mission magic 01 - the incubus job (11 page)

“They absorb magic,” I said. “But I did the revelation spell and they didn’t interfere. Why not?”

Law turned, his eyes flinty and faintly worried. He glanced at me then scanned the collection of cones. “Could be your spell armed them. It was predictable that one of us would cast a revelation spell, so once we did, the door sealed and the cones activated. I don’t like this.”

Preaching to the choir. I didn’t say it. A shiver rippled across my skin. I should have known or at least expected the trap. It seemed obvious now, though it wasn’t an easy sort of magic and nothing that an incubus should have been capable of. It was a complex working and required a deep ability. I didn’t know how he would have come by such a spell or why he’d have set it. He’d clearly made a beeline to Effrayant because he thought it was a haven. All the same, I could have kicked myself. It pays to be paranoid in my line of work. Either I was more tired than I thought or Law had me that distracted. Or both.

“We were meant to be here,” I said slowly as my brain started to work. “This is a witch trap.” I quickly leaped to the obvious conclusion. “This isn’t the incubus’s work at all. This is So’la’s.”

“I agree. The question is, what exactly does he or it want with us?”

I didn’t have an answer, but I did still have Law’s phone. I tapped Ivan’s number into it and waited. Nothing happened. I hung up and tried again, but even though the phone had full bars and a healthy battery charge, it refused to connect.

I resisted the urge to throw it at the wall and instead handed it back to Law.

“No signal,” I said.

He scowled and hit a speed-dial number. He tried three different times before he gave up. I wanted to tell him I told you so, but I refrained—barely. Did he think I’d forgotten how to use a stupid phone?

I crossed my arms, and the beading of my dress rustled, the silk cool against my skin. I would have given a lot to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

“Got any good ideas for escape?” I asked, mentally ticking through my own arsenal.

The only way to really take out magic suckers was to overload them. That could easily exhaust us both before we succeeded. As it was, I could feel them sucking on my shields. I was replenishing them with a trickle of magic, but a constant drain would take its toll. Once my shields went, the suckers would drain the spell carvings and eventually kill me.

Even though it wouldn’t help, I backed away from the cones as far as I could get. At some point the doors to the other bedroom and the bathroom had swung closed.

“The ghosts might overload the cones,” Law said.

I knew he’d get around to suggesting it sooner or later, and I couldn’t resent him for it. After all, as far as he cared, they were already dead and unnatural. Their potent energy could be used to save our lives.

Was it crazy that I wasn’t even tempted to ask them? Suicide is insane, they say, and choosing not to feed the ghosts to the trap meant I could very well die or worse, depending what this So’la had in mind for us. All the same, I couldn’t do it. They were people to me—maybe not flesh and blood, but people all the same.

I shook my head, bracing for the condemnation that was sure to follow. But Law surprised me.

“You’re that committed?” Genuine surprise colored his voice.

“They’re innocent,” I said with a shrug. “I can’t kill them just to save myself.” What about to save him? I couldn’t let myself answer that. The answer scared me.

“Once our magic is spent, this So’la will be able to do anything to us,” he argued. “There’s a better than good chance we’ll end up like the incubus and the ghosts will get sucked up anyway. Nobody wins.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that. We’re a smart pair of sorcerers with a lot of experience in dire situations. We should be able to come up with a way out that keeps us from an early grave.”

“Optimism in the face of sure disaster. I always did like that in you,” he said with a wry grin.

I grinned back and my chest expanded. For a silver moment, it almost felt like the past six years apart had never happened. “I aim to please. Got any tricks up your sleeves?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Law said, sobering. “These cones will leave us helpless in no time. Their pull on my shields is increasing. Can’t you feel it?”

“You could drop them.”

“I don’t think it’s wise. This trap was well planned. I’m betting our captor anticipated us doing just that.” He scowled at me. “Don’t even think about trying it.”

“Yes, Dad,” I said. Then, because he needed to know my limitations, “Besides, it would be fatal if I did.”

He stared, his expression going pale as my words sank in. He slowly slid his hands into his pockets as if he feared what he might do with them if they weren’t contained. “What exactly are you saying?” he asked in the same careful voice I’d used.

