by Angie Fox
She opened her slash of a mouth. "What do you want?" she demanded in a thick, wet voice as crimson splashed from her lips, splattering the white sink and countertop.
The light from the candles cast deep shadows in the lines of Grandma's face. "We need to see who controls Phil Whirley."
Bloody Mary faded and we saw Phil's living room. A shrunken, razor-toothed thing burst through the front window. A swirling gray cloud encompassed it as it clambered over the glass-strewn couch on black clawed feet. Serena? It had to be.
It smashed straight through the coffee table, heading for the bookshelf. The succubus punched through my retainer case, glass tinkling to the floor as it seized the framed photo behind it. It tore the frame like an envelope and ripped out the picture of my college graduation. It hissed, spittle clinging to its blackened lips. Rubies dangled from its scraggly ears. My picture crumbled into dust in its hands. Oh yeah, the demon knew who had Phil.
Well, too late now. "You lose," I said, bound and determined to make that true.
It whipped its head around, as if I'd walked right into the room. Could it see me? Impossible. Still, I practically felt its scarlet eyes on me. It cackled, low and throaty and the image in the mirror faded away.
That's when everything went to hell.
We heard the hotel door crash open. "What the—?" I searched for the demon in the mirror and found Bloody Mary instead. Terrified for Pirate and Uncle Phil, I scrambled for the doorknob.
"It's locked!" I said, twisting hard, wrenching my wrist.
"Let me see." Grandma barreled past me. She rattled the door with all she had while I watched the face in the mirror. What in the world had she summoned?
"Cookies!" Pirate said. I could hear his delight even through the door.
"Don't eat anything!" I hollered out at him.
"Aw now, Lizzie…"
I wanted to claw my way past the door. We should have cut the tie immediately. If we had, this thing wouldn't be in my room, with my dog. Why did I listen to Grandma?
"What's happening?" Grandma barked.
"Now watch it. This is a rental," Phil admonished.
It had to be the succubus.
"Phil!" I screamed.
Grandma pounded on the door. "Open up and fight like a woman!"
No one answered.
"Pirate!" I hollered. My stomach rolled over. If anything happened to him, it would be my fault.
"Phil!" Grandma yelled over me.
"Pirate!" I repeated. The apparition in the mirror chuckled, drops from its slashed neck sizzling down on Grandma's fat red candles. "What do you know?" I demanded, not worrying anymore about something awful happening because our afternoon had gone to hell anyway.
The face disappeared into the mirror, replaced by a vision I could have done without. Gray stone steps led down to a circular room devoid of windows. Heaps of men's rings, wallets and other jewelry choked the small space.
They weren't stealing energy anymore—they were killing people.
Watches were strung up along the wall like war trophies, their faces smashed in, as if Serena stopped them the moment she murdered their owners. A brunette stood, her back to us, in a cloud of ash. A white minidress clung to her curves and a matching jangle of bracelets ringed her tiny wrist. "Phil, darling!" she called. Serena. I'd bet my last switch star.
Please don't be there. Please don't be there.
If I could call him to me, I hoped like anything I could also drive him away from her.
"Sugar lips!" Phil rushed down the gray stone steps. He wore the same white tuxedo I'd seen him in right before we'd corralled ourselves in the bathroom. The dried lavender drooped and fell from his coat pocket.
Son of a witch.
Phil's nose glowed bright red, and he couldn't stop smiling.
Tingles shot down my body. I wasn't sure if they were from shock or from the fact that one of my favorite childhood television stars turned her head and winked through the mirror at me.
"Agent Ninety-Nine!" I stammered. I felt like I'd walked straight into a TV Land rerun. Serena was the spitting image of Maxwell Smart's savvy brunette girlfriend, right down to her kicky 1960s hairdo and her kohl-lined eyes. Never mind that her eyes burned with an unearthly fire and sparks danced across her French manicure. I winced at the rubies dangling from her ears.
She stood next to a positively glowing Phil.
Grandma harrumphed. "He always had a thing for Barbara Feldon."
Serena's white plastic bracelets jangled as he dragged her to him for a sideways hug, "I missed you, babe." Phil planted a kiss on his fiancee's cheek.
