by A. L. Tyler
I opened my mouth to say something, but the sound of a loud, gong-like bell made me jump. With a start and adrenaline pulsing through my veins, I turned around to see Charlie standing behind me.
“Thorn,” he said, looking grave. “I’m going to need more blood.”
Chapter 2
“Charlie!” I said, clutching the stitch in my chest. “Quieter bell!”
We had unanimously decided it was best if Charlie announced his presence with the ringing of a bell every time he left and came back, but this was the first time he had elected to follow the bell rule while human instead of feline. It was to prevent him from finding out about a curse that could only kill him if he learned about it. And instead of the soft tinkle of a little charm on a collar, he had chosen to announce himself with all the acoustics of a bell tower.
He had a knife in one hand, and his other was held out to receive my wrist. Vince was immediately on his feet.
“Settle down, Fido,” he said. “We do this all the time.”
“We’ve done that once,” I corrected him. “Why do you need more?”
“Because I’m out, and I don’t want to have to deal with banishment at the wrong moment, and it’s the easiest way to prevent such things.”
I held out my hand with a sigh, and Charlie steadied it in his grasp, laying the sharpened blade to my flesh as Lyssa approached.
“No! None of that here!” she said, agitated. She grabbed my hand away from Charlie. “Annie, I would really rather you didn’t practice this kind of… of… bastard magic.”
Charlie and I rolled our eyes at the same time. Lyssa let my hand go, and I gave it back to Charlie.
“I already summoned a demon,” I said. “That ship has sailed, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say he’s our best chance to get out of this alive.”
As the blade cut my arm and blood flowed down into a cup, Vince gasped and I looked over at him.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “He’s a demon. He makes it so it doesn’t hurt.”
“That doesn’t seem healthy,” he finally said.
“It’s not.” Lyssa crossed her arms.
I took a deep breath and sighed at her before setting my gaze on Vince. I withdrew my completely unharmed arm as Charlie finished.
“It protects him from banishment,” I said. I didn’t want to share the exact details on how it worked, because the thought of Charlie drinking my blood still made me want to gag. It might have put Vince right over the edge. “Having a piece of me sort of anchors him here.”
Charlie took the blood to the kitchen, and Gates came running out as fast as her four legs could carry her. She remembered the sight of Charlie with his mouth full of blood, too.
When he was done, Charlie came back and cleared his throat. I looked at him expectantly, and he raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
Nothing happened.
My eyes shifted nervously to Vince, and then I smiled. “Okay, so…?”
“All done,” Charlie sat down on the couch, and reached for the remote.
I waited for him to speak again, but he didn’t.
“With what?” I finally asked.
“The cage,” he said, leaning back. “I put the door in your bedroom. Under your new rug.”
Vince shifted nervously, and then all of us except Charlie moved to the bedroom. Vince flipped up a corner of the Oriental rug that had appeared, revealing a heavy wooden trapdoor. Beneath the trapdoor, there was a flight of hewn stone stairs, and at the bottom, there was a heavy silver door. It had a large wheel mechanism to close and lock it, like a submarine hatch. Charlie had built in a door viewer with a small, hinged cover, heavily armored by crosshatch bars only wide enough to stick one or two fingers through.
The inside of the cell would have made me laugh if Vince hadn’t been present.
The walls and floor matched the style of my apartment, but the lights above were protected by more silver crosshatch grates. There was an over-sized nest-style dog bed in one corner. Situated next to it were two stainless steel bowls for food and water.
“That’s cute,” Vince said with a frown. “Real cute. Your boyfriend has a sense of humor.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. Charlie, get down here!”
If Gates had been human, I knew that she would have been smiling. She trotted over to the pet bed in the corner and jumped inside it.
“Oh, I don’t know, Annie…” she said, doing a quick turn before sitting down. “Looks good to me. Can I have my own room?”
“We’ll talk,” Charlie said from behind me.
I turned to face him with a frown. He gave me a condescending smirk.
“Lighten up, Thorn. It was a joke.”
He snapped his fingers, and the room was fully furnished. Vince’s jaw dropped open, and he did a quick turn as he took it all in.
It was done up like a studio apartment, complete with a small kitchen. There was a sleeping area tucked away behind a curtain next to a living room that had a television and a blue couch. One corner had been walled off for a full bathroom, and two windows along the far wall from the door overlooked a park with a fountain. It even mimicked the real time of day outside, and a dark expanse of stars shone across the illuminated pond beneath the splashing jets of water.
“You won’t be able to enjoy the illusion when you’re your other self,” Charlie said, walking over to the windows with us. “And I expect you’ll destroy everything else in here, but you’re in the company of a demon. I’ll clean it up when you’re done.”
“Annie, this is nicer than your place.”
I turned to see Lyssa looking over the stainless steel appliances. Gates was jumping down from the couch to get a closer look at the wall-mounted television.