“I’ve been spell carving.” I braced for his inevitable explosion.

It didn’t come. Instead Law took a long breath and blew it out slowly, scraping both hands through his hair. He turned and paced across the room to the window, touching his fingers to the glass then down below the sill.

“What are you doing?”

“Figuring out how to get out of this mess.” He sounded choked.

He went around to the other walls, touching each, then crouched to brush his knuckles over the floor. He straightened.

“I’m cut off from Effrayant.”

“I know. We’re in a trap.”

“No, you don’t know. The place is an auberge.”

“I do know that. It’s written on the sign outside.” I was beginning to feel like one of us had had a head injury, and I don’t think it was me, but then again, I was really tired and Law was right—the drain on my magic was growing stronger. We needed to figure out a way to get out of the trap soon. I wasn’t eager to knock on death’s door so soon after the lich-cat episode.

He began pacing around the cones, examining them. “Not that it matters at the moment, but an auberge isn’t just a hotel. They are always anchored in a ley junction, and magic flows through them. My blood-bond lets me tap into that power at need. The trap is blocking me from doing that.”

“Which means that the trap was meant for us in particular. Why?”

“Because of the box, of course,” a young, feminine voice said.

I spun around to face the door. Just inside was the young woman from the elevator who’d seemed so familiar. In her hands she held three chains attached to the three missing goats. The animals strained at the end of their leashes to get as far from their captor as possible, eyes sprung wide with fear. Ice clamped my bones as Tabitha dug deeper inside me. I felt her shaking. Her fear turned my mouth dry and made my heart explode. I breathed quietly, trying to calm my body, even as my own fear surged.

That’s when I realized who the woman was. The incubus had killed her in Vegas. She was a corpse.

Chapter 6

“You are So’la, I presume?” I asked, ignoring the fear clenching my stomach. “You look good for a corpse. Law, let me introduce you to the woman the incubus killed in Vegas. I think her name was Kelly Langston.” Some of the pieces of the puzzle clicked together. “That’s why the incubus ran in Chicago,” I said to her. “You showed up.”

“Quite right. He was dawdling, and I was in a hurry.” So’la gave a flourishing bow, something right out of The Three Musketeers. “I am delighted to meet you again, Mallory. You are always such a delight.”

I frowned, adrenaline stampeding through my muscles. Fight or flight. I couldn’t do either. “What do you mean? We’ve never met, have we?”

“Oh, so many times. Let me see, perhaps you remember this one . . .”

So’la’s body blurred as if a flesh-colored wind spun around it, and in a disturbing lumping of flesh, bone, and hair, a man resolved where the dead Kelly had been. He was tall with black hair and a dramatic widow’s peak. The hair at his temples was silvered. His face was long and gaunt, with sunken eyes that reminded me of stagnant water. For a moment he stood naked, with a sagging paunch and bristling body hair. Clothes slid over him out of nowhere, and a pair of thin silver glasses propped onto his nose.

“You’ve been masquerading as Turner Dempsey?” My voice squeaked despite my effort at control. The ground no longer felt quite solid. Dempsey worked for Ivan in international relations. He spoke eight or nine different languages fluently and another ten or twenty with passing skill. He also could fit like a native into just about any culture. I never liked him, but he’d been a useful resource for me ever since I started working for Ivan. “For how long?”

“Years. One does wonder why he felt the need to travel so frequently.” He smiled and he had Dempsey’s crooked bottom teeth.

“Tabitha knew you were here. If we’d run into you before, she’d have known,” I said.

“Tabitha? Ah, one of your ghosts, I suppose.”

I started and exchanged a speaking glance with Law. Nobody should have known about them. I hadn’t even told Ivan.

The Dempsey look-alike shrugged and smiled at my surprise. “I have made a study of you, you see. As for why your Tabitha did not sense me, I am usually quite skilled at disguise. Being this close—” He broke off with a grimace. “Let us just say my control is not quite perfect at the moment.”

“The box,” I said, putting two and two together. “The box interferes with you.”

The being wearing Dempsey gave a happy smile that made me squirm. “You see? As smart as you are, this will turn out well.”

