Rohan snorted, reaching for a napkin that he used to meticulously wipe off his hands. Fine. Maybe my magic was kind of weird, being variations on a theme rather than one ability gained all at once. But considering that all the other Rasha had ages to understand magic and what would happen when they came into their powers, and I was just mastering it on the go, I was acing the catch-up.
“How do we know these magic forensic chemists don’t exist?” I asked.
“Oh, I just asked Rabbi Abrams.”
“Ari!” I jumped off the bar stool, my heart hammering.
“Calm down, stress case, I didn’t tell him. But hasn’t he risked enough for us already? He deserves to know.”
“Save your breath.” Rohan removed the canister of ground coffee from the freezer, slamming the door. “We’ve had this conversation a dozen times.”
“And for the dozenth and first.” I stacked our dishes in the dishwasher. “I’m not saying anything until we know who’s responsible for the purple magic. The man is a billion years old. I’m not potentially causing him to stroke out based on supposition.”
They turned identical scowls on me. Even Kane had been nagging me to bring the head of our chapter on board. I was terrified to tell the rabbi. Partially because I didn’t want to upset him, but mostly because he was the one rabbi in this entire Brotherhood that I trusted. How was I supposed to tell him the core of the cause that he’d devoted his life to was rotten? It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the one responsible, I knew what they did to messengers, and I wasn’t ready to give up the fond smile he bestowed on me whenever he saw me.
“We don’t have a forensic chemist,” I said, “but we do have drugs with demon magic all over them.” I sealed up the remaining crystals in the vial once more.
“What happened?” Ari asked.
Letting me relay the events of the night, Rohan filled the coffee machine with a new filter and grounds, sliding the empty glass carafe onto the base. He flipped on the power switch, the machine gurgling to life.
Ari squeezed my shoulder. “Geez. That’s rough. Sorry to hear it.”
I didn’t even like Naomi, so why was I obsessively checking the clock on the wall to see if it was late enough in the morning to call Christina’s brother Henry for an update? I turned away from the clock with purpose. The only thing I could do to help right now was find the demons responsible.
“We’re going to need a new paintbrush.” Since the crystals had dissolved into the brush and saturated it with demon magic, it was now officially useless for further spell casting. Thanks to the spell, it would forever remain the color of the magic signature.
Generally, this didn’t matter, like with the gogota’s finger or yaksas horn, because we wanted that proof of the magic signature to remain, but sometimes it sucked. No amount of dry cleaning had changed the coat that I’d tested back to its natural pale green. I could have lived with a red coat, the color that Dr. Gelman’s witch magic had turned the fabric, but it looked like a bad dye job and was now unwearable.
I was so done with my ongoing loss of clothing.
I took a few deep breaths, letting the sweet burbles of the coffeepot melt away stress and tension better than any ylang ylang shit. Meditation with hippy oils was all well and good for people with no worries more pressing than destressing from their morning commute, but for those of us with hellspawn breathing down our necks on a regular basis, mainlining caffeine was a must.
Rohan got two chunky ceramic mugs out of the cupboard and held up a third. Ari nodded at him. “Oh, hey. I got a lead from Christina while I was consoling her,” Ro said. “She said she bought the Sweet Tooth from some skater kid who lives on her block. Told me where he hangs out. We’ll start there.”
“Leo and I have plans. As you very well know.”
“Nava,” he said, all blustery stern. “You’re still going there?”
“Rohan,” I mocked back in a deep voice. “We still need answers about the Brotherhood.”
He sighed and passed me my coffee with its correct 3:2 ratio of milk to sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon on top. “It’s not that I don’t believe you can pull it off.”
I smiled at him. “I know.”
Ari scrunched his nose. Initially he’d been hardcore Team Brotherhood, but after I told him the truth about nearly being killed by a modified demon, he’d come around to Team Nava. He still had some issues accepting that the organization he’d been a member of since birth wasn’t squeaky clean, but actually fixing the problem was much more important to me than sweeping it under a rug to spare my twin’s feelings.
Rohan took a sip of his disgusting black coffee. “How’s Leo doing? Her midterms last week sounded rough.”
