The Demon's Apprentice (4 page)

That thought made a warm place in my head for a while, until the EMTs led the old man over and sat him down beside me. My glare didn't stop him, so I settled in for a good long scowl as they slipped the oxygen mask over his face. He waited for the paramedic to get a few feet away before he lifted the mask.

“Listen, son, you need to get me out of this,” he said quietly. His tone was stern, and left no room for argument. My frown broke as my left eyebrow tried to climb into my scalp in sheer disbelief.

“First off, you
never
get to call me that again,” I said. “Second, no. No way, hell no, never gonna happen, and let me just throw in a 'screw you' while I'm at it. I don't have to do a damn thing for you ever again, you slimy son of a bitch, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't. All of my foci got torched. I can't cast a spell without one. Never thought
that
would come back to bite your fat ass, did ya?”

“That attitude is what made us resort to using foci to maintain control,” he said. “This is your fault, and I expect you to clean up the mess you made. You're already in enough trouble with me. You don't even want to think about how angry Dulka is going to be with you.”

“I'm free, old man. I couldn’t care less how mad Dulka is, and the more I piss
you
off, the happier I am. And,” I raised my voice, “no, I'm not gonna lie for you!” Heads turned toward us as I stood up and ripped the plastic mask off.

My father went pale as he understood what had just happened. “What are you…you can't!” he gaped.

“I did. I am
done
being your price. From now on, you deal with him on your own, asshole.” Cops ushered me to one of the cruisers, and, best of all, away from my father.

By the time I got to the police station, I had the better part of a new plan worked out. While I sat in a bare interrogation room, I worked on the finer points. I figured the cops really only had a couple options: either juvie, or the foster program. It all depended on whether they thought I'd committed a crime tonight.

The bored cop who‘d been standing in the corner got me a cup of crappy coffee while I waited, and I toyed with how much leverage to put on my old man as the clock edged up on one a.m. On a Friday night, I figured one fifteen year old with a record, even if his father was a suspected criminal, wouldn't be big enough to pull someone from the usual rush of nuisance calls the NEPD had to deal with until the bars closed. I settled in for a long wait. At least they hadn't handcuffed me to the chair this time. That meant the odds were good I'd end up placed in a foster home before the night was out. A foster family would be a
lot
easier to escape from. Well, in cop-speak, they'd call it running away. Not that I couldn't get out of juvie; it just took longer. With a foster home, I could be lost in New Essex's mystical Underworld before Sunday morning. Getting out of juvenile detention would take about a week.

The door opened, and all of my plans went out the window when Officer Collins led my Mom in. My world just stopped as she crossed the threshold, and I think my heart took a moment before it restarted. Between heartbeats, my brain registered about a million things. The black skirt with red roses embroidered along the hem, the white blouse, and her hair caught up under a red headband. I noticed strands of gray in the thick curls, but her face was still the same. Except for her eyes. They were dark, and sad.

I came to my feet, my eyes still catching details. The thick silver rings on her hands. Then her hands went past my face, and she had me caught up in a fierce hug. I closed my eyes and gave as good as I got. She still smelled like vanilla and sandalwood, but I was taller than she was now.

“Oh, son, I missed you so much!” she said into my shoulder.

I opened my eyes and looked over her shoulder at the image in the room's two-way mirror. I'd gotten my color from her, hair and skin both, but I had a little of the classic Greek curl to my hair as well.

“Missed you, too, Mom,” I said quietly. It wasn't anywhere near the whole truth, but it was all I could handle at the moment. All I'd known of family for the past eight years was a father who had traded my freedom to a demon so he could get rich and laid, and who saw me as nothing more than a tool for keeping the money and babes rolling through his life. Now, here was my Mom, genuinely happy to see me, and pulling back from me with damp eyes and a broad, beautiful smile on her face. It was either typical fifteen-year-old surliness, or total meltdown. And I figured the meltdown would mean a medicated haze in a soft, comfy room somewhere, in a nice white coat with extra long sleeves.

Mom pulled back and held me at arm's length with one hand while she wiped at her eyes with the other hand. “You've grown up so much.” Her voice was tight with emotion, and all I could manage was a stupid shrug.