Serena brushed her breasts against Phil's arm and nibbled his earlobe. He stiffened and sighed as her nails dug into his neck, leaving bloody scrapes in their wake. "Phil, darling, you know you shouldn't have left me."
Phil seemed confused for a moment. He shook it off, a trace of doubt lingering in the creases on his forehead. "My goddaughter called. I had to go."
"Not anymore." With a flick of her French-tipped nails, garlands of black jonquils sprouted from the four corners of the room. Sickly sweet and unlike any cemetery flowers I'd ever seen, the slender vines surged up the walls and across the ceiling. Greasy green leaves twisted with twinkling red lights, in a sort of macabre wedding canopy.
A scraggly bone wedged its way out of the apex of the canopy. I didn't know if it was alive or attached to something or what. Bits of leathery flesh clung to the tip as it heaved and hitched itself into place. More disjointed parts snapped and scurried together to form a grisly chandelier, complete with six bloodred candles.
Flames burst from the candles on the chandelier, igniting stray bits of flesh like spider webs. "Oh that is disgusting," I murmured.
"Do you like it, darling?" she asked my uncle. "I made it from the bones of my enemies."
Enough. I wanted to reach through the blood-smeared mirror and throttle the woman. "That's insane."
"She is the bride," Grandma said, her face lit in the red glow from the mirror. "If she wants a chandelier made from the bones of her enemies, well…"
I couldn't believe it. "How are you okay with this?"
Her jaw twitched. "I'm not. But I don't see what we can do to stop it."
Yeah, well maybe I did. I'd called Phil once before.
I focused my emotions—scattered as they were. Now was the time to prove to everyone, including myself, I could do this. I concentrated on Phil. Even though I'd barely met the man, I could picture him perfectly. I imagined his heavy-lidded eyes, his laugh, the smell of cinnamon.
Please work.
"I need my fairy godfather now."
Phil's ears perked. I saw it. At least I thought I did. He gave no other indication he even sensed me. Serena laid a possessive hand on his arm.
Oh no, she'd better not. I tried again, calling up every bit of power I had.
The flames in the candles danced as I focused on my fairy godfather. I watched him with her. Black smoke swirled and a squat-figured man with gray dreadlocks appeared. He wore red, flowing robes and held an ancient book. It was a demon. I knew it without even smelling the sulfur.
Phil took Serena's hands in his and spoke as if he were in a daze. "I take you as my bride. I am yours." He reached for her with the ring, stopping only inches away. I could almost feel him fighting it.
"No!" I yelled, my voice echoing off the tile. "I summon you now!"
Nothing happened.
"Now!" I hollered, heart pounding, head swimming.
Serena jammed her finger into the gold band. So much for free will.
Her beautiful face twisted into a sneer of pure triumph. "I take you, Phillip Rosewood Clausen Whirley. For eternity." She grabbed his hand and screwed the ring onto his stubby finger.
I felt the energy build. Heard it in the way the bones on the chandelier clacked together. A sulphurous wind blew through the fortress of a room, sending jonquil leaves and petals cascading down.
"Man and wife," Serena grated
. I felt the rush of power as she wrapped her fingers around the back of my uncle's head and yanked his mouth onto hers.
The red candles blazed high. "Are you sure this is real?" I asked, not really wanting to know.
"Yep," Grandma said hoarsely.
Serena released Phil's lower lip with a long, lingering suck. She stole energy from him, from the marriage, from her unholy victory. She curved her chin, shoving Phil backward with a finger to his chin.
Her crimson eyes settled on me.
Holy hellfire, could she see us?
I could feel her rage, her hate. Triumph burned in her eyes. "Leave us alone, demon slayer," she spat, "and I'll only kill him when I'm finished. Push me and I'll take his soul."
My stomach lurched. "What am I going to do if I can't go after him?" I asked Grandma. I couldn't be responsible for Phil surrendering his soul. Or for what the demons would do with his power, or…
Grandma clutched my arm and said something I'd never heard her admit before. "I don't know."
Chapter Eight
The candles snuffed themselves, leaving us in a freezing, pitch-black bathroom. It was the least of our problems. In my short time as a demon slayer, I'd dealt with renegade witches, black magic and the wrath of corrupted souls, but nothing had prepared me for a choice between letting my godfather die, or risking his eternal damnation.
