Ruby Shadows (60 page)

“
A little,” I admitted.
“Too bad I didn’t think to grab that fur coat you gave me right
before they dragged me down to the…to the trial.”

I could hear the break in my own voice as I
said the words but I tried to cover it up by clearing my throat.
The events of the last few minutes were just beginning to sink in.
Being handed over to Druaga…almost being raped…and then the
incredible mixture of relief and disbelief I felt when I saw Laish
standing there and knowing everything would be okay. Then the
horror of seeing the boar-demon incinerated before my eyes…I could
still smell the stink like burning pork and hear his squealing
screams echoing in my ears…

Ugh—stop! Just
stop!
I told myself but somehow I
couldn’t. The memories were on a loop inside my brain, playing over
and over, making me feel sick and weak and shaky.

“
Here,” Laish murmured.
Taking off his immaculate charcoal gray suit jacket, he put it
around my shoulders.

“
Thanks.” I slipped my
arms into the sleeves and looked down at the ground, unable to meet
his eyes. I had so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to
say, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. Or maybe I was just
afraid if I started talking too much, I would start crying
again.

“
Well…” His voice had a
briskness to it that made me look up. “You are home safely, the
door to the Abyss is shut, and you have no more to fear from the
HellSpawn or any other creature of the Infernal Realm.”

“
Thank you,” I said again
because my stupid brain couldn’t think of anything else to
say.

“
So I suppose it is time
to leave you with your beloved grandmother and let you get on with
your mortal life.” He nodded at the trim yellow bungalow where I
knew Grams was probably sleeping right this minute.

Suddenly I realized he was saying goodbye to
me. And it didn’t sound like he was coming back.

“
Laish,” I said beginning
to panic. “Wait, I—”

“
Gwendy? Gwendy is that
you?”

The soft familiar voice came from the
vicinity of the front porch. As I watched, a shape detached itself
from the mass of shadows and came towards me. The moon was full and
in its light, I could see the haggard face of my little sister.

“
Keisha?” I left Laish
standing there and ran to meet her. The last time I’d seen her in
the Mirror of the Eye, she’d looked like a real mess. She didn’t
look much better now but at least I could tell she was clean. There
was no drug haze in her dark brown eyes when she looked at me,
though they did shine with tears.

“
Gwendy,” she whispered
and then she was in my arms and we were hugging and kissing and
holding each other for the first time in ages.

“
What’s this? What’s going
on out here?” another voice declared and Grams came out the front
door in her pink quilted house robe looking ready to shoot whoever
was trespassing on her property. Grams doesn’t play when it comes
to intruders. But when she saw who it was, she ran forward and
encircled both Keisha and me in her arms.

“
Grams!” Keisha
cried.

“
Keisha, child! And
Gwendolyn! Oh, my girls—both my girls have come back to me! Thank
the Goddess!”

Grams was nearly crying
she was so happy and Keisha and I
were
crying.

“
How did you get home
safe?” Grams asked. I think she was talking to me but it was Keisha
who answered.

“
Ray’s gone, Grams—that’s
why I came home. He just disappeared the other night—right out of
the bed. I don’t know what happened to him!”

“
Well, neither do I.”
Grams shot me a look and muttered in my ear, “Now you wouldn’t have
anything to do with this, would you, Gwendolyn?”

“
No, I swear,” I whispered
back, glad that Keisha was crying too loudly to hear me. “It wasn’t
me. It was…” But as I turned my head to nod at Laish, I saw that
the spot he had been standing in was empty. Frantically, I scanned
the front yard, looking for any trace of him but he had melted
quietly away, almost as though he was a dream I’d had just before
waking. “Laish,” I whispered but there was no reply.

He was gone.

Chapter
Thirty-five

Gwendolyn

“
Well,
then
what happened?” Addison
demanded. She and Taylor were literally on the edge of their seats,
staring at me with wide eyes as I repeated the story I’d already
told Grams what felt like a hundred times. Of course, I edited
quite a lot of it for Grams but here with my friends, I felt like I
could really talk and I had been completely honest with
them.

I shrugged. “Then, well…we came back in the
middle of the night and it was cold and my shirt was torn so he…he
gave me his jacket.”

I still had it hanging in my closet. Even
though it had been days since Laish had brought me back, it still
smelled faintly of cinnamon and that dark spice that always hung
around him. I knew because I was guilty of going to the closet and
pressing my face against it, just to feel close to him again.
Stupid, I know but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

“
And?” Taylor
asked.

“
And then my little sister
showed up and he left while I was distracted.” I sighed. “I haven’t
seen him since.”

“
Well, have you
tried
to see him?”
Addison asked practically. “I mean, have you called him or
summonsed him or whatever it is you do with demons?”

“
Well…no,” I admitted. To
be honest, I’d been afraid to. What if I called and he didn’t
answer? What if he never answered again? The way he’d said goodbye
had seemed so
final
.

“
You should call him,”
Taylor said. “Didn’t you say that he said he loved you?”

“
Repeatedly,” I said. “But
then Belial said Laish only
thought
he loved me because of the Eternal
Flame.”

“
What? That Bangles song
from the 80s?” Addison looked confused.

I explained quickly and then shrugged.

“
So you see—he probably
doesn’t love me at all. He just
thinks
he does.”

“
Well, he’s got a funny
way of showing that he thinks he loves you,” Taylor said. “Since he
also took your virginity and half your power.”

“
But
did
he?” Addison asked, looking at
me. “I thought you said you opened a portal from Hell into our
world. Doesn’t that take some serious juice as a witch?”

“
Well, yes it does,” I
admitted. “Honestly, I’m not sure
how
I did that.”

