The Demon's Apprentice (14 page)

“Touch her again, and I'll burn you so bad there won't even be a stench left.” My teeth ground together as I snarled the words at him, and he backed over the threshold of his shop. Depending on how strong his door wards were, he could probably shrug off most of what I could throw.

“Take your filthy bitch and leave,” he ordered from the safety of his shop. The Hellfire flickered and went out as I lost the anger I needed to sustain it, and I offered Synreah my other hand. She got to her feet on her own, and I tried not to let the hurt show on my face at having her refuse my help.

“From where I'm standing, the only bitch I see, Ashkhabad,” Synreah said, “is the sniveling wand-crafter who isn't man enough to take two steps out of his shop and put a woman in her place.” She turned her back on him to add to the insult, and took my hand. My laugh was loud and long as she led me away from his shop.

“Are you okay?” I asked as she led me toward one of the broader alleys.

“We both made an enemy of him,” she said softly. “You'd better lay low if you come back to the Hive any time soon.”

“What about you?”

“I'll manage. And…thank you for what you did back there. No one…ever helped me before.” The words came out slowly, like she wasn't used to saying them.

I gave her a shrug and a half smile. If she was anything like me, it had cost her a lot to say that. The best thing I figured I could do was just let it go and press on. But…it felt good to hear it.              The next place Synreah led me to was Arianh-Rod's. It was one of the few permanent shops in the Hive, in the middle of a fork in the lane, a full two-story stone building, shaped like a wedge. The door faced straight into the lane. A round turret rose above the doorway, and the shop’s sign hung beneath it: a plain black plank with the shop’s name and the silver wheel of seven spokes that was her maker’s mark below it. Windows showcased the front of the shop, where she displayed an assortment of wands in velvet-lined cases.

It was one place Dulka never wanted me to go. He had a thing about not letting me get my hands on a focus, especially a wand. The spells I had thrown at him during my escape had been potent, but sloppy. Magickally, I was the equivalent of a blunt object. A
very
blunt object. Say, a Mack truck, or a car, if you were feeling generous. I made a heavy club seem like a precision instrument by comparison. Dulka’s training had concentrated on stamina, strength, and knowledge, but he’d left me painfully short on things like fine control and theory. I could memorize an incantation, cast it from a circle perfectly and repeatedly, but I had to pour a ton of energy into it each and every time. To cast spells outside of a circle, I needed to have a focus and barring another eight years of training at the feet of a real mage, wands were the best tools for the job.

I held the door open for Synreah, who gave me a bemused smile as she ducked her head under the lintel and slipped inside. The threshold here was strong enough to leave goose bumps across my skin as I crossed it, and the sounds from outside faded to almost nothing as the door creaked shut. A half-circle display case held some of the more expensive wands, and served as a barrier between the front half of the shop and the back. A selection of staves lined the walls on either side, and the back wall held drawers and cabinets with labels on them that I couldn't read in the soft light. A curtained doorway was set in the middle of the back wall, and from behind it, I could hear a rhythmic hissing sound. The smell of sawdust was a pleasant tang in my nose, and Synreah's boot heels made a sharp counterpoint to the hissing sound as she crossed the floor. There was no one else in the shop but us, and I wondered if we were going to get the same reception we'd gotten at Ashkhabad's.

The hissing sound stopped, and I heard movement in the back. Then the curtain parted, and I found myself face to face with the glowing crystal tip of a power rod.

“Ye'd best turn about and leave,” the woman behind the rod hissed at me in a soft brogue. She was a little taller than me, maybe five foot ten, and slender, with pale blonde hair and almond-shaped violet eyes that suggested fae blood. I wondered what would fall out of her family tree if I gave it a good shake, as I concentrated on standing verrrrry still. The power in the length of silver metal she was pointing at me was strong enough that I could feel it pressing against me without it being truly focused on me. If she cast the spell that I could feel pointed at me, I was pretty sure I was going to end up splattered across a good-sized chunk of the Hive. Of course, the whole front of her shop would be equally obliterated, as well.

“Okay,” I said, “I'm going.” I turned and opened the door for Synreah, who hadn't moved an inch.

“What?” Synreah sputtered after a moment. “You're not even going to try to defend yourself?”

I sighed, already tired of being treated like this. “She's no different than Ashkhabad. She's gonna believe what she wants to believe, and I can't change that. No point arguing with her about it over a charged weapon. Let's go. I don't feel like getting blasted out of another shop.” Synreah shrugged and started across the floor toward the door.

