“Rest. I have the hawkweed for the spell.” He still clutched something in his fist, squeezing it in small pulses.
“How?”
Tighter and tighter he squeezed. The bones in his hands tensed. “I bought it and had it couriered.”
“In the hour or two I was gone?”
“Try fifteen.”
I blinked. “Still not possible. Couriers require overnight delivery.”
“I arranged it privately.” This was the first time it hit me that Rohan probably had a lot of money from his rock star days and if anyone could have arranged this, it was him.
Blood trickled out from between his fingers.
I grabbed his hand, forcing it open. “Ro. Stop. You’re hurting yourself.”
He’d been holding the piece of yaksas horn tight enough that its broken edges had sliced his skin.
I grabbed some tissues off his bedside table and dabbed at the blood.
“It’ll heal.”
“That’s not the point.” I glared at him. “Have you spoken to anyone about what you went through?”
Rohan pulled his hand away. “You.”
“Do any of you actually use our very fine medical benefits?”
Rohan blinked, the picture of dumb caveman with his uncomprehending look and half-open mouth. “Me kill. No undergo psychoanalysis,” he grunted.
I wadded the tissue up and put them on the bedside table since there was no trash can in sight. “Why do I bother?”
Rohan settled himself next to me on the mattress, sitting back against the headboard. “Tell you what. Pass on the name of the shrink you spoke to when you couldn’t dance anymore and I’ll call them right now.”
His arm brushed my belly as he stretched across me to reach his phone. His shirt rode up to expose a strip of ab muscle rippling under his brown skin.
I slid a pillow in front of me. “Oooo, you got me.”
“Shocking.”
“I didn’t want to bare my soul to someone who was being paid to listen, all right?” I snapped. “And there’s only so much I’d subject Ari and Leo to. Other people’s misery is boring and if you keep it up, you end up still miserable but then you’re alone, too.”
“What about this ex of yours?”
“Cole dumped me when it all happened,” I mumbled. That particular shame hadn’t been something I’d wanted to share with Rohan.
“He’s an idiot.”
“He said I shut him out.” I blurted the words out.
“You probably did.”
“O-kay.” I smoothed down a pulled thread in the blanket.
“When I lost Asha?” He shrugged, bending a knee, and bracing his elbow on it. “I couldn’t talk to anyone either.”
“Because you felt like if you opened your mouth the only thing that would come out would be a piercing howl and you’d bleed out from the inside?” I snapped my mouth shut.
“Aw, Sparky.” Rohan put his arm around me.
“Don’t you dare pity me, Mitra.”
“I don’t. I understand you.”
“You do understand me. God.” I laughed, shaking my head.
“And if I’d been there,” he brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes, “you could have talked all day or been silent for a week. I wouldn’t have left.”
As if. When my world had come crashing down, Rohan had been on top of his and indulging in all his worst excesses.
But the idea that someone I loved would have understood that I was terrified? That I hadn’t been shutting Cole out so much as holding myself in check every single second because if I didn’t I was convinced that I’d shatter? That there could exist a reality in which I could have that one person who’d have my back in every way that mattered like I could have his and he wouldn’t cause grievous emotional harm?
That’s what I’d sacrifice everything for.
I jumped to my feet. “Let’s do the spell.”
While Rohan gathered the ingredients, I made us coffee. A dull dawn light cracked the clouds open enough for the mist to shimmer silver against the silhouetted trees out back.
The coffee pot stopped burbling. I turned from the window and poured myself a cup.
Which led to me wondering after I’d downed half of it if I should perhaps take one to Rohan. He liked his caffeine as much as I did. I took a second mug out of the cupboard.
Yikes. Did this telegraph “girlfriend?”
I put the mug back.
Except… We were friends and fellow Rasha. I’d get Kane one if he needed it.
I pulled the mug back out. Set it on the counter. Poured coffee into it.
Eyed it like it was a cobra about to strike.
