Every Which Way But Dead (3 page)

“Damn you all to hell!” Algaliarept shouted from the edge of the cement, furious.

I got up, shaking. My breath caught, and I stared at the frustrated demon.

“Ceri!” the demon demanded, and the scent of burnt amber rose when it set its foot across the unseen barrier and jerked it back. “Push her at me! Or I'll blacken your soul so badly that your precious god won't let you in no matter how you beg it!”

Ceri moaned, clutching my leg as she huddled, hiding her face, trying to overcome a thousand years of conditioning. My face grew tight from anger.
This would have been me. This still could be me.
“I won't let it hurt you anymore,” I said, one hand dropping to touch her shoulder. “If I can stop it from hurting you, I will.”

Her grip on me shook, and I thought she seemed like a beaten child.

“You're my familiar!” the demon shouted, spittle flying from it. “Rachel, come here!”

I shook my head, colder than the snow warranted. “No,” I said simply. “I'm not going into the ever-after. You can't make me.”

Algaliarept choked in disbelief. “You will!” it thundered, and Ceri clutched my leg tighter. “I own you! You're my bloody familiar. I gave you my aura. Your will is mine!”

“No, it isn't,” I said, shaking inside.
It was working. God save me, it was working.
My eyes warmed, and I realized I was almost crying from relief. It couldn't take me. I might be its familiar, but it didn't have my soul. I could say no.

“You're my familiar!” it raged, and Ceri and I both cried out as it tried to cross into holy ground and yanked itself back again.

“I'm your familiar!” I yelled back, frightened. “And I say no! I said I'd be your familiar and I am, but I'm not going into the ever-after with you, and you can't make me!”

Algaliarept's goat-slitted eyes narrowed. It stepped back, and I stiffened as its anger chilled. “You agreed to be my familiar,” it said softly, smoke curling up from its shiny, buckled boots as they edged the circle of blasphemed ground. “Come here now, or I'll call our agreement breached and your soul will be mine by default.”

Double jeopardy.
I knew it would come to this. “I've got your stinking aura all over me,” I said as Ceri quivered. “I'm your familiar. If you think there's been a breach in contract, then you get someone out here to judge what happened before the sun comes up. And take one of these damned demon marks off me!” I demanded, holding my wrist out.

My arm shook, and Algaliarept made an ugly noise, deep in its throat. The long exhalation set my insides to quiver, and Ceri ventured to peek at the demon. “I can't use you as a familiar if you're on the wrong side of the lines,” it said, clearly thinking aloud. “The binding isn't strong enough—”

“That's not my problem,” I interrupted, legs shaking.

“No,” Algaliarept agreed. It laced its white-gloved hands behind its back, its gaze dropping to Ceri. The deep fury in its eyes scared the crap out of me. “But I'm making it your problem. You stole my familiar and left me with nothing. You tricked me into letting you slip payment for a service. If I can't drag you in, I'll find a way to use you through the lines. And I will never let you die. Ask her. Ask her of her never-ending hell. It's waiting for you, Rachel. And I'm not a patient demon. You can't hide on holy ground forever.”

“Go away,” I said, my voice trembling. “I called you here. Now I'm telling you to leave. Take one of these marks off me and leave. Now.” I had summoned it, and therefore it was susceptible to the rules of summoning—even if I was its familiar.

It exhaled slowly, and I thought the ground moved. Its eyes went black. Black. Black, black, then blacker still.
Oh, shit.

“I'll find the way to make a strong enough bond with you through the lines,” it intoned. “And I'll pull you through, soul intact. You walk this side of the lines on borrowed time.”

“I've been a dead witch walking before,” I said. “And my name is Rachel Mariana Morgan. Use it. And take one of these marks off of me or you forfeit everything.”

I'm going to get away with it. I outsmarted a demon.
The knowledge was heady, but I was too frightened for it to mean much.

Algaliarept gave me a chilling look. Its gaze dropped to Ceri, then it vanished.

I cried out as my wrist flamed, but I welcomed the pain, hunched as I held my demon-marked wrist with my other hand. It hurt—it hurt as if the dogs of hell were chewing on it—but when my blurred vision cleared, there was one scared line crossing the welted circle, not two.

Panting through the last of the pain, I slumped, my entire body collapsing in on itself. I pulled my head up and took a clean breath, trying to unknot my stomach. It couldn't use me if we were on opposite sides of the ley lines. I was still myself, though I was coated with Algaliarept's aura. Slowly my second sight faded and the red smear of the ley line vanished. Algaliarept's aura was getting easier to bear, slipping almost into an unnoticed sensation now that the demon was gone.