“You stop right there, ye little strumpet! And yew! Close that fecking door and get yer arse back in here!”

I looked at Arianh-Rod with a frown. “You made your point; we're leaving.”

“Ye'll be doin' nae such thing! I'll not be treated like I'm a fecking idiot. Believe what I want to believe, indeed. D'ye think I dinnae know when a body is after calling me stupid? And I'll be thrice damned if
any
man can say I treated him the same as that wrong-headed bastard, Ashkhabad.” The silver rod came down, and she nodded toward Synreah. “Besides, it's the first time I've heard a whore speak up for a man. Says a lot about ye, it does.”

“Don't call her that again, Arianh-Rod,” I said.

Arianh-Rod gave out a bark of laughter and smiled at me. “That says a lot about ye too. Best ye call me Ari, if we’re ta be talkin’ much more, lad. Ye'd be the apprentice the Red Count says he let go then, wouldn't ye?”

“I wasn't his apprentice, I was his slave. I escaped. End of story.” I managed to keep my cool when she looked to Synreah and raised an eyebrow.

“Biladon Garnet believes he's a good kid, Ari” Synreah said. “And so do I.”

The wand-wright gave me an appraising look, then nodded. “I'm willing ta take a bit on faith. What were ye needin' today, anyroad?” she asked. The rod had disappeared, and she leaned on the glass of her display case.

I blinked at the sudden change while my brain tried to catch up with things. “Uh…a stylus for a copper force rod, and sigils. And…” I hesitated, but there was no way to avoid looking like a total wanna-be with the time I had. “I need a charging spell for it.”

“Needin' it quick, then are ye?” she asked with a smile that made the pride I'd just swallowed go down a little easier. “I can do ye for all of that, but ye'll also be needin' some garnet and carnelian powder and a
chrism
of hawthorn to anoint it with.”

The knot between my shoulders loosened when she didn't call me out as a fake. Most magi could charge their own tools, but warlocks had a well-deserved reputation for taking shortcuts. Most of the time, it was why they chose to serve a demon. And the last thing I wanted people to think of me was that I'd
chosen
to serve Dulka.

“I can get the gems and the hawthorn oil,” I told her. “I just need the spell and the stylus quickly.”

“Aye, I have both ta hand, to be sure. The stylus will be twenty sterling, and the sigils forty. The charging spell, that's another sixty on its own.”

I pulled the pouch out of my satchel, and ended up with only a handful left to buy the oils and powdered gems. But, one good thing about the Hive, the art of haggling was still alive and well. After about twenty minutes of wrangling, I worked her down to a hundred ten sterling, and figured I got a good bargain. With a show of grumbling over how I was cheating her, she went back into the back and started rummaging around.

“Ari meant no disrespect,” Synreah said from over my right shoulder.

“I know, it's all part of the deal,” I said. “This isn't the first time I haggled a price down.”

“When she called me a whore. It's what I am…what I do. From her, it was no insult.”

“Oh,” I said slowly. I didn't know how to put what went through my head into the right words, and years of being slapped down if I said something the wrong way paralyzed my voice while I struggled with my thoughts. “It makes you…less,” I finally managed to get out. “It maybe what you do, but it isn't who you are.”

“That's sweet, but it
is
who I am. I enjoy what I do. Sex is power for me; it’s in my blood.” She shrugged and leaned toward me. One full breast brushed my arm as she gave me a knowing smile. “But I like that you treat me nice.”

Ari came out of the back room with a wooden box that was stained a dark red, and laid it down on the display case. The lid opened with a slight creak, and she turned it to face us. Inside was a scroll wrapped around a slim stylus. I could see the pale tan butt of the wooden handle and the bronze point of the stylus sticking out of the scroll.

“Here it all is, then,” she said proudly. “Sigils, charging spell, and stylus. One hundred ten sterling, as agreed.” I laid a couple of trade bars and the last of my gems on the countertop, and she closed the lid on the box and slid it across to me. With my money pouch a lot lighter, there was plenty of room in the satchel for the case, and I gave Ari a nod before we made for the door.

“Good luck, then, Chance Fortunato,” she said, as I opened to door for Synreah. I muttered thanks to her and slipped out into the street.

