Infernal Magic: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demons of Fire and Night Book 1) (9 page)

U
rsula dodged
, but not before Hugo’s elbow grazed her cheekbone. She stumbled into the side of the stall. He followed his elbow with a wild haymaker, but she saw it coming. As she ducked, she struck upward with the sharp nib of the pen, slicing into his forearm.

Hugo let out a shrill scream, gripping his wrist. “You cut me.”

“You’re lucky I haven’t killed you yet.” She thrust the bloody pen toward him. “Sign. Now.”

She was losing control of this situation. Kester had told her not to call attention to herself, that she was supposed to work in the shadows, but she had a hysterical pop star on her hands. Just as she thrust the parchment at him, Hugo lowered his shoulder and charged.

She tried to sidestep, but the stall was too narrow. He knocked her backward through the door and onto the marble tiles. Her head smacked against the floor, and pain exploded in her skull.

Clutching his arm, blood dripping between his fingers, he stood looking down at her. “Unbelievable,” he said, then sprinted from the bathroom.

Ursula clenched her teeth, forcing herself to stand. Little flecks of light sparked in the periphery of her vision, and she held onto the edge of the sink for support. She rubbed the back of her throbbing head.
I can’t let Hugo get away.
She had royally cocked this up, but at least the bathroom was still empty.

Outside the door she could hear Hugo shrieking, “A crazy woman cut me! Call the police!”

Shit.
How was she supposed to get out quietly now? This place was littered with CCTV cameras, and everyone would be looking for her. If she screwed this up, Emerazel was going to take pleasure in personally executing her, for reasons Ursula did not even understand.

Think, Ursula.
If she ran through the door, she could make it past Hugo’s guard, but some well-meaning club patron would surely tackle her before she made it across the room. What about a diversion? If she used Emerazel’s fire, she could set off the sprinklers and the fire alarm. In the ensuing chaos, she might make it to the elevator, but likely not much further before a bouncer caught her. She tightened her fists.
F.U., you bloody maniac, you dragged me into a hellish world I don’t even understand.

She needed to escape now—before anyone came in.

Outside the door someone shouted, “She’s still in there, right?”

Sodding hell.
So much for working in the shadows. In a few moments, Hugo’s bodyguard and the bouncers would be in here. Her heart raced, heat blazing from her hand. If she didn’t control herself, she’d be lighting something on fire. Or worse—she’d be lighting
someone
on fire. She glanced down at her hands, at the black smoke curling from her fingertips.

Then it came to her. She rushed to the door, gripping the doorknob. She closed her eyes, willing the heat from her hand into the metal. It was just enough to warp the latch shut.

Someone banged on the door, shouting and trying to turn the knob, but it wouldn’t open.

Okay. I’ve locked myself in.
But how was she supposed to get out? There were windows over the urinals, but they were sealed shut. And even if she could break one, she was fifteen stories up. She hadn’t exactly brought a parachute.
Magic. I need to use magic.

She grabbed a bottle of cologne and a matchbook from the attendant’s tray. Gripping the bottle, she smashed off the top on the steel edge of the sink before pouring it on the floor in the shape of Emerazel’s sigil. She struck a match and dropped it. Flames blazed around her.

What was that transportation spell Kester had chanted? He hadn’t taught it to her.
Bollocks bollocks bollocks.

An authoritative voice boomed through the door. “Is she still in there?”

She closed her eyes.
It’s in my brain, somewhere.
In her mind’s eye, she was back in the stone circle. Kester held her against his chest. She could almost feel his heartbeat next to her cheek. He’d intoned the strange magical words about a portal of fire, and Emerazel’s grace. She repeated after him, and the spell slipped from her tongue, as though she’d known it all her life—which, perhaps, she had.

The bodyguard pounded on the door, shouting. But the fire was raging all around her, and she dissolved into ash.