Dead if you don't. Damned if you do.
I couldn't let them have him, could I?
Even if I did, I didn't honestly believe the succubi would leave us alone. Something big was going down in Vegas and I had a feeling this was barely a glimpse of the horrors we'd face if we stuck around.
"You ladies ever coming out of there?" Pirate sniffed under the door. "Cause Phil already left."
With that, the door swung open. "Pirate!" I scooped up his impossibly warm little body. At least they didn't get him. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm fine. I was all set to bite the guy in the shiny pants, but he gave me these." He whipped his head toward a bag of half-eaten Doritos on the bed. "And Phil seemed to know him and I felt sorry for him, you know, being a succubus love slave and all." Pirate paused to study me. "Gee, Lizzie, you look stressed. You want to rub my belly?"
I buried my face in the scruff of his neck. "Just give me a second." I couldn't believe things had gone downhill so fast.
"Aw, now that's nice," Pirate said, licking my hand.
"How many were there?" Grandma asked.
Pirate's expression fell. "You know I can't count."
Grandma launched her backpack at the wall. "Dammit!" She stood, fuming. "I would have bet my bike the wards wouldn't let succubi up on this floor," Grandma said. "I forgot they had slaves."
"Great," I growled. I didn't know what the hell I was doing and Grandma forgot.
"We really screwed this up," I said, we meaning her.
Here we were, fighting for my uncle, trying to save him the way he saved me; not to mention clearing the way to get out of Vegas before something even worse happened. I'm laying everything on the line and Grandma gets sloppy. Worse, I had no idea how to fix it. I didn't have the knowledge. She did. And it looked like I couldn't always count on her to think things through.
Her eyes narrowed. "You want to tell me something, sport?"
Oh yeah, I did. Lucky for her, we didn't have time to argue.
"They're not just sucking energy. They're killing people," I said. Uncle Phil would be next as soon as they got what they wanted from him.
"How does it work?" I asked Grandma. "We know their power is growing. What we don't know is if that's attracting demons from other places, or,"—I really didn't want to think about this—"if they're using that power to draw more of their numbers straight out of hell."
Could they even do that? It would take a lot of energy. But I couldn't begin to imagine how else their numbers could increase so rapidly.
"I don't know," Grandma said, clearly not wishing to dwell on the topic any more than I did. Well tough. We had to figure this out. I hunkered at the foot of the bed and rubbed Pirate's ears as if that was going to give me any ideas.
"Um, Lizzie," Pirate nosed my wrist. "I don't mean to interrupt your thinking there, but I have some business to attend to as well."
It took me a second to even know he'd spoken. "Say what?" I asked.
"Oh you know what. I spotted a nice grouping of palm trees next to the pool."
I took him to an empty lot behind the hotel. It clung to the very edge of the parking lot, a forgotten smidge of land—big enough for Pirate, but too small to do much else with.
Night had fallen, and Pirate danced in and out of the circles of light from the parking lot. I rolled my shoulders as I double-checked my switch stars.
Pirate sniffed at a tuft of weeds with tiny yellow flowers. "Oooh, now these are nice."
"You mind shaking a leg?" I asked. The menace in the air hadn't let up. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Pirate let out a long, wet snarf. "I'm just appreciating my environment. That's the great thing about being a dog. We know when to stop and sniff the flowers. And the rocks. And the dirt. And the grass. And ooh and here's a lovely crushed-up can of… hmm… I don't know what that is."
I stared up at the clear night sky. I tried to use the moment to clear my brain, focus my energies. But all I could think about was Dimitri—where he was right now, and why he wasn't here with me. I pulled my phone out of the top front right pocket of my utility belt. I'd begun to text him. Again. When I heard a sandy voice behind me.
"You call those turtle knees? These here are turtle knees."
"Battina?" Grandma's head apothecary specialized in hard-to-find ingredients.
"Who's that?" Battina's head popped up from behind a white PT Cruiser. Red glasses perched on the end of her nose and her ash blonde hair fluttered in the night.
"It's Lizzie," I called.
