Forbidden

by Jana Oliver

  “I should have had Ayden’s tea,” she grumbled, but she’d completely forgotten that remedy until this morning.

  It annoyed her that Backwoods Boy might have a point: If Hell really wanted her dead, the fiends wouldn’t care how many people they killed to get to her even if the mysterious Ori was nearby. No way could she admit that to Beck’s face. His flurry of unwanted advice would become an avalanche.

  Riley sat at the kitchen table, face propped up by an elbow, watching the microwave carousel rotate her dad’s favorite cup, the one that said STUPIDITY CAN BE HABIT-FORMING.

  Forty more seconds and there’d be hot chocolate.

  She felt miserable, partly because of the poor night’s sleep but mostly because of the calendar. Today’s date was circled and marked with a big D. She’d marked the calendar that way because this was Dad Is Free day, the day of the full moon. After today no necromancer could touch him.

  “Yeah, that really worked, didn’t it?” she mumbled. She rose and turned the page to February, even though it was a day early. Anything to keep from staring at that D.

  Just as she returned to her chair and resumed the microwave vigil, her cell phone jarred her out of her misery. She answered it without looking at the display.

  “Riley?” a gravelly voice asked.

  “Good morning, Beck,” she said, not taking her eyes off the cup. Thirty seconds. First the hot chocolate, then oatmeal. Maybe she’d be adventurous and make toast.

  “I told ya to stay at the cemetery, but ya didn’t,” he said accusatorily. “I was outside, watchin’ yer place all night; that’s how I know.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” You sat out there in the cold? What kind of idiot are you?

  That was why Ori was nowhere to be seen. He wouldn’t want Beck to know he was around.

  “What are ya thinkin’, girl?” her caller demanded.

  “I’m thinking my hot water is almost ready and I don’t want to talk to you anymore, not if you’re going to be a stalkery butthead.” She hung up on him. He immediately rang back and she ignored it.

  “I’ll so pay for that,” she mumbled, but right now breakfast was the only thing she wanted to think about.

  Ding!

  “About time.”

  As she stirred the hot chocolate mix into the cup, she realized Beck wasn’t going to give an inch. He’d sit out there, night after night, watching her place like a vigilant bloodhound. If he kept it up, he’d be so tired a demon would make a meal of him. And if he was out there, it would make it harder for Ori to do his job.

  “Ah, jeez,” she grumbled. Why was everything so much hassle?

  What she needed was a “bolt hole,” at least until Ori caught up with that Five. Every trapper had a safe place on hallowed ground just in case the demons went to war. When her father had first told her about that, she’d thought it sounded really paranoid. After the Tabernacle, not so much. Beck’s bolt hole was in a church, so it was heated and had a bathroom, both of which would be a major improvement over the Blackthorne mausoleum, her family’s “sanctuary.” Besides, if she could find a place to stay, that would get Backwoods Boy off her case.

  “Until he comes up with something else to complain about.”

  The phone rang again, but it wasn’t Beck’s name on the caller ID. This wasn’t someone she could blow off.

  “Lass?” the Scotsman asked, his voice tight.

  “Master Stewart.” Why is he calling me?

  “I’m hearin’ that yer givin’ Beck a hard time. Now let’s be clear: Ya will be on hallowed ground after sundown, till I tell ya different.”

  “But why not during the day?” The Five had come after her in the late afternoon. Or, it might have been right after sundown. It was easy to lose track of time inside a library.

  “The beasties are stronger at night. Ya might be thinkin’ that ya might go about yer business and I’ll not know if yer followin’ my orders. That would be wrong.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be on hallowed ground at night.”

  “Glad we got that sorted. Good day ta ya, then.” Stewart hung up.

  Riley dropped the phone on the table like it was red hot. “Cute, Beck. Bring in the big dog,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re such a jerk.”