U
rsula blazed
into the sigil room before doubling over with a coughing fit. Hot soot seared her lungs, and her body burned with preternatural pain.
I really need to remember to hold my damn breath.
At least she’d escaped the club in one piece. Granted, she didn’t have Hugo’s signature on the pact, and she’d left Zee behind, but neither was she in handcuffs in the back of a police cruiser.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Kester appeared at the doorway. “What happened? How did you get here?” He paused, sniffing. “Did you douse yourself in cologne?”

She’d never thought the sight of his strange green eyes would be a relief. “Sigil spell. Forgot to hold my breath.” She wiped tears from her smoke-stung eyes. “And I had to use Giorgio Armani as the accelerant.”

“You look gorgeous.” Candlelight danced in his eyes, and his gaze trailed over her short dress. “But I still don’t understand how you got here. I never taught you that spell.”

“I remembered what you said.”

He stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. “Impressive as that is, I’m a little alarmed that you felt the need to use it. You collected Hugo’s signature, right?”

Ursula brushed ash off her dress. “Things got messy. Hugo made a scene.”

A muscle clenched in his jaw. “You didn’t get his signature? Then why are you here?”

“I had to escape.”
How do I explain this?
“Hugo ran away and started shrieking that I wanted to stab him.”
The truth again, I guess.

Kester moved closer, irises burning. Had she really found his face a welcome sight? He looked—terrifying. “We’re supposed to work in the shadows. If your face becomes known, Emerazel will destroy you. If you fail to get a target’s signature, as you have, Emerazel will destroy you. She hates you, for reasons I don’t understand, and she seemed very eager to reap your soul. I told you the importance of getting this right.”

Oh, God. I can’t escape the lectures about my own failure, even among the hellhounds.
“You told me the importance, but that doesn’t make me any more experienced. You and I both agreed it was insane that Emerazel wanted to send me off without training. I don’t know why you’re suddenly surprised that it didn’t turn out well. And you know what? I still don’t understand what she wants with everyone’s souls. What does she do with them?”

“It’s the stakes that mattered. You couldn’t afford to fail.” Ignoring her question, he rooted her in place with his gaze, and stepped closer. “I don’t know why you didn’t just sign the pact like I told you to in the first place. Then neither of us would have to worry about this mess.”

She crossed her arms, taking a step back, until she was backed up against the wall. “I don’t know—why didn’t I sign that pact?” She touched her finger to her lips. “Oh yeah, I guess I was a bit put off by the ‘burning in eternity’ thing. It sounded unpleasant—which, by the way, is why I’m not going to be a great salesman for this deal, because only a psychopath would want someone to burn forever. Hugo gets some cash in exchange for everlasting torture? And I’m supposed to convince him that’s a good deal? It’s insane. I’m not a monster, Kester.”

“Oh, but you are,” he snarled. “And so am I.” He pressed his palms to the wall on either side of her head, boxing her in.

Adrenaline surged. “I never wanted this.”

“You and I don’t get the luxury of morality and soul-searching. You asked to be just like me when you wanted a trial, and now you’re one of the demons. And I notice you quite happily accept the lodging and the payment for your work.”

White-hot anger burned her cheeks. “All I wanted from life was a normal job, enough for food and rent, and a couple of normal friends. I was happy in my hovel of an apartment. It was my home, before you told everyone I overdosed. I don’t need three bedrooms in a mansion, or a four-hundred-dollar haircut. And I don’t need gold ingots. For fuck’s sake.”

His eyes bored into her, and for a second, she thought he might tear into her neck like he’d slaughtered the ewe. “Has it occurred to you that there might be worse monsters out there than hellhounds like me?”

Her fingernails dug into her palms. “Worse than agents of perpetual agony? Is that so?”