“It's been a while, Mom,” I offered. “Don't take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here?” She smiled, and some of the sadness seemed to leave her eyes.

“Officer Collins called me. And…” she paused for a second and looked down before she went on. “I've been trying to find a way to get custody of you for years, son. Ever since the divorce. My lawyer thinks he can get me full custody after what happened tonight. If that's what you want.”

“Oh, HELL yeah!” I blurted out.

“I can see we're going to have to work on your language, young man,” Mom said with mock seriousness. “Especially around your sister.”

“I have a sister? How did that happen?”

“The same way you happened, son, just later,” Mom said with a wicked smile.

Collins choked on a laugh, and I fought down the flush I felt creeping up my neck.

“So, I'll call Mister Vor…” she started to say, but the door slamming open cut her off.

Mike Cassavetes, my father's lawyer, stormed into the room and slammed his fist down on the table. My mother jumped, but Collins had his Taser out and trained on the pudgy shyster's ample gut before he could get his trademarked dramatic entrance line out. His chins wobbled as he gulped, and his comb-over went damp as he broke out in a sweat, then he recovered a little. He looked down at the red dot on his tan suit jacket and back up at Collins with his eyes a little wide.

“I
do
need a new car, officer…Collins is it? So by all means pull the trigger.”

“And I need an excuse to charge your client with assault by proxy and tampering with a witness, so by all means, keep shootin' your damn mouth off,” Collins shot back.

“This is a clear violation of the custody decision, Miss Murathy. I'm going to have you leave now, and I'm sure Mr. Fortunato can be persuaded not to have charges filed against you.”

“She stays, and you get to go back and tell your client I'm adding child endangerment to the list of charges,” Collins stepped forward. “Then I’m calling in Family Services to have the kid placed with his nearest relative, and your client’s parental rights revoked completely.”

“My client has yet to hear a single charge against him.”

“It keeps gettin' longer every time you open your mouth.”

“It's okay,” I said. Three pairs of eyes turned to me, none of them looking like they were believing what their ears were telling them. “I'll talk to him.” Cassavetes turned and gave them a smug look, and made a dismissive gesture. Mom looked back over her shoulder at me, and I gave her a reassuring smile and a nod.

“Good boy,” Cassavetes said as the door closed. “Here's what you're going to tell them happened. You and your father…”

“Shut up.” The words felt good coming from my mouth. Mike looked at me like I'd just turned into someone else. “Right now, my memory is kinda hazy about what happened tonight. Tell the old man to back the fuck off, or I start making shit up. If he
really
pisses me off…I'll just start telling the truth.”

“They'll never believe the truth,” Mike sneered.

“Didn't say I'd tell them all of it. Just enough to give them an excuse to start looking in all the right places. Either he goes away and leaves me alone, or I make sure someone else does it for him. And I ain't too picky about who makes him gone.” That made his pasty face a couple of shades lighter. Cheap aftershave and sweat assaulted my nose as he stood there slack-jawed for a moment.             

“You…you wouldn't dare!” he sputtered.

“Try me.” We matched glares for a moment, then he flinched. I got the impression of desperate bluffing, and a contempt for everyone who had all the things he wanted. What did he see in my eyes, I wondered?

“You have no idea what I'm capable of,” he said. It was supposed to sound like a threat, I was pretty sure, but all I heard was injured pride trying to make a comeback.

“You've got a good idea what I can do, though. And if you ever want to find out first hand, just cop an attitude with my Mom again.” I copied the gesture he'd used earlier to let him know I was done talking to him, and weathered a glare for it. But, since pissing him off was almost as much fun as pissing my father off, it lost a lot of the intimidation factor.

Mom and Officer Collins came back in as soon as the door opened, and neither of them looked happy. Both of them eyed me, like they were looking for some kind of damage. I smiled, partly to reassure Mom, but mostly because, for the first time in a long time, I just felt like it.

“What did he want, son?” Mom asked as she came over to me.

“To make sure I told the cops what he wanted them to hear. I told him that wasn't happening.”

“He didn't look happy to hear that,” Collins remarked. “I'm gonna go talk to my captain, see if we can't at least get temporary custody for you, Miss Murathy. With your husband's rep, I think we can find a judge who'll do that, at least for a few days. Especially after what happened tonight. But I can't promise nothin' beyond that.”