“It’s all real,” Charlie said. “I had to redo some city plumbing to make room, but this is a real basement below your apartment, Thorn. Thank god you’re on the first floor, or someone would have been evicted. The walls, floor, and ceiling are just a facade over a silver-lined thick steel casing. The door is the same. It is part of the apartment, technically, so it should be protected from Stark like the rest. As long as you willingly come in every month before the animal takes over, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”
The look on Lyssa’s face almost made me laugh, because the entire setup was nearly too much. She looked like a child staring through the window of a toy store at things out of reach that she wanted so badly to touch.
Charlie hadn’t turned away from the window, but when he caught my eye he gave me a smile and a wink.
“You’re changing your tune on the evils of demons?” Gates asked Lyssa.
Still aghast, Lyssa shook her head. “I can want something and still say ‘no.’ It’s fueled by unsavory dealings.”
“It’s fueled by human stupidity and greed,” Charlie said, finally turning around. “And left to my own devices, I choose my clientele very carefully, thank you very much.”
“And you consider yourself qualified to play God and judge who deserves what?” Lyssa crossed her arms again. “Kendra wouldn’t tell me much, and it spurs curiosity. I found more than enough sources to tell me about the nature of demons.”
“You don’t know the nature of this demon,” he said with finality. He turned to Vince. “But this isn’t about Lyssa. It’s about you. Does it meet your needs?”
Vince was still stunned. He went to the entertainment cabinet beneath the television and slid open a panel to find a gaming system. There were three games stacked on top of it.
He turned back to Charlie, both pale and amazed. “How did you—?”
Charlie tapped his temple. “I hope you don’t mind. I had a look around your room back at your parents’ house. I obviously wasn’t going anywhere near your room at college, and your thoughts are already getting a little difficult to read.”
Glancing back at the games, Vince looked uncertain. “Oh. Okay.”
“I want a room,” Gates repeated in a low voice.<
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Charlie gave me a quick look as he started walking back toward the door.
“Sure, whatever,” I said.
Gesturing for Gates and Lyssa to follow him, he walked back out of the new expansion to my apartment with my friend and sister in tow.
Vince was still looking around the room like he was either ecstatic or terrified. I kept my distance, staying on the opposite side of the couch.
The sound of Gates’ voice, dictating what she wanted her room to look like, finally faded off into nothing as the door closed to just less than an inch.
He finally said something. “You’re a witch. Can you do stuff like this?”
I glanced around the room and cocked an eyebrow. Even if I had a small fortune and a team to do the heavy lifting, I wasn’t this good of an interior designer.
“So far, I can summon demons,” I said. “One demon. And he’s usually not this cooperative.”
He nodded, but the frown on his face told me he was still intimidated beyond words. I was uncannily reminded of the way I felt when Charlie froze me outside of Jennifer Wilmot’s window, forcing me to watch her fall to the ground as she went into anaphylactic shock.
“He’s not a bad guy,” I managed. “He’s not a good guy all the time, but I guess none of us are. I think he does the best he can.”
“He could be the king of the planet,” Vince said. “He could snap his fingers, and literally be the king of the entire planet…”
I had never thought about it before, but I supposed it was true. But with what little I remembered about my time being a demon, I knew it held no interest for him.
“He already has that,” I said, lowering my voice and trying to choose my words carefully. I didn’t understand why people hated ex-demons so much, but I knew it would be better if they never found out I was one. “They come from a place called the Other Side, and they shape their own worlds there. Humanity is just food to them.” I shook my head when his eyes went wide. “No, no—he makes deals. I don’t get exactly how it works, but the deals, the exchange of wants and needs and gratification, it fuels them. We’re like livestock to them, or less. He wouldn’t want to be the king of livestock. And they like us having complicated lives, because it gives them more opportunity to offer to fix it. I think that’s why they mostly leave things alone.”
Vince nodded. He turned his back on me to sit on the couch. I quietly crept around, then debated if I should sit next to him, or across from him on the lacquered wood coffee table, or just leave. When Vince moved over on the couch a little, I supposed it would be rude to refuse the gesture, so I sat down.
“Did you use him to cheat on your ACT score?”
I slowly looked over at him, and his grave expression made me laugh. “No. He wasn’t around when I took the ACT.”
“But you would have.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Vince smirked, pleased that he had ruffled my feathers. When he looked back at me, and our eyes locked for a second, I forgot where I was and what had happened to bring us there. His eyes were dark gray and gorgeous, and he was technically sharing an apartment with me.
“I think I’ll settle in and see if there’s anything else I need,” he said.
I twitched in a very unattractive way as I snapped back to reality. “Right. Good.”
I stood up and started walking to the door.
“Annie?”
I stopped, heart pounding, and turned back to him. I hoped I wasn’t blushing too badly.
“Thank you,” he said, standing up. “Tell Charlie thanks, too.”
I nodded, smiled, then turned around and left.
Climbing the stairs again, I realized how tired I was. It was way past when I usually went to bed. When a werewolf came knocking on your door, the schedule went out the window.
“Annie!” Gates burst through my bedroom door, once again human. Having completed his work for the evening, Charlie must have given up his turn being human. “Annie, you’ve got to come and see this!”
