Neon Blue

by E J Frost

  Lin glances at the clock on my office wall. “You were dreaming,” she says flatly. “At three-twenty in the afternoon.”

  “I was up really early!” I protest.

  Lin rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I think the SexyBeast is here for you. He’s busy seducing Evonne.”

  Damn. Jou probably is doing exactly that. I toss the papers onto my desk, pull off my work smock and run my fingers through my hair. I bet I look like a zombie, and not from a good zombie movie, either. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a crew neck shirt that were on the floor of my closet this morning. They’re both blue. Which matches. Kinda. I bet the demon won’t see it that way. My eyes are always bloodshot when I first wake up, and my hair is in knots. Great.

  I follow Lin out to the reception area, where Jou has both Evonne and our nurse, Ruth, enthralled. Ruth’s pulled one of the client chairs up to the edge of the reception desk so she can perch practically on Jou’s hip. Any closer and she’ll be straddling him.

  “Hey.” It comes out sharper than I intend, even without any power behind it.

  Ruth straightens, and Evonne flashes me her lighthouse smile, but there’s just a touch of guilt behind it.

  “Jou was just telling us about Japan,” Ruth gushes. “He’s so well-travelled.”

  Because warlocks all over the world have summoned him. “Is he? That’s great. Jou, you ready?” I ask tightly.

  The demon turns to me with his shark-leer. “Whenever you are. Here, I brought you somethin’.” He hands me a jute carrier bag. A peek inside reveals folds of white cable-knit and plum velvet. Neither of which I own. “You’ll get cold outside wearin’ . . . whatever it is you’re wearin’.” The dark glance he gives my shirt leaves me in no doubt as to what he thinks about my ensemble.

  “I’ll change on the way,” I offer, wanting to get him away from my staff. “Let’s go.”

  Lin joins Evonne and Ruth in saying such heart-felt good-byes to Jou that I wonder if he’s worked his spell on her, too. Fuming, I let him escort me to the car he’s double-parked in front of the office.

  “You leave my friends alone,” I hiss once he hands me into the passenger seat and slides behind the wheel.

  “You got me all wrong, sweetness. Again. I was just bein’ friendly. Your receptionist an’ nurse, they ain’t got enough juice between them to make a margarita—”

  “A what?”

  “You know, the cocktail? Tasty. Anyway, I got no interest in them. An’ your dragon friend, her soul’s already spoken for. Last thing I want is fifty generations of Revered Ancestors on my ass.”

  Having met some of Lin’s ancestral ghosts, I can understand that. I chuckle, and let my irritation drain away. “Really. So, where are we going?”

  “Wherever you want. Where’s the best shoppin’?”

  I stifle a sigh. It’s so much easier with a magical horse. “Head through Cambridge to Mass. Ave. and up to Davis Square. We can park up somewhere and walk up the bike path.”

  The demon nods like he knows exactly where Davis Square and the bike path are. Maybe he does. He’s had plenty of time to explore Cambridge and Somerville while I’ve been working, but I had the impression he was doing other things. Like taking souls and killing smoke demons.

  While Jou drives in his utterly smooth and assured fashion through the afternoon traffic, I open the bag he’s given me and wriggle around in my seat, trying to pull on the cable-knit sweater and slide out of my shirt without flashing my bra at the world. Watching me, Jou chuckles. “Cast a glamor if you’re feelin’ modest.”

  I shake my head. Then wonder why not. “Do you use magic for everything in He—uh, when you’re at home?”

  “You can call it Hell, sweetness. Everyone else does. An’ no. Power shouldn’t be wasted.” My feelings exactly. “But you got it to spare.”

  I shrug. I have been feeling . . . full since the demon crashed into my life. Maybe full isn’t the right word. Bountiful. Not overflowing but . . . abundant. Like fall. As soon as I think that, my mind recoils. I do not want to be harvested. Not in any sense.

  I finally get the sweater on and my faded shirt off. The sweater fits me perfectly, just like everything else the demon’s given me. “How do you know my size?” I ask.

  “By feel,” he says with his wicked leer. “Jacket goes over that.”