  A sharp series of raps came from the apartment door. She ignored them. Mrs. Litinsky didn’t knock that loudly, and she was the only person Riley was willing to see this early in the morning. At least until the hot chocolate was history.

  “Miss Blackthorne?” a voice called out. It took a moment for her to recognize it: It was the guy from the collection agency.

  “Go away,” she muttered under breath, continuing to stir the hot chocolate. Almost all the little clumps were gone now. A few more stirs and—

  “Miss Blackthorne? Your car is in the parking lot so I know you’re here.”

  Well, at least she could see what this idiot knew about her father’s summoning.

  Riley opened the door, leaving the chain lock in place. The guy promptly wedged a highly polished shoe inside to keep it from shutting. He wore a black suit, white shirt, gray tie, and carried a black briefcase. His hair was so glued down it didn’t budge when he moved. It made him look like one of those dress-up dolls she used to play with as a kid.

  He offered his card and she took it. ARCHIBALD LESTER, CLAIMS ADJUDICATOR.

  “What do you want?” she asked. Her hot chocolate was cooling.

  “I would think that would be obvious,” the man replied, an eyebrow arched. He pulled a sheaf of legal-size paperwork out of his briefcase. That was never a good thing.

  “If you’ll just tell me where I can find your father’s body and where the funds from his sale are located, we can get this taken care of without any unpleasantness.”

  Her sleepy fog vanished. “You think I sold my own father?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter who did the selling as long as we receive the money and the asset in question.”

  “Asset?”

  “Your father’s body.”

  Her stomach twisted. “No way.” She tried to shut the door, but the guy’s foot prevented that.

  “You’re not helping matters, Miss Blackthorne.”

  Riley jammed a finger in his direction. “Why don’t you go find the necromancer who stole my dad and ask him for that asset.”

  “We’d rather deal with you. You don’t wield magic. If you refuse to cooperate, I’ll be forced to file a complaint with the police.”

  A giggle escaped Riley’s mouth before she realized it. Then another. She wasn’t a giggler, but this was just too stupid to think about. After everything that had happened, this guy was worried about money.

  The man’s face clouded. “You’re not taking this seriously, Miss Blackthorne.”

  The giggles ended abruptly. “I watched people die the other night. Do you think I give a damn about your money?”

  “You should. It’s your debt.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m seventeen, so I’m not responsible for anything my parents did. You people are totally hosed, and you know it.”

  He glowered. “Then we’ll play hardball. We’ll confiscate your father’s life insurance payment.”

  Can they really do that? “Whatever,” she said. She just didn’t care anymore.

  “You’ll regret this,” he called out.

  “The regrets line forms to the right,” she said.

  The CDC guy retrieved his foot microseconds before she slammed the door.

  * * *

  In Riley’s search for the Guild’s priest, the church secretary used the words temporary and mortuary in the same sentence and sent her to a location just west of downtown. After a bit of hunting she located the building, a music shop that still had sun-faded posters in the windows announcing the latest albums from several years back. Now it was home to the Guild’s fallen, as no mortuary would touch a trapper if the cause of death was demonic in origin. Another weird superstition, as if death
by demon was somehow contagious. Apparently Father Harrison had found a sympathetic soul who had agreed to let them use the location until the trappers were buried.

  Eight pine caskets sat in a neat row down the center of the store, their lids closed. Each had an index card attached with the name of the coffin’s occupant. These eight were just the start: Not all the bodies had been identified by the coroner yet, and others were still buried under the rubble at the Tabernacle. Standing near the head of the coffins was a trapper about her father’s age. That was tradition: A member of the Guild remained with the dead until they were buried. It had been Simon’s choice to perform that duty for her dad. Riley didn’t know this particular trapper’s name, but he gave her a solemn nod, which told her the man wasn’t an enemy. She made sure to return the gesture.

  Father Harrison was attempting to comfort an older woman. “I didn’t want him to do this,” she said in between sobs. “I told him it’d get him killed.”

