Neon Blue

by E J Frost

  He leans in and kisses my forehead. Yeah, okay.

  “Friends?” I ask, before I realize what a stupid question that is.

  He looks down at me for a moment. “Never seen any point in bein’ friends with a human.” A smile slowly brightens his dark eyes. “But if that’s the way in with you, I’ll be your b.f.f.”

  I shake my head at him.

  His fingers trace my cheek, slip down my neck to my breast. He traces a familiar pattern on my skin, and my skin heats in response.

  “Jou?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, didn’t this end badly last time?”

  He chuckles. “Just means we need more practice, sweetness.”

  His restored humor sets the tone for the sex. He licks me all over, with both tongues, until I’m so breathless from giggling and moaning that I nearly pass out. After an orgasm so intense that I do gray out, I fall asleep on his chest, with him still buried inside me, exactly the way he wanted. When I wake again, my bedroom is filled with golden morning light. Jou has slipped out of me and turned on his side. I check on him as I rise and find some clothes to wear to work. He stirs when I take a shirt off a hanger in my closet with a bit of a clatter, rolls onto his other side, but doesn’t wake. I can feel him in my mind again, that banked-fire presence.

  I leave him sleeping and in the care of the two lizards who are malingering in the hallway, waiting to waddle into the bedroom as soon as I open the door. How they’re going to get up onto the bed, I don’t know. Maybe they levitate. I ponder the abilities of salamanders as I collect my shoes and head out the door.

  It’s only afterwards, as I’m riding the T into work, that I realize he didn’t come.

  Lin’s standing at Evonne’s desk when I arrive at the office, sorting through the day’s mail. She glances at the clock on the wall when I come through the door. Nine-forty. I’m practically on time.

  “Sexybeast keep you up late?” she asks.

  I elbow her as I come to stand beside her at the desk.

  “We still on for Friday night?” she asks as she hands me several letters.

  “Uh-huh.” I open the first letter, which is a cream card with gold lettering, inside a thick cream envelope with an iridescent liner. Wow, fancy. The envelope alone must cost more than all our office stationary combined. I turn the card over in my fingers. It’s an invitation for a fund-raiser at the Column Museum in November. Black-tie. Three course meal and dancing. Suggested donation, two thousand per plate. “Yow,” I say.

  “I got one, too,” Lin shows me hers. “That’s a heck of a suggested donation.”

  “No joke.” I take both cards and drop them in the waste-basket next to Evonne’s desk. “I’ll give Timmi our regrets.”

  “Mmm, she called for you.” Lin fishes around on Evonne’s desk for a moment until Evonne brushes her hand aside impatiently and hands me a message slip.

  “Postponing until four,” I read. I hope everything’s okay. I glance at Evonne. “Is my schedule clear for then?”

  She nods and grins her lighthouse smile. “Look at you with the friends in high places.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s me.” I wave my mail in the air as I head toward my hearth-room to brew.

  “You go with your bad self,” Evonne calls after me to Lin’s chuckle.

  Brewing gives me too much time to think. Jou didn’t come this morning. He denied himself that pleasure – of sowing me, fuck, whatever – because of me. Because he didn’t like what happened during his last amnesiatic episode. Because he cares about how I respond to him. He wants me to enjoy being with him. So that I’ll agreed to be with him . . . forever.

  That is just way too long. I mean, there’s promising someone forever and meaning a couple of decades, and there’s promising someone forever and meaning eternity. Okay, “forever” is supposed to be for life, but when life is measured in a hundred times the normal span? That’s much too long. What if I can’t cope with being his seggurach and want a divorce? Do demons get divorced? Somehow I doubt it. Nor can I see Jou ever letting me go. He’s been very clear on how he treats what he regards as his.

  And then there’s what I want. A normal life. Jou’s casual disregard of my dreams makes me want to scream. Maybe I don’t have any chance of a normal life. But it is what I’ve always wanted. Don’t I have the right to go after what I want? Is that clinging to a hopeless illusion, or is it just following my dreams?