Rohan loped into the kitchen, freshly showered, in a pair of sweatpants that molded to every inch of him, and that white T-shirt of his that was so soft and worn, patches of his skin were exposed. Humming, he opened the fridge, his back to me.
He’d shaved. His gorgeous face was a good thing, but I really liked his stubbled, unpolished edge. Bah. I shot his back the finger. His presence was doing squat to help me deconstruct all the possible meanings, permutations, and ramifications of me giving him a cup of coffee.
Dummy got out the milk.
I glared at him, shoved the mug into his hand, said, “Enjoy your damn coffee,” and stomped downstairs to the Vault.
I sat cross-legged on the padded blue mat flooring and read over the spell. It was super straight-forward and I was positive I could do it, but my sum total of spell casting was limited to creating and undoing wards, and only under supervision. It was better that I didn’t attempt this on my own.
Rohan entered carrying a mason jar of purified water mixed with a variety of different tiny rock salts and the shredded deep golden-yellow petals of the hawkweed. He also had a thin paintbrush hooked between two fingers.
“We good to go?” I asked.
“Hit it,” he said.
I slapped my palm against the scanner on the interior wall. The iron door to the room imprisoning the gogota slid open.
A rotten meat stench whacked me in the face. I threw my arm over my nose.
The demon could barely lift his head, whispering “Gel. Man.” in a slow, broken chant, as he lay curled in a piteous ball next to the iron chair. He’d been leeched of all color and was shriveled to two-thirds of his normal height.
Rohan sat down beside him, placing the mason jar of water and paintbrush out of the demon’s reach. “Okay, buddy. This will all be over soon. Nava. Do you remember what to do first?”
“Control experiment.” I sat down next to the jar and snapped a hair elastic off my wrist. Setting it on the ground, I zapped a bit of electric magic into it, wrinkling my nose against the charred odor. I picked up the paint brush, dipped it twice in the water mixture, then painted the precise vine pattern detailed in the spell on it. “Galah.”
The elastic cycled through a rainbow of colors before gently pulsing pink.
“No way,” I said. “If I have gender-stereotyped magic, heads are gonna roll.”
I handed Rohan a dried fig which he stabbed with his blades. Once more I did the spell and once more rainbow colors appeared before settling into the pulsing pink.
“Equal opportunity,” I said. “Better.”
“I rock pink,” Rohan said. He lined up the two objects. “That’s the winner then. Indicative of Rasha magic.”
We tested my hamsa ring that Rabbi Abrams had glamoured up when I’d gone to Prague, to see if rabbi magic manifested the same way as Rasha magic. Rasha magic was inherent to us, whereas rabbis had a limited number of spells they cast, mostly around the rituals involved in testing and inducting hunters.
“Seems we’re on the Barbie Dreamhouse end of the pink color spectrum with rabbis being more Barely There lip gloss.”
“Like the Sephora Ultra Shine,” Rohan said.
“Is this knowledge from wearing or kissing?”
Rohan grinned at me.
“Gel. Man.” the demon rasped.
/> My stomach heaved. I looked longingly out toward the Vault and fresh air. The sooner we got this done, the better. “Hold him.”
Rohan pinned the demon down, frowning. “He’s not even fighting it.”
I repeated the paint job and spell on the metal spine and watched the colors cycle. “Be honest with me. If we learn the Brotherhood is behind it? What then?”
“I don’t know.”
The colors abruptly disappeared leaving the spine in its original state.
“No. It’s not possible.” I shook it. There had to be magic on it. I reapplied the vine pattern. “Galah,” I said more forcefully.
The same cycling. The same lack of a result. I smacked the floor.
“No magic.” I couldn’t tell if Rohan sounded relieved or disappointed.
“This demon didn’t just sit there and let the Brotherhood mount a two-foot spine on it, then happily bound off to do their bidding. If the spine wasn’t the binding agent, then something else was.” I painted the pattern on the gogota’s head. “Galah.”
