Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2)

by Leslie Claire Walker

  I spoke the question I’d come to ask.

  They answered with a rush of wings.

  The fire went out.

  My head rocked to the side once. Twice. I felt the air moving before a third blow. Grabbed whatever had been about to hit me again. Forced my eyes open.

  I had hold of Stacy’s arm at the wrist. Which I held hard enough to break.

  Her words seemed to come from a hundred miles away. It echoed inside my head. “Rude, are you all right?”

  “No,” I said.

  Her mouth had fallen open. She studied my face.

  “What? How did the magic look to you?”

  “Like more than you bargained for. Let go of me.”

  I peeled my fingers from her skin. My hand shook. I couldn’t stop the trembling.

  “Did you do it?” she asked.

  I nodded. “They’ll watch for us. They’ll report what they see to me. Bonus, they’ll tell their friends. We have the whole network.”

  The Singer knelt beside us. “What’s the catch?”

  I met her gaze. “I have a better understanding of what happened to your people in Faery last time. When they corrupted.”

  She reached for my hand. Squeezed it. “You’re not safe to be around.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “You should stay here with Kevin’s father,” she said. “Don’t risk going out there. Not like this.”

  “Scott can’t go on his own.”

  “He can’t go with you, either, Davies.”

  Someone behind them cleared his throat. I glanced up. “Speak of the Devil.”

  “You all made a big, bright flash of purple light,” he said. “The transformer blew.”

  I looked around. The house was dark again. And all the other houses. No lights. No power. “Mr. Landon’s gonna be pissed. No electricity means no coffee.”

  “Not to mention no A/C. It’s gonna get hot fast. Y’all do something, you don’t mess around,” Scott said.

  “Go big or go home.” I braced myself against the tree. Tried to use the strength in my legs to push to standing. Failed big time. “Need a little help here.”

  Scott stepped in and hauled me upright. “I hear somebody say you’re not coming with me to the tree?”

  “It’s a big risk,” the Singer said.

  “Bigger risk if I can’t talk to it. Which I can’t. Regular Joe human here. Hey, where’s Malek?”

  The god slipped around the curve of the tree like a ghost. He looked at me with the same sadness as before, but he didn’t say I told you so, for which I felt eternally grateful.

  I’ll go with you, he signed to Scott.

  Who furrowed his brow. “Here’s where I should’ve studied a second language.”

  That put a damper on communication. Nothing like sending two people into a potentially dangerous situation with a pen and a notepad and hoping for the best. Wait.

  “You’ll go with him?” I asked.

  You stay here with Melody.

  “Didn’t you say that’s a recipe for disaster?”

  Not in so many words.

  “In every other words except those,” I said.

  We do what we have to. I can talk with the tree.

  Scott couldn’t. And I had no business anywhere near it. “Fine.”

  Malek walked into the house, disturbing another wave of crickets in the grass.

  “What just happened?” Scott asked.

  I put my arm around his shoulders. “You’re taking the field trip with him instead of me.”

  “I’m gonna hate this. Aren’t I?”

  “Probably.”

  “You trying to tell me you love me, or do you need help getting inside?”

  “Both,” I said. “I think I need to eat again before I crash.”

  “Whatever the locusts haven’t devoured?”

  We had picked the kitchen pretty well clean. “I know where Kevin keeps his stash of peanut butter cups.”

  “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  “Always.”

  The first golden fingers of dawn brushed the sky as we closed the door behind us. I didn’t like it. It felt too bright, like a spotlight. Not like the house, where the power outage left everything cloaked in shadow.

  Mr. Landon had lit candles in the kitchen and the living room, and opened all the drapes and blinds. People looked at me funny—or funnier than usual. I guessed we really had made a big bang in the back yard.

  Melody perched on the arm of Mr. Landon’s chair. She met my gaze and held it. I read sorrow in her eyes. And another thing. The thing Malek had tried to convince me to believe. Tenderness. Understanding. Not love, but something like it.

  Was that a lie, too?

  Maybe I was fooling myself, but I didn’t think so.

  Then we rounded the corner into the hall and Scott pushed me toward Kevin’s room. The dog took up position at our heels, nails clicking on the hardwood. Scott leaned me against the door jamb by the glow of the camping lantern on Kevin’s desk.

  Kev was in the middle of changing his clothes. He pulled on a clean pair of jeans, then bent over and shook water out of his hair, the tips of his wings dusting the light fixture on the ceiling. He straightened up again and combed his wet hair with his fingers. Curled his bare toes into the rug.

  “Hey,” Scott said. “You took a shower?”

  Kevin flexed his wings. “With these? You’re kidding. I stuck my head under the sink. Better than sleep.”

  “Whatever you say.” Scott threw us both a two-fingered salute. “Gotta go.”

  “Don’t die,” Kevin said.

  “Back atcha.” He retreated down the hall.

  Kevin waved me in. “Malek told me the sitch. He’s going with Scott and you’re staying here with our favorite demon chick.”

  “I’m in bad shape.”

  He looked me up and down. “Who beat you up?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then where’d the bruises come from?”