“I understand, officer. I think my lawyer can handle it from there. I've been waiting for this night for too long to waste this chance.” Her eyes never left my face as she spoke, and she brushed the back of two fingers across my cheek. My gruff teen act broke under that touch, and I was all kid again, with a goofy smile for my mom. I got up and wrapped her in a hug to make sure she was still real.

“Okay, then,” Collins said. “Let's go fill out some paperwork.”

Chapter 4

~ No place in the world is so safe as a place one of the Roma calls home. ~

Friedrich Horst, 17
th
century mage

“Let's go home, son.”

Mom's words kept playing through my head as she drove. Home. I liked the sound of that. I didn't even know where home was, and I didn't really care. Almost anything would be better than sleeping on the floor in an abandoned high school science lab and living with a demon.

The neon and concrete skin of New Essex blurred by my window as Mom navigated her battered beige VW van out of the Old Joplin District without a word. Off to my right, the sparkling towers of downtown pointed into the night sky. Mom was heading through the edge of downtown, where the industrial parks of the Joplin district gave way to the convenience stores and strip malls that catered to the financial section of town. Even at three a.m., the streets weren't empty. New Essex was called Night City for more than one reason. Brightly painted high-performance racers prowled through the parking lot of a strip mall on mobile pools of neon off to my right. Further down on the opposite side, heavy bass beats thumped out competing rhythms from the trunks and back seats of chromed-out Caddies and Lincolns. Sodium streetlights turned blues to black on the bandanas and left-skewed baseball caps of a group of men and women standing outside a liquor store in baggy jeans and hoodies.

These were familiar faces. Not that I knew them personally. It was their eyes. It was the combination of resignation and desperation that made these people familiar to me. Unexpected tears made hot trails down my face as we drove by. Up until tonight, I had helped my former master prey on these people's dreams and fears. Now I was going to a home I didn't deserve. If I thought anyone would have listened, I would have prayed for some kind of forgiveness.

“What's wrong, honey?” Mom broke the silence when I sniffed.

“Nothin',” I said with a thick voice. “Nothin' at all.” In spite of myself, I smiled.

“Tears of joy?” she asked. I could see the glistening wet lines down her face.

“Big time.” It was even a little true. In spite of the sudden guilt attack, I was as happy as I could ever remember being. Maybe that was where the guilt came in. It wasn't like I didn't have plenty of scars to show for the past few years, and I sure as Hell hadn't been willing, but I'd still done a lot of really bad things. I leaned my head against the cool glass and looked up at the overcast October sky.

“Give me a chance to make this right somehow,” I whispered to the night. “I'll do whatever it takes. I swear I will.”

Something…some
one
must have heard me. I felt a subtle pressure for a moment, and an ethereal wind blew through my hair. For just a moment, I got the feeling that I'd just made a bargain with something that was vastly amused, and that I'd get the chance I'd asked for. Then the pressure went away, and I felt like I was just catching up to the world again.

“Did you feel something?” Mom asked.

I shook my head, but I saw several loose strands of her hair falling back into place. Note to self: no magick while Mom was nearby. She shrugged and went back to watching the road. As she turned left at a stoplight and headed down a smaller street, the smaller brick businesses started to give way to cheap houses with vinyl siding, and stunted trees in postage stamp sized front yards.

“We'll have to clear out the guest bedroom for you,” she said after a moment, like she was picking up in the middle of a list. “I've been using it for storage, but I can move that stuff into the garage. What you have with you will be okay for the weekend, but it won't do for school. I know it's probably not as nice as what you're used to with your father but you'll have to put up with shopping for school clothes at Wal-Mart.”

“I'm good with Wal-Mart,” I said, and added a shrug to make it seem more casual than I felt. New clothes of my own would be so cool. I didn't give a crap if they were from Wal-Mart or Macy's. They would be mine. I'd get to pick them out. That alone made it as cool to me as any expensive boutique shop or high-end, name-brand store.

