None of this fit Evan’s knowledge of daemons, and he studied Matt Shields across the antique desk, trying to figure what was wrong with this picture. Those rubies represented bargains for a hell of a lot of tasks. Shields had been really busy or somebody had bound him here a long time.
Evan knew the name on the Sotheby’s catalog—would have to in his business. Grayson Donne’s obituaries had swept the chat rooms where high-end arcana traded for large sums of money. Eccentric recluse, upstate New York, died without a will. Things had gone quiet while the state ground through the investigations and searched for heirs, but they hadn’t found anything. The market was lining up for this auction. Evan had a copy of the catalog in the back office somewhere. Hadn’t given a glance at that strongbox, though. The key word in all of this was dead. Donne was dead. In Evan’s experience, daemons didn’t collect souvenirs. They departed, sometimes leaving a hole in the ground that raised questions for centuries. So, why had Matt Shields hung around for almost three years instead of heading right for the second celestial sphere as soon as Donne died?
“Why do you need the box? Why don’t you just go home?” Evan leaned back in his chair and gestured at the ceiling.
Shields twitched a bit at the questions, and Evan figured he was still deciding how much truth to mix in with his lies. But lies could be telling as well. “Donne was a Magus, and careful. He knew if I ever had a chance at escape, I’d kill him. So he bound me to the box. I need to find it, own it, destroy it, and then I can go home. I’ve already done the first part. It’s up to you to do the second part. I can take over once I own the box.”
“Fair enough, but why us? You’ve already said that Paimon is no ally to Ariton, and your Prince tried to kill me not that long ago. We seem an unlikely first choice.”
Shields had a laugh like broken glass. “If I walked into any other agency with $15 in my pocket and a bag of rubies, they’d want to know where I got the rubies. You want to know why I don’t have a million dollars in the bank, and you don’t expect me to tell you. Who else can I tell the truth?”
Not all the truth, but more than either of them had expected. It explained the symbols on the strongbox, and why he was here. Evan nodded and put the rubies back in their pouch, all but the one the size of his thumb. “Does anybody else know about the box?”
“I don’t think so.”
That was a lie. The rest had been omission. He figured some answers would have to wait until they had a contract. “You’ll need to liquidate this one for the sale,” he said, holding up the ruby. “It should cover the auction and our fee—once we have a contract, we can help you sell it. If anything you haven’t told me costs time or effort, we revisit the stash. The price goes up if bruising is involved.” He’d meant it as a joke, but Shields nodded agreement. Dangerous, then.
Evan considered the standard contract, thinking. “Our usual rates shouldn’t bother you. We charge a bidders’ fee of 15% of the value of the acquired property. There’s a $10,000 retainer up front, but you’ll get some of that back if we acquire the object for less than the estimated value. Provenance doesn’t seem to be an issue, but if you need investigative work, protection of the object, or other services related to the purchase, our rates are $700 per hour, plus expenses, with a $20,000 retainer, nonrefundable. It’s an open-ended contract—we guarantee success, but not the time it takes to accomplish it. So, if you lose the bid, we’ll negotiate a private sale, however long that takes, at our standard hourly rate, plus the bidder’s fee for the final sale value. You can cancel and walk away at any time, but that nullifies the guarantee.”
“I have the money,” Shields said tartly, dropping the handyman pose for a moment. “Or, I will have it as soon as we sell some of these stones.” Amber fire flickered in his eyes, but he seemed more amused than annoyed. “I’m not going to need it where I’m going.”
“About that—the rubies are yours, and you should clear quite a bit from the sale of this one. If you want it to go to someone in particular when you leave, we can include that in the contract. Our lawyer can take care of the transfer of ownership, we can make sure they get where they are going—”
“For a small standard fee, I am sure,” Shields added.
“Not small, no. But for a standard fee.”
Matt Shields stared out the window, focused on the daylilies in the side garden, while he thought about the question of his rubies. “Carlos Sanchez,” he said, coming to a decision. “He was Donne’s gardener. Has a daughter at SUNY and another heading there next year. Donne left him nothing.”