Synreah led me to an apothecary's squat a couple of turns down the way from Ari's shop, and I ended up walking away from the little man's trailer setup with almost all of the rest of my trade silver gone, and a glass vial of hawthorn oil and two paper envelopes with a couple of grams of carnelian and garnet chips in each of them. Enough to do the job right the first time.

“Here's the rest of what I owe you,” I told Synreah after we made it back to the main alleyway.

The topaz sparkled between my fingertips, but her eyes didn't seem to shine as bright as they had earlier. Still, she took the yellow gem with slender, black-taloned fingers, and it disappeared into the chasm behind the top of her corset.

“Don't go getting any ideas about getting your money back,” she joked, then turned hot eyes on me. “Then again, I wouldn't mind it if you tried.” She leaned forward and squeezed her arms together and leather creaked as she displayed another few inches of barely contained bosom. I took in the view that she was offering, but I shook my head at the other offer.

“Here's a bonus,” I told her, and put the onyx pendant over her head. “You earned it, and a lot more. Thanks for sticking up for me at Ari's shop.”

She shrugged as she touched the pendant as it lay in the cleft between her breasts. “If it weren't for this, I'd be almost disappointed that you didn't try anything. A girl might think she was losing her touch. Other than that, you're all right.”

“I'm on a tight schedule,” I told her as I closed the satchel up. “Maybe next time.”

“Promises, promises,” she said with a half-smile.

I headed for the gate. I had a tracking spell to cast and a force rod to craft, all the while having to dodge the Conclave, and keep my Mom from finding out I was a warlock. And if that wasn't enough, I had to get it all done before my mom got home from work.

Yeah, that was me, livin' the glamorous life of a teenage warlock.

Chapter 10

~ Justice is cold and swift, and often leaves both parties unsatisfied with the outcome. Vengeance however, finds favor only in the hearts of the aggrieved. ~ John Dee, 17
th
century Wizard

The school's parking lot was mostly empty by the time I made it back there on Mom's bike. There was only one news van left, and only two police cruisers near the entrance. Another, unmarked police car was parked behind them. The news crew was filming the reporter's wrap-up as I slipped around the edge of the building and headed for the back of the school to play junior psychic detective. I passed the first two wings of classrooms and turned to my right between the second and the third when I saw the yellow strip of crime scene tape fluttering in the light wind. The cops had strung it across the end of the breezeway between the second and third wing, under the still-gaping hole of the lab's missing window. The cloudy, gray sky did a pretty good job of mirroring my mood as I eyed the black square that marred the building like a missing tooth. The hole in my life seemed a lot bigger.

I left Mom's bike leaning against the building and headed across the damp grass on foot. My boots clomped against the covered concrete walkway that ran between the wings, then I was out from under the beige-painted breezeway, and standing at the yellow line of tape, suddenly not sure of what to do. How was I supposed to do this? I looked back at where I'd walked across the grass and wondered if I'd trampled on anything important. But the whole area looked pretty much stomped flat, so I figured I wasn't making things much worse. Now what? My gaze went back to the area inside the tape.

The window, frame and all, was still on the ground outside the science lab, about fifteen feet from the wall. I looked up at the hole it used to occupy, and blinked. The window wasn’t right beneath the opening. It hadn’t been knocked out; it had been torn out and tossed aside. I slipped under the tape and went over to the frame. Four parallel furrows ran across the pale wood sill, and I remembered the gray lines scored in the concrete column in the lab. There was no blood on the wood or the glass. I looked up at the concrete pillar that ran up the outside of the building, and saw another set of claw marks in the pillar, level with the window, but this set had something the others didn’t: a fifth claw mark on the adjacent side of the pillar. The killer had an opposable thumb. It ruled out a lot of things, but still left a pretty long list of possible species for the perp. Hence, my spell.

I moved back into the breezeway and pulled some of my new purchases out of the satchel Billy had given me. As I held them in my hands, they looked pretty innocuous. Copper tubing, a few sandwich bags from Mom's kitchen, a file, a piece of purple chalk, and a piece of amethyst on a chain. In anyone else's hands, they were harmless: completely unconnected. In mine, they were tools that would cast a finding spell.

I looked back up at the gray gap where the window used to be and wondered if I was ready for what I was about to step into. Right now, I was almost where I wanted to be, just a normal kid, going to high school. If I wanted to, I could turn around and leave this to the cops. If I wanted to, I could be done with this. I didn't have to get involved, and my life could go on being almost normal. The question running around in my head was, “Could I really?”