“
And how did Laish close
the door to the Abyss that you opened when you dragged me back
here?” Taylor asked. “I thought the whole point of you going to
Hell in the first place was because only someone with your—how did
you put it?”

“
My ‘soul signature’ what
was Laish kept saying,” I said.

“
Right—only someone with
your soul signature could close the door—at least according to him.
So then why did he make you come if he was able to close it without
you?”

“
To mess with her head?”
Addison suggested. “Demons are almost as bad as vampires when it
comes to that.”

“
Thanks a lot.” Taylor
made a face at her friend, showing her little white fangs. “I just
think it’s weird that he says he loves her and then betrays her and
then come back and saves her just in the nick of time. Something
doesn’t add up there.”

“
Like I said—he’s messing
with her head,” Addison said flatly.

“
What if he’s not?” Taylor
demanded. “What if he had a perfectly good reason for everything he
did?”

“
Like what?” Addison
demanded. “What reason could he have to drag her down to Hell if he
was able to shut that door on his own in the first
place?”

“
But that’s the thing,” I
interrupted their heated discussion. “I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t
have been able to close it at all. Grams thought the same or she
never would have let me go in the first place.”

“
Well maybe he had to take
you to Hell in order to get close enough to you for some of your,
uh, ‘soul signature’ to rub off on him,” Taylor
proposed.

“
No, it doesn’t work that
way.” I rubbed my eyes, wishing I could get some perspective. But
every time I closed my eyes, all the awful events of my time in
Hell intruded, demanding to be taken out and examined like poison
toys wanting out of their box. I was so distracted at this point I
could barely think straight—which was one reason I’d invited Taylor
and Addison over—to help me make sense of the whole
mess.

“
Well how
does
it work then?”
Addison demanded.

“
To shut that door, Laish
would have had to get a piece of my soul somehow,” I said. “And…oh
my Goddess…” Understanding poured over my head like a bucket of
cold water. “Oh my Goddess,” I whispered again. “Why didn’t I see
it before?”

“
What? What?” Taylor was
bouncing excitedly on my Grams’ faded floral print couch and
Addison was looking at me intently.

“
When the Demon Council
was giving me over to Druaga—”

“
That’s the pig-headed
hotel manager, right?” Taylor said.

I nodded. “Yeah. So
anyway, when they were handing me over, he said I had lost my
innocence and
half my soul
since the last time he’d seen me. I didn’t think
about it at the time since I was so freaked out but
then…”

“
Then Laish
appeared and stabbed the evil pig-headed bastard
with a weapon that
requires
you to have a soul to use it,” Addison said. And
before that, he closed a door that required
Gwendolyn’s
soul
signature.”

“
Oh my God.” Taylor’s face
went paper pale. “He literally
stole
your soul! Just like in all
the old stories about demons.”

“
No—he only stole half.”
Addison looked at me excitedly. “You know, I think Taylor is
right—I think he had a reason for everything he did.”

“
Oh crap…” I put my head
down between my knees, feeling suddenly light-headed.

“
Gwendolyn, hon? Are you
okay?” Addison hopped up to rub my shoulders.

“
I’m fine…fine…” I
whispered. But I wasn’t. Not at all.

“
Give her a minute,”
Taylor said anxiously. “She just found out she got soul-napped. Or
halfway soul-napped anyway. Is that what you’d call it?”

“
I don’t know what you
call it when you find out a demon who says he loves you steals half
your soul.” Addison sounded grim.

“
Well, at least we know he
stole it for your own good, don’t we?” Taylor asked me. “I mean, so
he could close that door for you and you wouldn’t have to go too
near that awful pit yourself?” She shivered and I knew she was
remembering the Abyss—she had nearly slipped into it before I could
pull her back to the Mortal Realm.

“
It’s not that,” I said.
“If it was only that I wouldn’t feel so…so…” But I didn’t even know
how I felt myself. A memory had just popped into my head—one I’d
either forgotten or tried to suppress. It was the brief vision I’d
had when Laish and I were making love—the golden cord that was tied
around my heart which had, as he finished in me, also tied around
his. Suddenly my grandmother’s voice came back to me.

“
I
knew when I met your grandpa, you know. I knew he was the one I’d
been waiting for. And on our wedding night, when I finally gave
myself to him…it was like a golden cord, binding us
together.”

“
Oh my God
dess,” I whispered.
“Oh my Goddess.”

“
What? What is it?” Taylor was up now too and both she and
Addison were bending over me, worried looks on their
faces.

“
I
have to call Laish,” I said thickly. “I have to summon him right
now and find out if…if what I think happened really
happened.”

“
What do you think happened?” Taylor asked. “Is it really
bad?”

“
I
don’t know,” I said. “I won’t know anything until I talk to
him.”

“
Should we go?” Addison asked practically. “I’m guessing this
is going to be a private conversation.”

“
Yes, I’m really sorry but you’re right. I need to do this
alone.”

“
Is it safe?” Taylor bit her lip, looking worried. “You won’t
be putting yourself into danger, will you Gwendolyn?”

“
No danger,” I assured them. “I just need to get answers.”
Taking a deep breath, I got up and smoothed down my skirt. “Thank
you so much for coming over. I promise I’ll let you know what’s
going on as soon as I get this all figured out.”

“
Well, all right.” Addison and Taylor began getting their
purses and getting ready to go. “But if you need us, call us. I
mean it—anytime,” Addison said.

“
Thanks.” Impulsively, I hugged them both. They hugged back,
returning my gesture of affection warmly. When I pulled out of the
three-way embrace, I found my eyes were wet. “You guys are good
friends,” I said. “Thank you for being there for me.”