Ceri let go of me. Reminded of her, I bent to offer her a hand up. She looked at it in wonder, watching herself as she put a thin pale hand in mine. Still at my feet, she kissed the top of it in a formal gesture of thanks.

“No, don't,” I said, turning my hand to grip hers and pull her upright and out of the snow.

Ceri's eyes filled and spilled over as she silently wept for her freedom, the well-dressed, abused woman beautiful in her tearful, silent joy. I put my arm around her, giving her what comfort I could. Ceri hunched over and shook all the harder.

Leaving everything where it was and the candles to go out on their own, I stumbled to the church. My gaze was fixed to the snow, and as Ceri and I made two trails of footprints over the one leading out here, I wondered what on earth I was going to do with her.

W
e were halfway to the church before I realized Ceri was walking barefoot in the snow. “Ceri,” I said, appalled. “Where are your shoes?”

The crying woman made a rough hiccup. Wiping her eyes, she glanced down. A red blur of ever-after swirled about her toes, and a pair of burnt embroidered slippers appeared on her tiny feet. Surprise cascaded over her delicate features, clear in the porch light.

“They're burned,” I said as she shook them off. Bits of char stuck to her, looking like black sores. “Maybe Big Al is having a tantrum and burning your things.”

Ceri silently nodded, a hint of a smile quirking her blueing lips at the insulting nickname I used so I wouldn't say the demon's name before those who didn't already know it.

I pushed us back into motion. “Well, I've got a pair of slippers you can wear. And how about some coffee? I'm frozen through.”
Coffee? We just escaped a demon, and I'm offering her coffee?

She said nothing, her eyes going to the wooden porch that led to the living quarters at the back of the church. Her eyes traveled to the sanctuary behind it and the steeple with its belfry. “Priest?” she whispered, her voice matching the iced-over garden, crystalline and pure.

“No,” I said as I tried not to slip on the steps. “I just live here. It's not a real church anymore.” Ceri blinked, and I added, “It's kinda hard to explain. Come on in.”

I opened the back door, going in first since Ceri dropped her head and wouldn't. The warmth of the living room was like a blessed wave on my cold cheeks. Ceri stopped dead in the threshold when a handful of pixy girls flew shrieking from the mantel above the empty fireplace, fleeing the cold. Two adolescent pixy boys gave Ceri a telling glance before following at a more sedate pace.

“Pixies?” I prompted, remembering she was over a thousand years old. If she wasn't an Inderlander, she wouldn't have ever seen them before, believing they were, ah, fairy tales. “You know about pixies?” I asked, stomping the snow from my boots.

She nodded, closing the door behind her, and I felt better. The adjustment to modern life would be easier if she didn't have to come to grips with witches, Weres, pixies, vampires, and the like being real on top of TVs and cell phones, but as her eyes ranged over Ivy's expensive electronic equipment with only a mild interest, I was willing to bet that things on the other side of the ley lines were as technologically advanced as they were here.

“Jenks!” I shouted to the front of the church where he and his family were living out the duration of the cold months. “Can I see you for a minute?”

There was the tight hum of dragonfly wings faint over the warm air. “Hey, Rache,” the small pixy said as he buzzed in. “What's this my kids are saying about an angel?” He jerked to a hovering halt, his eyes wide and his short blond hair swinging as he looked behind me.

Angel, huh?
I thought as I turned to Ceri to introduce her. “Oh God, no,” I said, pulling her back upright. She had been picking up the snow I had knocked off my boots, holding it in her hand. The sight of her diminutive form dressed in that exquisite gown cleaning my mess was too much. “Please, Ceri,” I said, taking the snow from her and dropping it on the carpet. “Don't.”

A wash of self-annoyance crossed the small woman's smooth brow. Sighing, she made an apologetic face. I don't think she had even realized what she was doing until I stopped her.

I turned back to Jenks, seeing his wings had taken on a faint red tint as his circulation increased. “What the hell?” he muttered, gaze dropping to her feet. Pixy dust sifted from him in his surprise to make a glittering spot of sun on the gray carpet. He was dressed in his casual gardening clothes of tight-fitting green silk and looked like a miniature Peter Pan minus the hat.

“Jenks,” I said as I put a hand on Ceri's shoulder and pulled her forward. “This is Ceri. She's going to be staying with us for a while. Ceri, this is Jenks, my partner.”

