Lost in Shadows

by J. Kenner

  And I hated him all the more for waltzing into my life and looking like an ordinary guy. Because he wasn't ordinary. He was evil. He was the frog-faced little worm who'd gotten me into this whole mess, and before this thing was over, I would see him dead.

  Not now, though, I thought, even as the weight of my blade in the thigh holster tempted me. Not now, because I've made a deal with an even worse devil.

  What was it they said about the devil you knew?

  Briefly, I wondered if I wasn't screwing up big-time by not telling Clarence what Johnson was up to. Tell Clarence, and get him and Penemue working behind the scenes to figure out a way to get Johnson out of Rose. And they'd do it, too, because I was Prophecy Girl. The über-warrior chick with Rand McNally blood.

  More than that, there was no way they'd want Johnson and Kokbiel to succeed with their plan.

  I was tempted. So, so tempted.

  But in the end I kept my mouth shut.

  Being a double agent was one thing, but I wasn't sure I had it in me to be a triple agent. More than that, I simply wasn't willing to take the risk. Because if I took it and failed, I'd pay with Rose's life. And that was unacceptable.

  So instead of saying anything to Clarence, I did what I was supposed to do: I played it cool.

  I drew in a breath and tried to act like a girl whose entire system of reality hadn't once again been turned askew. A girl whose sister hadn't been violated by a demon.

  A girl who wasn't slowly, with every kill, becoming the thing she most despised.

  "So?" he said, his arms tossed out to the sides, his shoulders rising in a deep shrug.

  "Uh . . . "

  "Your story? Where have you been? Egan's dead," he said, referring to Alice's uncle. "There's evidence of a ritual in the pub's basement, and you're nowhere to be found. So, yeah. I've been worried." He exhaled loudly. "Damn glad to see you're okay, but you scared the crap out of me. So where the hell have you been?"

  Where I'd been wasn't a topic I intended to delve into in depth. Instead, I wanted to scream that I wasn't okay. That it would never be okay until I got my hands around Johnson's neck—his neck and not Rose's—and squeezed until I felt every last drop of life ooze out of him. I wanted to take a knife and gut him. I wanted his blood spilled, and I wanted to be the one to spill it.

  "Yo? You gonna answer my question?"

  I blinked, realizing that Clarence had not only stood up and moved to the window, but that he'd been talking, and I hadn't been listening. "What question?"

  "I talk, talk, talk. But do you listen? Nope. I'm only Clarence, your handler, your mentor. Not like I'd be worried about you. Not like I'd—"

  "Clarence. What question?"

  "I asked where you've been. I asked what happened. Bodies all over the damn pub, and I can't find you anywhere."

  "Bodies?" As far as I knew, there was only one body, Alice's uncle Egan, aka the man who murdered Alice. Once I'd figured that out, I wasn't terribly inclined to show him any sympathy. And, yeah, I killed him.

  Not that I wanted Clarence to know that. Fortunately, Deacon and I had come up with a story that mixed fact with fiction. I only hoped it would fly.

  "I've been with Rose," I said, keeping a keen eye on him as I gauged his reaction.

  "Rose? Your sister Rose?" The shock on his face seemed legitimate, but I'd learned not to trust anything tossed at me by the little beast. "I thought I made it crystal clear that you gotta cut yourself off from your old life. You can't be Lily anymore. You need to let it go, kid."

  "I did," I lied. "I have."

  "And yet you went flouncing off to the Flats?" he retorted, referring to the Boston neighborhood where I'd grown up. "Doesn't sound to me like you're walking away from the old Lily."

  "Rose came to me," I said. "She came to the pub." I paused, both for dramatic effect, and also because the truth still ate at me. She'd come to the pub looking for me. "She came, and the demons got her."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" Clarence asked, sounding genuinely perplexed. "I send you out to kill a demon. I don't hear from you for more than a day. And now you come back with some story about how the demons snatched your sister?"

  "It's not a story," I said. "There were three of them, and they had Rose in a room in the basement strapped to a slab, and she was about to be some demon asshole's sacrifice."