  The man next to her, probably her husband, mumbled something reassuring, but it didn’t seem to help. The woman only sobbed louder. As they left the building, Riley stepped aside to give them space.

  Father Harrison joined Riley in the doorway. About thirty with brown hair and eyes, today he appeared older, dark circles beneath his eyes.

  “Ethan’s parents,” he explained. “He was their only son.”

  Riley dug for tissues as tears began to burn. The priest held his silence until she’d pulled herself back together. He’d probably been doing that all day.

  “I heard about your father’s reanimation,” the priest said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, I thought I had it covered.” She blew her nose one more time, jammed the tissues in a pocket, then leaned against the building. “You know about the Holy Water problem?”

  The priest nodded. “The Archbishop called me. He said you’d discovered the consecration dates were incorrect and that some of the Holy Water was counterfeit.”

  “I bought some from the vendor at the market and took it to the meeting so we could test it. Some of the bottles didn’t react right.”

  “Tested? How?” Harrison asked. He, too, was leaning against the building now.

  “I put my demon claw inside the bottles.” Riley pulled the item out from under her shirt, all three inches of ebony lethalness. Its former owner, a Grade Three Gastro-Fiend, had not so kindly left it in her thigh as a souvenir when it had tried to kill her. Beck had made it into a necklace, and now she wore it with perverse pride.

  The priest leaned closer to her, studying it intently. “Wicked thing, isn’t it?”

  “Totally,” she agreed as she tucked the talon away. “The real Holy Water went nuts when it touched the claw. The fake stuff didn’t do a thing. And I found out that the fake bottles have labels that smear when they get wet, so that’s a quick way to check them.”

  Harrison swiped a hand over his face. “I’d heard rumors that the Holy Water wasn’t working as it should, but I never thought someone might actually be counterfeiting it.”

  “I checked the labels on the bottles Simon used for the ward, and they were good.” There was more to it than that. Riley lowered her eyes, not wanting to see the priest’s face when she made her confession. “But I didn’t check what was inside those bottles. Maybe if I had, those trappers would still be alive.”

  She waited for the condemnation. Instead she heard a profound sigh. “It wouldn’t have mattered, Riley,” Harrison murmured. “It’s not your fault. There were a lot of demons in that building, am I right?”

  Her eyes rose. “They were everywhere. It was so scary.”

  “Holy Water loses its potency in the presence of sustained evil, unless it’s consecrated by the Pope.”

  “So if it had just been one or two of them they might not have gotten through?”

  The priest nodded. “Even if the Holy Water Simon used was counterfeit, he’d created a ward for the previous meeting, and the ones before that. The effects wouldn’t fade that fast unless there was an immensely evil presence or all the Holy Water was bogus.”

  “The trappers aren’t going to believe that. They’re going to think he made a mistake or that I did something wrong.”

  “Or that your father let them inside the ward.”

  Her eyes veered upward. “He didn’t! He was trying to save me, not kill all of us.”

  “I know,” the priest said, gently touching her arm. “Your father was an honorable man, but that doesn’t mean others might not want to make him a scapegoat. Or you, for that matter. You have to prepare yourself for that possibility, Riley.”

  “It’s already started,” she admitted.

  “I feared as much.”

  For one wild instant she felt the need to tell the priest about her deal with Heaven. Then her eyes shifted to the trapper standing vigil over the caskets. She didn’t dare, not with him here. He might overhear her, and then he’d tell the others, who’d make fun of her, accuse her of being crazy. Master Harper might find a way to use that to force her out of the Guild.

  I don’t want Simon to know. He’d feel like he owed her something, and that wasn’t the way she wanted their future to play out. She’d tell Father Harrison her secret someday. Just not today.

  When Riley left a few minutes later she felt better for having talked to the priest and she’d received his permission to use Beck’s bolt hole at the church for her temporary living quarters. No more cold nights in the graveyard.

