by Nina Harper
In my mind’s eye I saw the Salamander. I felt its heat and violent energy. I felt its unshakable will within my own. This one picture filled my mind so completely that I could smell the flames and feel the heat blister my skin.
I gazed into the mirror and saw it reflected clearly back to me, every scale blazing, every talon sharp and flaming. Only its coal black eyes were dark and calm, unperturbed by the flames. The mirror became liquid and the Salamander poured through the glass and stood flaming on a stainless steel counter. The white ceiling blackened from the smoke.
“I hear your call, Sister,” it said in a raspy, crackling voice. “What would you of me, and what do you offer?”
A bargain. Always a bargain.
“I want the young demon being held upstairs,” I said. “Can you snatch her away from the place where they hold her confined?”
“And if I can, what will you give me?” the Salamander demanded.
I thought hard and fast. There are currencies in the world of magic, and one of the most desirable of those I have easily at hand. “I will give you a drop of my ichor,” I said. “Which you can use for yourself or to trade, so long as it is never used against me or mine.”
“One drop we will need for the working. I will have three drops when it is finished,” the Salamander demanded.
“Done.”
I used the blade of the chef’s knife to cut the tip of my finger. One drop of ichor glistened on the edge. I held it out to the Salamander, who incorporated it with a delicate flick of its tongue. And in a blaze that was so bright my eyes ached, the Salamander left and transported through the element into the room upstairs. I rode inside of it, disguised, my inner self (that would be a soul in a human) being overlaid by the ferocity of Elemental Fire.
The Salamander took us to the upstairs room and I saw Raven chained to what appeared to be an altar, her belly slit open and bleeding. I screamed. I could see everything and I was there, but from the vantage of the Salamander I couldn’t do anything to intervene.
A shocked voice roared out behind me. “What in hell are you doing here?”
I turned and there, in the middle of the working circle, dressed up in his gray silk robes with a pewter laman on his chest, stood Marten.
chapter
TWENTY-ONE
“Marten?” I squeaked, shocked. Ohmygoodness, was he one of the bad guys? Had he been one of the ones who was torturing Raven? I screamed inside my head. Outside the Salamander roared.
“Lily, get out of here. It is dangerous,” he said.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Trying to save Raven,” he hissed, flickered, and disappeared.
And then, without warning, something flashed a brilliant red.
And I was in a beautifully appointed study, trapped inside a blazing red triangle. The Salamander had tricked me! It had dumped me in the physical reality, the actual room, and had itself fled.
I didn’t have time to wonder why. Raven was nowhere in sight. But four mortal men, one of whom I recognized, were ringed around me. The one I recognized, Craig Branford, held a sword pointed at my throat.
“Speak, demon, I command you in the name of Heaven,” he intoned.
“Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not the enemy of Heaven,” I told him. “The Hierarchy goes all the way down. Satan still serves On High, though don’t ask Her to admit that in polite company.”
“It tries to beguile us, Leader,” one of the others whimpered.
I sighed and sagged with more exhaustion than I had felt in a century. “I’m just telling the truth. It’s not my fault if you’re a bunch of half-educated halfwits. Where’s Raven?”
Only they weren’t going to tell me. They didn’t know what had happened, and I’d bet three pairs of next season’s Manolos that they hadn’t even noticed the substitution. If substitution it was.
But I could find no trace of Raven. She had vanished from the triangle, a triangle specifically designed to hold a demon. She was gone, and I was trapped.
As I realized the depth of my situation, I wanted to cry, to scream with frustration. This is what happens when you try to do something decent, I thought.
Then Branford pierced the triangle with his sword and it burned. It never touched me but the intention in that blade piercing my prison (and protection) became a torment.
I was hurt and angry, and I admit I wasn’t thinking very clearly. There was probably a better way; if I’d been a hostage negotiator for the FBI this could have gone down differently. But I’m not, I’m an accessories editor and a succubus. Diplomacy is not a job requirement.
So instead of trying to calm them down, I put my hand on the blade of the sword. And I shrieked with the pain of the intentions of the blade but I couldn’t let it go.
Branford had violated the most important rule of confining demons. He had breached the barrier. Give any of us the slightest crack in that magical barricade and we will exploit it. And I did.
I held the sword and swung it around. Every movement rent the triangle further.
I screamed. Branford screamed. The door burst open and Nathan entered, yelling and swinging a fireplace poker.
Branford’s companions fled, terrified, as I stepped out of the restraining triangle, which left me and Nathan to deal with Branford. Who, fortunately, was not about to let go of the sword. Yeah, he must have learned in Self-Righteous Fanatic School never to take his eyes off the demon.
Which would be good advice, but it didn’t take into consideration the mortal team member who wasn’t confined by magical barriers and who didn’t conform to magical protocols. As Branford and I danced around with the sword between us, Nathan swept his legs with the fireplace poker and the man went down. His hands came off the sword and I had control over the weapon. Which, being a ritual item, wasn’t at all sharp.
