Bone Lantern Witch

by Kat Simons

  Angie pretended not to notice the slip by taking the last piece of bread from the bread basket.

  “The situation must be handled. You’ve been instructed.”

  “Warned?” Sebastian said.

  “Requested,” the woman countered. “This can’t be ignored or left…out there. This is why you’re here.”

  “No.” Sebastian’s tone made the woman straighten.

  Angie wondered what he’d just said no to.

  “I’m here for the Molder demon,” he said as if clarifying.

  The woman’s shoulder’s relaxed, but only slightly. “When this fight is done, if you survive, your presence is required at the New York office.”

  New York office? The hunters had offices? That was news to Angie. As far as she knew, outside of a once-a-year gathering to share information and mourn the year’s lost or introduce the new recruits to the community, the hunters didn’t meet. They worked alone for the most part, traveled alone. They didn’t have offices.

  Angie studied Sebastian from under her lashes, pretending most of her focus was on sopping up the rest of the red sauce on her plate with her bread. His jaw was tight, his mouth a hard line, his eyes narrowed slightly. The red in their depths flared brighter, though in the muted restaurant lighting that could have been an illusion. At least, that’s what anyone who didn’t know about demon hunters would think.

  He sat a little hunched in his chair, and leaned back so he could meet the woman’s gaze, but that coiled intensity, that sense that he was ready to strike, hadn’t eased at all. In fact, he looked more ready to lash out than he had just a few moments ago.

  “If I survive,” he grunted. He did not sound happy about being summoned.

  “An explanation is due,” the woman said. “And we need a result.”

  “You’ve had the situation explained before.”

  “The result was not acceptable. You know it’s not. Something has to be done. This has gone on long enough.”

  Sebastian pulled in a visible breath, and Angie waited for the explosion. He looked like he wanted to rip into the woman. His anger was a living thing between them.

  And then, just as fast, all that anger and intensity vanished and he was a casual diner again, just speaking to a friend or colleague.

  “Thank you for coming to get that.” He nodded to the bag. “Tonight will go easier without it. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  The woman held her place for a few moments even after Sebastian turned back to the table. The lines around her eyes and mouth deepened with her tight expression. And then she, too, seemed to let go all that intensity and her expression was once again casual if serious.

  “Good luck,” she said. Though it wasn’t obvious, she flicked another glance at Angie. “With everything.”

  Angie watched her leave the restaurant. She was the only one who did. No one else even gave the woman a glance. She might have been a ghost moving past the tables, drawing no attention at all.

  Angie turned back to Sebastian and raised her eyebrows. “Well, that was interesting.”

  Sebastian waved the meeting away. “She’ll ensure the lantern is safe.”

  “Uh huh. And you’re going to explain all the unspoken conversation to me, right?”

  He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand to stop him.

  “If you’re about to lie to me, you can save your breath. I’m a little vain, but not so vain I assume all conversations are about me. But I can read body language. Very well. I know there was more in that conversation than was supposed to be obvious.” She set aside the last bit of her bread, and held his gaze. “And I know at least some of it had to do with me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The waiter arrived with their check. Whether that was Sebastian trying to distract her or just coincidence, she wasn’t sure. She and Sebastian both ignored the little slip of paper on the side of the table, though. And she didn’t turn away from him, even long enough to acknowledge the waiter. Neither did Sebastian.

  “Well,” she said after a moment longer, when they were alone again.

  He sighed. “I can’t discuss this right now, Ang. It’s complicated and we still have to stop Grant.”

  “Stop him doing what? What he’s been allowed to do for twelve years?”

  He dropped her chin. “We’ve taken away the Molder demon’s one option for moving in this world inside a human host without losing power. It’s not going to remain confined any longer. Tonight, it will escape. And kill. Grant. Carmen.” He held her gaze. “Mara. Tonight is it.”

  Angie sat a little straighter in her chair. “How long have you known that?” And why was she surprised? Shouldn’t she have realized? He’d said something had changed. Didn’t she on some level know this final fight was imminent?

  But she wasn’t a hunter. Should she really have known?

  “Not long after we took the lantern,” he said. “Probably on the way up to see Ellen and Mara. Everything in me—all those instincts I can’t quite explain—are assuring me this is the moment. This is the night.”

  Angie glanced at the remains of their dinner. He hadn’t eaten very much of his while she’d cleaned her plate and sopped up any extra with bread. Her gut tightened as she stared at the plates, the low-level anxiety that had been with her since Sebastian’s text to meet him at the Botanical Garden bloomed into full-blown panic.

  “The woman, she said something about if you survive tonight. What do you know that I don’t?” She glared at the table. “Was this some sort of last supper?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said firmly. “But I can’t tell the future.” With a slight lift of his lips, he said, “Anymore than you can.”

  “I can infer from past information and body language, though.” And sometimes she did get glimpses of the future. They were always just too nebulous to carry much weight. Too many things could change the future. Including getting a vision of it. “Your body language is telling me you’re worried you won’t come out of this,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t be worried about that, or I’ll fail for sure.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “What do you want me to tell you, Ang?”

