The Problem With Black Magic (23 page)

Despite the fact that the curse stayed away from her, Cassie thought she could sense its progression; first, it would choke
Cordley, to make him feel as though he would die from suffocation. Then, his insides would burn, reaching unfathomable temperatures until his organs were liquefied. Even then he wouldn’t be dead; he would continue to struggle to get air into the shriveled remains of his lungs, for hours, while his wasted body melted away. Normally the mind would shut down in the face of this kind of shock, but the curse was designed to keep him conscious for the sole purpose of feeling more pain. No matter how much time she spent around demons, she doubted she would ever see a blacker curse.

Vaguely, she could feel Sam’s hands on her arms, but she was connected to
Cordley; she couldn’t be ripped away physically, not now. She noticed he’d stopped coughing, but the curse was still wrapped around his body; it was still killing him, only slower. She reached down into a reserve she somehow knew was there, and poured as much magic into him as she could hold. It hurt, like her chest was going to burst.

STOP THIS NOW!
yelled Sam’s voice in her head, and then she had to let go. She fell backwards into his arms, finding that the room looked grainy and blurry. White spots flickered on the edges of her vision; she wondered if she was seeing traces of her own magic, or if she was just on the verge of losing consciousness again. She wondered why it had taken Sam so long to compel her to stop, but when she thought about it, she realized she had only been touching Cordley for a few seconds. It only felt like forever.

“Slowpoke,” she slurred. Her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she sank back against Sam’s chest. “I hope I got enough in him before you stopped me.”

“Cassie…”

“Why do you have to be so evil? That’s not cool….”

Her last memory of her time in Heathrow Airport was Sam wrapping his arms around her, calling her name softly.

***

“How about that,” said a voice Cassie recognized. “She just pumped him so full of white magic, the curse got too diluted to complete. No training, no knowledge, just pure brute force. She really is yours.” said
Serenus.

She still couldn’t see; all she could do was hear the voices, which seemed to float around her like smoke.

“I wish she was a little less like me,” said another voice softly. “After that stunt, I thought…she felt like ice….”

“Her own magic is knitting her back together. It’s just a matter of time. You’ll see.”

“I could’ve stopped this. If I’d compelled her as soon as I realized--”

“Sam, if your first thought whenever she disobeys you is to reach for compulsion, you will lose her absolutely,” said
Serenus, with a quiet gravity she wasn’t used to hearing from him. “You’ve no choice but to let her decide.”

There was a pause.

“I don’t know if I can take it, Ser.”

When she opened her eyes, she was confused; she knew Sam and
Serenus were there somewhere, but all she could see was the view from her grandparents’ house once again. The fall scenery had changed to winter, and she could hear the crunch of someone walking in freshly-fallen snow. Her mind tried to reconcile the two scenes for a while, but it seemed like entirely too much work.

She realized
that, despite the winter’s chill in the air and the icicles hanging from the trees, she was somewhere soft and safe, and that was all that mattered.

Cassie was surprised when
Serenus met her on the way to the Daily Grind before one of her Friday night shifts. She’d seen very little of the man since she returned from London. For a while, she was stuck recovering from what her parents thought was yet another case of the flu, but even when she went back to work, she only saw him for a few brief moments.

“Ms. Tremblay: W
ould you mind taking a walk with me for a little while?”

“I
gotta go to work, Ser.”

Serenus
smiled a knowing smile. “I’m sure the good Mr. MacGregor will not begrudge us ten minutes.”

“Well, if it’s short,” she said.

He led her to a small park that was only a block or two away from The Daily Grind. Cassie didn’t mind the fresh air, but she wondered what Ser needed to tell her that he couldn’t say in the shop. She guessed it was something he didn’t want Sam to hear, and that piqued her interest.

After they had walked around the freezing duck pond in silence for a minute,
Serenus began. “I realized I never apologized to you.”

Cassie looked at him quizzically. “Apologized?”

“For not realizing the threat that Cordley represented. Even though I knew all about his family. Even though I should have known that the Eastern Court was as desperate for witches as we are.”

She considered that; apparently, she wasn’t the only one who expected
Serenus to know everything. “You couldn’t have known, Ser. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Even after you were taken, Sam was insisting it was
Cordley, and I was arguing with him. I was trying to convince him that it was a coincidence that the man was talking to him outside while you were taken.” He shook his head sadly. “I just couldn’t believe it of him.”

“Still.
I don’t blame you, and I’m sure Sam doesn’t, if that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, it all worked out okay in the end.”

