Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

  He couldn’t see any interruptions in the rain.

  “All right.” Leah opened the bottom of the white silk shirt she’d changed into after an impressively quick shower and, pushing her black track pants dangerously lower on her hips, stepped closer to the gooseneck lamp they were using as a spotlight. “The innermost circle of runes defines the actual gate. All you have to do, because we’re not talking about creating an actual gate as much as reminding reality that demons don’t belong here, is burn these four into the air…” One finger, a careful distance from skin, indicated the runes in question. “…each rune more or less an equal distance from the other, with the demon in the middle of the pattern. When you finish the fourth rune, reality will reset itself and no more demon.”

  With his nose so close to her skin, she smelled like soap and cinnamon. Or cinnamon soap. Which was a weird choice, but it suited her. “All I have to do?” Tony muttered, peering at the intricate tattoo.

  Leah chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Because the demon doesn’t belong here, you don’t have to be specific about its name or its ultimate destination. Once you weaken the barrier, it’ll snap back to where it belongs. It’s a variation on what we were going to be doing before Ryne Cyratane upped the stakes—only then you’d have been pushing the runes through the weak spot to reinforce it.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The individual runes were a lot more complex up close than they were when they were just a part of the larger pattern. “What happens if I screw one of these up? Squiggle when I should spiral?”

  “Probably nothing…”

  The probably was a little worrying.

  “…although if, by chance, you re-create an entirely different power definition…” She shrugged, the curve of her belly rising and falling with the motion. “Maybe death. Destruction. Perpetual reruns of The Family Guy.”

  “Hey, that show’s a classic!”

  “Every now and then,” Leah muttered, flicking Tony on the top of the head with one finger, “I think, why not let him in? How much worse could things get? You’d better draw the runes on paper first.”

  “Sure.” He straightened. “But what did…” Tucked into the front pocket of the laptop case, his cell phone played the Darkest Night theme; Zev had made a digital file available to anyone in the studio who wanted to use it. Tony suspected he was hoping it would get picked up as a download by one of the big online ring-tone sites, but so far there were no takers. Flicking the phone open, he checked the display. “It’s Amy.”

  “Who?”

  “Assistant office manager at the studio. I should take it.”

  “Why?”

  “It might be about work.”

  “You’re a TAD.” Leah allowed her shirt to fall closed. “Nothing you do is more important than learning how to keep me alive.”

  Since she put it that way, he answered the phone.

  “Tony?” Amy had conspiracy in her voice. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, why?”

  “Because CB said you weren’t coming in today. Or tomorrow. CB. The boss. He didn’t show up at your place last night and beat you into a coma, did he?”

  “No. Why would he?” Did Amy know something about CB’s feelings toward him that he didn’t?

  “Why would he carry your messages unless he was feeling, like, mondo guilty?”

  “I asked him for some personal time.”

  “Personal time?” Amy snorted so vehemently, he had to move the phone away from his ear. “Loss of consciousness is CB’s definition of personal time. It’s not…” She lowered her voice dramatically. “…the other stuff is it?”

  “The other stuff?”

  “This isn’t a secure line, nimrod.”

  “It isn’t a line at all.”

  “Exactly my point. Well?”

  And who was to say that Kevin Groves wasn’t crouched in a bush outside the studio attempting to intercept his phone calls? It was the kind of sneaky underhanded, not exactly legal thing that tabloid reporters did, wasn’t it? “It’s sort of the other stuff.”

  “Bastard. Just so you know, if you have any…” Her voice moved away from the phone. “CB Productions, please hold.” And back. “…extracurricular fun without me, I will kick your ass up onto your shoulders.”

  “It’s not…fun.” He said the last word to no one in particular.

  Leah sat down and pushed the lamp out of her line of sight. “So Amy, the assistant office manager at the studio, knows you’re a wizard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And your boss knows?”

  “Well…”

  “Well,” she mocked, fingers tapping out annoyance on the polished tabletop. “Most people who have, let’s say, unusual powers don’t go talking about it to all and sundry since all, and particularly sundry, don’t usually deal well with unusual.”

  “Thing is, we were trapped in a haunted house together.”

  “All three of you?”

  “No, CB was outside.”

  “But he knows?”

  “He knew before, during the Shadowlord thing.”

  “So Amy and your boss…”

  The Darkest Night theme interrupted.

  Tony glanced down at the screen. “It’s Zev. He’s the music director at the studio.”

  “Does Zev know?”

  “He was in the house.”

  “Along with how many other people?”

  “Not many.”

  “Good.”

  “About thirteen.”

  Dark brows rose almost to her hairline. “About?”

  “Three of them died.”

  “Yay.” Her fingers stilled.

  It’s when the drums stop that you have to worry. The Darkest Night theme looped back to the beginning and kept playing.

  “Tony, answer the damned phone.”

  The conversation with Zev paralleled the conversation with Amy minus the speculation about a coma and the final threats.

  “You’ll call me if you need me?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you’ll be careful?”

  “Count on it.”

  “Because you’re an annoying pain in the ass, but I’m used to you being around.”