I tipped my mug to my lips, watching him through lidded eyes. See? This. How many other guys would show compassion for a demi-goblin’s summer semester course load? “She’s good.”
Ari dumped more sugar into his coffee. “Is there a Plan B for today?”
“Yeah,” Rohan said. “Be careful. That’s also plans C through Z.”
“Sweet boy.” Mug cradled in one hand, I headed out, swinging around the island for a quick pit stop. I rose onto tiptoe and kissed Rohan on the cheek. Damn. Even that gave me a short, intense rush of sunshine. “There’s only one Plan B. Don’t fuck up Plan A.”
3
Leonie and I braved bumper-to-bumper traffic along the highway and out over the Portman Bridge, its coiled steel cables stretching like sails above the cars.
Eyes closed, she tilted her face toward the open window, her straight red hair streaming and her Sexy Ruby perfume scattering the scent of apricot and jasmine through the car.
The cool nip of the morning summer breeze had burned away by the time the car bumped over the pothole-ridden dirt parking lot for Eddy’s Scrap and Salvage Yard, located out in the valley. Heat shimmered up in waves from the endless lines of cars.
Throwing the car into Park and cutting the engine, I pushed my oversized, black vintage sunglasses up my nose and winced when I touched my cheek, flushed from the sun streaming on it during the drive. Damn. I really needed to remember to sunscreen or I’d look like a Coppertone toad.
“You got it?” Leo scrambled after me, her flip flops thwacking softly.
I popped my trunk and unlocked a small iron box. A blue velvet bag was nestled inside. “Curious to see what a cursed diamond looks like?”
“Like that’s a question.”
I turned away so the reveal wouldn’t affect me but at Leo’s “Whoa!” glanced back.
The diamond was the size of a fat chestnut, uncut and flawless. I leaned in to admire it. To adore it, grateful that this puny being could bask in its splendor.
Leo smacked me across the face, snapping me out of the gem’s compulsion. Good thing. I didn’t have time to rip her to shreds for ownership, which had almost happened with Rohan when we’d first retrieved it.
I rubbed my cheek. “Thanks, you sadistic freak.”
“Humans,” my half-goblin bestie scoffed. “So weak.” She put the diamond away, stuffing the velvet bag into her orange cotton sundress, and lovingly cupping her now oddly-shaped tit. “I always wanted a Cubist boob.”
I snorted.
We made our way to the entrance of the salvage yard, my Sketcher high tops becoming more black-and-brown than black-and-white. I scanned for any hint of motion. The zizu demon we’d come to see would sense the diamond’s presence any moment now and come for it.
“Hi.” A cheerful middle-aged guy in a faded ball cap, his beer gut straining his dirty green coveralls with the word “Eddy” stitched in black across his heart, stepped out of a small trailer at the front gate. A wooden sign with “Office” painted on was nailed to the dusty aluminum siding. “Looking for car parts?” He chewed a toothpick between fleshy lips.
If Eddy was the demon, he should have been acting twitchy, trying to get to the jewel, but he looked like the last time he experienced tension was being squeezed out the birth canal.
“Transmission,” I said as Leo chimed in with “Engine.”
Eddy’s brows creased, but he shrugged. “Well. Sounds like a car in need of some TLC.” He took out his toothpick and jabbed it at the lot. “Use whatever you need. Engine hoists, wheel carts, we have it all. Let me know if you need a hand.”
The hoists, strewn around the lot, resembled primary-colored metal swing sets mounted on fat tire wheels. In the center of each was a lift secured with heavy chain and huge hydraulic pulleys.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a bit of a project. Might take us a while to find what we need.”
A boy and a girl, maybe five years old, both with wheat-blonde hair, barreled out of the office. The two stared at me with identical grave stares, dressed in gender-assigned T-shirts and shorts. Aw, the universal color-coding of fraternal twins.
Then the girl whipped a red foam block at her brother. Yup. That was universal, too.
Without missing a beat, he grabbed it, yelled, “Mine!” and ran.
Memories.