The homes sliding by my window were getting bigger and nicer, with bigger yards and older trees to match. Mom pulled onto a side street, and into the driveway of a compact two-story house. Flowers lined the walk to the front door, and I could see a tall tree looming behind the house on the right. Mom came around the front of the van as I climbed out and grabbed my bag. My stomach flip-flopped as I followed her to the front door. She unlocked it and turned on the light, then turned back to me.

“Welcome home son,” she said, as I stepped past her.

The front room was carpeted in a dark brown, and Mom had laid down a big red rug in the middle. There was a familiar easy chair against the wall to my right, almost in line with the door. On my left, under the broad front window, there was a worn and comfortable-looking beige sofa. The side table with its built-in reading lamp sat on the right side of Mom's chair, just where I remembered she used to have it…before.

Bookshelves took up the far wall, each shelf stacked two rows high, and it looked like two books deep. To my left, a beat-up television set squatted on a low stand, with a double handful of DVD cases stacked neatly below it. Flanking it were two more sets of shelves. More DVDs in bright cases filled the bottom two shelves of the one on the right. A set of candles and candle lanterns shared space on the third shelf with a collection of amethysts, citrines, and quartz crystals. The top shelf and the top of the case were devoted to pictures of a dark-haired girl with my Mom’s eyes and nose, and an impish grin in every shot. That could only be my unknown sister. They ran in order: shots of her as a baby with a full head of dark curls and a toothless grin on her chubby little face, through her toddler years, and into grade school. I felt a burn in my stomach as I followed my sister’s life in pictures, instead of memories. I added it to the list of things I owed my father, and looked at the shelves on the left. More DVDs occupied the bottom shelf. Above them, I saw myself. Baby pictures, my kindergarten and first grade pictures, shots of family vacations, and a few candid shots. At the top, standing by itself, was a framed picture of Mom and me on the carousel at Worlds of Fun. I remembered the moment, a cool March afternoon, just before my seventh birthday. In the photograph, I was on the horse as it was on the downswing, laughing as I threw my hands in the air. Mom was standing beside me, holding one hand behind my back, waiting to catch me if I fell. It was one of the last times I remembered seeing her happy. It was also the first time I had seen that picture.

“I found the film in my camera after the divorce,” Mom said softly, from just over my shoulder. I'd crossed the room and picked up the frame without thinking. “It's the only picture I have where we're all three together.” Her eyes went to the pictures of my sister, and I suddenly understood who she was talking about. She took the frame from me and her eyes got a distant look as she held it for a moment.

“You were…you know…then?”

“It's called being pregnant, son, and yes, your mother was in a family way in that picture.” I heard a little bit of laughter in her voice as she put the picture back.

I shook my head at the images that threatened my teenage sanity, then went to the bookshelves and stared in awe at all of the titles. Mysteries, craft, and gardening books dominated, but there were a lot of other topics covered, both in fiction and non-fiction. I felt my jaw slowly fall open, and I think my eyes glazed a little.

“You still like to read?” she asked. I gave an absent nod. “Bookshelves, then. We'll have to get some bookshelves for your room as soon as we can work them into the budget. But that room's not getting any cleaner on its own. Let's get to work on it.”

The room,
my
room, was about ten feet on a side, maybe a little bigger, with a little closet just left of the door as I came in. The bed was on the left wall, a little desk was opposite the door, and there was a dresser on the right. There was a boxy little machine on the desk, and a dozen spools of thread. The dresser looked like it was supplying the desk's thread habit, and also like it was pimping out yarn and cloth on the side, too.

“This shouldn't be too hard,” I told myself. Three hours later, my back was calling my brain a rat bastard for lying to it about how easy this looked. Every drawer in the dresser was full of crap, and the closet had cardboard boxes stacked to the hanging bar, all of them marked “Fragile!” in big red block letters. None of it could just be carted out and thrown somewhere. It all had to be stacked neatly, and with other stuff that fit some pattern that only Mom seemed to be able to make sense of.

We talked as we worked. Well, mostly, Mom talked and I grunted. She'd covered a lot of conversational turf over the past three hours, most of it to do with my sister, Deirdre, and her own work at Spirit Garden. I'd mostly tried not to lie about what the last few years had been like.