  “That you’ll survive so we can continue this fight tomorrow,” she snapped.

  His smile softened. “I always have enjoyed fighting with you,” he murmured, almost too quietly for her to hear in the hum of restaurant noise. “I know you hate the fights, but… I’ve always loved doing anything at all with you.”

  She swallowed. Hard. “Seb…”

  “We’ll argue about that tomorrow, too,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  He reached across the table and gripped her clenched fist, squeezing gently.

  It wasn’t an answer.

  Before she could drag the promise from him, though, his expression changed. He stood abruptly. “I need to go.” He glanced down at her. “You can stay. Last chance.”

  “Right,” she said. “We’ve had that argument already.”

  She dropped money onto the bill, enough cash to cover the cost and a healthy tip. She’d have cringed a little at the money, but it was for food, and at this rate, she might not have to worry about her retirement fund anyway.

  She followed Sebastian from the restaurant.

  He stood on the sidewalk frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m not… This isn’t happening at Grant’s house.”

  “Shit. Where?”

  He started trotting up the street and turned down a side road, heading toward Central Park.

  Shit, she thought again. The Park after midnight. This wasn’t going to be fun.

  As she trotted after Sebastian, trying to conserve her lung capacity—she wasn’t a runner—her second thought was that there were a lot of trees in Central Park. A lot of potential for disaster. She spent time occasionally in the Park. It was glorious, that patch of green in the middle of the
city. But always in the daylight, always when she could be careful of the trees.

  Night was more difficult. At night, it was easier to get caught.

  Just as she’d already gotten caught once tonight.

  Sebastian picked up speed and Angie stretched to keep up with him, holding her purse in one hand so it wouldn’t bounce against her leg, concentrating on her breathing. She fell behind a bit, and got caught at a traffic light Sebastian raced through. She watched him disappear into the Park without her and cursed under her breath. A quick glance at signs told her they were at the 76nd Street entrance. Lots of trees here.

  She counted to ten, impatiently waiting for the light because despite the late hour there were still a thousand cars on the road. Why the hell were there so many cars suddenly? Why was the light taking so long? Argh!

  Rubbing the pentagram on her bracelet, she counted to ten again. And the instant the lights changed, she charged across the street, still nearly getting clipped by a driver running the red light. She muttered one of her more colorful profanities under her breath and didn’t slow down as she barreled into the dark park.

  Low wattage lamps lit the path past one of the iconic playgrounds and deeper into the heart of the Park. This time of night, no one was around. The place felt empty and more like the deep forest than the middle of the city. The paving beneath her feet did little to dispel that feeling. The smells of pine and damp dirt overwhelmed the now faded scents of cooking nuts and city crowds. Still a touch of mustiness, but mostly just the scents of nature and night. A night bird hooted. The faintest sound of running water. Even traffic noise as it rose and fell seemed distant, more like a breeze through canyons than anything manmade.

  Angie might have enjoyed the serenity. The quiet. She might have even been fooled by the peaceful surroundings…

  If she wasn’t so aware of the predators ahead.

  Careful to keep her gaze lowered and not on the trees bracketing the path, she listened for any noise that would indicate which direction Sebastian had gone, following instincts. He was too far ahead of her for her to actually hear anymore, but she hoped she’d be able to intuit a direction. And when instincts didn’t provide any good answers, she paused and put her hands on her hips, scowling into the darkness.

  Panicking and charging off into the depths of the Park without a clue where she was going wasn’t going to help. She sucked in a deep breath, pulled in the loamy, woodsy scents around her, focusing on those smells. She let her pulse calm, though it took a considerable effort, and time that if she focused on would make her panic again. She gave her pentagram one last rub, then let her arms drop to her sides.

  The tracking spell wasn’t one of her best. She was still practicing it. But it did work better when she knew the person she was trying to track. She hadn’t ever practiced the spell in a life-or-death situation, though, and fear kept clogging her throat, making her concentration slip.

  Fisting her hands once, hard, and then relaxing, she breathed out, letting her eyes drift almost entirely shut even as her awareness of her surroundings opened. The sounds of a light breeze moving through the trees. The brush of cold air against her cheek. The rustle of a small night creature in a nearby tree. Even the barely perceptible changing light as the clouds moved overhead, covering the waxing moon, changing the shadows across the path.

  And very very faintly, a scent like sulfur reached her. Elusive and impossible to follow. But there.

  She murmured the words to the spell, letting her mind fill with an image of Sebastian. With him, this part was easy. His beloved face crowded out the fears, that flash of his smile, the wicked twinkle in his dark eyes when he was thinking things that made her body tingle. She let the very essence of his soul fill her, everything she knew and didn’t know about him.

  Him.

  And then she twisted her fingers in a pattern that, from the outside, probably looked like someone pretending at sign language. She murmured the final words of the spell, letting them out on a soft exhale, formed a triangle with her first fingers and thumbs, then released both the spell and her hand gesture, splaying her hands forward.