Serenus
looked at her with a sadness in his eyes that took her by surprise. “Did it? Because if I had a better idea of what was going on, maybe you wouldn’t have had to pledge yourself to one of the Lords of Hell to get out of it.”

Cassie stopped short.

“How did you know? Sam doesn’t even--“ She sputtered, and then she remembered. Of course he knew: he was the designated spell Examiner for this hemisphere. The man with perhaps the greatest sense for magic in the world. He could probably sense her bond with Sammael, like the scent of a musky cologne that clung to her.

“It took me a while to figure out what it was. At first, I thought you somehow had two bonds simultaneously with Sam, except that makes no sense. Eventually I realized who else’s magical residue would feel the same as his.”

Cassie shivered in her windbreaker. If she knew she would have been going for walks in the park, she would have dressed warmer today.

“You absolutely cannot tell him, Cassie,” he continued, turning to face her. “Sam hates his father; the idea that he has any claim to you would drive him insane. Do everything you can to make sure he doesn’t find out.”

Cassie regarded him coolly. She liked him, even trusted him, but it didn’t escape her notice that he thought nothing of manipulating his supposed friend. “You’re very big on deciding what Sam gets to know.”

“I am,” he said, unapologetically. He turned to look at the duck pond, not quite frozen for the winter yet, but getting there. “It may make you think less of me, but I made a promise to his mother that I would protect him, and I take that very seriously. And, just like you, the one he usually needs the most protection from is
himself.”

Cassie decided to ignore the backhanded insult. After all, though she didn’t regret it, after nearly getting herself killed trying to save the life of the man who had kidnapped her, it wasn’t really up for debate whether or not she could be reckless.

“Besides, you know how he can be. It’s not safe for him to get too angry.”

Cassie nodded.
They only think they can’t breathe….

“But
Ser,” she murmured. “You know he’s going to find out eventually. I can’t keep something from someone who can read my mind.”

Serenus
smiled that same sad smile. “I know he hasn’t read your mind since you returned from London. He’s afraid of knowing what you think of him.”

Cassie shivered again, not entirely from the cold.
Oh. Well then, that’s convenient. Incredibly sad. But convenient.

“Anyway, that was all I really needed to say,” he said, turning back towards the gate that led to the street. “Go make yourself one of those drinks you like with all the sugar.”

“I will, thanks,” she said and turned to go. Thinking better of it, she turned back to him, enjoying the feeling of her wool scarf whipping around her body. “One more thing though. Sam’s mother, is her name Helen?”

A pained expression crossed
the older man’s face when she said the name, but he maintained his composure quickly. “Yes. I take it the demon in question must have mentioned her.”

“Yeah,” said Cassie. “What’s she like, anyway? He talked about her like…like he loved her, I guess.”

Serenus just smiled, turning to look at the pond once more. “Go to work, Cassie.”

As she walked back to the shop, she wondered what kind of woman Helen was. It would be one thing if
Serenus had talked about her like she was She Who Must Be Obeyed-- given his flair for the dramatic-- but Sammael, a Lord of Hell, had talked about her the exact same way.

Of course, in theory she could ask Sam, but lately, they hadn’t been talking about much of anything. As she walked the rest of the way to work, she mulled over her current predicament:
how to rescue Ethan, who had emailed her and let her know he had been stolen from his parents, when she and Sam were barely speaking. Ever since London, her communication with him had been polite, but limited. She couldn’t hear his voice without remembering the sound of his curse in his head, and she was pretty sure he knew it.

Although she knew she would have to begin her training as a witch sooner rather than later in order to keep the court off her back, neither of them had broached the subject yet. She wanted to learn how to use white magic for sure, but the prerequisites…well, that was something she simply couldn’t think about right now.

When she reached The Daily Grind, she stopped in front of the window to quickly send Annette a text. As far as her parents knew, she had run off to the coffee convention behind their backs, then suffered a massive karma overdose by coming down with a severe case of stomach flu while in New York. Now, in addition to her other punishments, which she had expected, she had to keep a location indicator on her phone active and let her mother keep tabs on her at all times. While it was kind of humorous that she was perhaps the only teenaged girl in the world who had been told to use her cellphone
more
, it was also the only thing that allowed her to keep her position at DG.

She waved to Mike as she came in, who had taken over his typical corner with his laptop. Jay was running the register, while Khalil manned the bar. While
she was securing her apron around her waist, Sam came out from the back, holding a box of beverage mix under his arm.