Donne had left nothing to anyone—thus the auction of his property. Or so the State of New York seemed to think. Evan made a note of Sanchez’s name on the contract. “One more thing,” he said, and the hairs on the back of his neck came to attention. This was the part that could get him killed. “We have a deal between Matt Shields and Bradley, Ryan, and Davis. Of those names, mine is the only one that is real. ‘Matt Shields’ doesn’t want that box—a daemon lord who wants to go home does. If Brad was doing his job, he’d know your true name, and this would all be much simpler. But he isn’t, so we have to go with what we have. Money is nothing to your kind. You trade in favors, and that is the bill. I want an agreement, your Prince to mine. Paimon will owe one host-debt, payable when called upon by Ariton, for any need or conflict. And Paimon will refrain from attacks on my life for ninety years. Humans don’t usually live that long, but I don’t want Paimon looking for a loophole either.” Evan added the clause, obliquely phrased as a “reciprocal support agreement,” printed out a copy, and signed at the bottom of the one-page contract, with fees attached. Then he pushed it across the desk and held out the pen.
Flames rose in Shields’ eyes, as if his gaze could burn its way past the deal to the trick behind it. Evan let him look. There wasn’t any trick as far as he could see, just a wild-ass shot at a binding contract, assuming Shields was free to make a contract and not lying about that as well. The daemon laughed softly, shook his head, but took the pen Evan offered.
“Badad’s job is to kill his misbegotten spawn and go home. You most assuredly do not have the authority to bind a Prince of the second celestial sphere to a human contract. But if you do what you promise, Paimon will owe you.” He signed on the solid line, because the desperation was still there.
And then he screamed.
Chapter 4
MAI SIEN CHONG HAD SKIN THE COLOR OF SUNSHINE that felt, under his human fingers, like the waves of the universe at home. And her hands on this body . . .
Something not-home caught at Kevin Bradley’s attention with an almost familiar dread. This world could never be home, but on a quiet street in Philadelphia, in a house he shared with his son and with Lirion, daemon lord and host-cousin, something had gone seriously wrong. Evan was at the center of it, bleeding panic into two universes like he hadn’t learned anything at all about control in the past four years.
“Evan’s in trouble,” he said, and reached for his clothes because he liked that jacket. Through an expanse of glass the Singapore night glittered, light from the city bouncing off the darkness. On the other side of the world it would be well past noon.
“Evan can take care of himself, and most of the known universe when he puts his mind to it. His competence cost me my home. Both of them—I can’t set foot in Philadelphia or Vancouver without getting arrested, thanks to Evan.” She swept her long, black hair over one shoulder, raising her arm in a way that lifted her breasts like they were reaching for him. The body he wore reached back. She laughed and let him kiss her. “But I suppose you’re going anyway.”
Her lips didn’t really taste like honey, but he thought of honey when he kissed them. So he did it again. But the universe was gushing panic at him, so he pushed himself away with a promise, “I’ll find you when I’m done.” Then he vanished with the image of her naked sprawl on sapphire silk sheets to take with him.
He abandoned human form and in his own true essence as Badad, d
aemon lord of the host of Ariton, he followed the disturbance into the second celestial sphere. He thought he might slip through undetected, but it didn’t work out that way.
Paimon came at him out of the dark, blazing amber fury. Already the lords of that Prince had gathered in quorum: Paimon, Prince of the Western Quarter, swept over him in a tower of twisting flame. Badad fought to escape the tongues of amber fire. A forced merge—there couldn’t be any other kind with a foreign Prince—would first rip his mind from him and then tear him apart.
Ariton’s lords massed to defend its own, rose up in a wall of blue fire in darkness to repulse the threat. Each side attracted its allies—Oriens and Amaimon, Astarot and Magot—though Ariton had no defenders in this fight. Azmod fell back, but all the princes knew the grudge he held against Ariton’s half-human monster. Badad fought the pull of opposing forces, thought they might tear him apart anyway, but he held onto the vortex of his scattered thoughts.
Lirion joined him then, unhappy with Evan and with him, but she wouldn’t let that turn into an affront to Ariton.