  I push my whirling thoughts aside and focus on finishing the potion with a clear head and light heart. The magic milk is not a particularly sensitive mixture – it doesn’t absorb my feelings along with my power – but I try not to brew while in emotional turmoil. Creating a generation of manic-depressives and mass-murderers is not the idea.

  Chapter 36

  Timmi’s apologetic for rescheduling when I arrive at the Museum, and I quickly absolve her during the cheek-kissing stage. I reschedule all the time; there’s no shame in it. Once we’re past that, I give her Lin and my regrets for the fund-raising event.

  “Nonsense,” she says. “I won’t hear of it. The suggested donation is just to encourage those tight-wad Brahmins to get their hands in their pockets. Most of them don’t give a penny, and I know your contribution to the Museum will be far greater, my dear. I’ll take it very badly if you and your partner don’t attend. And I insist on helping you find an appropriate dress. Something extremely flattering.”

  What is it with my wardrobe that everyone feels the need to dress me?

  “Okay,” I say, bowing to the inevitable. “I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

  “Excellent, now what young man will be escorting you? I know several suitable gentlemen—”

  “Timmi, no!” I protest with a laugh. “I’ll find my own date.” Although it definitely won’t be the demon. Bringing him into a group of practitioners, even ‘just collectors’ like Timmi, is asking for disaster. I could bring the Squire. That would cause a stir.

  Timmi leads me a different way through the Museum – the place really is a maze. She stops several times to let me admire the exhibits, but picks up the pace as we get deeper into the Museum. As we walk past a case of flashing gold, cold washes up my spine and I stop, shivering. Timmi turns when she realizes I’m no longer following her. Quickly retraces her steps and takes my arm. “Careful, my dear. Some of the things in here can still bite. Even if they’re behind glass.”

  I move a step away from the case and give it a glare. A massive gold chain. Huge coins and seven enameled medallions hang from the chain. I assume the medallions are saints, until I look more closely. They’re portraits, miniature and exquisitely detailed. Each is also upside-down.

  “What is it?” I ask Timmi.

  “A chain of souls for the Saxon Knights of Brasov.”

  “Chain of souls?”

  “A soul trap,” Timmi says, wrapping her arm through mine and leading me away. “They made an unfortunate bargain to stave off invasion from the Turks. Now their souls are bound in that chain.”

  “Forever?”

  “Until someone figures out how to release them.”

  “What about breaking the chain?”

  “No one has managed it yet.” Timmi shrugs.

  We walk through the rest of the galleries in silence, until we reach the library where the huge column of Professor Park’s Diary dominates the far end of the wood-paneled room.

  “Timmi,” I ask slowly. “Do you know much about that sort of thing? Soul chains, I mean. Deals with the demonic?”

  “Only what every Bevvy girl knows. Steer far clear, my dear.”

  Yes, I do know that.

  We reach the column and seat ourselves in two of the plush leather chairs that flank it. Timmi gives me a speculative look over her half-moon glasses. “You know, if you want to know more about soul chains, I know a gentleman you can ask. He’s a visiting—” She waves her hand. “Adjunct. His credentials are not impressive, but he does seem to have a fair amount of practical knowledge. Would you
like me to arrange an introduction?”

  I smile at her old-fashioned phrasing. “Sure.”

  “Actually, let me see if I can find him now for you. I think today is one of the days he’s with us.” She pats my hand. “You take a minute with Park’s Diary. Don’t be alarmed by anything you hear. The Diary’s never bitten anyone.”

  Well, there’s always a first time, but I nod reassuringly at her and she rises and slips away, silent across a rich red runner that they’ve put down since the last time I was here.

  I sit back in the chair and look up at the column rising above me. The intricate carvings are too small to see unless I lean forward and peer at them. Instead, I gaze into the middle distance, let my eyes unfocus and listen.

  The scent of ink fills my nose, and in my ear, a man’s deep whisper, “Belteshazzar answered, “My lord, if only the dream applied to your enemies and its meaning to your adversaries! The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with it’s top touching the sky—”

  “You’ve moved on to the Book of Daniel,” I whisper back, remembering the passage from the many times my Dala read the Bible to me, sitting in the tiny main room of her caravan and reading by candlelight, since we didn’t have electricity. I wait to see if the Diary is interactive. It called me by name before, so I’m guessing it is.