My teeth ground together as my heart answered the question in my head. The cops would never find the killer. The Conclave might be able to find them, and if they did, they'd exact their own brand of justice. I'd seen their retribution before, when a warlock got careless. Conclave vengeance was cold, calculated, and almost always done from a distance. Mr. Chomsky deserved better than that. He deserved better from me. I couldn't walk away.

A cold stillness spread from my center, shutting down any thought that wasn't about finding the killer, and I knelt there in the middle of the sidewalk. First, I inscribed a rough circle on the ground, making the ends touch but not overlap, then broke out the file and a short length of copper tubing, and went to work. After a few minutes effort, I had a small pile of copper filings on the ground in front of me. I drew the sigils for divination around the inside edge of the circle before muttering “
Circumvare
,” to close the circle.

The world went ripply for a second as I felt the circle close around me, then the normal feeling of static in the back of my head faded, and I was left with a pure, clear focus on the spell. “
Velle potestatem quaero, videtur tacta, soluta tenere
,” I chanted as I concentrated on my goal.

The words were in Latin, like most of my spells. Latin gave my words power because it was the language I used only for magick. It helped my brain get into the place it needed to be to shape my will into reality, because I didn't have any association with the words other than magick. I sat with my legs crossed, back straight, and put my hands on my knees. My eyelids lowered as I started the next step.

The words and symbols of the circle had created the start of a seeking spell. Now all I needed to do was give it something to seek. Magick was shaped by the will, and the will, as much as most magi hated to admit it, was fueled by emotion. I'd seen rage drive people to impossible acts of stupidity, and love drive them to superhuman acts of courage and strength. I focused on my few memories of Mr. Chomsky. He'd only known me for a few hours, but he'd believed in me, seen things in me that no one else had. He'd offered to teach me. Me: a warlock, a demon's slave. In his eyes, a demon's apprentice. And he'd been willing to risk his life for me to do it. He didn't know me, but he believed in me. My breath caught at that thought, and it felt like someone had poured a pound of sand down my throat as my eyes stung. After years of being a slave, having someone see me for something other than an Infernal plaything had felt really, really good.

And someone had taken that away from me. Hurt and anger boiled over in my head as I concentrated on the loss, and on my hunger for vengeance on the person who'd killed Mr. Chomsky. The first person who’d seen who I really was and offered me a hand in friendship had been taken from me, and I wanted to find the thing who had done that in the worst way. All my thoughts focused in on that one goal, and I uttered the spell again. The words forced their way through my teeth as I scooped up the pile of copper filings and held them in my left palm. I held the amethyst pendant in my right hand as I focused my will on the copper filings. They started to glow as I repeated it a second time, and started to float and swirl over my palm as I chanted the third time, letting the pendant drop to dangle from its chain as they spun. When the pendant started to rotate in the same direction, I stood with the little metal slivers spinning like a miniature tornado over my palm and moved the toe of my boot to the purple ring of chalk.

“
Invenio
!” I hissed, as I broke the circle with my boot. The whirlwind of metal scattered in two directions: some going toward the school, and the rest flying the opposite way. My pendulum started swinging back and forth. I took a couple of steps to one side, and the pendant's swing changed, one half of its arc pointing toward the window frame on the grass. When I moved in the direction of the swing, it got faster and faster, until I had it suspended right over a spot where it spun in place. Bingo.

I dropped to one knee and looked down at the grass, but I couldn’t see anything worth picking up. Whatever the spell had homed in on was small; I had to practically lie on the ground before I saw it. A single hair, thick, coarse, and brown, was sticking up among the blades of grass with bits of copper filings sticking to it. I kind of doubted that the cops would have seen it, or even given it much attention. Only my fine-tuned little spell had led me to it. I plucked the lone hair from the grass and slipped it one of the baggies, then stood up and swung the pendulum in a circle to reset it.

It started swinging back and forth again right away, only this time, it barely moved when I took a few steps to zero it in. I stood there for a few moments trying to figure that out. If it had been here, even one step would have made it change direction a lot. Then I remembered that some of the filings had gone flying the other way, and I looked the other way. Past the end of the wings of the school was an open field, backed by a neat line of wood privacy fences. I chuckled as I started following the pendulum toward the fence line.