“There are monsters who would torture you without your consent, who prey on the innocent—unlike hellhounds, who approach only those who’ve agreed to the bargain. Whether you remember it or not, you agreed to serve Emerazel, and so did Hugo. So did I. Now we all reap the consequences. That’s life.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

A low growl escaped him, and she caught a glimpse of lengthening fangs. He was going to murder her. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if I’m fine with it. You can’t fight it. Emerazel is as old, as powerful, and as immovable as the stars. If we don’t reap the souls, she’s more than capable of taking them herself. Hugo’s soul will be collected whether you do it or not. But if you defy the goddess, you will join him in the inferno. In fact, Emerazel will want your soul now for your mistake.”

A hollow opened in the pit of Ursula’s stomach. “For one cock-up?”

Kester’s face was stony. “Hugo is internationally famous. Your image will be plastered across the news. If I don’t tell Emerazel about your failure, she’ll slaughter me along with you.”

Ursula fought the urge to vomit.
Of course.
There had been CCTV cameras all over the club, recording her image. She could already imagine the headline:
Insane Mystery Girl Fakes Death, Attacks Hugo Modes.

“Maybe no one remembers me,” she said, her voice breaking.

An eternity in the inferno.
Kester was going to give her up to Emerazel. Her heart pounded. She needed to get out of here. Glancing around for an escape route, her eyes landed on the chandelier. She could leap up, kick Kester in the face, and bolt into the elevator. But it wouldn’t be on her floor, and she’d have to stand there waiting for it to arrive while Kester summoned the goddess of fire and brimstone.
Bollocks, Ursula.

Could she make it out a window? Did windows in penthouses even open? Even if she did escape, the goddess had total control over her mind and body. There was no way to run from her.

Raw panic flooded her body, and she began pacing like a caged animal.

Kester’s phone buzzed, and he stepped away from her, yanking it from his pocket. After a moment, he exhaled, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “You are
very
lucky Zee was there.”

“Why? What happened?” Hope bloomed in her chest.

He shoved the phone in his pocket. “Zee was able to glamour everyone at the club. They won’t remember you.”

“How?”

“Zee’s a fae. That’s one of the reasons I sent her along.”

“Fae? I don’t even know what that is.” She was still vibrating with panic; her statement came out as an angry shout.

“The fae can influence people’s thoughts. Luckily for you, she convinced the security guards to hand over the tapes of your panicking face.”

Ursula loosed a long breath, steadying her nerves. She slid her face into her hands, trying not to imagine Hugo burning in hellfire. “A relief from my death sentence. I could kiss Zee. And now I just need to find Hugo. I heard him saying he was going to the opera tomorrow night.”

Kester smirked. “You see? The prospect of your own torment clarifies your thinking, doesn’t it?”

She glowered at him. “I don’t need you to gloat about it.”

“Obviously, you need training. I can give you until tomorrow night to collect Hugo’s soul, but beyond that I’ll have to report to Emerazel. Even this amount of leniency is risking my own skin.” His glacial voice chilled her blood. “And do not create a scene again, or we’ll both end up in flames. You have one thousand pages in your ledger—a thousand souls you must collect. Don’t give Emerazel the pleasure of reaping your soul before you get through them.”

He pivoted, stalking out of the room, and Ursula was left on her own to stare at the cold vastness of New York.

U
rsula hugged
herself and crossed into the cavernous living room. The apartment felt noticeably colder without Kester in it.

On an oak coffee table, an uncorked champagne bottle rested in a bucket of ice, two empty glasses next to it. She sighed. Kester had obviously been planning a little celebration, assuming she’d somehow succeed.

Instead, she was left on her own. Again.

Her sense of loneliness threatened to crush the breath out of her. She had no one—not in a world where people kept their secrets closely guarded, disclosing only the tiniest glimmers of truth.

She poured herself a glass and collapsed onto the stiff crimson settee. Might as well make use of this.

