Pale Demon (20 page)

“I don’t know what kind of spin I can put on this,” Al finally said, his eyes on his dirty fingers and his shoulders slumped.

“Al?” I said, really concerned. He looked up, and I blanched at his empty expression.

“And then this afternoon,” he said, reaching out to rub my hair between his fingers. I didn’t pull away, and he leaned forward to sniff it. “You were in the badlands of Arizona. Yes?” he asked, looking up at me from around his sweat-soaked bangs.

I didn’t feel so good, and I sat down, a hand to my middle. “This is about Ku’Sox, isn’t it,” I said, more of a statement than a question.

He made a sighing groan, and I knew it was. “Then you’ve met,” he said, his thoughts clearly on the day-walking demon. “Funny, you don’t look dead.” His hand touched my chin, shifting it so he could see where I’d been pixed, the blisters itchy and red. “I’m surprised you survived the little designer dump. I nearly didn’t. At least he doesn’t know who you are yet.”

I winced, and Al’s hand fell away. “He knows, doesn’t he,” Al said flatly, and I nodded, making the connection now between Ku’Sox and the shadowy figure I’d seen fighting Al before I’d come over and found Pierce ready to finish him off. Maybe I shouldn’t have banished Ku’Sox to the ever-after.

“He lived my entire life in eight heartbeats,” I admitted. I tried not to whine, but I knew by Al’s “So what?” rise to his eyebrows that it was there.

“Bet that was fun,” he said, and I wondered if Al could do the same and hadn’t, knowing it for the gross violation of self that it was. Not rape, but worse almost. “That adds something a little unexpected to the mix,” he said as an afterthought.

“Sorry,” I said, and Al slumped, rubbing his forehead with his stubby fingers. From behind us, the tapestry finally became quiet, and the silence was almost creepier than the weird burbling sound it had been making. Licking my lips, I stood. “What is he?” I asked. A shiver went through me, and I wondered if it was the need to feel like I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t a freak. “Is he like me?” I asked, lips barely moving.

Al’s eyes were glowing in the light of the fire when I turned to him, the demon seeming to be gaining strength as the flames warmed him. Still he said nothing, and after dropping the broken seat of an upholstered chair on the fire, I stood next to the weary demon, seeing him slowly regain his strength and knowing that we were really, really in trouble. “Al?” I asked again.

“He’s you.”

Twin feelings of fear and excitement lit through me, but the fear won. If he was me and he was bad, then everyone would think I was bad by association.

“A link between demons and witches,” Al continued, nodding to acknowledge that I realized what this meant. “But not made by Trent’s father. Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’Ru was our attempt to bridge the gap when we found out what the elves had done. It didn’t work,” he said sourly, “and we decided not to do that…anymore. He’s missing something.”

“Yeah, he looks a little crazy,” I said dryly.

“Crazy? Perhaps. He’s missing something from his soul,” Al said, and my lips parted.

“That might explain him eating pixies,” I said, and Al cocked his head at me, the glimmer of his usual bluster returning.

“Ku’Sox was eating pixies?”

Cold, I wrapped my arms around myself and sat down while Al built the fire higher, his chairs burning with the smell of varnish and burnt amber. I shrugged, then scratched at a little welt under my shirt. “Trent thought we were in danger.” My fingers slowed, and I tucked a foot under my leg as I gazed into the fire. “The idiot called Ku’Sox to get rid of the pixies. He showed up as a bird, and when Ku’Sox started eating them”—I looked up at Al—“I hit him with a curse. It sort of got his attention.”

“You’re a bright girl for someone so stupid,” Al said, and I frowned, affronted, as he got to his feet and unsteadily went to his bookshelf, nudging the books scattered on the floor until finding the one he wanted and retrieving it. “I told you to take that elf firmly in hand, my itchy witch.” Al sighed as he sat back down, closer to the fire than before. Square reading glasses had appeared on Al’s nose, and he squinted through them as he turned the pages of the book on his lap. “That new mark of his makes him immune to everything.” His eyes met mine, making me shiver despite my anger. “
Everything,
Rachel. He’s probably the only person on the planet who could free Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’Ru without getting killed in the process.”

“Free him?” I asked. Al made a questioning face at me, and I figured it out. The arch falling, the power I’d shoved back into someone. Ku’Sox saying he’d been gone for two thousand years, locked in the ground. “You mean Ku’Sox was imprisoned under the arch? Trent didn’t summon him, he freed him?” I said, aghast.

