by Angie Fox
“Okay,” I looked to my confused, desperate, on-the-edge mother. And pointed at Grandma. “They’re witches.”
Hillary gripped her pearls. Hard. “I don’t believe in that.”
“Those jars, the ones that spit smoke and energy—those were spell jars. Powerful ones.”
“There—” She stammered. “There has to be another explanation.”
While I was on a roll, I took my fiancé by the arm. It wasn’t hard because he was still helping to hold me up. “Dimitri is a shape shifting griffin.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Come on. “He just roared.” Then again, it wasn’t like she’d ever picked up a paranormal romance. Or even watched Buffy on TV. “Think werewolf, mom. But bigger, with wings.”
Now she had both hands gripping her necklace. “Lizzie Brown, you stop playing with me this instant. We have things to do. I’m sure we’re off schedule...”
“Hillary,” Dimitri said. For added proof, or maybe because he had an ornery streak, he locked gazes with her and changed his eyes from mocha brown to startling green, and then orange.
She let out a small squeak.
Frieda picked that moment to clomp up with my switch star belt. “It sure got quiet around here,” she said, handing it to me.
Dimitri helped hold me steady while I buckled on my weapons. “Mom,” I said. This wasn’t the way I’d wanted to tell her, what with the poisoned dress and me all shaky and her standing there with her mouth moving up and down with no words coming out. But in for a penny, in for a pound, “I’m a demon slayer.”
She watched me, speechless, as I took several shaky steps toward the poison dress.
“Stay back,” I said to Hillary. “I have weapons. You just can’t see them.”
“Oh,” she half-barked, half-squeaked.
Grandma and Creely had finished by then, and the dress was alone. It wasn’t dumb, though. Whatever had hold of it skittered the dress sideways a few inches as I approached.
“Could be possessed,” Creely offered.
I didn’t know and I didn’t care. With fingers that were still a bit shaky, I drew a switch star out of my belt. I aimed. And I hurled it.
The star ripped through the fabric. Skeeetch! It cried out as if it were alive. A wave of sulfuric fumes hit us as the dress caved in on itself and a bright blue flame shot out and up.
We retreated a few steps and watched the flame consume the dress. When the magical fire died down, all that was left was my switch star, gleaming in a pile of ashes.
That’s when I realized I had a massive headache. My arms and legs felt weak. “I think I’m going to pass out,” I told Dimitri.
Grandma drew a spell jar. “You think you’re in trouble again?”
No. “I’m beat.”
Mom stood behind her, watching me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “You’re a demon slayer,” she said, as if she were trying out the words.
“Yes,” I told her. I hoped with everything I had that she could accept me.
“Lizzie can also talk to her dog,” Dimitri supplied, helpfully.
Hillary’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted dead away.
Dyonne, bless her heart, was there to catch her. I sure couldn’t have moved that quickly.
“Come on,” Dimitri said, “let’s get you some rest, too.”
I took one last look at my mom as they moved her to the couch. “Maybe you shouldn’t have told her about Pirate,” I said, as he helped me out toward the foyer.
“Yeah,” he said, bracing my arm, wrapping his hand around my back. “The dog was the problem.”
Chapter Thirteen
I fell asleep within seconds of reaching my room. When I woke, Dimitri was gone. He’d helped me shower before putting me to bed, and I hadn’t even gotten to enjoy it. My head pounded and the skin on my chest and arms felt tight. Diana sat by my bedside with a glass of water and a Tylenol.
She gave a slight smile. “Try this.”
I leaned up, taking them from her. “A little conventional, don’t you think?”
“Never underestimate a good pain killer.”
I looked down at my chest and arms. They were slightly pink, like I’d gotten too much sun, but they were whole. “Where’s Dimitri?”
Diana flattened me with one hand. “He’s out patrolling the grounds.”
“In his condition?” I hadn’t seen the extent of his injuries, but if he felt even a fraction of what I had, he should be in bed next to me.
He was in no shape to shift or fight.
We didn’t even know who’d wanted to kill me, or why.
Yes, I was a demon slayer, but that meant I had hundreds of enemies. How was I going to even begin to know where this attack had started? And worse, how to stop it.
“You try keeping a two-hundred-pound griffin inside,” Diana said, clearly worried as well. “Dyonne is downstairs, routing the griffins a new one. Someone has to know who poisoned the dress.”
“It may not have come from one of the griffins,” I said. Yes, we hadn’t had great luck with the clans in the past, but it didn’t mean the Artemae were guilty by the sake of their blood. Besides, I smelled sulfur. This was demonic.
There was a knock at the door. Grandma pushed her way inside, followed closely by Creely.
“The wards were never breached,” Grandma said, by way of greeting.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Nobody can sneak poison from hell past your barriers.”
Creely exchanged a glance with Grandma. “You shouldn’t,” the engineering witch grunted.
“What the hell does that mean?” Diana barked.
Creely crossed her arms over her chest. “Shit. Beats me. I’d say whoever booby-trapped the dress came from inside the wedding party.”
Grandma glared at her. “Makes sense,” she said grudgingly.
There was another knock at the door. What was this? A fricking party?
