The Problem With Black Magic (16 page)

Cassie slept fitfully, tossing and turning into the wee hours of the morning. The king sized bed and high thread-count sheets were incredibly comfortable, but somehow it didn’t seem to help her relax. When the light of dawn became visible beneath the curtains, she woke from her dreamless half-sleep to hear the sounds of men talking. Vaguely, she remembered that the guys had decided to do some sightseeing in the city, and through the door, she heard something about Dwight telling Khalil to put down his steak and eggs and get going.

Cassie would have liked to have gone with them, but she couldn’t afford to gamble that something would
happen outside that would detain her; if a bomb threat or subway breakdown caused her to be late for her hearing, she was out of luck. At least she could sleep in, in theory, but satisfying rest remained elusive.

Eventually, she gave up on being well-rested and got out of bed. On
her cell phone, she had 14 missed calls and four voicemails, presumably all from her parents. Suppressing a pang of guilt, she put on one of the complimentary terry cloth robes over her t-shirt and sweat pants, she went out to the main room.

Sam and
Serenus were at the dining room table, their discussion falling silent at her approach. Sam picked up a newspaper and his coffee mug and vacated the table when she sat down.

When the door to the master bedroom slammed,
Serenus gave her a weary, if somewhat amused look. “You know, it would make my job easier if you wouldn’t insist on stomping on his pride every chance you get.”

Cassie poured herself some coffee from the gilded carafe on the table, not meeting his eyes. “You have a job? This is news,” she
snarked. It wasn’t the brightest comeback, but she had no idea what to say. Had she “stomped” on Sam’s pride? No more than he’d stomped on hers by calling her “nothing” without her magic. As far as she could tell, he’d been far crueler to her than she had been to him.

She looked up at the spot on the wall where Sam had pulverized the tray of chocolates, which had somehow been completely cleaned in the interim. The cleaning staff here certainly didn’t let the grass grow under their feet.

Before Serenus could respond, Jay ran into the room, clumsily stretching into his brown suit jacket. “Did it start yet? Can I go?”

“Wear your badge!” Sam bellowed from behind the bedroom door.

Cassie turned to Jay over her coffee. “You didn’t go with them on the sightseeing tour?”

Jay gave her a look like she was insane. “And miss demon court? Something hardly anyone ever gets to see? I don’t
freakin’ think so!”

Serenus
walked over to Jay, adjusted his lapels and slapped the gaudy yellow badge on his chest. “Remember, if anyone asks tell them you’re a member of Sammael’s entourage, and they should leave you alone after that. Valencia Ballroom, downstairs by the--“

“I
know, thanks!” said Jay, and he was off.

Serenus
shook his head in disbelief as he came back to the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so excited to witness proceedings at eight o’clock in the morning. Want some breakfast?”

Serenus
placed a quick call to the kitchen, and a waiter brought up a tray of eggs and syrup-drenched waffles for Cassie. As she ate, Serenus gave her some information about court. The schedule would primarily be occupied with small territorial disputes and other technical matters for most of the day, and Sam and Cassie’s hearing wasn’t until seven. They were going to sit through most of the day’s proceedings for the sake of appearing interested in demon business (ha!), but there was no immediate rush; showing up for the early morning hearings was something only those who couldn’t avoid it (and Jay) did.

“There are seven demons on the board, but the one that concerns you is Donatello
Arrigio; he’s been chairman for almost 30 years, and he’ll probably be doing the bulk of the talking. He’s a bastard-- well, they all are, more or less by definition-- but fair, if nothing else. The fact that justice is even possible at this point in time can be credited to him, in large part.”

“So what you’re saying is, he’s going to try to do the right thing,” Cassie said around a mouthful of butter and syrup.

“Yes, but keep in mind for him ‘the right thing’ concerns what’s right for our kind, not what’s right for you, personally. He won’t want to see you hurt if there’s no call for it, but remember: to him, you’re still an asset to be exploited more than you are a person. You have to understand that tightrope he’s walking.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, my heart bleeds for the poor guy.”

“Don’t do that.”

Cassie looked over
her shoulder briefly to see Sam walk up behind her, then did a double-take; he was dressed for the occasion, looking like a scowling magazine model in a glossy black tuxedo, complete with white gloves. She was at a loss for words for a moment, but fortunately he filled the silence himself.

“Don’t be sarcastic, they’ll take it as a sign of disrespect-
- which it is, by the way-- and hold it against you. Also, don’t lie.”

Cassie nearly choked.
“Really? Not about anything?”

“Not about anything,”
Serenus repeated. “They may have a witch in attendance who can use magic to detect lies. They don’t always have her present, but often enough to make lying not worth the risk.”

“But what if they ask me if Sam is a good master?”

At that, Serenus threw his head back and laughed, while Sam fumed silently.

***

Cassie never would have imagined that the details of demons trying to screw each other out of power and territory could have been so boring. Sure, there was interesting stuff going on in theory, but like any business, demons had plenty of their own jargon, and Cassie only understood maybe every third word. She thought there were a lot of cases dealing with familiar-napping, but they spoke in such impenetrable code she couldn’t be sure. What did “Unlawful access of a previously recognized wellspring without due diligence to cosigned petitions” mean?

Next to her, Jay was riveted, even as the day wore on into the afternoon. Cassie thought she would have gone crazy if proceedings didn’t break for drinks and snacks once every few hours.

To her surprise,
Serenus was sitting at the dais with the board, something he hadn’t mentioned. As far as she could tell, he was a vital part of the proceedings, but didn’t chime in on any of the resolutions. She supposed it made sense that the Examiner would be a non-voting member of the board.