Al had gone back to his book. “I told you…”

“To take him firmly in hand, yeah,” I said, seething. Stupid on top of stupid. God! I was ready to smack Trent into next week. “But he loosed Ku’Sox before I gave him his freedom,” I said, remembering the blood coming from Trent’s ears and nose. Maybe Trent was stronger than I gave him credit for.

Al made an uninterested sound and turned a page. “And of course the first thing Ku’Sox did was find me.”

“Because you’re my teacher,” I said, and Al laughed, the sound ending in a short cough.

“No,” he said, clearing his throat and waving his hand. I shivered as the dust in the air fell like rain, and I brushed it off. “Not everything is about you, itchy witch. Ku’Sox and I go back a long way. The son of a bitch completely yanked Asia out of my grip just when things were becoming interesting. I couldn’t get a familiar there for nearly a hundred years until Newt finally trapped him and tucked him safely away in reality. The demon is a genius.”

Ku’Sox was Al’s rival? Great. “And he can be under the sun,” I prompted, wondering if he had meant Ku’Sox was a genius, or Newt.

Al blew the dust off a page and turned it. “That was the entire point of creating him,” he said distantly, as if it bothered him and there was nothing he could do about it.

I wanted to go, but I thought he was working on something for me. The drip, drip, drip of the blood falling from the silent tapestry was loud, and sullenly I said, “I’m sorry.”

A short guffaw broke from Al, and he looked at me. “That makes me feel so-o-o much better. I’ll be sure to tell everyone that. My student freed her familiar, who let loose a demon we didn’t want to kill and just barely managed to imprison? Newt will be most vexed. Honestly, you told me you were going to be smarter. This isn’t it.”

“It’s not like you ever tell me anything,” I said sourly. “If you’d said, ‘Don’t go to St. Louis and free the crazy demon under the arch,’ I wouldn’t have.” Nervousness pulled me to my feet, and I went to the bookcase, shelving the scattered books one by one in no particular order—which might be a problem since none of them had names. “And I didn’t free Ku’Sox. Trent did. What Trent does is not my responsibility.”

A hint of deviltry was in Al’s voice when he asked me, “You severed all responsibility?”

“Yes,” I said as I shelved another book. “One hundred percent.”

“You didn’t even keep a call-back clause?” Al asked, then waved his hand and answered his own question. “Of course not. You’ve had the worst upbringing of any demon I’ve seen.”

I turned, the book I held pulling the heat from me through the binding. “I’m not a demon,” I said, and Al stood to bring me the book he was looking at, splayed open on his palm.

“Which emancipation clause did you use? This one, right?”

I leaned over to look at the curse he was pointing to, and though it was in a different book, I could tell it was the same. “That looks like it.”

Al smiled, and seeing it, a knot of worry eased. For the first time, that awful smile of his made me feel…good. “Trent is bound to come to your aid when you ask. Did you know that?” Al snapped the book shut and shelved it beside the one I’d just placed there. “I think that puts him in a slightly higher standing, thus freeing you from responsibility for his actions.”

“Really?” I said, willing to give Trent the high ground if he’d get in trouble, not me.

His pace a jaunty limp, Al crossed his kitchen, kicking bits of rock and wood out of his way. “I do believe your do-gooder tendencies have finally come home to save you,” he said as he pulled a chest from the wreckage, opened it, and fingered through whatever was inside. “Trent’s in trouble, not you. Go back to your little scavenger hunt.”

“It’s not a scavenger hunt,” I said indignantly. “I’m trying to clear my name.”

“Whatever.” Al dramatically waved a silver amulet. “You’re taking the runt with you.”

“Pierce?” I came up from the floor with another book in my hand, the image of him standing over Al, ready to kill him, sifting through my mind. “He just tried to kill you!”

“Yes, but for all his anger, he still thinks he loves you.” Al squinted at the black jewel centered in the amulet, muttering a word of Latin to make the stone glow a brilliant silver, and then darken. “You’re going to need protection if Ku’Sox is free to come and go. A demon killer is just the thing to keep you safe. I’d do it myself, but I don’t want any taint of interference to mar our agreement that if you can’t get your shunning removed, you abandon reality.”