She plucked her glasses off and let them dangle from a silver chain around her neck. "Oh hey, Lizzie. You mind giving us a hand over here?"
"Pirate," I said to my dog, who stood completely immobile for no particular reason. "You stay here."
"Mmmmm," he said, savoring the air, his nose pulsing like a heartbeat. "Done and done."
I jogged over to Battina and found her huddled over two six-packs of soda bottles and a half dozen empty sun tea jars. She was with Spinebreaker, Jan Elkins, the library witch. Actually Jan preferred to be called the Library Hag. She wore her hair in pink braids today. The witch refused to go gray, and changed her hair color to anything but on a regular basis.
Jan lifted a bottle of chocolate-flavored Jones Soda out of the case like it was liquid gold. Then I noticed the cork in the top. That wasn't soda.
"What's up?" I asked. "Did you guys find Dimitri?"
Jan dug through the rest of her bottles until she found another one she wanted. "Ant Eater tracked him down," she said, holding up a bottle of Grape. "Phoned it in to your Grandma right before we headed over here."
She handed it over to Battina, who uncorked it.
Phew, my nose burned. "What's in that thing? Lighter fluid?" My heart stuttered when she lit a match.
Wait a second. "You think that's a good idea?" I asked.
Battina chuckled as she tossed a match into the bottle and planted the cork back on top. "It's not really grape soda. We wouldn't ruin a good bottle of Jones. These are pickled turtle's knees. Very good in antidemonic wards. Only you have to toast them." She rattled the bottle. "Like this." A small curl of smoke escaped from the top.
Jan picked up a cork-topped bottle of ginger ale. "And this here is fresh Georgia creek water." She dumped it into a sun tea jar. "Nothing but the best."
"No kidding." I'd never seen these two at work before. "What's in the bottle that says Gravy?"
Jan tucked a lock of pink hair behind her ear. "Oh that actually is gravy soda," she said. "It's a special flavor. They only make it at Thanksgiving, so I stock up." She popped it open and took a long swig
. "Mmm… gravy-licious. Want to try it?"
"I'll pass. Now what about Dimitri?"
Jan shrugged. "He said he's got things to do and he'll be back tonight."
That's it? Things to do? I'd like to do a few things to him right now—none of which he'd enjoy.
"So… what?" I asked. "You let him go?"
Battina took a peek into the turtle knees bottle before dumping out the gloopy black contents—match included—on top of the creek water in the sun tea jar. "What did you want us to do? Sit on a one-hundred-eighty-pound griffin? Actually, Ant Eater tried, but he shifted and flew off."
"Jerk," I muttered.
Battina shrugged. "He's your boyfriend. Now you mind helping us lug these spell jars over to the hotel? We had to toast the turtle knees over here. They're not very stable when you mix them with kerosene. But really, they're for the outside walls of the place."
"Extra protection?" I hoped.
"It sure ain't for the smell." Jan snickered.
Pirate joined us as we spent the next twenty minutes throwing protective wards at the walls of the hotel. They weighed a ton and smelled like the inside of a gas tank. It's a wonder we didn't get arrested.
"How long will these hold?" I asked Battina.
She rubbed her fingers along the wall and sniffed them. "Oh we'll be out here every two or three hours checking. You can't be too careful."
"You want a helper?" Pirate danced in place.
"Why not?" Battina said. "You need to get out of the hotel every once in awhile. Jan and I could use a guard dog."
Jan rubbed him on the head. "You can be in charge of guarding my bottles."
"Hear that, Lizzie? I'm in charge!"
"Thanks," I said. These witches might be rough around the edges, but every one of them had a good heart. "I owe you one."
Battina studied the wards, and glanced back at Jan's soda-bottle cases of ingredients. "Get us out of here by tomorrow and we're even."
Excerpt from The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers:
Fairies tend to be at least five feet tall, sweet smelling, and glittery at times. They love gambling but can't stand bells. Grandma says it's no coincidence that the casinos are full of ringing bells, as fairies can manipulate time and influence the future—not what you'd want in a casino. Fairies are a feared, outcast class in the magical world. Still, I think having a full-blooded fairy on your side could come in quite handy.