  “As Nebuchadnezzar was the tree, so are you, Tsara. The tree that touches the sky and reaches deep into the earth.”

  “The tree was cut down,” I say, remembering the Book of Daniel. “The stump bound with iron. Nebuchadnezzar went mad. It’s a story about humility.”

  “Remember it. When power rises in you like a storm wind and all bend before you, remember that even the mightiest tree can fall.”

  “That’s why I’ve never sought power,” I whisper to the air, free to tell it something I’ve never told anyone else. “It just brings madness, destruction and grief.”

  “That is why it comes to you. So long as you remain humble, you are fit to wield it.”

  “I don’t want it,” I grit. “Look what it’s brought me so far. My parents are dead. My Dala is dead. Rowena is damned. And I’ve been bound by a fucking de—”

  “Here we are!” Timmi says brightly.

  I sit up abruptly and snap my mouth shut over my confession to a hunk of carved rock.

  Timmi and a dark-haired man stop a few paces away, on the far side of the Diary. I stand and shake the hand the man offers me. Dark hair, dark eyes that are a little blood-shot. Long face darkened by five o’clock shadow. Double-chin pinched by the high, buttoned neck of a black suit. He has a strong hand-shake, and as he releases my hand, one of his fingernails catches my palm.

  I pull my hand free with a hiss. Turn it over and suck on the drop of blood welling up at the end of a shallow scratch.

  “Forgive me! How clumsy,” the man says.

  “S’okay,” I mumble around my palm. “Accident.”

  “Tsara, I’m dreadfully sorry. Shall I fetch the medical kit?” Timmi asks.

  I shake my head. Lick my palm and push a little power into the wound with my tongue. Blood and the gritty iron of Earth mingle in my mouth. Then there’s just skin and the taste of hand-soap.

  I let my healed hand drop. Don’t offer it to the man again. He nods at me. “Daniel Leroy, Miss Faa. Again, apologies.”

  “No problem.” I study his face for a moment. Long and regular and not exactly attractive. Still, there’s something familiar about it. I try to place it. Fail. This is the problem with meeting so many people through work. Everyone begins to look familiar after a while. “Have we met, Mr. Leroy?”

  He smiles, which bares big, white teeth, but also causes long dimples to appear. “Surely I’d remember such a lovely young lady.”

  I doubt he’s got more than a year or two on me. The black on black on black makes him look older, more serious, but I think it’s a front.

  When I don’t respond, he gestures to the chair where I was sitting. He circles the table and sits down across from me. Timmi resumes her seat beside me. “So, Miss Faa, I understand from the good Curator that you have questions about soul chains?”

  I shrug. “And deals with demons. Binding. Banishing. That sort of thing.”

  “Summoning is actually my area of specialty. But once summoned, most demons will seek to make a deal, usually a soul-trade, which is the basis for abominations such as the chain you noticed.”

  I nod. “Once they’ve made the deal, do they leave?”

  “No, it is critically important to maintain control when dealing with a fiend. As you have summoned them, so you must hold them until you are ready to return them to the nether planes. It is a test of will.”

  I’ve already had a couple of tests of will with my particular demon. I haven’t come out on top. “So how do you send them back?”

  “If they are thrice-circled, you can compel them with their true-name.” He puts his elbows on the table, steeples his hands in front of him, and looks at me over the tips of his fingers. Trying to look wise. Again, it seems like a front.

  “And if they’re not?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “An unbound demon is extremely dangerous.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Well,” he continues. “The surest way to banish a demon is to immerse it in running water.”

  Great, back to that old chestnut. He and the Billigoat would hit it off. “Doesn’t that hurt the demon?” I ask.

  Mr. Leroy shrugs. “Is a demon’s welfare a matter of any concern?”

  Obviously not to him. “Let’s take a Buddhist approach to this and say I’d rather not hurt any living creature.”