“Al,” I protested, thinking my strolling into the coven meeting with a witch they’d buried alive for black magic wasn’t going to look good. “He’s going to get me labeled a black witch.”

Al looked at me over his glasses, almost pouting. “You’re going to be labeled a black witch anyway, love.” He smiled, snapping the chest closed and dropping it down the stairway to his herb cellar, to shatter by the sound of it.

Remembering the look of fury on Pierce’s face, directed at me, I shook my head, reaching for books as fast as I could place them, as if helping Al clean up might win me some favor. “I do
not
want Pierce tagging along on this magic carpet ride.” But just yesterday, I had.

“Which is why this is so perfect.” Smug, Al dramatically snapped his fingers, cocky again. In a soft pop of displaced air, Pierce flashed into existence, his clothes disheveled and his hair everywhere. Immediately his confused look turned to one of anger—deepening when his gaze landed on me.

“You’re a mess,” Al said, almost his old self as he smacked the man so hard he stumbled.

The smack had been a curse of some sort, because Pierce stiffened, shuddering as a sheet of red ever-after coated him, changing his outdated clothes into something more modern. He was still wearing creased black pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but now there was a colorful patterned vest and a sharp-looking, trendy hat in his hand. He looked good, even with his hair disheveled, and I squashed the thought.

“You’re going on a field trip, runt,” Al said as he looped the amulet he’d taken from the chest over Pierce’s head. “You will keep my student alive or die trying.”

“Hands off,” Pierce all but growled, and Al smacked his face, taking the hat out of Pierce’s hand and smashing it smartly on the witch’s head. I tensed, but clearly Pierce was used to the manhandling, and he only frowned more deeply.

“You will make sure that nasty demon Ku’Sox doesn’t kill her,” Al said conversationally. “Understand? You’re angry, but you still like her, yes? Want to have wild demon sex with her even if she ruined your attempt to kill me? Keep her alive, and you might get some. Eh? Eh? You’d like that, mmmm?”

“Al…,” I protested, and Pierce looked at me like I was trash.

“I’d sooner lie with a whore,” Pierce said, and I gasped, affronted.

I half-expected Al to smack him again, but all the demon did was brush off the amulet and say, “Well, she’s been called that, so where’s the problem?”

“Al!” I exclaimed, but no one cared.

“Better,” Al said, nodding once sharply as he took a step back and looked Pierce over. “All nice and pretty for itchy witch.”

Pierce took his new hat off and dropped it to the dusty floor, even though I saw that he liked it. “You’re doing this because I can kill you. I could kill you right this moment.”

I gasped as Al reached out and slapped him, the sound of hand meeting flesh giving the fast movement away. Pierce reeled, catching himself against the broken chair that had once belonged to Ceri. “I’m getting rid of you,” Al said calmly, “because you’re a clever witch who won’t stay in his box.”

Glaring, Pierce straightened from his half fall, looking at me as if I was the source of his woes.
Hey, dude, I wasn’t the one trying to kill Al.

“Al. No. This is not a good idea,” I said, seeing Pierce’s anger as I backed up a step.

“It’s a capital idea!” Al took three steps to close the distance between him and Pierce. The shorter man tensed, but Al only put an arm over his shoulder. He looked like a dad threatening a date, and I half-expected him to tell Pierce to have me home by ten, but what he said was “Keep her alive. Keep her alive, or I will know about it.”

Pierce looked at me, and I remembered his hand, painful against my mouth, forcing me to be quiet as inches overhead Trent’s horses and dogs searched the woods for my blood. He loved me. I was sure of it. But he had tried to kill Al with black magic—and as the memory of him leaning over Al with power leaking from his fingers replayed itself in my mind, I began to question my judgment of him.

My face became cold as I abruptly realized that for all Pierce’s claims of compassion, for his clever mind and quick loyalty, for all his justifications of black magic as acceptable if the cause was good, Pierce truly was a black witch. He had tried to kill with magic. It didn’t matter if the charm was white, black, or polka dotted with silver sparkles. The coven of moral and ethical standards had been right about him.
They were right.

And if they were right about him, maybe they were right about me.

“I don’t care if she dies,” he said, and I looked away, remembering:
And I will cry when I go, because I could love you forever.

Son of a bitch. I’d done it again.

Al smacked Pierce’s face a little too hard. “Then let’s just say you keep her alive, or I will give you to Ku’Sox like a free toaster for opening an account in the bank of degradation.”