“Um, hello,” she said into the phone, her light alto voice less than confident. “Yes, um … this is Robin Page, from the Grand Grimoire. I’d like to report the unbound demon, please.”
I blinked. Please?
“Yes … um. It’s in Oppenheimer Park. Mm-hmm. Uh … no, the demon is dead.” She pushed her glasses up her nose, her demon standing motionless at her side. “Yes, I’m sure. It’s definitely dead.”
The girl listened for a moment. “Okay, I’ll wait here. How long will MagiPol take to arrive?”
At those words, the Keys jolted into motion. Both their demons dissolved into red light, and with their pendants still sucking in the power, they strode for their van. Burke’s deep-set eyes dropped to mine and he smirked evilly.
I knew exactly what that smile meant: This isn’t over.
They piled into their van, the engine started, and the vehicle peeled away, tires skidding on the grass. The van’s nose barely missed the back of Kai’s bike.
Something cold touched my leg and I started. The pool of thick demon blood under the dismembered head was soaking into my pant leg. I yanked my feet away—and glimpsed a shiny object amidst the bloody grass.
“Aaron,” Kai said in a low voice. He swung his leg over his bike. “We need to go. We don’t want to be here when the MPD arrives.”
As Aaron muttered his agreement, I dipped my fingers into the lukewarm puddle of thickening blood. Yeeeuch. Teeth gritted, I pulled the small metal object out and peeked at it. It was the round amulet the demon had offered to Ezra, separated from its host when the demon’s head had parted ways with its body.
Aaron stepped in front of me, and I quickly shoved the slimy pendant into my pocket. Taking his offered hand, I let him pull me up, then I jumped into the car. He shut my door and jogged around to the driver’s side. Kai’s bike started with a snarl.
Through the windshield, I watched the young woman. She made no move to stop us or even call out as Aaron dropped into his seat, slammed the door, and shifted the running car into reverse.
As he backed off the grass toward the street, Kai following on his motorcycle, my gaze shifted to the creature beside her. Its eyes glowed faintly, then the car turned. As the headlights shifted away, darkness swept over the girl and her demon.
Chapter Eighteen
The drive back was eerily quiet. I sat in the passenger seat, afraid to look anywhere but through the windshield. A few times I peeked at Aaron. His expression was the bleakest I’d ever seen it.
When he drove straight through an intersection instead of turning to go home, I broke the silence. “Where are we going?”
“Your place,” he replied roughly. “The Keys might go to my house.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
We didn’t speak again until Aaron had parked at the curb in front of my shabby bungalow. The headlamp of Kai’s bike glared through the back window as he parked behind us.
Aaron threw his door open, jumped out, then folded his seat down.
“Hey,” he said softly.
I twisted to look behind me, surprised to see Ezra sitting up on the back seat. I hadn’t realized he was awake. He hadn’t made a sound.
Aaron helped him climb out. Ezra moved stiffly, like he was hurting in every muscle and bone—which he probably was, considering what Kai had done to him. Gulping, I slid out of the car and grabbed my purse from under the seat. As Kai joined us, I led the way through the yard.
I unlocked the exterior door, then the door to my apartment. Stepping aside, I let the guys go in first. Not one of them looked at me as they passed.
After locking both doors, I followed them down. Aaron helped Ezra limp into my bedroom, and Kai went in with them. They murmured, their voices too low for me to make out any words. I stared around my apartment like I was seeing it for the first time—my sofa with a new coffee table in front of it, an equally new small flat-screen TV, and two metal stools at the breakfast bar. The crawlspace door, recently replaced, was closed, and I didn’t expect Twiggy to make an appearance. He always hid whenever Ezra was nearby.
I’d wondered why, but I’d never asked. I hadn’t wanted to know.
Kai and Aaron exited my room and closed the door, leaving Ezra inside. Silently, they walked to the sofa and sank into identical poses—hunched forward, elbows on knees, chins braced on their hands, shoulders slumped. Grim defeat rolled off them as they stared at the floor.