New Essex cops were good at dealing with normal crimes. I'd been lucky to catch a single fiber outside the actual crime scene. I figured they'd probably scoured the lab pretty thoroughly, and had all kinds of things they couldn't identify. But whatever had ripped the window out of its frame to come in had left the same way, courtesy of Mr. Chomsky. The cops had searched the area for thirty feet or so outside the building, but anything that a full-fledged wizard had hit was probably going to fly a lot further than that before it hit the ground. I almost didn't need the pendulum to find where it had landed. A five-foot wide section of fence was simply obliterated, and it had taken out a good-sized section of someone's tool shed, too.

The last thing I needed was a trespassing charge, so I snuck a quick look in before I slipped in through the gap in the fence. The pendulum led me to the crumpled remains of a riding lawnmower. An inch-long sliver of something horn-like was glistening with copper filings, stuck on the edge of the mower's bent blade. There was even a little blood on it. I snagged the sliver, then turned one of the baggies inside out to use as a kind of a glove to scrape some of it off, then pulled it back right-side out when I was done.

I reset the pendulum again, but it just hung there after that. And here I’d been hoping for something vague, like a wallet with an ID in it, or perhaps a taped confession. It probably wasn't nearly as much as the cops had, but the things I could do with what I had were a lot more effective. Talon, fur, and blood, I mused as I jogged back across the field. More than enough for a dozen curses I knew.

It took only a few seconds to collect Mom's bike and head for the back of the school through the breezeway that ran through the middle of the wing. The sound of a door opening and closing made me pull up short, then I heard a voice I recognized.

“Damn, sergeant, this is wrong!” I heard the familiar tenor of Officer Collins.

“Collins, I know you don’t like it, but it’s not our call,” came a familiar woman’s voice.

I nosed the bike forward and hoped they weren’t looking my way. Luck was with me. Detective Roberts stood just behind and to the left of the tall, lean form of Collins. He turned away from her for a moment, and I heard the rasp of a lighter and smelled tobacco smoke a moment later. When he turned back, I could see his eyes were ablaze with anger. He paused long enough to blow smoke away from Roberts before he spoke again.

“It may not be our call, but it’s still the
wrong
call, Sergeant. We both know that,” Collins growled.

“Look, I know you don’t agree with Captain Sloan, but…”

“This is no animal attack, Holly,” Collins interrupted her. “This is a murder. At a
high school
. Sloan is just trying to cover his ass.”

“What would you suggest he tell the press, Collins?” Roberts demanded. “We think a creature with four inch claws tore a teacher apart and
ate
part of him?”

“It’d sure make good copy,” he said.

“For the
World Post,
maybe!” she shot back. I stifled a snicker at the irony in that, because most of the time, the
World Post
was partly accurate. Most of what they wrote about actually did happen, but the reporters’ understanding of what they saw or heard were usually a long way from right. But no one took a tabloid seriously.

“What if he just said something brilliant like, ‘No comment,’ or that line about not commenting on an active investigation, or some shit like that? Like he does when it’s something he can get the big, believable headlines for later on.”

“Collins, you can’t make waves on this. The only reason you're here is because of the Fortunato kid. If you buck the captain on this, he’ll bust you down to traffic in a heartbeat, if he doesn’t fire you just to get your ass off the force. You’re too good a cop to let that happen.”

“I’m too good a cop to let
this
happen, Holly. Whoev…
whatever
the hell did this, it did it at a school. What if the next time we come out here, it’s to mop up some kid off the gymnasium floor?” Collins hissed. Roberts gasped, and I even found my nose wrinkling at the thought. But, to her credit, she didn’t have a good answer to his question.

“Point,” she said, holding up one hand in surrender. “Look, let me talk to my father. The Gang Task Force is usually short-handed for things like school presence and Drug Awareness presenters. I’ll see if we can get you assigned to them for the next week or so, okay?”

“Aw, hell,” Collins spat.

“It’ll keep you here, at least for a little while, and out from under Sloan’s thumb,” Roberts said quickly. “I know you don't think he had anything to do with it, but keep an eye on the Fortunato kid. His story checked out, but I know he’s hiding something.”

For a moment, Collins glared at her, then gave a nod and shrug. “The Spartan’s kid? Hell, yeah he’s hiding something.” I stifled a curse. Being on the cops’ radar was going to make this a lot tougher.

“Damn straight. But, what? Now get your ass back down to precinct and get your report done. If it’s on the chief’s desk before Sloan shoots his mouth off to the press, we might be able to at least keep the case open, even if it’s put on the back burner.”