Hexed (27 page)

Buck would be inconsolable. And Lucifer had no doubt that he would kill Mr. Sinkowicz the first chance he had. Both of their lives would be over. And whatever plan the Sisters had would come to pass. Lucifer highly doubted the plan was to give the world more puppies and rainbows. But David . . . Lucifer could comfort him in his moment of loss. She could be the shoulder he cried on, the person he clinged to in his sadness, and the one who would ultimately make him smile again. And why not? Why shouldn't she know what it's like to have a boyfriend? A month ago, that idea would have seemed completely absurd. But now Lucifer had to admit that it was something she wanted. It was something she wanted badly. And all she had to do to get it was hide in a broom closet for a couple of hours, let a girl die at the hands of a witch, and wait for her father to murder the man responsible.

Lucifer rolled her eyes. As if she would ever let that happen.

When the elevator doors finally opened, the presence of magic hit her like an ocean wave. Lucifer's thoughts quickly came into sharp focus. She was back in her world, doing what she did best. Playtime was over.

The aura of magic was so thick that the air practically crackled with it. But the magical energy didn't seem to be coming from a single direction. It was as if the entire space was infused with sorcery. It was obvious to Lucifer that Mr. Sinkowicz had greatly undersold just how much his coworkers “dabbled” in the arcane.

Lucifer stepped out onto the immaculate navy carpet, the sound of her footsteps lost in the soft fabric. There was a large mahogany receptionist desk in front of a wall fountain that dribbled silently into a narrow pool. Lucifer was impressed by the engineering that must have gone into designing a completely silent fountain. Most people installed fountains specifically
for
the sound. It can be relaxing, calming, and welcoming. But here, it only served as a visual. The quiet was unnerving, lingering in the office like an invisible fog.

She suddenly realized what it was that was responsible for much of the magic she was feeling: a silence spell. As a test, she cleared her throat. She felt the familiar rumble in her throat, but what she heard was a muffled and distant cough that she would have missed had it not come from her.

Scientists had once designed the quietest room in the world by making walls that absorbed every sound so nothing reverberated back to the listener. The effect was so unsettling that the longest any one person could stay in the room without going insane was forty-five minutes. Lucifer suspected the quiet spell served the same purpose. She was already feeling uncomfortable.

Lucifer ignored her discomfort and moved through the office, searching. Grand abstract paintings lined the walls, each with a host of colors that perfectly accented the navy decor. On the floor next to those paintings were large leafy plants in lavender vases, giving the sense that the office had been carved out of the wilderness and Mother Nature was slowly trying to reclaim her territory.

Lucifer pulled out a feather duster from the cleaning supplies she took from the basement and began dusting. Though she doubted the bored guards monitoring the security feeds would pay her much mind, it didn't hurt to be too careful. She made a show of moving vases, telephones, even reaching for the tops of the paintings as she scanned for Isaac Haldis's office. She also kept a sharp lookout for any other security measures in place. She wasn't so much concerned with mundane measures like pressure-sensitive floors or fingerprint-ID locks on the office doors. It was the magical security that worried her. Before long, the silence spell would make it as difficult for Lucifer to concentrate as if David was around.

Well,
almost
as difficult.

She moved past a large conference room. The Graeae Industries logo was frosted on the glass walls that separated it from the rest of the offices on the floor. Each of the offices had similar glass walls allowing Lucifer to look inside. They each had the same minimalist design with a sturdy desk, ergonomic chair, a single piece of art on the wall, and not much else.

Lucifer turned a corner and found a short hallway that ended abruptly with the ladies' room on one side and the men's on the other. At the end of the hall was a small table underneath a large mirror attached to the wall. Resting on the table were a handful of objects that Lucifer didn't recognize. She stepped closer and wiped them with her duster. A glass sphere sat on a short pedestal with what looked like a dinosaur tooth resting at its base. It made sense for a company named after the three old crones of legend who shared an eye and tooth among themselves. That the company felt compelled to adorn the office with a tiny shrine to their memory only added to Lucifer's discomfort.