“We should’ve listened to him,” Aaron finally said, his voice hoarse. “He wanted to leave.”
Kai exhaled slowly. “I doubt Burke would’ve given up even if we’d made a run for it on Halloween. You heard him—he’s been waiting for this. Searching for one …”
My throat tightened as Burke’s triumphant cry echoed in my head. Finally, a demon mage!
I’d heard the term only once before. Alistair, the guild’s toughest mage and top combat mythic, had described a demon mage as the “ultimate opponent.” None of the Crow and Hammer’s other combat mythics had ever faced one.
“What we should have done,” Aaron muttered bitterly, “was gotten Ezra out of the city the moment the alert went out.”
Kai grunted in agreement.
I slunk to the sofa and stopped beside it, my heart contorting with each beat. “Guys?”
Kai straightened out of his slouch. “Sorry, Tori. We won’t stay long.”
“Huh?” I mumbled.
“Once Ezra recovers more, we’ll get out of here.”
“Get out of … where are you going?” When neither mage answered, my chest tightened with the beginnings of panic. “What are you planning?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kai said.
“Of course it matters!” My voice went shrill, volume rising. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“You don’t need to know.”
Aaron twitched his head in a faint shake. “A little late for that, don’t you think, Kai?”
“No,” he replied coolly. “Not yet.”
My hands balled into fists. “Don’t you dare cut me out. I want to know—”
Kai shoved to his feet, his dark eyes blazing. “You don’t want to know!”
My voice dried up, his sudden anger stealing my protest. Kai almost never shouted—but he was damn close to it now.
“You’ve never wanted to know, Tori. You’d rather pretend everything is fine and normal and easy. You’re the queen of delusion, an ostrich with your head in the sand, and that’s how you like it.”
His sharp words hit me like physical blows. Aaron glanced up at us, then looked away, his face pained.
“You had every chance to face this, and you chose not to. So, no,” Kai concluded tersely, “we won’t tell you anything.”
Angry denials built on my tongue, but I couldn’t speak them. I’d had dozens of opportunities to get answers, but I’d never tried. I could’ve asked Twiggy why he was terrified of Ezra. I could’ve asked Zak what he knew. I could’ve asked Alistair what a demon mage was.
But I hadn’t, because I was too scared of the truth. I didn’t want to know, because once I knew … everything would change.
“You two have done everything you could to hide the truth about Ezra from me,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level. “You didn’t want me asking questions.”
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that you didn’t,” Kai replied. “I’m saying there’s no reason to change that now. You don’t want to know, so you don’t need to know.”
“Tori,” Aaron said, getting to his feet too. “We’ve pulled you into a lot of messes over the past several months, but you always had the option to walk away. Even now, you can transfer to a sleeper guild and go back to living a human life if you want.”
“I don’t want to—”
“I know, Tori. I know. My point is you have the option, and we’re not taking that away from you.” He rubbed a hand over his lower face. “You’ve stuck with us, but you can’t anymore. You need to take care of yourself and your future. T
hat means”—pain darkened his eyes—“this is where we go our separate ways.”
A bolt of panic ruptured my chest. I gasped in a breath, staring from him to Kai.
They were ditching me. That’s what he and Kai were saying. I didn’t need answers about Ezra because they were leaving me.
Deep-rooted pain, embedded by every excruciating rejection from my past, flared through my core. My eyes burned and I tried to summon anger instead, but it wouldn’t come.
My jaw clenched. I glared at them through blurred vision, fighting the tears. “Tell me the truth.”
“Tori—”
“Tell me!”
Kai was right. I was good at ignoring unpleasant realities. It was a skill I’d learned in my childhood: pretending everything was fine even though my father was an abusive drunk; pretending I was okay after my mother had abandoned me; pretending I could handle it when Justin ran away, leaving me alone with my father for six terrible years.
I was so good at pretending that I’d rented an apartment even when, deep down, I’d been expecting to lose my job at the guild any day.