Setting his toothpick back into chew mode, Eddy grabbed the boy with one meaty hand, spun him around, and nudged him back toward the office. “Tony, Clea, cut it out. Both of you.”
He herded them back inside and shut the door.
“Hug right wall?” I asked.
Leo nodded and we strode onto the lot. “Guess what?” she said. “I learned that pap tests can suck my dick.”
“Mazel tov. My little girl is a woman.” I pressed my hand to my heart. “I’m all verklempt.”
She elbowed me in the gut. “Laugh now, but wait till you have to undergo the vaginal probe. You’ll fry the poor doctor and end up locked in a military compound while they run tests on you as the Brotherhood quietly celebrates.”
I shrugged. “A strong possibility. But maybe I’ll find that doctor to marry that Mom had always hoped for. I’d make a beautiful Stockholm Syndrome bride.”
We snickered, clearing the first long line of cars, some parked intact, others flattened and piled in high stacks. Sweat ran under my breasts and down my back. I lifted my arms up, flapping them to air out my pits. “It’s four hundred degrees out here. Where’s the stupid demon?”
We rounded the corner into the next wide row, trekking back the way we’d come.
Someone giggled behind us. I spun around with a “Boo!”
The two kids shrieked in delighted laughter.
“Are you supposed to be out here? It’s kind of dangerous.” I held out a hand. “Come on, we’ll take you back to your dad.”
The munchkins ran off. Also typical.
“It’s fenced.” Leo fiddled with her silver eyebrow ring. “They can’t get out.”
I was already dialing the office number. It went to voicemail so I left Eddy a message about his little Houdinis.
We picked up the pace. “Here, zizu, you jonsing motherfucker. Come get the pretty diamond.” I glanced back in the direction the children had gone. “We need to wrap this up.”
“Agreed.” She pushed me forward a few steps. “Stay in front of me. I’m pulling out the big guns.”
“I hope you mean the diamond and not your boobs,” I said.
“You’ll never know.”
I slowed down, my shoulder blades prickling, dying to turn around and gaze upon the jewel.
Leo poked me in the back. “Keep moving.”
“Don’t drop the merchandise,” I said sourly. “I don’t have time to track down another flawless cursed diamond.”
Rohan, Kane, Ari, and I had spent the past couple of weeks tracking the gem down using intel gleaned from David Security International, the Brotherhood’s public persona. Actually retrieving it had been a bitch of a mission involving oversized crab demons and a taste of being buried alive.
I placed my hand on my head as a makeshift hat against the relentless sun.
“You should have bought me a Popsicle,” Leo said.
“Hand over the ten bucks you owe me and you can pick your flavor.”
“A real friend wouldn’t have me pay up.”
“Be sure to mention that when you find one.” I wiped sweat off my brow, silently chanting eyes front. “Renege and I start charging interest. I’m not a good person like Rohan is.”
“Yeah, yeah. You have the best boyfriend in the world.”
“I do.” I veered around the jagged edge of a rusted door that was sticking out of a stack of crushed minivans. “Plus, he knows I’m no dilettante.”
“Okay, you need to stop with the app.”
“Expanding my vocabulary is an interesting and useful endeavor.”
“Nee.” She spun me around, the diamond behind her back, and turned her heart-shaped face up to mine, her brown eyes suffused with pity. “This isn’t your parents with Ari. It isn’t even Cole. Rohan doesn’t want a Lily imitation. He wants you.”
Any heartfelt sentiment I was about to spew was kiboshed as an araculum, a spider demon the size of a kitten, skittered across my foot, training its creepy rows of eyes on me.
I screamed, jerking back so hard I smacked my tailbone on an engine hoist. “Fuuuck!”
Leo crouched down by the araculum.
“Don’t touch it!” I yelled.
“I’ve touched worse.”
“That’s on you for hooking up with Drio.” I hissed through the burn, rubbing my back.
The demon scurried off under a VW camper and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Until he returned.
With buddies.
My first thought was “The kids!” then I had no time to think because dozens of araculum poured from the cars, swarming us. I burst into a full-body electric current, doing a cartoony jig so they couldn’t crawl up my legs. My normally ghost-pale skin turned blue, animated lightning bolts sliding over it as I slammed the monsters with everything I had.
