By the time Clara and I finished arranging the command center, another half a dozen members had arrived. They swept in and were immediately sent to either gear up or set up. Sanjana, our apprentice healer, arrived alongside a huge man with rich teak skin and a shaved head. Miles had enough muscle to be a combat mythic, but he was one of our two experienced healers—as well as a renowned surgeon. Arcana magic required intensive study to master, but healing Arcana was by far the most demanding; many healers completed med school alongside their apprenticeships.
Sanjana and Miles joined Venus, an alchemist, in preparing the healers’ corner—and their work had anxious butterflies tickling my stomach. They laid out two gurneys, lined the table with various potions, and produced a surgery cart. Yeah, an actual surgery cart full of surgical tools straight from an emergency room.
Just what were they expecting to happen?
The geared combat mythics started gathering in the middle of the room—Aaron and Kai, decked out in leather, armored vests, and weapons; petite Zora with a huge sword on her back and other weaponized artifacts strapped to her thin limbs; Lyndon with his belt lined with artifacts, even though he didn’t normally go on combat missions; Darren, sobered up by a potion and adjusting his leather duster; and Laetitia, our hydromage, sporting a pair of steel batons.
I scoured the group again. Where was Ezra?
As though summoned by my thought, the aeromage descended from the upper level, one hand trailing on the banister as he glanced across his comrades. His expression was calm, but tension lined his shoulders.
“Rowe,” Tabitha barked at him, “why aren’t you geared? Get moving.”
Darius looked up from the laptop Felix was working on. “Ezra is off on injury. He stays.” The guild master straightened as he looked across the non-combat mythics. “I know it’s difficult to stay behind, whether injured or inexperienced or the wrong class to fight. We all want to protect our homes, loved ones, and the innocent strangers at risk tonight. Protect them, and our fighters, by staying safe and helping here.”
Nods circled the group. Ezra slunk to my side, his hands jammed in his pockets and misery in his eyes. Before I could ask when he’d been injured and why no one had told me, Aaron and Kai broke away from the combat mythics and hastened over to us.
Aaron clapped Ezra on the shoulder. “It’ll be a boring march around downtown anyway.”
As Ezra muttered a reply, Kai took my elbow and drew me away. “Tori,” he said in a low voice, “keep an eye on him, okay? He’ll worry about us and he might be tempted to sneak out, but he needs to stay inside the guild.”
“I’ll watch him, but I don’t understand why—”
“The grid is posted,” Darius announced. “Teams! Tabitha, you’re leading Weldon, Zhi, and Ming. Andrew, you’re leading Zora, Ramsey, and Darren. Aaron, you’re leading Kai, Gwen, and Drew. Sylvia, you’re leading Laetitia, Lyndon, and Philip.”
Whoa, wait. Philip? Wasn’t he a witch? I didn’t know combat witches were a thing.
“If your team isn’t assembled yet, wait for them,” Darius continued. “If you’re ready, get your grid point from Felix—and don’t forget your stickers.”
Kai gave my arm a squeeze. “Time to go.”
I grabbed his wrist as he stepped away. “Kai—” My voice cracked. I scarcely understood what was happening, but only a dumbass would fail to recognize the level of danger. “Be careful.”
“We will.” Aaron pulled me against his side in a quick hug. “This will be over before you know it. Just hang in there.”
Heart in my throat, I watched the two mages, Gwen the sorceress, and Drew the telekinetic march over to Felix. The officer pointed at something on the laptop screen and handed Aaron an earpiece with a coiled cord, which he plugged into his cell. He tapped on the screen, then stuck his phone in the chest pocket of his vest. Felix stuck a reflective diamond sticker on each mythic’s shoulder.
“Remember,” Darius told them, “stay in the open. Be vigilant. Expect an ambush. At the first sign of the demon, call it in and follow procedure.”
Aaron nodded. Then they were out the door and into the rainy streets where a monster lurked.