  I fish the plum cloth out of the bag. Unfolded, it’s a soft velvet blazer. I lay it across my lap. I’ll appreciate the jacket once we’re outside but it’s too warm in the car.

  “Check the pocket,” Jou says.

  I fish around in the blazer pocket. Cool metal. I pull out a handful. It’s a small chain of linked roundels: baroque pearls, silver and enamel beads. I roll it between my fingers, feel the pearls warm. The enameled beads are patterned with tiny blue roses. Like the one still sitting on my bedside table.

  “Jou,” I say softly. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thought you might like it. Less threatening than those bindings, huh?”

  I glance at him guiltily, but he doesn’t look angry, or annoyed. He looks pleased with himself. I look back at the bracelet quickly before he notices my expression. “I’ll help you put it on when we stop,” he says.

  I nod. Clasps are not my best thing. “I haven’t got you anything.” I feel like I’ve missed an anniversary, which is ridiculous, since we’re not even dating.

  Jou chuckles. “You can gimme a blow-job later.”

  I swat his shoulder.

  In the death triangle of Davis Square, a parking space magically opens for the demon. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he must be glamoring the other drivers somehow. Before I lost my license, I could drive around Davis Square for an hour and never even glimpse a space in the distance.

  Jou parallel parks. No one even honks at him while he’s reversing.

  “That’s obscene,” I tell him.

  He chuckles as he slides out of the car and collects a real wicker picnic basket out of the trunk. Where does he get this stuff? Then he comes around the passenger side. I climb out before he can do the annoying male door-thing and loop the jacket and jute carrier over my arm. He holds out his hand and after I second I realize he’s offering to help me with the bracelet. I hand it to him, then hold out my left wrist.

  As I do, my heart seizes. The bindings. Surely he’ll be able to see what the Squire’s done on close inspection?

  He loops the bracelet around my wrist and squeezes the magnetic clasp shut. The rest of the bracelet looks old, with the natural pearls and cloisonné beads, but the clasp is modern and solid.

  Shivering, I look up into the demon’s eyes.

  He smiles at me. Takes my hand and leads me towards the corner cross-walk.

  My heart stutters back into a trip-hammer beat.

  As we wait at the corner for a turning car, the demon turns to me. “Somethin’ wrong, sweetness?”

  I shake my head. Grope around for anything to say to divert him. “How do you know where you’re going? Have you been here before?”

  The demon glances across the square, then leads me into the entrance to Linear Park. “Don’t think so. ‘Course, it all looks different now, but I don’t think I came this far south before. I’m followin’ your memories.”

  “I thought you weren’t in my head.” I don’t feel him, not even when I reach for him. Has he figured out a way to lurk in my mind, like a phantasm?

  “I’m not,” he says.

  Well, that’s a relief. “Then how . . . uh, wait, you haven’t, like, absorbed all my memories or something, have you?” Because that would be very creepy.

  He chuckles. “I’ve got a thousand years practice rememberin’ shit, sweetness. You think I can’t remember the couple hundred places you been?”

  “Oh.” I mull through the ramifications of that as we stroll together down the asphalt path. The traffic noise and pedestrian traffic fade behind us, until we walk down the leafy green tunnel of the bike path, with only the crunch of our feet on dry leaves and the
occasional whizz of a passing cyclist to break the verdant silence. “Do you remember everything you see and hear?” And steal out of my brain.

  “Nope. My head woulda exploded by now if I did.”

  That makes me laugh a little.

  He reaches out and puts his arm around my shoulders. The warmth of his body soaks through my sweater. I’m glad I didn’t put on the velvet jacket. Between his infernal heat and the fall sunshine, I’d be roasting. “You used to come up here a lot,” he says.

  I nod. Before I made my pact with the Squire, I’d walk up the bike path to gather herbs at least once a week. Not as easy as the magic horse-method, but I could usually find the basics. I do now, too, as I spot a tuft of dock leaves growing at the base of a chain-link fence that separates the path from someone’s back yard. I disentangle myself from the demon, collect the leaves, and when I straighten, find him holding open the jute bag I brought from the car.

  I didn’t even feel him slide it off my arm.