“Your monstrous spawn declares war in the name of Ariton!” Paimon’s knowledge filled him, a blaze of outrage that had nothing to do with human language. Rage kindled, a galaxy exploded, but Badad didn’t care. The thread of a binding spell led to Earth. To Evan, who had promised never to bind a daemon to his will again. A lie, apparently. Badad determined that this time, he would kill the creature that had caused so much misery.
Except. Time didn’t exist in the second celestial sphere. It was always now for the Princes and their daemon lords, but Badad had learned to recognize the signs in Evan. He saw it in the binding that held Paimon’s lord. The thread of that spell might lead back to Badad’s half-human son, but it was an old spell. Older than Evan, whose panic had mutated into an equally familiar emotion. Worry. Not for himself, but for Paimon’s daemon lord inside Evan’s circle. Parmatus, the shield of heaven—Badad plucked the name from the gathered host of Paimon.
Evan was worried about Parmatus. He knew the touch of that feeling, had long thought Evan a fool for it. Daemon lords of the hosts of heaven did not need a human’s pity, or his anxiety. The daemon lord of a foreign host needed only as much thought as required to assess the danger. But panic still pulsed through the spheres. It wasn’t Evan and, following the binding back to its source, he found that Evan didn’t hold the lead. The knotted tangle of the spell led to no living force that Badad could find in the heavens or in the material sphere.
“Evan didn’t summon Paimon’s lord.” He let the Princes feel what he knew. “Your lord freely sought Ariton’s aid, freely entered into an agreement with my son. Princes must rule on the agreements made, but Evan did not initiate this contract. He’s really not that crazy anymore.”
He remembered a time when Lirion had said the same to him. It hadn’t been exactly true, then, but Evan still wore that lesson on his face, and he hadn’t spoken the words of a summoning. Badad would have felt it if he had and he couldn’t, at the limit of logic or imagination, believe that Evan would ever bind a lord not of Ariton. Bindings worked both ways. Odd as the boy’s mind worked, Evan knew that Ariton would not tolerate a violation of host-loyalty that bound him to a lord not of his own host. Earth would already be ash, and Evan would be dead. So. It had to be something else.
“Evan had a new client today,” Lirion showed him. “you were supposed to take it, but you had sex on your mind.” Lirion thought his sudden interest in the mating practices of humans was funny. “I was in Hokkaido. Evan was alone.”
None of it should have been a problem, and wouldn’t have been, until a lord of the only Prince who kept his options open on matters of alliances had walked in the door. “Parmatus has done this, and I trust his Prince that he has acted out of ignorance.” He showed the gathered lords his certainty, and the sense of panic that Evan was leaking into the spheres again. “But if he kills my son, you will have the war you have prematurely called to Ariton’s account.”
“Ariton will owe us a host-debt for removing a problem his own lords could not.”
But Ariton had reached a quorum; enough of the host of 833 daemon lords had gathered to become their Prince. Badad felt his identity swallowed into the whole, sensed Lirion become a part of him, with her knowledge of Evan both shared and different. Caramos, wise and joyous, plucked sex from their joined minds. What shape, he wondered and, would Evan show him? Did it really feel that good and, what did “feel” mean?
Sched burned with a terrible female power. She knew humans, had been a goddess once, leaking milk from huge breasts to bless the land, but was curious now about Evan’s dual nature. She had propagated her own children on that world, before civilization had blinded it to the sacred female. Anader, cold and cruel, with no love of the material, wanted Badad’s half-human monster dead, but would allow no interference in Ariton’s prerogatives. Sibolas, Harumbrub, Erdulon, and hundreds more of Badad’s host-cousins merged their minds into one thought. Curious or not, the lords of his own host would have killed Evan and been done with him. He had proved himself a part of that host, however, and none but his own had the right to move against him, except in declared warfare, though he’d proved elusive in that arena as well.
Ariton spoke in blue flame, Prince to Prince: “The monster is Ariton’s. If harm comes to it, Paimon will have an enemy forever.”
“You put yourself at disadvantage,” Paimon answered with cold amber fire. There were seven Princes, evenly divided in their alliances—all but Paimon, who chose.