  I opened the closet door to get at the full-length mirror on the back of it. I looked like warmed-over dog crap. Besides the monster mash, I had a cut lip and a set of black-and-blues. My forehead. Side of my head.

  “This is so very bad,” I said. “This is from my seer’s intuition. Or whatever I should call it now. The change has taken me, Kev. Not all the way yet, but I’m freaking out.”

  “Your magic did that to you?”

  “Can you believe it?” I asked.

  Kev whistled.

  “I know, right?”

  “Yeah. While we’re on the topic, I’m noticing some stuff about myself that’s disturbing what’s left of my calm.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You remember last fall after the deal with my dad and the King, when the Singer turned one-hundred-percent fae? After that happened, she went from caring about us to keeping this…distance. When I saw her at the royal court and I was screwed nine ways to Sunday and it was life or death, she said she couldn’t help me. It was like I still meant something to her, but she couldn’t reach me. Or I couldn’t reach her. You know? I think I understand how she felt. I see y’all as individual people. My friends. I know you’re my friends. At the same time, I can’t shake this feeling that you’re all just cells in an organism. The Human.”

  “The Human, capital H?”

  “Weird, I know,” Kev said.

  I squinted at him. “Are you sure you said all that in English?”

  “No. Blood sugar?”

  “Post-magic starvation. I could eat an entire cow.”

  He cocked his head toward the desk. “You know what to do.”

  I pulled out the third drawer. Took six packages of candy and sat down on the bed, pushing his dirty jeans out of the way. I tore into the first one and spoke around a bite of chocolate and peanut butter. “So you’re feeling the distance. With all of us? Or just some of us?
”

  He drew his wings tight against his back. “Almost all of you.”

  “Amy?”

  He looked at the ceiling.

  “The Singer?”

  He turned his gaze on me. It looked colder than usual. Alien. I swallowed the bite I’d been chewing and choked on it.

  He handed me a half-empty can of soda to wash it down with. “I should be able to help it, shouldn’t I?”

  The carbonation burned on the way down. “I don’t think willpower has a lot to do with who you love.”

  “I love them both,” he said.

  “Neither of them seems willing to share, dude.”

  He nodded. “Not the problem of the moment.”

  “It’ll keep a little while. Which bayou are you and Amy going to for the water?”

  He blew out a shaky breath. “Buffalo.”

  “Not the closest to here.”

  “No, but it is closest to the heart of the city. It feels right.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “You gotta go with your gut. I’ll be keeping track of you. You need something, look for the birds. Talk to them.”

  “They’ll understand me?” he asked.

  “They’ll relay whatever you say—and whatever they see—to me.”

  He sat beside me and pulled on his socks. Slipped his feet into his sneakers. “Amy’s still mum about what happened at Malek’s. I told her I knew he’d done magic for her. That he’d given her a tat. She refused to show it to me. Can you believe that?”

  “No. Yes.” I shook my head. “She’s not right, Kevin. You get that, don’t you? There’s all this emotion underneath her surface. It’s as if she can barely hold it in. Barely keep it together.”

  “She’s been through a lot,” he said.

  So had the rest of us, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to be an asshole. “Maybe she doesn’t have the same kind of coping skills we have.”

  “Or maybe she just feels things more than the rest of us.”

  “That’s power,” I said.

  He looked at me. “How do you mean?”

  “She always talks about how she doesn’t have superpowers, but being able to feel that much, that’s—I don’t know what that is. But it feels like something.”

  “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” he said.

  I tried to imagine what it must be like for her. My imagination agreed with Kev. “Maybe I’m talking out of my ass. It’s probably nothing.”

  “Never is.”

  “Just be careful. Both of you.”

  “I’ve got her back,” he said.

  “She knows.”

  He shrugged, defeated. “Why don’t you sack out in here?”

  “I don’t see how I can if I have to watch Melody.”

  “The Singer can do it while you’re out. I’ll tell her. Don’t worry about it. We’re all doing double duty. Amy and I are catching a ride with Scott and Malek. That ought to be a blast.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, dude.”

  “No problem. Just don’t get any crumbs in my bed.” He rooted through his dirty jeans pockets. Grabbed his wallet and his phone.

  “Phones still don’t work.”

  “Neither does my money.” He shoved them in his pockets anyway. “Habit. Still feels weird, this no shirt thing.”

  “Wings in the way,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “See you later,” I said.

  He grinned just as coldly as he stared. “At the end game.”

  I listened as his footfalls faded down the hall. Heard the front door open. People heading out to get what we needed. Zach jumped onto the bed and wove his way around me. Curled up in a large ball at my side.

  The last sound I heard was the Explorer’s engine gunning to life and the squeal of its brakes as Scott pulled out of the driveway. Sleep took me deep.

  I dreamed of living fire.

  Stacy and the faery cops in the woods. Correction, swampy woods that smelled of mud and water shaded by four different kinds of oak trees, pecan trees, bald cypress. Grackles in the windblown branches. I saw through their eyes.

  A lake. Alligators.

  Which meant they’d gone to Brazos Bend, southwest of town.