  “There’s some debate as to whether demons can be considered living things,” he parries.

  They can die, ergo. I give him a tight smile. “Let’s assume for a moment they are.”

  “There are no banishing techniques that are painless for the subject. Salt, the name of our Lord and his angels—”

  “Salt?” I can get salt.

  Mr. Leroy shrugs again. “It’s a primitive technique.”

  “So, what, I circle the demon with salt?”

  He tilts his head to the side. “Do you have a problem with a particular demon? I would be delighted to assist.”

  Shit. I backtrack quickly. “Have you ever heard of the Hobomock?”

  Timmi crosses her legs and lifts an eyebrow. Can she tell I’m dissembling? “I’m not the expert that Mr. Leroy is, my dear, but I’m not sure the Hobomock is a demon.”

  I feign surprise. “Isn’t he?”

  “More of an earth spirit, I’d say. Although I have no doubt that a circle of salt would exercise a fearsome amount of control over the poor creature as well. Surely the Hobomock hasn’t offended you?”

  Of course not. He’s gruff and grumpy, but he’s been trapped on Minot’s Ledge for centuries so what can you expect? Damn, I’d counted on neither of them knowing the Hobomock. “Uh, no, it was more out of curiosity.”

  Mr. Leroy sits back. “I’d have to see the creature in question to be sure. It can be extremely difficult to identify a demon. Particularly if the creature is trying to conceal its true nature.”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that Jou was a demon. And as amusing as it might be to hear the insults the Hobomock is likely to hurl at the diabolist, I don’t think I’m up for a field trip. “I’m sure Timmi’s right.”

  Mr. Leroy gives me a fake, strained smile, and I feel slightly bad for having lied to him. “Well, if that will be all, ladies?”

  I nod. Follow Timmi’s lead when she rises and give Mr. Leroy a smile no more sincere than his when he leaves.

  As he walks out of the library, he lifts his hand to his mouth.

  “Tsara,” Timmi says, dragging my attention back to her. “Is everything quite all right?”

  I give her a smile a lot more real than any expression I exchanged with Mr. Leroy. Not a nice man. I’m glad I didn’t tell him anything. I sit down when she sits, and search for
something to divert her. “Timmi, do you remember when you said that when I was ready to talk about Ro, that you’d listen?”

  “I do, my dear.”

  I reach out and put my hand over hers. She squeezes the tips of my fingers lightly. “I want to tell you. Not everything, not today, but could we just talk about this one thing? It’s been, um, weighing on me.”

  “Of course, tell me anything you want.”

  So I do. Not about the demon-summoning, or Ro’s many other sins. I tell Timmi about the last time I spoke to Ro. A week before we graduated from Bevvy. We’d been fighting for days, that kind of internecine warfare that only people who once cared about each other can manage. Sniping comments as we passed each other in the common room. Silences that hurt more than any bitter words. Finally it came to a head. Over one of her bits of junk, a dream-catcher, I think, which fell off the window as I walked by. I didn’t touch it, or even think a curse at it. But it fell and the next thing I knew, Ro had thrown down the book she was reading and was screaming at me.

  So I said the things I knew would hurt her the most.

  “I told her she was the worst friend I’d ever had. That I wished I’d never met her. And that I hoped I never saw her again after we graduated.”

  Timmi squeezes my fingers again. “We all say things we regret in the heat of the moment.”

  “I never got to take them back, Timmi. They weren’t true. She was the best friend I’d ever had. She made everything that was unbearable about Bevvy bearable. The workload and the all-nighters and practicals I couldn’t pass and the cute townie boys who never gave me a second glance . . . it didn’t matter. I had Ro to share it all with. Laugh about it. And then I told her that. Just to wound her. So she’d hurt as much as I was hurting.” I hang my head. “I think it’s the meanest, most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

  Right up to the point where I told the demon he couldn’t climax during sex anymore. What is wrong with me?

  “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”

  I fold my lips together and bite down on them to keep the tears at bay. Why am I still crying about this so many years later?