The last combat mythics arrived in a rush, and all I could do was stay out of the way as they geared up, formed a team, and received their instructions and stickers. Ezra stood beside me, unhappiness rolling off him in waves.
The fourth and final team sped out into the rain, and the noise level dropped significantly. I rubbed a hand over my face, taking in the healers and alchemists waiting quietly in their corner and the non-combat mythics sitting at their tables, a few calling the last members they hadn’t gotten through to yet.
“What’s with the stickers?” I muttered. Not the most pressing question I wanted to ask, but what the hell was the point of stickers?
“They identify mythics,” Felix answered. I’d been asking Ezra, but I hadn’t realized the guild officer was walking up on my other side. “A Code Black means the MPD has brought in human law enforcement to help. They’re closing roads and clearing all humans from the area where the demon is suspected to be, and the stickers keep the police from stopping our teams.”
“And what’s all that about grids?” I asked.
“We’re doing a grid search of the area. The MPD has assigned every guild to a section of the grid, based on how many teams we can provide.” He turned to Ezra. “Can you bring two TVs from the second floor? I need larger screens.”
Ezra nodded and headed upstairs.
Watching him go, sympathy flickered across Felix’s features. “There’s nothing more difficult than being left behind.”
Footsteps thumped, but it wasn’t Ezra returning with a TV. Darius trotted down the stairs—and the GM had transformed. He now wore leather gear, his belt weighed down by two sets of long knives, their silver hilts gleaming. Girard followed, decked out in sorcery artifacts, and last was Alistair, carrying a heavy bo staff carved with runes, his tattooed arms bared by his leather vest. As a volcanomage, the rain and cold probably didn’t bother him.
“All right, we’re off,” Darius declared. “Felix, you’re in charge. Keep me informed of any developments.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck.”
Alistair chuckled with dark humor. “Luck is for beginners.”
Slapping stickers on their shoulders, the three men marched outside. The door banged shut behind them.
“That’s the most terrifying team I’ve ever seen,” Felix muttered almost too quietly for me to hear. “I pity the demon that tries to go through them.”
Over the next few minutes, Ezra brought down two TVs and Felix hooked them up to the laptops. An image filled each screen. On one was a map showing a square of city blocks twenty across, the Crow and Hammer on its northeastern edge. A big red X glowed in the center, and all around it were blinking dots. Red squares highlighted different sections, and two squares had turned to a solid green.
“The dots are teams from all the guilds. The GPS updates every few seconds.” Felix sat at the table and pulled on an over-the-ear headset with a mic. He pointed to the other screen. “The green areas have been checked by a team. See the update?”
On the second TV, messages scrolled upward like stuttering movie credits. The last two read, “OE T2: Grid 6 clear. GG T1: Grid 2 clear.”
“OE,” I murmured. “Odin’s Eye?”
“GG is Grand Grimoire. They’ll be out in force since the entire guild is contractors and champions.”
“Champions?”
“Those are—hold on.” He pressed a button on his headset. “Copy that, proceed east to Grid 11. Over.”
His fingers flew across the keyboard, and a second later, “CH T3: Grid 8 clear” popped into the update feed. Twenty seconds after that, another square on the map went green.
Clara rushed down the stairs, sweeping her escaping hair into a bun and twisting a rubber band around it. “All right. We don’t know how long this will take, so Tori, can you put on c
offee and boil water for tea? After that, please make as many sandwiches as we have ingredients for. Ezra, why don’t you help her?”
Without waiting for a response, she moved on to the other loitering mythics, giving more instructions—clean up this, set up that. Felix sat at the command station, manning the headset and laptops.
I grabbed Ezra’s arm and pulled him into the kitchen. The saloon doors swung shut behind us, offering a semblance of privacy.
“You’re injured?” I asked sharply as I turned on the giant coffee maker and pulled out packets of dark roast.
“Not precisely.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and into his hair, tangling his brown curls. His shoulders slumped forward, his gaze skittering away from mine. “This sort of thing … I don’t do well with it. Darius knows that, so he …”
“So he made an excuse for you.” Dumping the coffee grounds into the filter, I wondered if this was related to Ezra’s temper or the terrifying crimson magic he could command in emergencies. What did Darius know? All this time, I’d assumed only Aaron and Kai were in on Ezra’s secrets.