“Well, Kennedy probably won't compare to the private schools you've been to, but it has a great arts program, and one of the best advanced placement science programs in the state,” she told me as we put sheets on the bed. “But you always were smart. You'll do just fine.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I took a look around the room. It didn't look much different, but it was really mine now. My gym bag sat on the dresser: a shot glass full of stuff in a fifty-five gallon drum of a room.

It hit me then that nothing had gone the way I'd planned after I escaped. By now, I'd expected to be good and lost in the city's mystic underground. I had expected to see this sunrise from an alleyway in the Hive, not through venetian blinds in a bedroom of my own in the suburbs of New Essex.

“Damn,” Mom muttered. “it's after six. It'll be almost seven by the time I get over to the Romanov's to pick your sister up. This must be the worst homecoming ever.”

“Huh?” I managed to grunt. Did I have the snappy comebacks or what?

“I get you home, make you stay up all night, put you to work as soon as you walk in the door, then abandon you at sunrise with no breakfast.”

“Well, there was that fire and the trip to the police station last night, though,” I said. “You were the last person I expected to see come through that door last night at the station.”

“Well, if officer Collins hadn't called me, you wouldn't have seen me until later on today. But you
would
have seen me, son. I promise you that.” She stepped up and wrapped me in a fierce hug. “I'm so glad you're home, honey.”

“So'm I,” I mumbled through a mouthful of her hair.

She stepped back and gave me a long look, like she was trying to memorize my face. “I hate to leave you alone, but I do need to go get your sister, and frankly, sweetie, you look like someone pulled you out of a fire and put you to work at hard labor all night.”

“Feels like it, too.”

“The bathroom's across the hall, and there are clean towels and washcloths in the linen closet at the end of the hall. Get cleaned up, and I'll make breakfast when I get back.” She kissed me on the cheek and left me standing in my room.

I said it a couple more times to enjoy the sound of it: my room. Mom's voice floated through the hallway outside as she hummed an old tune I vaguely remembered. Before long, I heard her call out a goodbye, and the sound of the front door closing.

I grabbed fresh clothes from my smoke-stained gym bag and tossed them on the newly made bed, then dug into the bottom. After a moment, I pried the thick cardboard liner away from the second, original bottom of the bag to reveal my few pieces of magickal and mundane working gear. A black folding knife, a slim flashlight and a set of
very
illegal lock picks were nestled in wadded up newspaper padding, next to two battered Altoids tins: one blue, the other red. The red one held the sharpened piano wire and tiny vials of blood ink I'd used to give myself the blood tats that had helped me in my escape last night. I left that one be, and opened the blue one. A single, thin quartz crystal lay inside, its cheap gold chain caught on the thin layer of scavenged foam that was duct taped to the lid. A silver ring with skulls and crossbones etched around the band lay next to it. But it was what lay beneath the cheap trinkets that I needed to see. Several sheets of translucent onionskin paper were folded up beneath the crystal and the ring, the few magickal notes I'd managed to keep hidden from my master over the past few months. The cut-down stick pen I used was wrapped in the folds of the thin sheets, still intact. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd been afraid that the ink had boiled out in the heat of the fire and ruined my notes.
That
would have sucked. I carefully pulled the pages out and unfolded them. Line after line of tiny words marched across the page, with larger glyphs and sigils around the edge of each page, done bigger to keep the details right. Just glancing over them gave me a sense of relief. At least I had a little magick to work with. I had stuff for two foci, I had my basic notes, and more importantly, I had privacy. What I needed now was a safe place to stash my stuff.

Fortunately, my new room had lots of good places to hide things, and no one poking through it regularly to find my gear. Even though the need to hide it wasn't as bad, I still wanted a safe place for what little I had. I opened my pocket knife and pulled the closet door open, then stepped in, turned around, and sat on the floor. The spot I picked was low, on the wall facing away from anyone looking into the closet, and on the left as well. Hidden below eye level, on most people's off-hand side, and with the wall itself acting as a sort of barrier, no casual observer would ever notice it. I cut an almost-neat rectangle about the size of my foot in the drywall, and pulled it away to reveal the wooden framing of the wall, and stuck my gear inside. A quick run of the vacuum from the hall closet later, there was almost no sign of my work.