  Stacy hunkered on the shore looking for something among the rocks, fingertips brushing the dirt, picking up small stones and discarding them one by one. What she was after, I didn’t know—until I remembered from my scout days that flint could be found near bodies of fresh water, or places that had once been underwater. She had to be searching for flint, and it would have to be taken directly from the land. It couldn’t be bought or stolen. Not to make the kind of fire we needed.

  Lake water had soaked the hem of her skirt, her sandals, and her feet. She took a squishy step around a mat of twigs and grass and soil. A hissing sound rose close by. Officer Burns stepped between Stace and the source of that sound—a mother gator guarding her nest. All six feet of her.

  Any sane person would’ve backed away. Gotten the hell out. But Burns stood his ground. He said something to the mama in a language I didn’t understand. She didn’t back down, but she didn’t charge him, either. She would, though. Only a matter of time.

  Stacy ignored her completely. Picked a stone from the earth and studied it. Smooth. Gray. Dry.

  She slid her special pocketknife from her skirt and flicked its iron blade open. Struck the stone seven times. On the last blow, the stone sparked.

  “Got it,” she said.

  Officer Reid held a glass jar in one hand and his gun in the other. “Good. We should go.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Then at least do us all a favor and move away from the nest, okay?”

  “I should make the fire right here.”

  “You’re going to die right here, girl.”

  “Just hold her off for a few minutes longer, will you? And bring the jar.”

  He muttered under his breath, but he did what she asked. The jar had a slip of paper inside. With ink marks. A handwritten spell.

  Stacy pulled a couple of dry balls of oak moss from her pocket. She went to work with the blade and the flint. Produced a ton of sparks. Minutes ticked by. The moss didn’t catch.

  The mama gator took a step toward Burns. He matched it. Kept the gator’s eyes on him.

  Stacy closed her eyes. Spoke a spell or a prayer. I read the words on her lips. The living fire. Need. We have need. Blessed be the powers of the great Elements. The living fire. The living flame.

  Over and over again. Striking spark after spark.

  The mama gator hissed.

  The oak moss caught. Orange flame that rapidly heated to blue at its core.

  Stacy dropped it in the jar. The fire consumed the paper in a single breath that left no ash. The flame changed. All of the orange faded until only the blue remained. The hottest fire.

  Burns kept his gaze on the gator. “Stacy, wrap it up.”

  She set the jar down for a moment. Replaced her pocketknife. Spoke a blessing over the flint, which she laid gently in the spot where she’d found it. Then she picked up the glass again.

  Any normal flame and the jar would be far too hot to touch. With the super heat of the living fire, the glass should’ve exploded. Neither happened.

  Stacy held it tightly in hand. Retraced her steps without turning around. Without taking her gaze off Burns and the alligator. And most importantly, without stepping on the nest.

  She backpedaled until she’d gotten a good thirty feet from it. Reid followed her closely.

  “We’re good,” he said.

  Burns took that as his cue. He walked backwards slow and sure, one careful step at a time. The mama gator kept pace with him. Hissing. Impatient. The strength of the muscle beneath her armor wound up and ready to loose like an arrow. With razor teeth.

  He’d almost cleared the nest.

  She lunged at him.

  I sat bolt upright in Kevin’s bed, my breath hard and fast. My heart raced. I waited for a
sign. A vision from the grackles that Burns had been attacked.

  It never came.

  It would’ve, though, if it had come to pass.

  The Singer appeared in the doorway, her eyes dark. “You up?”

  I rubbed my face. “Yeah. How long was I out?”

  “Two hours.”

  Panic bloomed in my belly. “That’s too long.”

  “You needed the shut-eye. We have a problem, though.”

  “Another problem, you mean. There are so many.”

  “Semantics are unbecoming, Davies. Melody’s gone.”

  I stared at her. “What? When?”

  “While I was watching. And no, I didn’t take my eyes off of her. She just poof! Disappeared. She left a note behind.”

  I stood up, knees popping. “Show me.”

  She handed me a sheet of paper torn from the notepad on Mr. Landon’s desk. Melody’s handwriting was all loops and squiggles. It made my head hurt.

  Gone to the house. Rude will know where it is.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “The house? What house?” I had no idea what Melody could be talking about. Also, no way could she have just vanished. People didn’t do that. Except stage magicians. None of those around here.

  “How did I know you’d say that?” the Singer asked.

  The camping lantern still glowed strong. Good batteries. The light that slanted in through the blinds was stronger, too. I took a deep breath. Inhaled the ghost of breakfast and the stench of Kevin’s dirty laundry basket.

  “Show me where she poofed from.”

  The Singer led me to the kitchen. A plate of old candles guttered on the table, new ones set to burn beside them. Beth sat at one end. She’d opened the book to the spell and read quickly, blinking to stay awake. The other chair? Empty. Foam cushion still dented with the impression of Melody’s butt.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  The Singer pointed toward the counter, where she’d sat next to Malek during the pre-dawn meeting. “I was composing.”

  “Your song, right?” The one we needed for the spell.

  Sheets of paper lay next to where she’d been. No musical notes, only penciled-in lyrics.

  “So you did take your eyes off her,” I said.

  “I watched her over the top of the paper.”

  “She had enough wiggle room to do something magical.”