“Demons,” I said hoarsely. “I know nothing about demons.” I’d had lots of opportunities to ask over the past months, but honestly, I hadn’t wanted to know how scary they were.
Apparently, Ezra had a similar distaste for the topic, because he let out a long, weary breath like he’d prefer to discuss literally anything else. “Demons are kind of like fae, but they come from a world that’s completely separate from ours. We don’t know anything about it or even what demons are … aside from powerful and vicious.”
I pulled out loaves of bread and counted the deli meat packs in the fridge. The pub’s “super club sandwich” wasn’t a popular item. Note to self: propose cutting it off the menu.
“Why do people summon them, then?” I asked as I piled tomatoes on a cutting board.
He leaned against the counter, staying out of my way. “Because it’s a power that anyone, human or mythic, can acquire. The only requirement is their willingness to pay the price for it.”
“Which is?”
“A lifetime contract binding you to an evil creature that wants to kill you. And your soul.”
I looked up, expecting one of his deadpan jokes, but his eyes were dark with an emotion I couldn’t read. “Your soul?”
“It’s called the banishment clause, and it’s part of every demon contract. Once a demon is summoned, it’s stuck here. It needs a contractor—or rather, the contractor’s soul—to leave this world. When the human dies, the demon takes their soul and returns home.”
I stood with my knife poised above a tomato, trying to remember how to rehinge my jaw. “That’s … insane. Why would anyone ever enter into a demon contract if they have to give up their soul?”
Ezra shrugged and shifted over to the sink to wash his hands. “What can I do to help?”
“Lay out the bread for me, please.” I finished slicing tomatoes. “How does a demon get loose like this?”
He placed a dozen slices of bread across a large cutting board. “The summoner made a mistake. They let it loose without a contract.”
“And now it’s going to kill people,” I finished in a whisper, feeling ill.
“They say unbound demons kill because they’re trying to go home. They want a soul, but it doesn’t work without a contract.” He went quiet as he slathered mayo on the bread. “Every guild has sent combat teams to the area. They’ll find the demon.”
“And then what? What did Darius mean about following procedures?”
“Our teams will call in the demon’s location, then wait for the nearest contractors to arrive. It takes a demon to kill a demon.”
Mario had said that too. “Why?”
“Because it’s so dangerous. No one wants to fight a demon, especially not an unbound one, which is in full command of its magic, strength, speed, and wit. Plus, a demon can survive a lot of damage. They’re difficult to kill. Defeating one …” He trailed off, his hands unmoving, mayo dripping off the knife.
A nauseating chill washed over me and I shivered. “Aaron and Kai … and everyone else … Ezra, how much danger are they in?”
Ezra stared at the half-made sandwiches, then lifted his haunted stare to mine. “I don’t want them to find the demon. I don’t want them anywhere near it.”
The cold in my veins deepened. Ezra wasn’t a coward and he knew what Aaron and Kai could do, but if he was afraid … Even if it was selfish, even if it meant it took longer to stop the demon, I hoped Aaron and Kai never laid eyes on it.
Chapter Four
How long did it take to find a demon on a killing spree?
A long-ass time, that’s how long.
I slumped at the bar, an empty plate in front of me. I’d eaten half a sandwich just so Clara would stop nagging me, but I was too anxious to be hungry. The last four hours had crawled by, and a portion of my attention was always tuned to Felix’s voice. Waiting for Aaron’s next check in. Waiting to see an update from the other Crow and Hammer teams—all people I knew and cared about.
Well, mostly people I cared about. I wouldn’t cry if Sylvia got tossed around a bit, but I still wanted everyone, including the insufferable sorceress, to come back safely.