“What will turn out well?” Law demanded.

“In good time,” Dempsey said then shifted again, this time into a stunning Korean woman with waist-long hair and short bangs. She was slender and built like a boy. She wore a conservative pencil skirt with a white blouse buttoned up to her neck, white stockings, and four-inch spike heels.

“Hana Dai?” I said, taken aback yet again. She was a researcher for Emily Beakman, a partner in Ivan’s firm. Researcher was one of those euphemistic catch-all terms for an investigator willing to do just about anything to find the dirt she was digging for. Hana was one of the best, and now I knew why. I always figured her elegant feminine exterior hid some seriously dangerous skills, though I never imagined she was a demon. But then, who does expect demons? Probably the same people who wear tinfoil hats and lead underwear.

“Quite kind of you to help Hana’s sister out of that mess with the Sakoung clan. After their abhorrent behavior, I was quite tempted to kill them myself, but other duties called, I’m afraid. Perhaps when we are done with our business, I will make time. I truly do not care much for that sort of trash, and I always enjoy a good bloodbath.”

The voice was Hana’s, but the words and their cadence were alien.

“What sort of business do you have in mind?” Law asked, coming to stand beside me.

If he meant his presence to reassure me, he failed. Whatever So’la wanted, it was my fault it was here. I’d brought the demon parasite to Effrayant, and it was up to me to get rid of it. I wasn’t going to let Law or anyone else get hurt because of me if I could help it. I needed a plan. I needed to know more about So’la. I wish Tabitha had been willing and able to say more.

“Don’t you know?” the creature said to Law.

I couldn’t look away from the imitation-Hana’s pearly pink lips as she spoke.

“The box, of course. I could not take it myself. I have tried for years to gain my freedom, but every plan has failed, until now. Now I am nearly free.”

Her eyes turned a brilliant flickering orange, and several inches of shining needle-sharp teeth burst from her jaws, skewering her cheeks from within. The effect was unsettling for the lack of blood.

“But first you must do me a service.”

Hana’s voice had turned into a low, smoky growl. As if the demon could no longer tolerate her form, her scalp split apart and sloughed down to the floor like a skin sack. So’la’s body bubbled and expanded. I fell back a step, then several. Law held his ground a moment longer then retreated with me. The goats followed, bleating loudly, as the demon dropped their chain leashes.

We were so screwed.

Chapter 7

“Did you know something like that could fit inside such a little skin?” I asked Law, backing up some more. I shoved more energy into my shields and reached down to fiddle with the chain on the nearest goat. I was hoping that once freed, they’d be able to escape.

In the meantime, Hana—or So’la because, let’s face it, Hana was now just a skin suit on the carpet—swelled like one of those sponges that are the size of a postage stamp until you get them wet and they turn into a small car. Its skin was gun-barrel blue, and it appeared to be sheathed inside a thick layer of Vaseline. I was willing to bet that the goo would eat a person’s skin.

I guessed the demon stood around seven feet tall, give or take a few inches. It was bony and looked vaguely anorexic. Its back curved sharply, giving it something of a hump. Two bony protrusions pushed up from its shoulders, one topped with a knobby growth, the other cut short as if it had been snapped off. Long tree-branch arms emerged just below. Even bent at the elbow, the demon’s talons brushed the carpet. A pair of folded wings rose high above its head, which reminded me of a buffalo skull, except it was gray and its horns spiraled up straight like an African antelope, only the demon had five, each about a foot long.

It had so many teeth that they bunched and crowded, each about six inches long. Maybe there were no orthodontists in the demon realms, which really is ridiculous because I was fairly sure that’s where they all came from, along with dentists, gynecologists, and politicians.

My ghosts fluttered and pressed tighter. I could feel Tabitha’s rising terror. Jolts of pain pulsed through my gut and down my legs. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t handle it—yet. But if she went wild like earlier in the day, we’d both be in trouble.

Law eased in front of me. I didn’t know whether to be irritated that he thought could handle So’la better or gratified that he was willing to stand between me and harm. I took the opportunity to free the goats. The moment they the chains came off, they bolted through the floor. I wished we could do the same.