Jenks zipped forward, then back in agitation. An amazed look came over Ceri, and she glanced from me to him. “Partner?” she said, her attention going to my left hand.

Understanding crashed over me and I warmed. “My business partner,” I reiterated, realizing she thought we were married.
How on earth could you marry a pixy? Why on earth would you want to?
“We work together as runners.” Taking my hat off, I tossed the red wool to the hearth where it could dry on the stone and fluffed the pressure marks from my hair. I had left my coat outside, but I wasn't going out to get it now.

She bit her lip in confusion. The warmth of the room had turned them red, and color was starting to come back into her cheeks.

In a dry clatter, Jenks flitted close so that my curls shifted in the breeze from his wings. “Not too bright, is she,” he pointed out, and when I waved him away in bother, he put his hands on his hips. Hovering before Ceri, he said loudly and slowly as if she were hard of hearing, “We—are—good—guys. We—stop—bad—guys.”

“Warriors,” Ceri said, not looking at him as her eyes touched on Ivy's leather curtains, plush suede chairs, and sofa. The room was a salute to comfort, all of it from Ivy's pocketbook and not mine.

Jenks laughed, sounding like wind chimes. “Warriors,” he said, grinning. “Yeah. We're warriors. I'll be right back. I gotta tell that one to Matalina.”

He zipped out of the room at head height, and my shoulders eased. “Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I asked Jenks to move his family in for the winter after he admitted he usually lost two children to hibernation sickness every spring. They're driving Ivy and me insane, but I'd rather have no privacy for four months than Jenks starting his spring with tiny coffins.”

Ceri nodded. “Ivy,” she said softly. “Is she your partner?”

“Yup. Just like Jenks,” I said casually to make sure she really understood. Her shifting eyes were cataloging everything, and I slowly moved to the hallway. “Um, Ceri?” I said, hesitating until she started to follow. “Do you want me to call you Ceridwen instead?”

She peeked down the dark corridor to the dimly lit sanctuary, her gaze following the sounds of pixy children. They were supposed to stay in the front of the church, but they got into everything, and their squeals and shrieks had become commonplace. “Ceri, please.”

Her personality was thundering back into her faster than I would have believed possible, going from silence to short sentences in a matter of moments. There was a curious mix of modern and old-world charm in her speech that probably came from living with demons so long. She stopped in the threshold of my kitchen, wide-eyed as she took it all in. I didn't think it was culture shock. Most people had a similar reaction when seeing my kitchen.

It was huge, with both a gas and an electric stove so I could cook on one and stir spells on the other. The fridge was stainless steel and large enough to put a cow in. There was one sliding window overlooking the snowy garden and graveyard, and my beta, Mr. Fish, swam happily in a brandy snifter on the sill. Fluorescent lights illuminated shiny chrome and expansive counter space that wouldn't be out of place before the cameras of a cooking show.

A center island counter overhung with a rack of my spelling equipment and drying herbs gathered by Jenks and his family took up much of the space. Ivy's massive antique table took up the rest. Half of it was meticulously arranged as her office, with her computer—faster and more powerful than an industrial-sized package of laxative—color-coded files, maps, and the markers she used to organize her runs. The other half of the table was mine and empty. I wish I could say it was neatness, but when I had a run, I ran it. I didn't analyze it to death.

“Have a seat,” I said casually. “How about some coffee?”
Coffee?
I thought as I went to the coffeemaker and threw out the old grounds. What was I going to do with her? It wasn't as if she was a stray kitten. She needed help. Professional help.

Ceri stared at me, her face returning to its numb state. “I…” she stammered, looking frightened and small in her gorgeous outfit. I glanced at my jeans and red sweater. I still had on my snow boots, and I felt like a slob.

“Here,” I said as I pulled out a chair. “I'll make some tea.”
Three steps forward, one back,
I thought when she shunned the chair I offered and took the one before Ivy's computer instead. Tea might be more appropriate, seeing as she was over a thousand years old.
Did they even have coffee in the Dark Ages?

I was staring at my cupboards, trying to remember if we had a teapot, when Jenks and about fifteen of his kids came rolling in, all talking at once. Their voices were so high-pitched and rapid they made my head hurt. “Jenks,” I pleaded, glancing at Ceri. She looked overwhelmed enough as it was. “Please?”

“They aren't going to do anything,” he protested belligerently. “Besides, I want them to get a good sniff of her. I can't tell what she is, she stinks of burnt amber so badly. Who is she, anyway, and what was she doing in our garden in her bare feet?”