Outside each office was a small plaque with the name and position of the person who used it. It didn't take long for Lucifer to find the COO's office. Unlike the others, its walls were solid wood. Isaac Haldis did not seem to have the same desire for transparency his colleagues were required to have. And Haldis's apparent need for privacy extended beyond just having solid walls to his office. His office was also out of view of any security cameras, so Lucifer didn't bother to hide her actions.

Before she touched the door, she carefully examined every aspect of it: the handle, the hinges, the wood, the lock. Most office doors, even executive offices, only had a single lock in the handle of their doors. This door was no different. But Haldis had more than just a basic lock. Etched in the brass of the bottom door hinge was a small symbol. A symbol Lucifer didn't fully recognize. She quickly grabbed her smartphone and punched up her database app. She found it in the hybrid sub-folder. The core symbol was Mesopotamian but had been modified with a dash of Corsican pict-magic to give the spell some added punch. It was impressive work and not easily done. Lucifer doubted she even had the skill to craft that kind of spell without it blowing up in her face.

Lucifer knew that if she opened the door, the spell would activate. The symbol would emit a burst of energy that would bind anything in its path, like catching a fly in amber. But because the symbol was on the bottom hinge, it would only lock the trespasser's feet. It would be enough to immobilize them yet keep them alive until someone happened along, allowing the company to deal with the would-be thief any way they wanted to. Clever.

Lucifer thought she might be able to use her own brand of hybrid symbols to counteract the trap, but she wasn't familiar enough with Corsican pict-magic to trust herself. There was a good chance it would just make things worse. So she decided to go with the easier option.

Lucifer grabbed a set of lock picks from her trick bag and began on the lock. She had to work completely by feel since there was no sound to guide her. Eventually, she felt something give way. But before she opened the door, she reached up and curled her fingers on the top of the door jamb. Digging in, she pulled herself up off the ground and used her feet to manipulate the handle.

When the door opened, there was a quick flash of sickly yellow light followed by a small concussion wave that Lucifer felt deep in her chest. The lush navy carpet directly beneath her was now a brittle mass of melted green. She slowly pushed the door open with her foot and dangled for a moment before falling to the ground. Lucifer could feel the binding magic gripping the tiny fibers of the carpet, making it feel as if she were walking on gravel.

Lucifer quickly stepped inside. The office was larger than the others she had seen and more ornately decorated. Statues, vases, and several masks sat atop the long shelving units that lined the far wall while a handful of midcentury modern chairs formed a makeshift meeting area. But what caught Lucifer's attention was the huge painting hanging behind the dark mahogany desk.

It was a portrait, expertly done as far as Lucifer could tell. A woman in a yellow dress sat with her hands folded across her lap, her face composed and demure, but there was a hint of something unpleasant behind her eyes.

Most people had photographs of loved ones on their desks, but the portrait of the woman was the only image in the office. There was something unsettling about it. Lucifer dismissed it as jitters from the memory of trapping the Witch of Cape Vale inside the 47th Street painting. That was, until she noticed something unusual at the bottom of the frame: a pair of manacles etched into the wood.

This was a binding frame.

It was a cruel and terrible thing, the worst of what magic could do. A binding frame trapped its subject inside an image, forever, frozen in a state of full awareness. It allowed a particularly cruel person to look upon their captive indefinitely. It was a trophy, much like a moose head on the wall. Only in this instance, the moose was alive and fully aware of its suffering.

Lucifer's stomach turned. If she knew how to free the woman, she would. No one should be tortured like that. But the binding frame was at a level of magic beyond what Lucifer could manage.

The book, Corsican pict-magic, binding frames . . . the people at this company did not mess around. From what little she had seen so far, it was obvious that they were some serious players in the mystical underground. One of these days Lucifer was going to have to come back and investigate just what kind of magical shenanigans were going on here at Graeae Towers. But one job at a time.

Lucifer rummaged through the bookshelves. Most of the books were mundane business manuals, but a few were definitely of the arcane. The book she came for, however, was nowhere to be seen.