But Ariton laughed. “Your lord Parmatus came to us. Who is at disadvantage here?”
“One way or another, the problem will be solved.” Paimon withdrew too quickly, not sharing some knowledge that had made a sham of his challenge. But Badad’s monster remained, sending waves of anxiety through the spheres.
“Go. Fix this.” Dead would do. Ariton cast him out and Badad fell, into the eternal gravity of the material sphere. He felt Lirion at his side and realized that he had a side again, a body that had picked up his clothes along the way.
Chapter 5
PARMATUS, WHO PROBABLY HAD A HUMAN name here, lay curled in a writhing ball in the center of the office that the agency used for client meetings. The carpet was burning, amber flame rising in a circle defined by the protections in the ceiling, which had already grayed with the smoke. The pale blue walls above the pristine white wainscoting seemed fine, though. Assuming they stopped the blaze before Parmatus dropped them into the basement, the damage should be limited, all things considered. Not counting Evan, of course, who was inside the circle, on his knees beside a daemon lord of a foreign Prince. Parmatus had no reason except the one that brought him through the door to hold to the contract that protected Evan. And Badad had already promised a war on Ariton’s behalf if anything happened to his misbegotten son.
“Get out,” he said, and took Evan’s place at Parmatus’ side. Evan leaped out of the circle, his relief so palpable that Badad winced. He was going to have to stand, though, because Lirion had taken his chair and watched with narrow-eyed attention the disaster that Evan had managed this time.
Badad took Parmatus’ chin in his hands, turned the daemon lord’s human face to look at him, but he spoke to Evan first. “What in the name of Ariton have you done now?”—because that seemed the easiest way to get him thinking.
“My job,” Evan answered, just as Parmatus gasped out, “Contract.”
“He signed a walk-away contract; it should not have done this.”
Parmatus’ eyes were glazed with pain, but rage percolated just beneath the incapacitating anguish. “Does he understand that?” Badad insisted, and Evan answered, “I told him. I spelled it out. He can cancel the contract at any time, verbally, in writing, or he can just stop paying the bill. I’d never—he’s not even Ariton. I would never bind this agency to anything except a walk-way single task contract with another Prince. I haven’t been insane in a long time.”
That
last was Evan-speak for humor, but it was probably true.
“We know that,” Lirion said, though Badad wouldn’t have told him so. “But did you add anything to the standard contract?”
“I didn’t limit the walk-away clause, not in any way.” Evan was looking guilty now, and that was never good. Badad held his human shape steady by force of will. “I added a rider, a host-debt. Paimon will owe Ariton for this. He said if we succeeded he would anyway.”
Lily came over the desk, into the circle, adding blue flame to the amber and not even trying to hold her human form together.
Badad still didn’t quite believe it. “You asked a boon between Princes? Of my son? He’s human, you fool!”
“He’s more than that,” Parmatus gasped out.
Then Evan was inside the circle again, the buzzed hair lifting in a halo of blue flame. “Enough. The rider is no more binding than the rest of the contract, unless we get the damned box back. I need him calm, not burning down the house. Lily! Please! I like this house!”
Parmatus said, “Who’s Lily?”
“Who do you think?” Lirion bent to glare eye-to-eye with the daemon lord on the floor. “Now pull yourself together. You are shaming your Prince in front of Ariton, and if you burn my house down, I will declare war myself.”
“Can’t. Can’t.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Evan,” Badad grated between clenched teeth, “Get out of the circle. We’re at war if he kills you.”
“Good to know.” But he stepped out of the circle. “It’s the box, isn’t it? The contract set up a conflict.”
Badad didn’t know what box he meant, but he remembered that tangle of a binding that no human had a hand on. Evan snatched a piece of paper from the desk and tore it in half. “No contract,” he said, and crossed back into the circle to stuff one half into Parmatus’ curled fist. The edges crisped with the heat and Evan pulled his fingers back quickly, shaking out the pain where his fingertips had blistered “An agreement between Princes it is. But you’re still paying our standard rates, and the carpet and cleaning will be included in the bill for expenses.”
A Legacy of Daemons Page 3