“Um,” I said, suddenly wary. Pixies had excellent noses, able to tell what species someone was just by smelling them. I had a bad suspicion that I knew what Ceri was, and I
really
didn't want Jenks to figure it out.

Ceri raised her hand as a perch, smiling beatifically at the two pixy girls who promptly landed on it, their green and pink silk dresses moving from the breeze stirred by their dragonfly wings. They were chattering happily the way pixy girls do, seemingly brainless but aware of everything down to the mouse hiding behind the fridge. Clearly Ceri had seen pixies before. That would make her an Inderlander if she was a thousand years old. The Turn, when we all came out of hiding to live openly with humans, had only been forty years ago.

“Hey!” Jenks exclaimed, seeing his kids monopolizing her, and they whirled up and out of the kitchen in a kaleido-scope of color and noise. Immediately he took their place, beckoning his oldest son, Jax, down to perch on the computer screen before her.

“You smell like Trent Kalamack,” he said bluntly. “What are you?”

A wash of angst took me and I turned my back on them.
Damn, I was right. She was an elf.
If Jenks knew, he would blab it all over Cincinnati the moment the temperature got above freezing and he could leave the church. Trent didn't want the world to know that elves had survived the Turn, and he would drop Agent Orange on the entire block to shut Jenks up.

Turning, I frantically waved my fingers at Ceri, pantomiming zipping my mouth. Realizing she wouldn't have a clue what that meant, I put my finger to my lips. The woman eyed me in question, then looked at Jenks. “Ceri,” she said seriously.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jenks said impatiently, hands on his hips. “I know. You Ceri. Me Jenks. But what are you? Are you a witch? Rachel's a witch.”

Ceri glanced at me and away. “I'm Ceri.”

Jenks's wings blurred to nothing, the shimmer going from blue to red. “Yeah,” he repeated. “But what species? See, I'm a pixy, and Rachel is a witch. You are…”

“Ceri,” she insisted.

“Ah, Jenks?” I said as the woman's eyes narrowed. The question as to what the Kalamacks were had eluded pixies for the entirety of the family's existence. Figuring that out would give Jenks more prestige in the pixy world than if he took out an entire fairy clan by himself. I could tell he was on the edge of his patience when he flitted up to hover before her.

“Damn it!” Jenks swore, frustrated. “What the hell are you, woman?”

“Jenks!” I shouted in alarm as Ceri's hand flashed out, snagging him. Jax, his son, let out a yelp, leaving a cloud of pixy dust as he darted to the ceiling. Jenks's eldest daughter, Jih peeked around the archway from the hall ceiling, her wings a pink blur.

“Hey! Lego!” Jenks exclaimed. His wings made a furious clatter, but he wasn't going anywhere. Ceri had his pant leg between her thumb and forefinger. Her reflexes were better than even Ivy's if she had enough control to be that precise.

“I'm Ceri,” she said, her thin lips tight as Jenks hovered, snared. “And even my demon captor had enough respect that he didn't curse at me, little warrior.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Jenks said meekly. “Can I go now?”

She raised one pale eyebrow—a skill I envied—then glanced at me for direction. I nodded emphatically, still shocked at how quick it had been. Not smiling, Ceri let him go.

“Guess you aren't as slow as I thought,” Jenks said sullenly.

The ruffled pixy brought the scent of store-bought dirt to me as he retreated to my shoulder, and my brow furrowed when I turned my back on her to poke around under the counter for a teapot. I heard the soft familiar clink of pens, recognizing the sound of Ceri tidying Ivy's desk. Her centuries of slavery were showing again. The woman's mix of meek servitude and quick pride had me at a loss for how to treat her.

“Who is she?” Jenks whispered in my ear.

I crouched to reach into the cupboard, pulling out a copper teapot so badly tarnished that it was almost maroon. “She was Big Al's familiar.”

“Big Al!” the pixy squeaked, rising up to land upon the tap. “Is that what you were doing out there? Tink's panties, Rachel, you're getting as bad as Nick! You know that's not safe!”

I could tell him now. Now that it was over. Very aware of Ceri listening behind us, I ran the water into the teapot and swirled it around to clean it. “Big Al didn't agree to testify against Piscary out of the goodness of its heart. I had to pay for it.”

With a dry rasp of wings, Jenks moved to hover before me. Surprise, shock, and then anger cascaded over his face. “What did you promise him?” he said coldly.

“It's an it, not a him,” I said. “And it's done.” I couldn't look at him. “I promised to be its familiar if I was allowed to keep my soul.”