Also surprising was the fact that most of the demons didn’t appear to have red eyes. Sam had dropped his disguise spell, which she knew he didn’t do lightly, so either disguise spells weren’t allowed at court, or were simply considered bad form. That meant that Sam, the chairman (who Cassie assumed was
Arrigio) and a few demons here and there were the only ones who had them, since most of the demons in the room had normal eye colors.

People came and went with the cases, but there seemed to always be a few hundred people in the ballroom. By four o’clock, Dwight, Khalil and Mike had returned from their sightseeing, quietly taking seats in the row behind her. Technically, they were there to support Sam as his entourage, but Cassie realized when Khalil and Dwight each put a calming hand on her shoulders that they
hadn’t really come for the sightseeing; they’d come to support her. She briefly felt idiotic for not realizing it sooner.

Khalil leaned over and
whispered in her ear. “Status report: The Empire State Building? Actually quite tall.”

“You don’t say,” she whispered back.

When proceedings broke for the last time before Cassie’s hearing, she felt her mood instantly shift from boredom to terror. She wanted to run away, go to the ladies room and hibernate for an hour, but knew there was nowhere to go; in five minutes, they were going to be calling Sam’s name, and she would have to sit before the board. Whereas previously there had been empty rows, now the room appeared to be full to capacity as the demons and their entourages drifted back to their seats.

She adjusted the hem of her dress, still not completely comfortable in it. She knew it flattered her, but Sam had barely looked at her when she came out of the bedroom with it, and had only shrugged noncommittally when
Serenus had said she looked very pretty. Despite the fact that he was furious with her, or perhaps because of it, she’d been hoping for more of a reaction from him.
I’m a very sick person,
she thought, holding her third Shirley Temple that day like it was a lifeline.

When the bell rang to indicate that break was over, Cassie swallowed a big chug of her drink that hurt going down. Watching the hundreds of people walk back to their seats from the cocktail area in twos and threes, she felt frozen, rooted to the spot. Khalil, looking more elegant in his black suit than she’d ever seen him, put his hand on her arm gently.

“Chin up, baby girl; you’re up,” he said. Behind him, Dwight nodded.

“You can do this,” said Mike, while Jay just grinned at her. Cassie was torn between affection and wanting to strangle him; he was still too dazzled by the novelty of the situation to have any inkling of what she was going through.

Arrigio tapped his gavel and leaned into his mic; his deep voice would have resonated even without it. “Recess is now over. The chair calls the case of the son of Sammael and his familiar, in accordance with Section 223c of our charter. Sammael, please take your familiar and approach the dais.”

Sam walked over to her and tilted his head in the direction of the dais, his red glare unnerving her even though she knew to expect it. Sharing a nervous grin with the guys, Cassie started to move forward,
then stopped suddenly when she felt a warmth at the small of her back. Realizing Sam had put his hand on her, she turned to him with narrowed eyes. “Hey, watch it,” she said.

To her surprise, Sam looked down at her body with a look that made her stomach flip flop,
then slid his arm around her waist, his hand coming to rest low on her hip. With a quick, forceful motion, he pulled her against his side, then began to walk forward, leaving her no choice but to keep pace with him.

“H-hey!” she exclaimed
, hating how squeaky her voice sounded in her shock that he had just manhandled her. The feeling of her breast flattened against his side was making her dizzy. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t look down at her again, his face impassive. “If this goes poorly, I may never get to touch you again. Have a little compassion,” he whispered.

Cassie didn’t really hear anything for the next several minutes. She knew that Sam had guided her to the seats up front, right before the dais, and she heard the men seated above her spout some perfunctory sounding lines about a case number and the particulars of master-familiar law, but her mind was reeling. Never before had Sam made it so clear that he was attracted to her. Even last night, when he’d grown angry, it had seemed more like she had insulted his foolish, masculine pride than anything else; she hadn’t really believed he wanted her, specifically.

It’s impossible,
she thought, looking up at him; his face remained that same impassive mask. Whatever he was feeling, he had no desire to share it with the panel. Though they were sitting, his hand remained on her hip; even through the thin material of her dress, her flesh seemed to vibrate with an electric charge where he touched her.

Did he act like he hated her guts all the time to camouflage how he really felt, or did he legitimately dislike her, but felt the attraction regardless? Or maybe it was a side effect of their magical bond? She had no way of knowing.

Sam pinched her gently, and she realized that the red-eyed demon, Arrigio, had been asking her a question. She cleared her throat, hoping her face wasn’t as flushed as she felt.

“I’m sorry, could you please repeat that?” she said, and a snicker went through the audience behind her. She bit her lip; she was afraid to look at
Serenus for fear that he was banging his head on the dais at her stupidity.

Arrigio
gave her a withering look, which she had to admit she probably deserved. The demon, bald except for some gray whiskers at his temples, had a face that seemed to be made for expressing scorn: deeply crevassed with a long, crooked nose and beady little eyes. “This is your master’s hearing, miss; please try to pay attention.”

“I will; I’m sorry.”

“Is it true that on October 4
th
, you engaged in a power transfer with the demon sitting next to you, leading to a time freeze of 17 minutes, 34 seconds?”

Cassie blinked; actually, that wasn’t quite true.
“No…uh, no sir.”

A murmur ran through the audience at her words; apparently, her denial was unexpected.

The demon looked surprised for a second, then resumed his contemptuous glaring. “Are you saying a power transfer did not occur?”

“No. I mean, yes, it did happen, but not like that.”

Arrigio slammed his hand on the dais, making Cassie jump in her seat. “Explain yourself, girl,” he said quietly into his microphone. Somehow, his stage whisper was more threatening than yelling would have been. Cassie cleared her throat.