  “I’m used to being around. Don’t worry.” As he hung up, Leah slid a sheet of blank paper in front of him.

  “Practice,” she snapped, handing him a pencil. “Before someone else…”

  The Darkest Night theme.

  Once.

  Lee’s cell number.

  Tony had, of course, memorized it even though he’d never used it. He stared at the phone, but Lee had obviously reconsidered calling.

  “Earth to Tony.” One bare foot kicked him, not particularly gently, in the shin. “Let’s try and remember we’re on the clock here!” Leaning back, she reexposed the Demongate. “Now that your fan club has checked in, can we get on with this?”

  “Sorry.” He peered at her belly, put pencil to paper, and stopped. “Look, when you said, burn these four runes into the air, what did you mean?”

  “You know.” The tip of one finger sketched invisible circles. “Draw them in the air with lines of energy.”

  “Okay.” He remembered Arra creating golden lines of power as she called on light to banish shadow. “I don’t actually know how to do that.”

  “Everything in here is about energy. There’s just nothing specifically about energy.”

  “Well, that’s useless.” Leah pushed a curl away from her face and tried to shove Tony away from the laptop. “Look up drawing.”

  Tony flicked the same curl away from his face and refused to be shoved as he scrolled up the file list.

  Drawing, of the Dark.

  Vaguely familiar but not helpful.

  Drawing, Down the Moon.

  Also familiar. He opened the file.

  This is woman’s magic. You don’t need to know it.

  Then why the hell did you list it, you crazy old…

  Drawing, Blood.

  “Wh
at did she think she was training,” Leah snorted, “a wizard or a paramedic?”

  “So she was a bit rushed when she put this together.”

  “A bit rushed? Da Vinci was a bit rushed when he was finishing the Mona Lisa. This wizard of yours seems more like a complete incompetent.” Her breath hit the side of his head, warm and impatient. “You scroll; I’ll stop you if I see anything useful.”

  Storms, Calming.

  Poison, Checking for.

  Water, Purifying.

  Demons, Banishing.

  “Hold on. Right there.” One fingertip tapped the screen. “You have a spell to banish demons.” The fingertip moved to tap him on the forehead. Hard. “You think maybe you should have mentioned that? Just in passing, perhaps?”

  “I forgot it was there.” He jerked away before she could tap him again and opened the file.

  Calling demons is among the stupider things you can do with your power. I am inclined to allow stupidity to be its own reward; however, it is possible that someday you may need to clean up another’s mess. Begin by drawing six drops of blood from the idiot who called the demon. Do it quickly before the corpse cools.

  “This is useless.” Leah straightened, turned, and dropped onto the edge of the table. “These demons weren’t called, they’re being sent. There’s nothing we can use in there…”

  “It says we should use an unnatural rope to hold the fiend.”

  “And then do what with it? Why don’t I just kill myself and save them the bother?” Dragging both hands back through her hair, she began to pace. “I can’t believe this wizard of yours would leave out something so basic.”

  Tony scrolled up and down the list one more time and frowned. “Hell, if it’s all that basic, maybe there’s something about it in the instructions.”

  The sudden silence was so complete, he could hear the traffic passing on the TransCanada six stories down and almost a half a kilometer away. He twisted around on his chair to find Leah staring at him from across the room. “What?”

  “There’s instructions?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t read them, but…”

  “You didn’t read the instructions? Of course you didn’t,” she continued before he could answer. “You just opened the spell list and started trying things out, didn’t you?” While he was thinking about denying it, she closed the distance between them and smacked him on the back of the head. “Men!”

  “Hey!”

  Leaning back she flashed him a narrow-eyed glare. “Hey, what?”

  “Nothing.” It just seemed like a bad time to go into the whole gender stereotyping thing.

  “Good. Now then…”

  He could feel every one of those thirty-five hundred years leaning over his shoulder with her.

  “…let’s have a look at the instructions, shall we?”

  Power, Responsibilities of.

  Power, the Focusing of.

  Her finger touched the screen. “That’s got subdirectories.”

  “On it.” The next layer down had been divided into basic, intermediate, and advanced. As Tony moved the cursor onto advanced, Leah’s hand closed around his wrist and moved it back to basic. “I thought we were in a hurry.”

  “We are. But as much as I don’t want to be killed by a demon, I’d also rather not be killed by you. Start at the beginning. Read fast.”

  Fortunately, the lesson was, well, basic and it seemed he’d been instinctively doing most of it already. The rest of it seemed simple enough. When he mentioned that to Leah, she snorted.

  “Lots of things seem simple when you read the instructions, but it’s an entirely different story when you actually try to hook up the DVD player.”

  Fair point. “It doesn’t seem that complicated, though. Mostly, I just have to shift my internal focus to external.”

  “Do you even know what that means?”

  Tony pushed his chair out from the table and stood, forcing her to take a couple of steps back. “It’s sort of like choking up on the Powershot.”

  “Choking up on the Powershot?” Muttering under her breath, she moved around until she stood behind him. “Your keen grasp of description fills me with confidence.”

  “I need to practice.”

  “You think? Make it fast and don’t destroy my apartment.”