But Branford didn’t know that, or didn’t care. Or was more afraid of the magical properties than I understood, because when I held the point of the sword to his throat he lay very still. His eyes were steady and blazed with the absolute certainty of a raging idiot.
“God will save me,” he said with perfect conviction. “You may destroy my body but you cannot have my soul in Hell.”
“Don’t worry, we don’t want your kind,” I said as Nathan started to duct tape his wrists behind his back.
Branford smiled thinly. “Of course not. You can’t have me. I belong to the Lord God wholly and entirely, and my being is dedicated to doing His work.”
I shook my head and sighed. “I don’t think so. You people are so . . . ignorant.”
By then Nathan had gotten his ankles and came around front to tape his mouth shut. Thank goodness.
“What should we do with him?” Nathan asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Where’s Raven?”
It was Nathan’s turn to look confused. “I didn’t see anyone but you and the men who were here. I thought you did some kind of magical snatch or substitution or something.”
“No,” I admitted.
But someone had. Someone had snatched Raven out of the triangle and substituted me. Something was going on, something that involved Meph and Marten and I didn’t know what else. But the vast array of sky visible through the windows was starting to lighten, and I was tired beyond belief. Craig Branford would wait a day or two. We could stash him someplace later, but for now I was too tired to think.
“Do you have someplace you can take him?” I asked Nathan.
Nathan hesitated. “I think so. Probably.”
“Then take him there and we’ll figure it out later,” I mumbled. “I’ve got to get some sleep. And I’ve got an editorial meeting tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive you home,” Nathan offered, but I waved him off. “No, you take care of Branford. I’ll take a cab.”
I nodded off until the cabbie announced we were at my door and I stumbled out. Only to be greeted by Vincent, looking handsome and unharmed, who took me by the shoulders an
d delivered me upstairs.
Three hours of sleep and two extralarge espressos later I was pretending to keep my eyes open during the editorial meeting. Which was excessively quiet due to the fact that Lawrence was notably absent. We had gotten through a very civilized discussion of sculpted wedgies, the hot new trend in shoes for next spring. Over a year away, and I still wasn’t into this spring’s clothes.
I was aware that my mind was wandering, but I managed to come up with deadlines and photo shoot information when I had to give a report about my shawl feature.
That was it. No mention of Lawrence or his absence, or whether we would ever see him again. After the meeting ended I walked down the hall with Danielle.
“No Lawrence?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow in that oh-so-French way. “I have heard nothing. No rumors, no gossip. Not about him.”
“He could just have the flu, then.” I sighed.
But when we got to my door, Danielle followed me into my office. Which was fine with me, but we both had work to do. If I could work. I had been thinking about collapsing on the sofa for a couple of hours since really I was not equipped to handle an all-nighter and be fresh and productive the next day. Danielle pulled up one of the chairs to my desk while I sat down and pretended to be awake.
“I have heard no rumors about Lawrence,” she stared. “But, Lily, people are starting to talk about you. You have been out of the office a lot recently, and when you are here you look like you need to be someplace else. You are too tired during meetings and I think you are not keeping up with work. You have not contributed to the editorial meeting in weeks.”
I froze. My hands curled around the edges of my desk and I sat stock-still. Fear, cold and solid like ice in my stomach, knotted my insides.
“Did someone ask you to speak to me?” I asked carefully.
Danielle shook her head. “I do not believe that there is much said, not yet. But I am your friend, Lily, and I do not want to see you in trouble. I want this to stop before anyone else pays attention. I am worried for you also, because something must be happening at home for you to be so tired all the time here. And you do not focus the way you used to.”
“Do you think I’m in trouble?”
“No, no,” Danielle attempted to reassure me. “But I can tell that something is wrong. And I thought before that this was something small and you would recover quickly. But it is getting worse and you are not better and I think that soon someone else will notice. Whatever is happening at home that keeps you up all night, this is no good thing. And if I can help you I will. Can you at least tell me what has happened?”
My friends all knew. But Danielle was my friend too, my only real mortal friend. My only friend who didn’t know about the rest of my life, who took me as a mortal woman like herself, and that was important to me.
“There’s this guy,” I started, and Danielle nodded.
“I thought it was a man,” she said. “You have not had so much romance in your life, I think. Who is this man?”
I gave her a very edited version of Nathan and Marten, leaving out all the magic, Hell, Mephistopheles, and the Treasury. It ended up sounding lame to me, but Danielle nodded sagely at points in my narrative. And at the end she sighed and shook her head.
“American women,” she said. “I have lived here since I was twenty, but I still do not understand. Why do you not date both of them? Why must you choose? And even if you must choose, why must you choose now?”
“I can’t date two guys,” I protested, confused.
“Why not?” she countered. “You are only dating them, you have not known either for long, and you have no commitment to either of them. Your heart, yes, your heart is torn. But why? Because you believe you must give one up? So this Dutchman is in Aruba and that distance makes a problem, I agree. But this Nathan seems very young and undecided. He is in school, he is not in school, he is a scholar, he is a pretend detective. How can he commit to you if he cannot commit to even a plan of action for his life?”
