Left Hand Magic (28 page)

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Authors: Nancy A. Collins

BOOK: Left Hand Magic
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“Get away from my dog, you bastards!” I shouted, snatching a discarded bottle from a nearby trash can and chucking it at the writhing mass of fur and fangs.
I expected the rat king to react to my attack the same way a normal rodent would, by scurrying off to the nearest hidey-hole. Instead, the wheel of rats came whirling toward me like a lazy Susan from hell, squealing and gnashing its myriad teeth in anger.
“Let me at ’em!” Scratch snarled, tucking his wings in and dropping from the sky like a hawk going after a rabbit. The familiar nimbly zipped through the maze of crisscrossing laundry lines like a barnstorming stunt pilot and sank his talons into the rat king’s knotted tail. The verminous abomination shrieked in alarm, its squeals melding into one voice, as Scratch snatched the creature off the ground.
The familiar flapped up into the air again, the rat king swinging back and forth beneath him like the clapper of a bell. Once Scratch landed atop the roof of a nearby tenement, the screams of the rat king as its individual members met their fate echoed throughout Snuff Alley.
I rushed forward and pushed aside one of the garbage cans, revealing a shivering Beanie. He was covered in filth and badly frightened, but seemed otherwise unharmed. The moment he saw me he jumped up onto his hind legs, waving his little paws in the air. I snatched him up and buried my face in his fur, unmindful of the smell.
“Don’t you
ever
scare Mommy like that again!” I scolded the squirming wad of puppy as he licked the relieved tears from my face.
“You can really haul ass—you know that?” Hexe panted as he jogged up to join me. “One second you were standing on the street; the next you were halfway down the alley!”
“I guess my maternal instinct kicked into drive,” I replied.
“Overdrive is more like it. Is he okay?”
“You tell me,” I said, handing Beanie to him so I could wipe the puppy kisses from my face.
“He seems to be unhurt, but—Hey, that tickles!” Hexe laughed as Beanie started licking his ears by way of greeting. “Phew! He’s definitely getting a B-A-T-H when we get home!”
“ ‘And they all lived nauseatingly ever after,’ ” Scratch said sarcastically as he made a four-point landing, a still writhing length of tail hanging from the corner of his mouth like an errant strand of spaghetti. “Don’t everyone thank me at once for saving your stupid dog.”
“You know this little guy means a lot to me,” I said, kneeling so that I was face-to-face with the familiar. “I owe you one, Scratch.”
The winged cat looked at my outstretched hand for a long second, and then stepped forward, butting the top of his head against my palm. His skin was warm and smooth to the touch, like a living chamois cloth.
“Hey, he’s
my
pet, too,” he purred.
 
 
Later that night I lay in bed and stared up at the dragon painted on the ceiling. Hexe was asleep next to me, his tousled purple head resting on my breast. The warmth of his body pressed against mine was comforting after everything we’d recently endured. Despite today easily qualifying as one of the worst of my life, I felt oddly at peace.
All my life I had felt somewhat . . . detached . . . from my family. I’m not sure whether the fault for that lies with me or my parents. It’s not that I don’t love them. I do. And I know that they love me, in their own fucked-up way. But when it comes to understanding and accepting one another—that’s a different story.
Being an artist isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It’s more like a genetic disposition than anything I have conscious control over. I can’t stop being an artist any more than I can stop being allergic to grapefruit. But my parents have always viewed it as some sort of deliberate act of defiance, done simply to get under their skin. And, to be honest, sometimes it was. But I never set out to be a sculptor simply to piss them off. I’ve given up on them ever understanding me. And I would be okay with that, if only they could just accept me for what I am.
I’d never experienced much in the way of acceptance, outside of Nessie and Clarence, my family’s butler. All my boyfriends before Hexe had certainly fallen short in that regard. Most of them thought my claiming to be an artist was the upper-class version of being a welfare cheat—a way for me to shirk adult responsibilities while giving the finger to my family. In the end, they viewed me no differently than my parents did, really.
But Hexe . . . Hexe had accepted me for who and what I was, including my art, right from the start. He’d never once complained about the noise I made when working on my sculptures, or the sparks generated by my welding equipment. And he would be well within his rights to do so, because what I do is sure as fuck loud and dangerous. But he doesn’t seem to care. Hell, it seems to make him
happy.
I glanced down at the foot of the bed, where Beanie, freshly bathed and exhausted from his misadventures, lay sound asleep. He was curled up toes-to-nose and snoring like an adorable little buzz saw. There was a flapping sound and a second later Scratch appeared, perched atop the footboard.
“I just finished the perimeter check,” the familiar whispered. “The warding spells Hexe erected are still holding strong. Courtier or not, that demon’s not getting back in here.”
“Might as well turn in for the night, then,” I said, pulling the bedclothes about Hexe and myself. “Good night, Scratch.”
“G’night, Tate,” the familiar replied as he hopped down onto the foot of the bed next to Beanie, draping his right wing over the sleeping puppy like a mother hen protecting her chick. “See you in the morning.”
 