She pulled me from my bedroom and out to the kitchen, where a new tribal tapestry was hanging on the wall. Pulling it aside, she opened a door, and we stepped into a small hallway and into a new room.
A room bigger than my room.
My eyes danced from the queen-sized bed to the balcony view of the beach at night. A moon hung low over the crashing surf, and I could smell the salty water. There was a walk-in closet on one end and an open door to a five piece master bath on the other. At the far end of the bathroom, I saw another door.
“You needed a second closet?” I asked in a deflated tone.
“That’s Lyssa’s room,” Gates said, practically skipping to her balcony. “We’re sharing the bathroom. Her room isn’t nearly as nice, which I don’t get. If she’s going to use it at all, then ethics be damned—really use it, right? I feel owed for the last few months. I still haven’t decided what color I want on the walls, but Charlie said I can decide later.”
“How nice for you.” I furrowed my brow as I stuck my head back into the kitchen, then looked at the new bedroom again. “Wait—did Charlie evict the guy in the apartment behind us?”
“This is a compressed pocket in reality,” Charlie said. The room was so big, I hadn’t even noticed him lounging as a cat by the dresser. “The occupants aren’t werewolves, so I can use more illusion with them. A room like this wouldn’t hold a werewolf—it’s almost entirely magic.”
He rose up and walked back to the kitchen. I left Gates alone in her new haven. My eyelids were beginning to droop with exhaustion, and I needed to sleep before anything else happened.
“Do you want any upgrades?” Charlie asked. “I can give you just about anything you want.”
“My room is fine,” I said.
“No beach view?” he asked in an airy tone. “No big bed, or walk-in closet? Heated floors?”
I rolled my eyes. Gates’ imagination had spared no expense.
“I’m good,” I said. Then I paused.
If Charlie could have smiled with his cat face, he would have. “A place for books, Thorn? Are you giving me permission?”
I dug through my kitchen cabinet, trying to find a good decaffeinated tea to drink before bed. I couldn’t help myself and smiled.
“Make me a library, Charlie.”
I saw his tail twitch, and then I finished making my tea. When I went into my bedroom, I found the door hidden behind the clothes in my closet. I only had the energy to peek inside and smile.
It was a smaller space, which was fine with me, but it was lined floor to ceiling with books. A chaise with an afghan thrown over it was situated next to a little end table with a simple lamp.
I closed the door, and wanted to go to bed, but I remembered that Vince was now living beneath my floorboards. Somehow, I felt like I needed to say goodnight and let him know I was going to sleep.
I went down the stairs again and knocked on the metal door at the bottom. It was still sitting open a fraction of an inch because it couldn’t be closed all the way without locking, and it only opened from the outside. I didn’t think that my knock had made enough sound, but then Vince opened the door.
He had already changed into nightclothes, and he was wearing sweatpants and a white cotton undershirt. I tried not to let my eyes leave his face. I knew I was going to blush again if they did.
“I’m going to bed,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Is there anything else you need tonight?”
A small smile flashed on his face, but whatever the joke was, he decided not to share it. “No, I don’t think so. Are you going to lock the door?”
I instinctively slid my hand down the side of the door. I hadn’t even thought about it.
Vince shrugged. “Just in case I’m not me by morning, I guess.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Goodnight.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else. We stood there awkwardly until I made the move to shut the door.
“Goodnight.” It felt wrong shutting the door on him, but I knew he was right. He was in my room, and if he lost control while I was sleeping, it could end badly.
I shut the door, and I locked it, turning the heavy wheel on the exterior until it wouldn’t turn any further to engage all the locks on the mechanism.
Then I went and crawled into my bed. My tea was still steaming up its last vapors on my nightstand, but I was too tired to drink it or dump it out. I don’t know if I dreamed that night or not. If I did, the memory of it was taken from me by my sudden awakening early the next day.
A noise that was half-howl and half-scream shook my whole room like a train was passing just outside the window.
Chapter 3
I jumped out of the bed like it was on fire. It took me a moment to remember where I was, and who was living in the room beneath me.
Shoving back the rug, I flipped open the hatch and descended the stairs. “Charlie!”
He stopped me just as my hand landed on the wheel to open the door.
“Thorn, I know what you’re going to say, and trust me, you don’t want to even look.” He spoke quickly, looking me directly in the eye. “I’ve already been in to see him, and he’s not in a good place to have company right now.”
There was a loud grunt, and something exploded against the wall inside the room. The entire apartment shook.
“Is that door going to hold?” I asked frantically.
“I hope so.”
“You hope so?” Something else cracked and hit the door, shaking dust loose around the seams. “It isn’t even the full moon… Is he going to get worse? Stronger?”
Charlie glanced back as Vince, or whatever he had become, started ramming repeatedly into the door. “Yes, Thorn, he’s going to get worse and stronger, and probably more desperate to escape—”
A loud howl cut him off, and I ducked and covered my ears. When it finally subsided and the attempts to break down the door started again, Charlie gave me a long look.