  “Your faith is underwhelming,” he muttered, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet and shaking the tension out of his arms. He could do this. He called things to his hand by knowing where they were, by being aware of the space they defined. According to Arra’s notes, focus meant being aware of the space he defined and pulling in energy to fill it. That was the part he’d been doing instinctively.

  Once he had the energy, all he had to do was pick a spot outside his body, shift the focus to that spot, and reform the energy in his chosen pattern. Like writing with sparklers, only the images would stick around longer. Arra’s notes suggested he practice with a neutral symbol, something that could only be what it was.

  Okay.

  Right index finger extended—best not toss the scar on his left hand into the mix until he had a better grip on what he was doing—he picked a point about halfway to the window, refocused until his right eye started to water, and began burning his chosen symbol onto the air.

  Leah’s curtains caught fire.

  Crap! That wasn’t supposed to happen. Glancing down at the laptop, he checked the screen. No, definitely not supposed to happen.

  He opened his left hand. The fire arced toward it.

  The curtains separated at the char line, the lower third dropping to the floor.

  Tony coughed, smoke pluming out on his breath. Back in his teens, although he couldn’t afford the habit, he’d bummed the occasional cigarette from other guys on the street. The coolest guys could always make the biggest plumes of smoke. Apparently, for wizards, the cigarette had become optional—although he wasn’t sure that the present circumstances were any healthier.

  He was sure blowing out a nice big plume, though.

  Leah crossed the room and picked up the burned fabric. Ash crumbed off between her fingers, drifting to lie like dirty snow on the hardwood floor. She stared at the ash, at the curtain, and finally at Tony. “Damn. What did you do?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “After the accident. When you put the fire out.”

  “Oh.” He coughed again. There was a little less smoke this time. “I called it to me.”

  “The fire?” Still holding the piece of curtain, she started back toward him. “You called the fire toward you?”

  “It’s just another kind of energy, right?”

  “Yeah. Right.” Her fingers left dark gray smudges behind when she patted his arm. “You just keep believing that, okay?” A wave of the ruined curtain for emphasis. “Try dialing it back this time.”

  “It?” One last puff of smoke as punctuation. “You want me to do it again?”

  “Curtains can be replaced,” she reminded him as she returned to her place out of the line of fire, “I can’t. Once more, with less feeling.”

  “I don’t think…”

  “Good. You think too much and we’re running out of time. Do what you just did, only less.”

  “Less. Right.” Tony wiped damp palms on his thighs, extended his finger again, and very carefully refocused. To his surprise, a bright blue light burned in approximately the right position and then went out. Okay, almost there. He needed less less. That’s more, right? Licking dry lips, he tried again. The blue light burned longer. A little more. And again. This time the light maintained; became a line; the line bent into a circle; the edges of the circle sputtered, but the shape held. Within the circle, two dots of power for eyes. The curve of a smile.

  It was slightly lopsided but recognizable.

  “What is it?”

  Or not.

  “It’s a happy face.” Even when he turned away, the power he’d used to create the symbol hung in the air. It was bone useless but way cool. “I to
ld you it would be…” His voice trailed off as the sound of laughter filled the condo.

  Tony whirled around, both hands up, expecting some kind of demonic clown charging in from the balcony. There was only his happy face, all blue and glowing and hanging in the air. Given the way it was laughing, it seemed to be very, very happy indeed.

  “Simple,” Leah said, raising her voice enough to be heard. “You said it would be simple. I think you meant to tell me that you were simple. And when I say simple, I don’t mean that you’re easy, I mean that you’re…”

  The Darkest Night theme joined the laughter to drown out her last word.

  Since he couldn’t think anything else to do, Tony answered his phone.

  “Tony! There’s something in the soundstage! It’s ripping the place apart. There’s crashing and screaming and…”

  “Lee!”

  “No, it’s Amy, you ass!”

  He knew that. “I meant…”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what you meant! Get in here!”

  “What…”

  But there was only the dial tone. Over by the window, the happy face kept laughing.

  Shoving the phone back in his backpack, Tony hung it over one shoulder as he ran for the door. “The demon’s at the studio!”

  “Tony! Wait!”

  “Forget it, Leah. You want your body guarded, you come with me.”

  “I intend to.” She grabbed his backpack and dragged him around. “But you can’t leave that thing hanging in my condo!”

  The happy face kept laughing.

  Tony stretched out his left arm and sucked the energy back through the scar. He had the giggles all the way to the underground garage.

  Leah’s driving made it difficult to practice the four runes he needed to know. He’d taken half a dozen pictures of the tattoo with the camera on his phone and, with his knees pressed against the dash and the phone open on his knees, he tried to memorize the swoops and curls as he sketched.

  Tried to sketch.

  “Leah!”

  “You want to get there in time or what?” Considerably over the 100K limit, she cut in and out of westbound traffic in order to maintain her speed.

  The TransCanada was a slightly less direct route back to the studio, but it had no lights and they were making amazing time—even considering the amount of lateral movement. Flung right then left, Tony wondered again why every time something metaphysical came down, he ended up in a car with people who drove like complete maniacs. Henry, Arra, Mouse, Jack, Leah…