  With a sigh, I lay the dock leaves in the bottom of the bag, careful not to crumple them, and take the bag back so he’s not carrying everything. He slides his arm around my shoulders again. “Just ‘cause I’m not in your head don’t mean I can’t tell what you’re thinkin’, sweetness. What’s got your panties in a twist?”

  I shrug, but when he continues to eye me, I try to put my irritation into words. “Everything in my life is upside-down.”

  Jou nods. “An’?”

  “And? Does there have to be an ‘and’?”

  “Is there?”

  I lean my head against the solid warmth of his shoulder. “This thing . . . you wanting me to be your seggurach. I don’t know what to say, Jou. It scares the hell out of me.”

  “Hell scares you, or I scare the hell outta you?”

  I think that through. “Honestly, both.”

  “Mmm.” The demon’s silent for a moment, like he’s considering. While he’s mulling, he drifts across the path, dragging me with him, and examines a brightly-colored flyer stapled to an electrical pole. “Fanelli’s Fabulous Flying Circus,” he reads off the flyer. “Relatives of yours?”

  I glance at the flyer incuriously. My family rarely comes north of Pennsylvania. Another reason I decided to live in Boston. “No.”

  “Mmm. Wanna go?”

  I hunch one shoulder. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Get real. Going to a circus with you would end up like something out of Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

  He chuckles. “I was thinkin’ more Johannes Cabal.”

  “What?” I’ve never heard of that one, not even in any of my mainstream lit. courses, and I thought I’d read most books about magical circuses.

  “Oh, yeah, that hasn’t been published yet. Never mind.”

  “Jou!” I push away from him, but he reels me back and tucks me tight to his side before we continue up the path.

  “Listen to me for a second,” he says, in his deepest tone, and I do listen, both because that dark-treacle voice is so arresting and because I know when he uses that tone he’s serious. “Th’ way I know about a book that hasn’t been published yet’s the same way I know about you. I got just enough foreknowledge to be annoyin’. Comes from being half-Noctil.”

  I shrug. I have a touch of precognition, too, although mine’s not very useful. “What’s a Noctil?”

  “Type of demon.”

  “I thought you were Butter Pecan.”

  He grins hugely. “I can see enough to know you’ll be important to me. Not how or when, but you will. That’s why I bound you. That’s why I want you t’be my seggurach. So I can keep you by my side. An’ I swear to you, I protect what’s mine. I’ll keep you safe.”

  His idea of safety and mine are so far apart. “I was safe, Jou. I was perfectly fine. You want to know why I’m angry, well, there it is. You’ve crashed into my life and turned everything upside-down because I’ll be important to you at some point. Don’t you see how self-centered that is? What about what I want?”

  “The things you’re clingin’ to, this vision you got of a perfect life, it’s just an illusion, sweetness.”

  “But it’s my illusion, Jou.”

  He hangs his head. Scuffs his boots a little as we walk. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  I hate it when he does this. Looks vulnerable and unsure. Because it undermines all the anger that I’m clinging to. “Jou, dammit. Okay, I’m not saying ‘no.’ I’m just saying not yet. Please, I’m not ready. Everything I saw and your harem and everything? It scares the life out of me. I know you want to go back—”

  “I’m not in any rush,” he interjects.

  “But your family?”

  “They’re doin’ just fine. Probably safer without me there, since the Old Man’s pissed at me. I got no reason to hurry back.” He steers me to the other side of the path, and then up a small grassy hill. The houses that border the bike path are set back here and there’s a long expanse of browned lawn overlooking the path, screened from the houses by a row of pine trees. “Forget all that for now. This looks the business,” he says and begins unpacking the hamper. A plaid blanket goes down on the grass. Plates and napkins, silverware and glasses. No plastic for this picnic. Jou fills the plates with fried chicken, dill-flecked potato salad, roasted corn, a green salad, and, just when I think the plate is going to shatter under the weight of all the food, a wedge of pecan pie.

  “You did not make that,” I say, nodding at the pie.

  “Nigella,” he says. “Extra vanilla; no corn syrup. It’s the shit. Have a seat, sweetness.”