This time when the rainbow cycling stopped, the gogota was purple.
So was one of Rohan’s hands. But the magic traces didn’t come from having touched the gogota, because his other hand didn’t show any magic. It was only visible on the hand he’d injured on the yaksas horn.
Rohan pulled the piece out. He traced the curve of the horn before closing his fingers around it for a second, then dropped it into my outstretched palm.
I submitted the fragment to the same spell. Same result.
“Purple is demon magic.” Rohan studied his hand. “When I cut myself on the horn, I must have gotten a residual trace.”
Unconvinced, I sprinted out of the room, not stopping until I got to my bedroom on the top floor. I tore through my closet, flinging hangers out until I found what I was looking for, then I raced back down to the iron room.
One more spell.
I clutched the coat that Gelman had magicked clean when we’d been in Prague. It still smelled faintly of rose petals, even all these weeks later.
The spell finished cycling colors and the coat glowed red.
“Witch magic is red,” I said, exhaling. Ari being right would have sucked in so many ways.
“Thus the simplest hypothesis is most likely the correct one. Demon magic is purple,” Rohan said.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was too simple. That there was no way the most underhanded agenda going on here was merely the Brotherhood’s modifications. I grabbed the gogota’s lone remaining hand and shocked it, hard. It tensed against me, too weak for its fingers to even close around my wrist. I pulled my hand away revealing the demon’s sticky, silver secretion and, with my free hand, picked up the paintbrush. “My hand should turn purple, then.”
Dipping the paint in the hawkweed solution, I painted the vine pattern on my skin and said the magic word.
Blue. Demon magic was blue.
The gogota yelped, a feeble pained cry. Rohan had sliced the metal spine off of the demon. The gogota’s fur rippled in tiny convulsions, blood tingeing it in patchy drops.
“Rohan!”
He flipped over the spine, and brandishing the paintbrush like a weapon, snarled the spell. A moment later, the wide swathe of the demon’s secretions that had dried to a hard resin on the underside pulsed blue.
Rohan shook the spine but it didn’t make the results morph from blue to purple.
“One demon in Prague and another in Askuchar with the same purple magic on them. Why? How are they connected? Whose magic is it?” Rohan thudded his head back against the wall. “If that attack in Askuchar was deliberate and my fucking Brotherhood had us bury it to hide something?” Pain etched his features. Rohan whipped the spine against the wall.
I flinched at the loud clatter, then lay my hand on Rohan’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
The gogota raised its moist eye to mine.
Leaving the demon alive was a cruelty that I wasn’t capable of. Or maybe killing it was the cruelty I needed to enact. I sliced the tip of one finger off as purple proof before I killed it.
I barely needed any magic to finish it off.
Chapter 23
Daniel finally checked in.
Ari and I met him at an out-of-the-way diner. Despite his police uniform being neatly pressed, the cop himself looked rumpled. Bags under his eyes, his hair somewhat greasy, and the hand picking up his coffee cup jittery. “You never worked with Mara, did you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t.”
The chipped white mug rattled against the ceramic plate when he set the cup down.
I blotted the coffee that sloshed onto the table. “Do you maybe want some decaf?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Have you been home?” Ari and I were crowded into the tiny booth across from him. The red leather seats were a dull sheen, especially worn in the butt area.
“No. I’m staying with a friend.” Daniel fiddled with his unopened creamer.
“Good.” Ari dumped cream in his own coffee. “You need to keep away from Malik.”
“Yeah, keep away from the handsome, funny, smart guy.” Daniel rubbed his temples. “Not a guy though, huh? We spent hours at the museum and he taught me about all kinds of art. I watched him paint. Watched him create such beautiful pieces. How could someone with so much passion and vitality be a monster?”
Ari and I exchanged concerned glances. “There are a lot of monsters out there, Daniel,” Ari said. “Some are human, some… aren’t. Unfortunately, we can’t judge their insides by their outsides.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Daniel pushed his coffee away. “I thought he loved me.”