Only once I’d dispatched the last of my attackers did I see Leo’s blood-covered hands. She clutched an araculum and was exsanguinating the fuck out of it. The demon was literally deflating, its legs spasming, and its body shriveling in on itself. Its fur was so soaked, the demon resembled a bloody sponge. The run-off dripped over Leo’s wrists, falling with quiet plops on her cute blue pedicure and running into the dirt next to the velvet bag laying at her feet.
Hot copper filled the air and my stomach heaved. Way to make me not care about the diamond.
With a soft pop, the final araculum winked out of existence, sucked dry. Leo had activated the sweet spot to kill it.
I forced myself not to step back and injected as much not-wigged-out cheer into my voice as I could. “Wow. Can you scent me when I’m on my period? Like a shark?”
Leo’s eyes flashed red as she licked the blood off the inside of her wrist, dainty, like a cat. “No.”
A tense silence fell over us, broken only by the crackle of Leo halfway unwrapping a power bar she’d stashed in the pocket of her sundress. Gotta love a dress with pockets. Even one with bloody fingerprints now dotting it. She crammed a piece of it into her mouth, barely chewing it before swallowing. “This is why I have to eat all the time.” I looked blankly at her. “The redcap goblin thing. If I don’t eat?” She ripped the rest of the bar open. “I crave blood. Probably have to rampage and pillage to satisfy it.”
My eyes bounced around for a safe place to look because the savagery of her bloody hands and feet were an unnerving contrast to my adorable friend. “That would suck,” I said carefully. “Hard to fit that in to your school schedule.”
“And work. Rampaging doesn’t give me extended medical.”
“What happens if you do get all bloodlusty and don’t satisfy it?” I braced myself. I wasn’t going to electrocute my bestie but her eyes still had a slight red haze to them.
She swallowed the other half of the energy bar and the haze faded. “I’d feel inclined to sport a hat kept wet with blood. The hottest accessory for any fashion-conscious redcap.” She twisted the torn wrapper, her bleak eyes at odds with her flippancy. �
�I’m scared one day I won’t make the right choice.”
I’d never seen Leo’s goblin magic and she’d never volunteered, so I’d never pushed her on it before. Seeing my best friend vamp out didn’t even phase me in the grand picture of what my life had become. What did phase me was the grand picture of what my life had become.
I should have reassured her that she’d always make the right choice, because at my continued silence Leo scooped the velvet bag off the ground and stomped off. “This is why I didn’t want you to ever see it. Because you can’t unsee it. Like that good-one-side dolphin we found on spring break.”
I ran after her. “I shoot electricity, my twin suffocates people with shadows, and I’m dating Ginsu Man. We’re all freaks, Leo. You’re not a half-rotted aquatic mammal. You’re my best friend and I love you.” I pointed at her chin. “You got a little schmutz there.”
Leo licked the blood off, her guarded eyes trained on mine.
I yawned and cocked an eyebrow.
A long, assessing look later, my bestie gave me a very shark-like grin that I swear involved too many teeth. “You scared of me?”
“Little bit. Yeah. Happy?” We ended up in the back left corner of the lot, a large unused space that had been bulldozed into uneven dirt in anticipation of more car storage.
“Yup.” She stuffed the wrapper in her pocket, then glanced at her hands. “It’s been way too long. I needed that fix.”
“Don’t make yourself sick. If you need to, suck ’em dry, baby.”
“I always do,” she said.
“Phrasing.”
She patted my cheek, leaving a sticky, bloody smear. “Should have set up a safe word.”
I spun in a circle, sunlight winking off the cars and cooking me alive. No signs of zizu demon life at all. “Now what? Either the diamond is a dud or the demon isn’t–”
More giggling from the two chubby, and now grubby, kindergarteners. Sunlight caught their baby-feather hair tufting off their heads. Wait. Zizu had feathers. These kids had been following us for a reason and it wasn’t because they were little dorks.
Bingo! “Leo! Show the diamond!”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Crave (Nava Katz Book 4) Page 4