She went to Haldis's, desk but there were no drawers or shelves. There was no place to hide the book. Lucifer went through the office again, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, but the book was nowhere to be found.

Lucifer turned to the portrait on the wall.

Very carefully, she pulled the frame away from the wall. When she peered behind it, she could see a safe recessed deep into the wall. Lucifer had to admit that she was disappointed. A wall safe? How boring.

Lucifer pulled the portrait off the wall and leaned it against the desk. When she saw the safe in the full light of the room, she took back her disappointment. The dense green metal of the safe had been etched with dozens of intricate picts and symbols, each infused with particularly nasty magic.

Before even touching the safe, Lucifer consulted her symbol app again, making sure she knew exactly what each could do. It was a knot of chained magic that would take an expert hours to untie. And simply changing the symbols by adding elements or dissolving ones already there would only set off the rest of the magic in the chain. It was so complex that only the person with the right spellword could open the door to the safe without meeting an untimely and unpleasant demise.

This was going to be easy.

The problem most practitioners of magic had when it came to securing their valuables was that they relied too much on magic. Isaac Haldis was no exception. He had every magical safeguard set to prevent a would-be thief from opening the safe. But a safe is a box. And every box has six sides. Yet so many people put all their mystical booby traps on only the one side with the door.

Lucifer reached into her trick bag and found the tools she needed: a ball-peen hammer and an antique metal syringe. She took advantage of the silence spell and took to smashing the wall with relish. She hammered away, knocking off thick chunks of drywall until the underneath of the safe was fully exposed. The metal box was welded to metal supports within the wall to prevent anyone from just taking the entire safe to someplace where they could take their time opening it with a blowtorch. Lucky for Lucifer, she had the magical equivalent of a blowtorch with her.

Lucifer took the syringe and carefully squeezed its contents along the bottom edges of the safe. Too little, and it wouldn't work. Too much of it, and it would melt the entire safe and everything inside. It was a special mix of chili powder and bile from the snot-gland of a fire salamander. Lucifer had ruined three perfectly good practice safes perfecting the formula.

Her eyes began to water from the acrid smoke of the melting metal. When the smoke finally dissipated, Lucifer used the hammer to bang on the bottom of the safe. The rectangular hunk of metal along with the contents of the safe all fell to the ground in uncharacteristic silence. There, at the top of the pile, was the book. Lucifer grabbed it and tossed it in her trick bag.

Then something shattered.

The sound came from outside the office. But that wasn't possible. The silence spell was still in effect. But there was no mistaking it. Lucifer had heard shattering glass.

Lucifer instinctively dropped into a crouch. That's when she saw a summoning symbol on the piece of metal in the pile on the ground. If disturbed, the symbol summoned whatever big and nasty was bound to it. It had been etched on the inside of the safe where she never could have seen it. Isaac Haldis was an exception after all.

Now that she had what she came for, it was time to go. Slowly, she made her way to the door and peered out into the hallway. No movement. And no sound. Lucifer crept out into the hallway and started toward the elevator. When she crossed the hall toward the restrooms, she saw the Graeae shrine beneath the mirror. Only now the glass sphere of the shrine was in a thousand pieces and the tooth was gone. She caught her reflection in the mirror and saw something lurking behind her:

A witch-hound.

The witch-hound was a swirling cylinder of orange and pink flesh that coalesced into a cavernous maw of wicked, slathering teeth. Lucifer had never seen one before, but she had read about them. The great sorceress Ro' Ember was rumored to have used them to defeat her brother in the 1356 War of the Twins, only to be devoured by them moments after her victory. Any person who used one for security had to be either incredibly powerful or incredibly crazy.

Lucifer dove to the side just as the ethereal beast lunged at her. She could feel the sheer mass of the creature as it slid overhead and slammed into the wall with such force that the wall disintegrated in a flurry of dust and debris. The bits of drywall that had come into contact with the witch-hound's amorphous skin sparked and smoldered.