My mentor, Rachmort, poked his head around the door, and if I didn’t feel like death warmed over, I would have rushed over to hug him. The wrinkles around his eyes and the angle of his cheekbones gave him an air of jocular authority.
He removed his black top hat and ran a hand thorough his mop of white hair. If anything, it made his wild white locks stand up even more.
Zebediah Rachmort was a necromancer, a legendary demon slayer instructor and a cursed-creatures consultant for the Department of Intramagical Matters’ Lost Souls Outreach program. Today he wore a brown dress jacket, an olive green waistcoat and brown pants with pinstripes.
His white hair reminded me of Einstein’s, while his Victorian-era clothes, neatly clipped sideburns, and large gold watch fob looked like something out of a Dickens novel.
It was impossible to tell how old he was. The man seemed almost timeless.
He was my sounding board. My rock.
“Ant Eater told me what happened,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a blue nugget of what looked to be a chalky type of gem. He handed it to Grandma “A little something extra for the wards.”
She and Creely left to go use it as Rachmort ambled toward my bedside. He sat heavy on the chair that Diana had vacated and watched me, elbows resting on his knees.
He fiddled with the humongous gold and copper ring on his middle finger. It looked more like a compass than a piece of jewelry. “It’s good to see you. Alive.”
“If you look at this as a fun learning opportunity, I’m going to slap you,” I told him.
He merely grinned. “I’d hoped to talk to you about so many other things.” He dropped the humor, gave a slight shake to his head. “I don’t think any of your wedding guests are trying to hurt you.”
“But you heard what Grandma and Creely said.” No one came in from the outside.
He shook his head, watching me carefully. “Regretfully, I believe one of your guests is possessed.”
It took me a second to process that. But damn. It made sense.
Diana frowned. “How could they get a demonic poison past the wards?”
In typical Rachmort fashion, he embraced the discussion like a professor with a pupil. “The biker witches protect against threats from the outside. Strangers. They don’t protect against good people, or invited guests who happen to carry dangerous weapons.” He held up a hand while he used the other to root around in an inside jacket pocket. “If that were the case, I’d have been zapped for carrying my hell fire.” He gave a slight grin as he produced a round globe with a searing yellow and orange flame inside. “Pretty, isn’t it?” He held it up for us to see. “It could send you straight to hell.” He set it on the bed.
Diana and I both shrank back.
Rachmort didn’t notice.
“Oh, and I forgot I had this.” He drew a cackling insect from his jacket. “Not to worry. Theodore is trained. You should see Petite Ice Nymphs in the wild. Nasty buggers.”
“Can you put that away?” I asked.
He seemed surprised at that. “Oh, sure.”
Diana took another step back. “Why do you even have that stuff?”
“I counsel the black souls of purgatory,” he told Diana. “This makes me easier to relate to. You have to know your audience. Anyhow, back to our problem, I can tell you unequivocally that dangerous items can make it past the wards.”
“Yes,” I said, “like Cerberus slobber.”
“So what got in here?” Diana asked. “When did it start?”
I tried to think back. “I don’t know. I took some grave dirt on the way here, but I’m not possessed. And it wasn’t evil.”
“You have to invite it in,” Diana said.
“Unfortunately you don’t,” Rachmort said, regret coloring his voice. “There must be a pathway however. That’s what makes it tricky.”
How was I supposed to find a pathway when I couldn’t even count on my demon detector senses working? Think. “If we don’t know ‘how’ then we need to figure out ‘who’.” I sat up on my pillows, glad no one tried to stop me. My head was feeling better and my voice was, too, now that I was using it. “The only demon who is after me—at the moment—is the Earl of Hell.” At least that was the only one I knew about. “We locked him up, though.”
“Don’t rule out your Earl,” Rachmort said. “Zatar isn’t one to stew for centuries.”
I reached out with my demon slayer senses, tested the space around us for as far as I could reach in my weakened state. “I can’t feel him,” I said, “even before the dress incident. I didn’t sense any demons. I’d know if someone is possessed. I’m a slayer.”
“Except that you didn’t see it coming,” Rachmort said. “Did you?”
“No,” I whispered.
He was right. My powers had been compromised.
Hadn’t I known in, in some way, from the minute I stepped on this property?
“Can you help?” I asked Rachmort.
“I don’t sense demons,” he said, “but I will work to see if I can determine which of your guests could be stricken.”
“What do I do?” How could I fight this evil if I couldn’t even sense it?
A boom went up outside, and I heard biker witches cussing.
Boots tromped up the stairs and the door flew open. “Rachmort, can you get down here?” Grandma asked.
He nodded, and stood to go. “Be careful,” he told me by way of parting.
“You, too,” I said.
At least I was sitting now. I swung my legs over to get out of bed.
Diana caught them. “I promised I’d take care of you.”
“You did,” I told her. “Now I’ve got to figure out what’s going on. Hand me my leather pants.” My legs were smooth, maybe a little red. And weak. Otherwise, you’d never know I’d been poisoned.
“You’re worse than Dimitri,” she said, as I stood slowly.
“Thanks,” I said, managing to stay upright.
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“So how the hell are you going to find a demon you can’t even sense?” she asked me, as if I wasn’t having enough trouble putting my pants on.