“He might have, in as much as something like him is capable of it,” I said.
Daniel’s eyes flashed. His fingers twitched down toward the gun holstered at his hip.
“No.” I waved my hands. “Do not go after him. I know you hate him but you’re not trained to take him down.”
“Top of my academy,” Daniel said. “I’ve trained plenty.”
“Not for this,” Ari said. “Trust that he’ll be dealt with and stay with friends or close to other cops until you get the all-clear from me, okay?”
Daniel didn’t look happy about it, but he agreed, then saying he needed to get to work, left.
“Poor guy,” I said.
“We need to kill Malik.” Ari tossed some change down to cover our coffees. “I don’t trust Daniel to stay away from him.”
We walked back to the car hunched in our coats against the cold wet wind. While Ari drove, I called Kane, explaining that finding Malik had reached a new urgency, and we were on our way back.
Kane made us wait another forty-five minutes before exiting his room, yawning. “Chill out, taskmasters, I have succeeded.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Address and phone number. It took a bit to untangle the shell company that owns it.”
I whistled. Malik had some swank real estate in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour.
“I also took the liberty of looking for any security systems on the place.” Kane jogged downstairs, calling for Rohan to meet us in the kitchen because he was convening the “War Room.”
Ari stopped on the bottom step. “Did he just take my mission away from me?”
“Naw, I’m sure you’re equal partners.” Smirking, I skipped off to join Kane and Rohan.
The two more experienced Rasha went over everything they knew about marids, scrutinizing our plan of attack down to the last detail. Had they not been able to give us a secret weapon to take down Malik, they would have insisted on accompanying us. Even so, it was clearly killing them to respect the mission and let Ari and me deal with it.
Kane was still frosty with Ari, mostly directing his comments to me.
Once the men were satisfied with our plan, Ari and I tore the weapons room apart, looking for the small, flat, iron disc called an amplifier that they’d instructed us to find.
“Got it.” I backed out of a cupboard, brushing dust off my knees. I twisted the two-inch disc between my fingers. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“It’ll do the trick.” Ari held out his hand for it. “Make Malik solid so we can kill him.”
I stuffed the disc in my bra.
He dropped his hand. “That’s not gonna stop me.”
It was totally going to stop him and we both knew it. “If you have the best opportunity to kill Malik, I’ll give you the disc. Emet Hatorah.” Truth of the Torah and the phrase that our grandparents swore would bring God’s wrath down on us if we dared swear an oath on and weren’t truthful. I didn’t believe it but I didn’t not believe it and I’d never broken it.
“You don’t trust me to do the same?” he asked.
I patted the amplifier. “Not for a second.”
We waited until night to breach the penthouse, all curved glass with sweeping views of the water and city. Real estate in Vancouver was so crazy that I was convinced we were all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, nodding our heads about what a good deal a shoebox ground floor suite with no view running upwards of half a million dollars was nowadays.
The tower was outfitted with a state of the art security system involving audio, video, a manned desk in the lobby, and regular sweeps by guards. Which begged the question: who else lived here? Former dictators? Satan?
Though security wasn’t an issue since Ari was going to shadow-port us directly into Malik’s apartment. The issue was the wards spanning across Malik’s floor-to-ceiling windows that we bounced off of. And by “bounced,” I meant ran into like a car hitting a cement wall. While being twenty-three floors up.
“You’re forgiven for abandoning me last time in the EC,” I panted, laying safe in a tumbled heap on the roof of the tower, thanks to Ari’s quick reflexes. “I wouldn’t make a good smear on the sidewalk.”
Rain misted down on me. Misting rain was the worst. Rain or don’t rain but commit, you asshole drizzle clouds.
“I didn’t abandon you. Oof.” Ari shoved my leg off of him and rolled himself free. “The strain was too much and I lost control of my magic. I got to the final location and you were gone.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 81