  One problem solved. That left countless others. On impulse, she dug out the list she’d made at the coffee shop and studied it. Nothing to cross off yet. The least she could do was buy her groceries.

  If Harrison was right and concentrated evil had taken out the Holy Water ward, then neither she nor Simon had caused the deaths of their fellow trappers. That was a profound relief. Simon has to know he isn’t to blame. It was what the priest hadn’t said that weighed on her mind.

  If the Holy Water isn’t strong enough, how do we stop the demons?

  EIGHT

  Riley knew she should be at Harper’s place by now, but dealing with her master rated a negative five on a scale of one to ten. The feeling was mutual. So she’d bought groceries, one thing off her list, and now she was savoring a big cup of hot chocolate at the coffee shop and wasting time by staring at nothing. If she stared hard enough she couldn’t hear the sound of roaring flames. Or the cries of the dying.

  “Hello?” a voice called out. “Earth to Riley.”

  Riley glared up at the unwelcome interruption. Her barista friend, Simi, was clad in a criminally short jean skirt, black tights, and blood-red T-shirt that said PHREAKS ARE PHUN, her hair a wild mishmash of electric blue and hot pink. On her, it all looked good because she was a potpourri of Irish, Native American, Lebanese, and Chinese. Simi had never really explained how all that global DNA had connected, which was probably for the best.

  Her friend pulled out a chair and took a seat. Her purse, a plush vampire bat with huge purple fangs, dropped on the table in front of her.

  “Why are you here? You’re not working today,” Riley muttered.

  “Looking for you. I think it’s time for a Simi intervention.”

  Riley groaned. The last intervention had been two years ago, right after Allan, the soon to be ex-boyfriend, had socked her in the jaw. It’d been Simi who’d figured out how to apply enough makeup to cover the massive bruise so there’d be no questions from her classmates, but not so much that Riley looked like a zombie.

  “No one has hit me today,” Riley retorted. “Just go away. I’m busy brooding, okay?”

  “Not okay. You’re coming with me,” Simi said, jumping up from her chair so fast it spooked a couple of customers nearby. Maybe it was because the girl lived on coffee. “I’m going to take care of your follicular issues.”

  “My hair is fine.”

  “No, your hair is fried, toasted, and shriveled. It needs help. Just like you.” Simi leaned over the table. “You know I’
m right. You don’t want your trapper boyfriend to see you like this.”

  “He already has.”

  “And he’s probably praying he won’t see you like this again.”

  “I don’t want—”

  But that was the problem with her friend—the world ceased to exist until Simi got her way, which she usually did by sheer force of will. Riley continued to protest as she was pushed and tugged out of the coffee shop and onto the street. She gave her friend the glare that always worked on her other friends. No response. Apparently Simi was immune, so Riley gave up.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” her friend trilled.

  As they threaded their way through the city’s streets, Simi kept up a running conversation about the club she’d been to the night before. Some place called the Decadent Vampire.

  “Let me guess: They wear fake teeth and lurk a lot,” Riley said, conjuring up an image of her faux-vamp classmate who lisped and wore overly frilly shirts.

  “Some. Not all. It’s a mixed crowd. I really liked the band last night and—” She lost track of what she’s saying, distracted. “OMG! Hunk at two o’clock.”

  Riley wasn’t in the mood, so she didn’t bother to check the guy out. What was the point? There were more important things to worry about than handsome guys, at least in her world.

  “He’s coming this way!” Simi said, primping a couple of her pink dreadlocks. “Could you, like, fake a heart attack or something so he’ll stop and talk to us?”

  Riley scowled at her friend. “Are you kidding? No way.”

  “Come on. Just for me? He’s amazing.”

  Riley finally eyed the oncoming hunk and then smiled. It was Ori, dressed to kill. Literally, if you were a demon. Simi is going to be so jealous.

  Actually, her friend fell speechless when Ori stopped in front of them, which had to be a first.