  "You're sure?"

  "I was there," I said. "Hard to miss." I managed an offhand shrug. "Not like this is coming out of the blue, right? I mean, the pub's always had a freaky reputation." The Bloody Tongue—now half-owned by me in light of Egan's untimely demise—has been around for centuries and is a staple on Haunted Boston tours. Before I dipped my toe into the wonderful world of demons and hell and darkness and light, I'd assumed that was all hype and hoopla.

  I'd assumed wrong.

  Turned out that Alice's family had been deep into the dark arts for generations, and though Clarence had assured me that Egan scorned such devilish things, the truth was exactly the opposite: Egan was in tight with the demons, going so far as to pull homeless girls and runaways off the street and sell them to the demons, a little fact that had pissed off his sister, Alice's mother. Her mom had been trying desperately to extricate herself from the family business, and her efforts were not appreciated. When it became clear that she was going to be trouble, Egan murdered his sister.

  When the demons insisted that Egan provide them with a specific girl for a sacrifice—his niece Alice—he'd gone along, undoubtedly fearing their wrath more than he loved his niece. What the demons didn't tell him was that Alice was part of a whole big scheme to create a fancy, schmancy warrior. All he knew was that he sent his niece off to be a sacrificial lamb one Saturday night. And on Monday evening, her body came strolling back into the pub for her shift. Granted, the new Alice was me, but Egan didn't know that.

  To keep Egan from asking a bunch of messy questions, the demons did what I actually considered a pretty smart thing: They told Egan the sacrifice had failed, that Alice was tainted goods, and that Egan needed to provide another. When Rose had wandered in looking for Alice, Egan had snatched the opportunity and delivered my little sister to the demons.

  "So tell me exactly what happened," Clarence said. He was leaning forward, his brow furrowed, which had the effect of making his eyes bulge out even more than usual.

  "Rose called while I was fighting the demon priest." There was a big fat lie. I'd killed a priest, all right, but he hadn't been demonic. "And by the time I checked my messages, it was too late. She'd already left her house."

  "What was the message?"

  "She was going to the pub and wanted me to meet her there." Not an outright lie, but the real truth was that I'd already learned about the sacrifice and was racing to the pub to stop it when I got Rose's message.

  "And she was there," Clarence said.

  "I didn't see her right away, but Deacon Camphire was there."

  "The filthy demon got ahold of your sister," Clarence said, instilling so much fury into his voice that I almost broke out into applause at his stellar acting abilities.

  "Guess so," I said, saying a silent apology to Deacon, despite the fact that he and I had planned out my cover story for Clarence long ago. Even when I'd been planning to kill Clarence, I'd still needed a solid story. Because to kill a beast like Clarence, you had to be sneaky. And you had to get close.

  "I know for a fact Deacon killed Egan," I added. "I saw him over the body, but he took off. Got away before I could slam my knife through his slimy, black heart." Okay, maybe that was pouring it on a little thick. "Anyway," I continued, hurrying on before he could put too much thought into my story, "Egan told me that they'd taken a girl downstairs. And when I ran down, I found two demons standing over Rose, and there was someone else escaping out the back."

  Once again, I saw surprise flash in his eyes. "Do you know who?"

  "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it was a demon."

  "Lily, this is—"
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  "She's staying with me," I said, my voice flat and firm and designed to brook no argument.

  "No. I don't think—"

  "She stays," I said. "She stays, and I protect her. She was supposed to be sacrificed to demons, Clarence. You think they're just going to give up on her? She's in their sights now, and no way am I leaving her unprotected."

  Clarence was shaking his head slowly from side to side. "I can't agree to that."

  "It's not your choice," I said firmly. “I killed the demon priest before he could open the gate, right? I think I'm entitled to a little leeway here. And what I want is to keep an eye on my sister."

  "She has a father. You can't just pull her away—"

  "Joe isn't going to give a flip," I said, my heart light in my chest. Because my alcoholic stepfather really wouldn't care. I'd won. I knew it, and Clarence knew it. All I needed was for him to acknowledge it.