Swiveling on my stool, I scoured Felix’s screens again. The ever-changing map now featured three X’s: the original one, plus two more. Suspected sightings of the demon. As squares turned green, red ones appeared elsewhere. The search kept shifting, but despite every combat mythic in the city out there looking, they couldn’t find the demon.
It was starting to feel unreal, like maybe it was all a disgusting Halloween prank. I might have believed that, except the MPD had no sense of humor.
Felix sat at the table, his attention moving from screen to screen. “Copy that. Proceed northeast to Grid 31. Wait—repeat that.” A pause. “North of you? Team Three is north of your position.” Another longer pause. “Okay, I’ll relay the message.”
He typed on the keyboard, then spoke again. “Aaron, do you copy? I have a message from Tabitha. Two KS teams just passed her location, heading north toward your position. If they interfere in your search, cede your grid and move to the next.”
Tapping his headset again, he huffed angrily.
“KS teams?” I prompted cautiously. “The Keys of Solomon?”
Pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up his nose, he nodded. “They aren’t following the grid or communicating with other guilds. They want the demon kill for themselves.” His hand flew to his headset. “Copy that, Team Two. Proceed … northeast to Grid 33.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, my eyes burning. It was way past my bedtime, but there was no way I could sleep. Aaron and Kai weren’t the only ones I was worried about. The MPD had the regular police force helping with this operation, which meant my brother was out there too. Unlike the mythics, Justin had no idea the danger he was in.
After my dramatic induction into the mythic community at the beginning of September, things with my brother became … strained. I’d told him almost everything, from my first shift at the Crow and Hammer to my recent brush with the law. His knowledge of mythics was limited to what he’d learned after joining the force—meaning he knew very little—and he was highly prejudiced since the police only ever encountered mythics who were causing havoc.
Needless to say, he wasn’t happy about me joining a “magical street gang”—his words, not mine. He was convinced it was dangerous and excessively illegal, but most of all, he was hurt that I’d lied to him for months. Rogue witches had attacked me right in front of him, but instead of coming clean, I’d doubled down on the deceit.
Twisting my lips, I held my phone for a long minute, then sent a brief message warning him to be extra careful. Maybe it would help.
I glanced at the big clock on the wall: 4:23 a.m. In another hour or two, the morning rush hour would begin—a mass migration of humans the MPD couldn’t hope to stop. Thousands upon thousands of people would flood downto
wn, putting themselves in the demon’s path and making the search all the more difficult.
I was still staring at the screens, my stomach churning as I watched the blinking dots, when a male torso in a black “Winter Is Coming” shirt appeared in front of me.
“Tori.” With my name alone, Ezra’s silk-smooth voice lowered my anxiety levels by several degrees. “Here.”
I blinked at my laptop. “Huh?”
He set it on the counter and slid onto the stool beside me. “Let’s work on the new pub menu.”
“Now? I’d have more success concentrating on calculus equations. By the way, I failed calculus.”
“I need a distraction, and you do too. You’ve been fixated on those screens for hours. Give yourself a break.”
Like a moth drawn to a light, my head turned back to the TVs. “But …”
He tugged gently on my ponytail until I straightened, then nudged the laptop in front of me. I booted it up and opened a new document, then stared blankly at the white page. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Let’s look up other pub menus for ideas.”
A quick Google search produced a list of the best bars and pubs in the city. I pulled up the number one restaurant’s menu.
Ezra leaned close to skim it. “Avocado mash. Avocado toast. And avocado … chili? Why didn’t Clara think of this strategy before? So much effort wasted in buying multiple ingredients.”
I snorted, half my attention on Felix’s voice as he directed Team One to a new grid. I scrolled through more dishes. “What’s with this menu? Salads? Perogies? Cheese boards? This isn’t real bar food. Where’s the greasy, deep-fried stuff?” I exited the window and tried the next restaurant on the list.
“Mediterranean stuffed chicken breast,” Ezra read off the new menu. “I tried to make stuffed chicken breasts once.”
My eyebrows shot up. “I thought you didn’t cook.”
Demon Magic and a Martini: The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Four Page 3