  When she opened her eyes, a faint blue illuminated line ran ahead of her into the darkness.

  She let out a slow breath and followed the line, grateful she hadn’t gone too far afield before initiating the spell. She had to double back to a small side path that led into a thicker wooded area, but that correction only took a minute.

  Letting her awareness stay open, she hurried down another paved path, this one covered in dried leaves and a few fallen branches so it was hard to tell it was paved. She kept her gaze on the blue line, her focus on the spell, and hoped no muggers jumped out to disrupt things. She was well into the middle of the Park now, heading into the Ramble, the night deepening as the trees crowded around her. At the very edge of her hearing, she caught a slight sound of something like a ringing bell. Her heartbeat kicked up, though she wasn’t sure why, and she picked up speed.

  Beyond that faint, deep gong, the Park had grown remarkably quiet around her. No more birds. No more night sounds. Even the breeze had died and the leaves were still. She sensed her surroundings pause, like Nature was holding her breath. Angie’s fear ticked up another few notches.

  She was nearly at a full run by the time she heard the fight, still hidden by the trees, but impossible to miss now that she was this close. No longer in need of the guiding spell, she let her focus on it drop. The blue line winked out of existence. Without the faint illumination, it took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the normal night light. The shifting darkness and that faint red city glow overhead. Clouds rolled in, covering the moon.

  When she felt she could see without tripping on a branch, she rushed forward, again, prepping a defensive shield spell, running through the words in her mind so the spell would be ready to trigger.

  But before she got within sight of the fight she could clearly hear now, a large, pale shape stepped out in front of her.

  Angie skidded to a stop.

  And triggered her shield spell.

  Chapter Thirty

  A dome of faint blue circled Angie, though she knew from experience no one else saw the shield but her.

  The pale man standing before her smiled. “’Bout time you got here.” He stepped forward and hit up against her magic, getting a jolt of energy that made him curse and step back. “Bitch,” he hissed.

  “Witch,” she corrected. “You sound different when you’re not hosting a demon.”

  The man was just as she’d seen in her vision at Dana’s—short and painfully thin, pale skin, skeletal facial features, brown hair, no eyebrows. But his eyes were an ordinary brown, not black with a hint of red in the depths. And everything about him seemed…less.

  Not less threatening, just less…

  Demonic.

  “He wants you now,” the man said. “And Carmen’s happy to give you to him.”

  “Him who?”

  The man frowned. “The Master.”

  “The Molder demon isn’t a ‘he,’” she said. “That particular species doesn’t come in distinct genders. We use ‘it’ because that just seems more appropriate with a demon. Although, sometimes I still slip and use gender pronouns. I’m working on that, which is why I bring it up. If you’re going to be working with a specific species of demon, it’s important to understand their basics.”

  The man blinked. Angie grinned. Sebastian did that sometimes, lectured someone in the midst of a confrontation. Nothing like throwing an opponent off their game.

  And while he was confused by her calm lecture, she murmured the fire spell, calling the little ball of heat and flame into her palm.

  The man’s gaze flicked to that. “She warned me about you,” he said. “Warned me you could call the fire like a demon.”

  “Then you know trying to fight me is a bad idea. I’m going to go help my friend now. And if you don’t get out of my way, I will let you burn.”

  Someone shout
ed around the corner. She couldn’t tell if it was Sebastian or not because more noise, the sounds of something whooshing through the air, a scuffle, all competed with the shout. Not knowing what was happening, what kind of trouble he might be in, filled her with dread and panic. She had to get around this asshole, and fast. He might be dangerous under normal circumstances. But with a demon just beyond the next clump of trees, he seemed a nuisance rather than a threat.

  Until he grinned.

  Her attention snapped back to him. That grin worried her.

  “I ain’t here to kill you,” he said. “The Master wants you. I’m here to stall you.” His gaze lifted as if he could see behind him without having to turn his head. “Sounds like I stalled just long enough.”

  He stepped aside as Angie barreled past him, dropping her shield to move fast. She kept the little fire ball in her palm, which slowed her down because if she ran, she risked accidentally dropping or tossing it. Though it wasn’t technically a physical thing she touched in her hand, it was linked to her in a way analogous to holding. But the hold was tenuous when she was moving.

  She skidded into a clearing, leaving the path to reach the patch of dirt and leaves. In the middle of the clearing, the Molder demon laughed, its pointed gray teeth against black gums so obvious even in the dark it was like the beast glowed from within, a ghastly apparition in the dark clearing. Carmen and Sebastian were clenched together in a physical fight, and it only took a moment for Angie to realize Carmen was his match. She was a head shorter, but stronger than she looked, and obviously trained because she was holding her own against the much larger man. When she punched Sebastian in the kidney, Angie hurt the hit and winced for him.

  She wanted to intervene in the physical fight, but she wasn’t trained for that, despite all the fights with her brothers over the years. She could hold her own in a dirty, kicking, biting fight if she had to. But getting between Sebastian and Carmen right then would likely get her a head-spinning punch to the face or breath-stealing gut punch, and none of that would help Sebastian.