  "It's not a good idea."

  "It's a great idea," I countered. The point was non-negotiable.

  "I can't allow it."

  I smiled broadly, pretending I hadn't heard him. “Then it's settled. I'll keep doing your kill-the-demon errands, and you let Rose move in with me."

  "I don't like it," he said.

  "Get used to it," I countered.

  He stared at me, hard. Then his head tilted slowly to the side. "What else have you been up to?"

  I swallowed, hoping my face didn't show my guilt. "Nothing. What do you mean?"

  "You're thinking one hell of a lot softer these days, Lily," he said. "What did you do?"

  "Oh?" I pretended shock. "No way? You mean you really can't get into my mind anymore? I don't have to sing 'Conjunction Junction' in my head to keep you out of my thoughts?" From the first second I'd known him, Clarence had had the ability to poke around in my head. An ability I'd thwarted by going out and killing a Secret Keeper demon—a fortuitous kill, as that was how I'd learned about the plan to sacrifice a girl in the pub basement.

  I had no intention of telling that to Clarence, however.

  "I didn't do anything." I shrugged, hoping for casual. "Maybe it's a little present to me for a job well-done. The Big Boss giving me my privacy."

  His lips thinned, but his expression was thoughtful. Maybe my suggestion wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

  "What's the matter," I pressed. "Don't you trust me?”

  I waited one beat, then another. Finally, he nodded. "Of course I trust you. I'm just used to hearing all the prattle from your mind buzzing around me. It's damn quiet in here now."

  I rolled my eyes, my entire body sagging in relief. "And Rose? We're cool there, right? She stays with me."

  I held my breath, waiting for his response. Finally, he nodded. "But you're Alice," he said. "Not Lily. You're not that girl's dead sister."

  "Sure thing," I said. "No problem."

  "Did she see the demons? When you killed them? Did she see them melt away?"

  I shook my head. "She'd passed out by then. No worries about explaining demon goo to my little sister."

  "What about explaining who she is to Rachel? Alice's sister will wonder when you bring a young girl home. And what about taking care of her while you're at the pub? Finding someone to watch over her while you're off fighting demons?"

  "Well, listen to you," I said. "You've really got the lowdown on child care. But she's fourteen, not six. And I swear I'll work it out." Of course, I was going to have to break the news to Johnson that he would have to fake being fourteen. I stifled a wicked grin. Finally, something I was looking forward to.

  "I suggest you put some thought into the care and feeding of your sister. I need you focused, Lily."

  "See, this is what I don't get," I protested. "When you first sold me this gig, you told me I was the girl who could prevent the gate from opening. That I'd stop the Apocalypse. You said that was my mission. My purpose."

  "And it was," Clarence said, his expression slightly concerned, as if he wasn't sure where I was going with this.

  "I did all that," I said, working to keep the rage and self-loathing out of my voice. Because I didn't do that, as Clarence damn well knew. "So why aren't I done? Lily Carlyle," I said in a newscaster-style voice, "you just saved the world. What are you going to do now?" I peered hard at Clarence. "I should be going to Disneyland, not working harder."

  "You locked the Ninth Gate, kid," he said, his lie making me sick to my stomach. "And a big high five to you. But you think that solved all our problems? You think the world is all peachy keen now?"

  I had to agree it was not, and I tried not to hold my breath as I waited for him to tell me about my new mission, searching for this funny little key that would lock the gates shut. Yeah, right.

  "Like I said. We got work. We got demons on the streets, infiltrating themselves into the lives of the innocent. And, yeah, we got demons plotting another Armageddon."

  "The fun never stops," I said. "What are they up to?"

  "The other eight gates," he said. "They're running around trying to figure out how to open them before the convergence."

  I grinned. Score one for the cynical girl.

  "Is that even possible?" I asked, keeping my face serious, my expression concerned. "I thought they were locked tight."

  "It's not easy," he said. "But it's possible. And we need to make sure it doesn't happen."

  "How?"