“Hi, Cassie,” he said, looking at her pleasantly but not quite meeting her eyes. “How was school?”

“Oh, fine….the usual,” she muttered.

“Good. If you could get the pre-close stuff done while Jay handles the
front, that would be great.”

“Okay. No problem.”

“Great.” Sam walked off to start mixing up a new batch of beverage base at the bar behind Khalil. From his manner, there was no indication that he was anything other than an attractive coffee shop worker.

As she went to get the mop, she saw Jay and Khalil exchange annoyed looks; she and Sam practically sounded like retail-bots, discussing only job-related tasks. Though both had dropped hints (Dwight and Mike had known better), she hadn’t told either of them what the source of this new awkwardness between them was, and she didn’t plan to either. It wasn’t something she felt comfortable discussing.

She’d only been cleaning the shop for a few minutes when the delivery truck stopped outside. She exchanged surprised looks with Khalil. The shop got deliveries all the time, but that was from the companies DG did business with, and almost always in the early morning; a UPS delivery in the middle of the afternoon was a rarity.

A delivery worker came in, holding a package the size of a notebook. When Khalil went to sign for it, the man shook his head.

“This is addressed to Cassandra Tremblay at the Daily Grind.”

She and Khalil exchanged
looks again; it had to be a demon-related thing. Who else would send a package to The Daily Grind like she lived there? And did she really want to open any packages of demonic origin?

“Uh, thanks,” she said, signing for it. When the delivery man thanked her and left, she stood at the counter, staring at the package for a long moment. Sam came to stand at her shoulder, his brow knitted in thought. Jay abandoned his post at the bar for a moment to examine it.

“You gonna open it?” Jay asked, curiosity obvious in his excited tone.

She turned to Sam. “I don’t sense any magic from it, do you?” she whispered.

“None,” he said, “Although we should probably call Serenus--“

She had already started ripping off the paper.

“-- just to be on the safe side,” he finished, crossing his arms. “Or not.”

When she had
unwrapped it, she frowned; it seemed like a tablet PC, only thinner and lighter than she had ever seen. The front was emblazoned with a logo she’d never seen before.

She and Sam exchanged glances, the first eye contact they had shared in some time. Demons had sent her a computer?

She’d pretty much forgotten that Mike was even in the room, so his sudden outburst came as a bit of a shock. “Oh. My. God!” he said, standing up and crossing the room faster than she’d ever seen him move. “That’s a Venus 7200X! You can’t even pre-order those yet!”

“Eh?” said Cassie, looking over the counter at him. “What is it?”

“Only the thinnest, fastest, most powerful tablet ever,” he said, his blue eyes huge in his face. He seemed to remember there were a few customers in the shop, and lowered his voice. “They sent you something that only exists as a prototype- someone really high up in the company has to be a demon.”

Cassie looked at the thing quizzically; well, it figured that some demons would be in powerful positions at computer hardware firms. Based on what court was like, she had assumed that the ranks of
demonkind were mostly made up of lawyers, but there had to be exceptions.

“Touch the
screen, that should turn it on,” Mike continued, looking at the tablet with a look that was almost greedy. She complied, and a text document immediately appeared on the screen. All the guys clustered around her to read it.

Dear Ms. Tremblay,

You are cordially invited to attend the next meeting of the Greater American Society of Dental Professionals on Saturday, March 23, at 7 p.m. at the Legacy Hotel in San Francisco, California. On the agenda: exploring the ethics of experimental orthodontics, exciting new products in the burgeoning field of teeth-whitening candies and gums, the latest advances in flossing, and a heari
ng regarding the blood status of Sammael, a.k.a. “Samuel Andrews,” in regard to Sections 48c and 336a of the Hemispheric Charter. The full text of the charter, in addition to other pertinent documents, has been provided for you on this device.

Please come prepared to speak in regard to the latter, and we look forward to seeing you in the spring. Always remember: Clean teeth are happy teeth.

Sincerely,

Donatello Arrigio,

President, Greater American Society of Dental Professionals

It was all Cassie could do to keep from throwing the thing across the room, and she probably would have were it not for the fact that Mike would have probably refused to speak to her ever again.

“Of course I have to go back to court! Of COURSE!”

“They sent your invitation before mine?” Sam asked rhetorically. “I don’t even know if I should be offended.”

Khalil threw his hands up in the air and made a triumphant noise. “Guess who’s getting a free trip to San Francisco? Whooo! Next time it’ll be Vegas, bet you 50 bucks.”