She tried to ignore the ache of isolation gnawing at her chest, and flipped open her phone, scanning the news. A story about a crazed fan at Club Lalique was the top story. Fortunately, Zee had apparently glamoured everyone into believing the assailant was a blue-haired man with a tattoo of a spider on his cheek. It was a bizarre enough description that it wouldn’t lead to any false arrests. Only Hugo would still remember the truth.

Kester was right. She needed to find him as soon as she could, or the truth would get out.

And yet, Kester’s secrecy made her blood boil. The man was full of mysteries: the death of Henry, the truth about Zee, his own mysterious past, the locked library books—even the forbidden room upstairs.

At this point, she was entirely dependent on him to tell her about this bizarre new world, yet the guy clearly wasn’t trustworthy. He was
the Headsman
, for crying out loud. He’d even referred to
himself
as a monster. How could she trust anything he said? What if all of this was a lie, and there was another way out?

Moreover—what was it he was so desperate to keep from her, that stood locked in her own apartment? He’d said this was her place, but he sure didn’t act that way. There were rooms she couldn’t enter, while Kester was free to swan in and out whenever he pleased. She drained another glass of champagne. She was going to start finding out secrets on her own.

She refilled her champagne flute and rose. Clutching the glass, she hurried upstairs into the hallway. As the bubbly took hold of her mind, her mood brightened.
I’m not a screw-up. I just have a normal aversion to sending people to hell.

At the end of the dark corridor, the forbidden oak door shone with an otherworldly light.

Slowly, she approached the door, its surface punctuated by iron spikes. It certainly didn’t look inviting, but maybe some kind of answers lay inside. She was done with secrets. She gripped the doorknob, cursing when it wouldn’t twist open. Kester hadn’t lied when he said it was locked. She’d need to find another way in.

She stalked down the hall to the botanical room, which stood adjacent to the locked door. She inhaled deeply.
Oranges, rosemary, and marigolds.
Kester hadn’t just had the place cleaned—he’d had the whole greenroom replanted.

She stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. In the frost-covered panes, Manhattan’s lights appeared hazy and distorted.

She gazed down at the yellow taxis and the few pedestrians foolhardy enough to brave the winter night. What were they doing, with their normal human lives? Hurrying to their parents, their spouses, their lovers? Maybe just slipping down the block for last call at the bar?

Still agitated, she took a long slug of her champagne. She’d grown sick of all secrets and mystery. She didn’t want to be the bloody Mystery Girl. She wanted to know where she came from, who her parents were, and how she’d ended up with Emerazel’s mark carved in her shoulder. But short of that information, she at least wanted to know what lurked in the locked room in her own apartment.
Is that too much to ask?

She glanced at the windowsill. A little brass handle protruded from the iron rail, and she pulled at it, cracking it open.
I guess that answers my question about penthouse windows.

If she was going to break into the locked room, her only hope was to climb along the outside wall and through one of its windows. She drained the last drops of her champagne. She’d need a little Dutch courage for this.

A hard push was enough to open the window wide. A frigid breeze blew into the room. Ursula held tight to the sill, leaning out, and peered to her left, at the windows of the locked room just eight feet away.

A small stone ledge jutted from the wall a few feet below, barely large enough for her to stand on. A giddy thrill bubbled through her—one which turned terrifying when she looked past the ledge at the streets below. She was at least fifteen stories up.

She edged back into the safety of the conservatory. She needed a plan. One slip on the ledge would send her plunging to her death. Crawling would be safest. On her hands and knees she’d be more stable.

Still, she would need a way to pry open the window of the locked room. A crowbar would be ideal, but it was too late for a trip to the hardware store. A small blade might work, and that was something she had.

She hurried to her bedroom, snatching the dagger from under her pillow.

Her pulse raced as she returned to the conservatory. The window was still open. She held her breath and crawled through it and onto the ledge, keeping the knife clenched between her teeth.