  "They're looking for a key," he said. "The Oris Clef. This one unlocks all the gates," he said. "The three pieces are scattered, but once they're assembled, we're talking some serious mojo."

  "Oh," I said, actually impressed that Clarence wasn't trying to hide the basic nature of our quest from me. "So what's our plan?"

  He grinned at me, then said exactly the words I wanted to hear. "Give me your arm, Lily. Because we're going to find those pieces first."

  6

  I used my own knife to slice my palm, then smeared my blood over the flat edge of the blade. As Clarence muttered an incantation, I ran the blade down the soft interior of my right forearm, causing two strange symbols to rise on my flesh, the pain as my flesh was seared making me grit my teeth and squeeze my fingers and toes together. A second swipe of blood cooled the pain, though, and I opened my eyes to peer down at the symbols, the first, an Aztec-looking circle. The second, a series of lines and squiggles crammed tight into an area roughly the shape of a triangle.

  "I'm running out of arm," I said, knowing we still needed the third symbol for the third piece of the Oris Clef.

  "No worries. We've got your whole body to work with."

  "Great. If the demon-killing gig goes under, I can always join the circus."

  He tapped my other arm, and I held it out, ready for yet another demonic tat. "You gonna let me do it this time?"

  "You know how to call up the symbols?" he asked.

  "No," I admitted, though I realized it would be a good idea for me to figure that out. I wasn't sure where one went to learn basic body-map-symbol-raising skills. Maybe a Learning Annex course?

  Wincing a little, I once again smeared the flat edge of my blade with the blood, then passed the blade to Clarence, who drew the blood down my forearm, all the while muttering the strange, foreign incantation. I cringed, anticipating the familiar burn as the blood seared a new locator into my flesh, then exhaled as another swipe of my blood over the by-then-visible design quelled the pain.

  "What is it?" I asked, peering at the strange, geometric marks now burned into my flesh. An odd square, the lines inside seeming to collapse in on themselves as with a spiral descending to a point. A triangle in which another upside-down triangle was embedded. And a design that seemed to resemble a tic-tac-toe board, with dots in the outer squares and the image of an eye in the center.

  "The three pieces," he said, voicing what I already knew. "Each design represents one of the three pieces of the Oris Clef."

  "And all three images rose on my arm," I said thoughtfully. "So that means the pieces still exist. That they're in
this dimension." My learning curve about the Rand McNally me thing was pretty steep, and one of my first lessons was that my hyped-up blood could only latch onto things that were in this dimension. No locating lost relics that had been hidden forever within the demon realm.

  I scowled down at the image burned onto my flesh. This next bit was the part I really didn't like. "You ready?"

  "Go on in," he said.

  I nodded, disconcerted by the fact that Clarence was now my anchor back to reality. Before, I'd believed he worked for the angels. Now I knew the true nature of the creature who was watching my back.

  No helping it, though. Trying not to think about what could go wrong, I closed my palm over the square, then waited for the sharp tug near my navel.

  It didn't come.

  I looked up at Clarence and shrugged. "You sure you got that incantation right?"

  "I did," he said, bouncing a bit in agitation. "I know I did. Try again. Try again right now."

  "Right." This time, I went with the next image—the triangle. Again, nothing. "No way," I said, thinking of Rose and the way Johnson was surely going to freak out completely if I returned to the motel without even a solid lead. "Something's wrong. You did something wrong."

  “Try the last one," he said, his voice tight.

  I wasn't expecting anything, but I did what he asked, slapping my hand over the tic-tac-toe board—and getting yanked off my feet by the hard jerk of an invisible thread pulling me down, down, down into the board.

  "Clarence!" I called out as I clutched his hand tight. I'd done this twice before, and I still wasn't used to it. I knew that when I was finished on the other side, I could touch my arm again, and the portal would reopen and Clarence could pull me back. I'd never actually done that, having missed my return journey both times before. But I knew how it worked, and intellectually, I was with the program.

  Emotionally, though, I felt all alone and lost in the rush of wind as I moved through dark, swirling mists and thick, velvety blackness.