  I sit, and pick up my plate, and descend into gastronomic paradise. The fried chicken has a buttermilk crust. Light and crunchy. Dearie dubbleskey, it’s even better than my Dala’s, which is heresy. I try to banish that thought as I chomp through a second piece, and then a third. Yum.

  The demon finishes before I do, stretches out his long legs, and takes a bite out of one of Lin’s crisp apples, since he’s demolished everything else, including the pie. “You humans got no idea how good you have it.”

  I watch a pair of roller-bladers skim down the bike path. Their matching high-viz, sweat-wicking lycra bodysuits glimmer in the early evening light. Their roller-blades probably cost more than my old car. All that expensive technology for a hobby.

  “Do we?” I point out the roller-bladers with my potato-salad-laden fork. “They probably get out like this once a week. Maybe twice. The rest of the time they’re chained to their desks in some high-rise downtown. Making the money that pays for those expensive skates. Are they happy? Are they better off than people were a hundred years ago?”

  “You’re a hellofa lot cleaner than you were a hundred years ago. Fuckin’ Puritans bathed once a week and stank like their pigs.”

  I throw my napkin at him. “The Puritans were around three hundred years ago.”

  “Yeah, well, humans were still stinky a hundred years ago. Trust me. Fuck.”

  “Jou!” I look around for something else to throw at him.

  He chuckles. “You’re lonelier than you were a hundred years ago. That’s the truth. Those boxes you’re addicted to.” He snorts. “You spend more time staring at ‘em than you do talkin’ to each other.”

  I nod. The irony that the person I’ve talked – connected – to the most in years is a demon hasn’t been lost on me. “I guess you don’t have anything like that in . . .”

  “Hell, sweetness.”

  Right, Hell. “Sorry, it’s still hard for me to get my head around.”

  “Why? I know the old woman read you the Bible—”

  I stare at him in surprise. “Doesn’t it hurt you to say that?”

  “What, Bible? No. I can say all kinds of shit. God. Yahweh—”

  “Stop, that’s creepy.”

  “Sweetness, I don’t know what they taught you at those fancy schools you went to, but I never Fell. I was born a demon. I can say all kinds of words you humans think are holy. I can go into place
s you hold sacred. I can even read the Word, in the original Aramaic, which mosta you humans can’t do anymore. I just don’t got a soul like you do.”

  So, by definition. “Professor Uela always said demons were just another supernatural species. But you prey on people’s souls, Jou.”

  He shrugs. “Don’t seem much different than eatin’ flesh, which you do all the time.” He nods at the chicken bones on my plate. “Just another source of energy.”

  Totally different, although I admit that I occasionally flirt with vegetarianism for exactly that reason. “There’s the eternity thing.”

  Another shrug. “Eternity don’t mean much to me. Not sure how it can mean anythin’ to you, either, since you humans barely live long enough to learn how to piss properly. Become my seggurach an’ maybe you can explain it to me after a millennia or two.”

  “Is that what would happen to me? I’d become immortal, as your seggurach?”

  Jou snorts. “I’m not immortal. I just live a fuck of a lot longer than humans do. Maybe human souls are immortal. I dunnow. All I know is that they’re fuckin’ tasty.”

  “You don’t . . . eat them, though, right?”

  He takes another bite of apple and grins around it. “Nope.”

  “But you feed off them. The way you’ve been feeding off me.” It’s not really a question.

  “Yeah. Kinda bland, now that I’ve tasted you. Like eatin’ everythin’ without salt.” He finishes the apple and tosses the core under the pine trees. “You’ve really opened my eyes to Nuevo cuisine, sweetness.”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate the comparison.” I finally finish the huge pile of food he’s put on my plate. He’s tucked his own plate back in the picnic basket, so I follow suit. Discover that he’s thought of everything, including a plastic bag for dirties. And, in a thermos underneath the baggie, coffee.

  “Pumpkin spice,” I say when I open the lid. My current fave.

  “Mmm-hmm. I know you’re used to thinkin’ of yourself as the top of the food chain, but even you gotta admit that humans are food for all kinda things.”