A thick layer of crusted snow covered the ledge. A strong gust of wind blew up her skirt, pushing it up over her waist and exposing her tiny thong. If any eagle-eyed New Yorkers were watching from below, they’d catch a wondrous view of her arse.
Why didn’t I change into trousers first?
Her bare knees were freezing against the ice. She’d been too charged up to think this through, as usual.

Another gust of wind blew her hair into her eyes. She wanted to brush it away, but she couldn’t lift a hand from the ledge without slipping.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. As she inched toward the window, she did her best to ignore the auburn tresses slapping her cheeks. She crawled forward, and the ice on the ledge thickened. She glanced down at the street fifteen stories below. The falling snow obscured most of the details, and it looked as though she was peering into a bottomless void.
What the hell was I thinking? This is insane.
She started to edge backward, but her knee slipped from the ledge, and she scrambled to press herself close against the building.

She gasped, and the knife almost slipped from her teeth. She didn’t want to move forward or backward at this point, but she obviously couldn’t stay here.
I really am a first-class idiot.
She’d failed at holding down a job, keeping a boyfriend, achieving any sort of education or achievement. Tonight she’d screwed up her hellhound job, and now she was stuck on an icy ledge fifteen stories above Manhattan’s streets. No one would really care if she lived or died. Her only contribution to the world so far was her ability to light things on fire.

Although… A thought sparked in her mind. Maybe she could channel Emerazel’s fire and melt some of the ice.

But how to do it? Before when she’d used the fire, she hadn’t uttered any Angelic to call up the fire. Neither, as far as she could tell, had Kester. It had just sort of been there when she needed it, burning her veins and channeling into her fingers until they glowed, white-hot. Maybe she just needed to envision it.

She imagined her palms burning, her fingertips blazing like candles.

She glanced at her hands.
Nothing.

As she closed her eyes, she envisioned a raging forest fire. She peeked at her fingertips, frozen to the ledge
.
A frigid gust of wind blew up her skirt again. How did you explain to a hospital how you’d got frostbite on your arse?

Bollocks.
Imagining fire couldn’t be it. And when she thought about it, she hadn’t even known she had this ability when she’d burned Muppet in Rufus’s club.

Another snow squall whipped by her ears. Her hands were freezing against the stone. Damn it, this had been a terrible idea.

And then she felt it: a distant trickle of heat. Almost as soon as it was there, it flickered away again.

Ok, what did I just do? The wind blew, I looked at my freezing fingers, I swore.
That had to be it. The fire came from anger. She could do anger.

Ursula closed her eyes, imagining Rufus and Madeleine cuddling on his sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles and expensive cheese. The familiar warmth flowed in her veins. This was a start, but it wasn’t going to clear a path anytime soon. She didn’t really give a fuck about Madeleine. She needed more heat.

In her mind’s eye, Rufus leaned over his desk. “The problem, Urse, is that you have no goals—no vision,” he whinged.

The heat poured out of Ursula like liquid metal from a crucible. The ice in front of her melted with a hiss and a burst of steam.

Rufus continued to play his part in her imagination. “You’re just a sad cow who will never make anything of your life.”

Flames burst from her palms pouring along the ledge. Sparks fell toward the street below in a waterfall of hellfire. Ursula watched the fire, entranced by its beauty, until a great gust of freezing wind snapped her out of her reverie.
Get a grip.

One the plus side, the ice had fully melted. Ursula inched forward over the stone. When she reached the forbidden room’s windows, she pressed her face against the glass, but all she could see were heavy curtains. She wouldn’t learn any secrets unless she actually broke into the room.

She kneeled flat against the wall, the dagger still clenched between her teeth. Gingerly, she released it into her hand, careful not to slice herself with the sharp edge. Holding it firmly, she slipped the blade into the crack between the window and the sill. A twist of the dagger’s hilt ratcheted the window open.

Slipping her fingers into the gap, she pulled it open further. Crouched on the ledge, she didn’t have the leverage to open it all the way without leaning dangerously close to death. She would have to clamber in as best she could.