“You think that’s the problem?”
Danielle shook her head delicately, jangling the lovely chandelier earrings I recognized from our April issue. “I think that you are being quite silly not to see that it is the problem,” she countered. “He clearly has feelings for you, but he runs. Why does any man run when he cares? Because he is a coward, because he is tied to another woman, or because he cannot make a decision. Because he cannot take a risk with his heart and his life.”
“That’s so romantic if he’s actually afraid that he’ll risk his heart for me,” the words came out before I realized what I had said. And it was true, that was a very romantic view of life. As a succubus, I was anything but romantic.
“Ah, but there you are wrong,” Danielle said almost as if she had been reading my mind. “It is merely realistic. Your Marten, it appears, is willing to take risks. He came up to New York without telling you to see you.”
“That was business!”
She waved her hand. “If he did not wish to see you he would not have come. He used the business as an excuse. And he is, after all, Dutch. He cannot let you know that he was so rash. But that is exactly what you need, Lily. You have always been so sensible. I have seen it. You have always been so focused on your career, on your achievements. You only want to date men who will fit into a particular pattern and so you have not dated at all. So neither Marten nor Nathan fit into the mold of the proper boyfriend you had envisioned for yourself. Nathan is not employed enough, not serious enough, not committed enough. Marten doesn’t live in New York. But both of them seem quite good for dating. Why not just date both of them and enjoy them?”
“You’re probably right, Danielle,” I admitted. “But I’m too tired to think about it now.”
“No,” she said. “You should not think about it at all. You should feel about it. What do you feel? What do you desire? That does not come from your head. You live in your head too much, Lily. Listen to your instinct.”
I think I was almost awake. Danielle sounded like a self-improvement and motivational book come to life. It was terrifying; I hadn’t known she’d had that in her.
I got up and hugged her, although Danielle was not normally the huggy kind. She was more of the air-kiss-on-both-cheeks kind. “Thank you, Danielle. That was what I needed to hear. Now—maybe now I can try to get some work done.”
Danielle shook her head. “And what will you do about these men?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m not sure yet but I do know that I’ve got to pay more attention to work right now. And . . . just talking to you I got this funny feeling that I’ll figure it out.”
She nodded gravely. There is something about a Frenchwoman in a Dior outfit who takes affairs of the heart as something profound and serious. “That is true. And sometimes the best way to discover what you think is not to think about it.”
Then she turned and left me standing, slightly in shock. And in desperate need of more caffeine.
So I went down to the Starbucks in the lobby of the building to buy myself the biggest, most potent fix I could find and asked for a triple shot of espresso (along with vanilla syrup to make it a bit tastier) and returned to work. I worked hard and thought about nothing else for the first time in what seemed like weeks. I’d forgotten how good it felt to match the right accessories to different editors’ needs. It was more magical than anything I’d done with ritual. Then I checked in with the writers for the feature articles and the photographers for the next two issues’ Accents page.
Then it was time to go home. Most of the department had left and the hallways were silent. I realized that I hadn’t seen Lawrence all day—not at meeting, and I hadn’t heard his bellow down the hall.
I hoped it would stay that way.
Vincent was on duty when I arrived home with my dinner in a drippy pizza box. He took it from me while I fumbled for my mailbox key, dropped the junk into the conveniently placed trash, and found the three keys th
at would let me in to my apartment. Only then did I think to inquire as to his well-being and state of health.
“I’m fine now,” he said gravely. “Sybil has been wonderful. She took today off and we went to the Carnegie Deli for lunch because she believed that I needed chicken soup for a complete recovery. But we’re fine now.”
“Do you know what happened with Raven?” I pursued the subject.
Vincent shook his head. “Have you talked to Meph and Nathan about what happened when you were kidnapped?” I asked.
“Yes,” Vincent said wearily. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. You can ask Nathan or Mephistopheles if you want to know.”
Then the elevator arrived and really, I was too tired and overwhelmed to pursue the matter. I stepped into the elevator and let the doors close on Vincent and on anything else that could interfere with a serious evening of Taking Care of Me.
I didn’t check my e-mail or my voice mail. The only thing I turned on was the TiVo (where I’d recorded last week’s episodes of my three favorite shows) and didn’t even bother with heating up the pizza (though it was not as warm as I would like it and the cheese wasn’t runny anymore). It was the most delicious pizza I’d tasted in ages, and the Gilmore Girls sparkled and I indulged in a hot bath in my deep clawfoot tub with a Black Pearl bath bomb. At which point I was so tired and so relaxed that getting out of the bath to get into bed was the hardest task I could manage.
I slept for eight beautiful, glorious hours and when I woke up it was morning and sunny and warm. Spring had finally come.
My joyful ignorance lasted through my first cup of coffee, through two fried eggs, two slices of bacon, and a cheese Danish. I hummed, I went through my closet looking for a proper spring outfit for the day, and it was only after I’d chosen the pin-striped pencil skirt with black tights and a shell pink Anna Sui silk blouse trimmed with black Venice lace accents that I turned on my e-mail.