“Simple,” I said, zipping them up and fastening the button. “I’m doing it the old fashioned way.”
***
I was extremely quiet, and kept to the right side of the bannister as I headed down the main staircase. There were still small groups of Dimitri’s relatives gathered in the sitting room. They leaned their heads together, talking quietly, fearfully.
My legs still felt a little weak, and I took it slow. Still, I didn’t want to bring any attention to myself or have to hear about how I should be in bed. Recovering was one thing. It was something else to sit around doing nothing while someone or something tried to destroy us.
When I made it outside, I saw a pair of biker witches at the far end of the drive, right before it sloped down. They were working with a group of objects on the ground. Spells, most likely. To my far right, I saw a plume of smoke erupt from the dense gardens on the side of the house.
“Lizzie!” A wet nose found the back of my knee, and I nearly stumbled off the porch. “I told you one of these days I’d be able to sneak up on you.”
Yes, well I wasn’t quite myself this evening. “Where have you been, Pirate?”
He stood as tall as his stubby legs would allow. “Your mom threw me outside for barking. Can you believe it? I was only trying to tell you your dress was here.”
The dress was the least of my problems now.
“You think you can help me with something, bub?” I asked, bending to scratch his knobby head. As soon as he saw me reach down, he got so excited he couldn’t stop moving. I hit his ear, snout, his nose. “I need to search the estate, see if we can find more of those markers, like the one you saw in the observatory.”
“Oh, I will be good at that,” Pirate said, falling in next to me as I started walking. “I have been all over this place. Running. Chasing rabbits. Running. Did you know there’s not a fence? I could run until I fall over. In fact, I did that. Flappy had to bring me home.”
“Which way?” I asked. It was more a question for myself than for him. The sides of the house looked clear. It would be hard to hide something on open ground. The gardens in the back, however, left all kinds of possibilities.
“Dimitri is making sure everything out front here is safe,” Pirate said, starting to head that way.
“Let’s go out back,” I said, making it several feet before Pirate realized I’d done the opposite.
He rushed to join me. “What is this? Some kind of super secret mission?” he asked, his stubby legs going a mile a minute as he kept up with me.
“I’m afraid they’re going to try and make me stay in the house,” I said to him, as I double-checked my switch stars. No telling what we’d find out there.
“I get it,” Pirate said as we neared an arched trellis that marked the entrance to the side garden. “When I want to be in, people throw me out. When I want to go out, no one ever opens the door.”
I opened my demon slayer senses as we neared the garden. I detected nothing. I focused on something new—the slight hum of my switch stars. In the past, I’d always been able to detect their subtle power. Now, I couldn’t even feel that.
What had we gotten into?
“Be careful, Pirate.”
He snorted. “Careful? Shit. Any creeps out here better watch out for me.”
Yes. Fear the mighty Jack Russell Terrier and the injured demon slayer.
I still had my powers. That was evident enough by the way I’d nuked my wedding gown in the sitting room. But I didn’t have my instincts, and that was dangerous.
It felt like I was going in blind.
We made it through the herb garden, and instead of heading through the roses, like last time, we veered into a covered garden. It swallowed us up. The archway didn’t end with the trellis, rather the wiry top extended over us, forming a tunnel as climbing vines grew up and over us on bot
h sides.
“This is like a cave!” Pirate said.
“Have you been this way before?” I asked, noticing the spider designs on the tunnel supports.
What was it with this place and spiders?
“Of course I’ve been this way before,” Pirate said, every step light as he streaked out ahead of me. “I’ve been everywhere.”
I reached out to touch one of the iron spiders. It was slick and cold. “How long does this go?”
“I don’t know,” my dog said, turning a corner, “I usually run!”
“Pirate, wait!” I dashed after him, afraid he was about to spring a booby trap or barrel headlong into something treacherous or heck—unleash a curse.
Instead, he stood at the end of another tunnel that led to a large, dry pool that held the battered husks of plants. Water lilies, I assumed.
“Are there any markers in there?” I asked, approaching slowly, saving my strength.
“Lemme see,” Pirate said, scrambling up the side and basically tipping head first into the mess. I could hear him crunching around in the dead leaves before I got close enough to see him.
“Well?”
He leapt from pile to pile like a tiny stag. “It tickles my tummy!”
“Pirate, focus.”
“No crazy markers, but that lady don’t have a face.”
For a second, I thought the ghost was back, and then I saw the statue overlooking the pond. It was some kind of a water nymph, with flowing robes and hair. She held her hands out, palms cupped toward the sky. And Pirate was right—she had no face.
“Looks like the people in the observatory,” Pirate said, looking up at her.
“Those weren’t people.” They were very creepy statues.
I scanned the bottom of the pond, glad for once that Pirate had stirred things up. The bottom was slick, red tile, with no markers in sight. I walked the perimeter of the pool and checked the base and robes of the statue to make sure.
They were clean.
Hades. I wasn’t sure where to go next. Several paths branched off from our little clearing, like spokes on a wheel. I counted six, including the one we’d just used.
“What way is the best, bub?” I asked. He’d been down some of these.