 
I’m riding on a cart alongside Gus as Bayard slowly clipclops through the early-morning fog. I glance up at the sky, in search of the sun, but all I see is gray.
“Where are we going?” I ask, but neither replies.
“I asked them the same question,” a strange man’s voice says from behind me. “And I got the same response as you did.” I look over my shoulder and see a Kymeran man with apricot-colored hair and a Vandyke beard sitting in the back of the wagon. Although I do not know him, he seems familiar. “Part of me is relieved they won’t answer,” the stranger says. “I think if they talk to me, it means I’m dead.”
“Do I know you?” I ask. “I have the funny feeling we’ve met before. . . .”
“My name is Jarl,” the stranger replies. “I am an alchemist.” He gestures to the floor of the wagon, at the copper dragon curled at his feet. The creature regards me with eyes made of flame, steam rising from its nostrils. I do not feel fear or surprise upon seeing the beast, but, instead, a strange sense of connection. Somehow I know the creature will not harm me. Jarl reaches into the pocket of his coat and removes an egg and shows it to the copper dragon, which opens its mouth to receive it.
I turn back around and see a narrow alley before us, barely wide enough for the wagon to pass. There is a bright light at the other end. There is a figure standing at the far end, arms spread as if to block our path.
“This is my last favor!” the figure calls out. I recognize the voice as Quid’s, although it sounds as if he’s speaking from the bottom of a well. “The girl can go no farther!”
Gus nods his head and turns to speak to Jarl. “Tell her.”
A look of dismay flickers across the alchemist’s face, as if his worst fears have been confirmed. He glances at me and smiles sadly. “You have to wake up, Tate.”
“Why?”
Jarl points at the narrow sliver of sky above our heads. I look up and see the shape of an approaching demon silhouetted against the fog.
 
I came up out of the dream like a swimmer escaping an undertow, gasping and flailing as if my life depended on it. I sat straight up in the bed, my senses strained to their limit. The clock on the bedside table told me it was just before dawn.
“What’s wrong?” Hexe yawned as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Do you hear it?” I whispered.
There was something scratching at the shuttered window over the bed. A few seconds later the sound stopped, only to resume at the secured window in the bathroom.
Hexe threw aside the bedclothes. “It’s heading for the roof,” he said, pulling on a pair of pants.
Scratch raised his head and sniffed the air, pulling a still-snoring Beanie closer to him with his wing. The familiar’s eyes narrowed to gun slits and he began a low, menacing growl as he tracked the sound of the intruder, his ears swiveling like radar dishes.
“Don’t worry. I cast the strongest spells of protection possible on all the windows and doors,” Hexe assured me.
A rattling sound came from the bedroom fireplace, followed by a tiny spill of displaced soot falling onto the hearth. “What about the chimney?” I asked.
Hexe bounded across the room, his right hand glowing, and fired a bolt of blinding-white magic into the grate. There was a whooshing noise, followed by an all-too-familiar squeal.
“I can’t believe I overlooked the chimney,” Hexe said, shaking his head in self-reproach. “It’s a good thing you woke up when you did, Tate.”
“Could that thing really fit down the flue?”
“Demons can make themselves as big or as small, as thick or as thin as necessary,” he replied. “That’s why it’s important to seal every possible means of entry with protective wards, so they don’t pour themselves through the keyhole or slip in through the mail slot.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait until cockcrow. If it hasn’t fulfilled its mission by then, it must return to its master. And then it will return at the same time tomorrow, and so on, until it either succeeds at its task or is returned to the Infernal Court by whoever summoned it. Now that you know that, are you
still
sure you want to remain in Golgotham?”
I wrapped my arms about him, pressing my head against his bare chest. “If my mother can’t scare me into leaving, what chance does a demon have?”
Chapter 23
 
W
hile Hexe’s spells might have been able to keep a demon at bay, they were unable to do the same in regard to my parents, who showed up at the boardinghouse bright and early, looking even more ill at ease than they had at the hospital.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” my mother said as she bulldozed her way across the threshold, my father in tow. “I had to look at some horse’s ass all the way over here.”
“I must admit, our cabbie had a fine set of hocks on him,” my father said appreciatively. “Reminded me of this polo pony I had, back in college—”
“This is neither the time nor the place for you to reminisce about your days on the Harvard polo field, Timothy,” my mother said sharply, cutting him off before he could launch into another of his rambling stories. “Good heavens, Timmy—what possessed you to live in such a tacky dump?”
“Sounds like the taxi driver wasn’t the only one with a horse’s ass, if you ask me.”
“Who said that?!?” my mother gasped.
“
I
did,” Scratch said, emerging from behind the purple sofa. He eyed my mother as if sizing her up for a takedown. “Wanna make something of it, nump?”
My mother instinctively recoiled, but quickly regained her sense of outrage. “Timmy! Your cat just insulted me to my face!”
“Hang around long enough, and I’ll insult the rest of you, too,” the familiar sneered. “Oh, and by the way, I’m
not
a cat. And even if I
was
a cat, I wouldn’t belong to
her.
No offense, Tate.”
“None taken. Mother, this is Scratch—he is Hexe’s, um, ah . . .”
“Call him what he is, sweetheart,” Hexe said as he came downstairs to join us. I noticed he was freshly groomed and dressed in a dark turtleneck sweater and corduroy pants instead of his normal scruffy jeans and ironic T-shirt. “Scratch is my familiar, Mrs. Eresby. He is both my servant and my friend. Allow me to take this opportunity to welcome both of you to my home. Please, make yourselves comfortable; do sit down.”
“That won’t be necessary,” my mother replied. “We won’t be staying long.” She looked around the front parlor and scowled. “Where are your things, Timmy? I don’t see any suitcases.”

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