Denial was my coping mechanism, but that wouldn’t work anymore. I’d done too much damage by pretending everything was a happy fairytale with no bad monsters … or demon mages.
Now, I needed to understand. If I didn’t understand, then I couldn’t stop them from abandoning me.
Aaron and Kai said nothing. Then—
“Tell her.”
My head snapped up. Ezra stood in the open bedroom doorway. His arms hung at his sides, his shoulders were bent with pain and exhaustion, and his eyes were dull.
“Tell her,” he repeated. “She deserves to know.”
He disappeared back into the bedroom. The door closed with a soft thump.
Aaron and Kai hesitated, then Aaron sank onto the sofa. He grasped Kai’s wrist and tugged him down too. I perched on the coffee table facing them. The two mages were silent again, but this time, they appeared to be gathering their thoughts.
“In the Demonica class,” Aaron began, choosing his words carefully, “summoners and contractors are the two legal orders. But those aren’t the only orders. Ezra belongs to a third order, an illegal one.”
I nervously licked my lips. “He’s a … demon mage?”
He nodded.
“So, Ezra is a di-mythic? Elementaria and Demonica?”
“Not precisely. He wasn’t born a demon mage.” Aaron drew in a deep breath. “The MPD regulates as much magic as they can, and they have to decide what can be controlled and what has no place in a civilized society. Certain branches of magic are forbidden, and some types of magic-users are forbidden to exist.”
Kai pressed his fist into his opposite palm. “Vampires, for example. They don’t fit into human society, so we exterminate them whenever we find them.”
Words in red pen, scrawled on the police report. 4 months after extermination.
“Demon mages are the same,” Aaron continued. “They’re too dangerous to coexist with other mythics, let alone humans. It’s an automatic death sentence.” His jaw flexed. “Demon mages are so rare and deadly that, to hunters like the Keys, killing one is the ultimate trophy.”
I clasped my hands to hide their trembling. “What is a demon mage?”
Aaron opened his mouth but couldn’t summon the words. His gaze dropped, his expression tight.
“In regular Demonica contracting,” Kai explained grimly, “the demon’s spirit is housed inside an infernus. With a demon mage, the contractor himself is the infernus.”
My entire body tensed. “You mean …”
“Ezra carries a demon inside him.”
My limbs shuddered, shaking me from head to toe. A demon … inside him. “Is it … permanent?”
“Like all demon contracts, it’s irreversible. It’ll only end when he dies.”
My chest hurt. I rubbed my eyes, denying the stinging tears.
“There are other differences between demon mages and contractors,” Kai went on, sounding businesslike except for the slight hoarseness of his voice. “Ezra can’t call his demon out. It’s bound inside his body.”
“And,” Aaron added heavily, “Ezra’s demon, unlike a contracted demon, isn’t powerless. It has its own will—which you saw tonight when it overpowered Ezra to take that amulet.”
The vision of Ezra going rigid, of glowing crimson swamping his warm brown eye, flashed through me. The amulet in my pocket pressed against my leg. No one had seen me take it.
I looked at Kai. “So that’s why you … you …”
He nodded, and a pained grimace ghosted over his features. “I had to hit him hard. If Ezra had lost consciousness but the demon hadn’t …”
Uneasy quiet settled over us.
“The more angry or upset Ezra gets, the more vulnerable he is to the demon’s influence.” Aaron braced his arms on his knees. “It’s one reason demon mages are so dangerous compared to contractors.”
I gripped my thighs, fingers digging in. “What are the other reasons?”
“You saw that already. Ezra has full access to his demon’s magic. His power is on par with an unbound demon’s.”
Whereas a contracted demon, devoid of its own willpower, had little to no magic.
“It’s why they’re called demon mages,” Kai revealed bleakly. “They wield magic like a mage. Ezra being an aeromage is a lucky coincidence.”
“Lucky how?”
“He can blend in with other mythics without raising too much suspicion, since he has magic independent of his demon’s.”
I nodded, feeling sick. Questions should have been racing through my mind, but only a shocked buzzing filled my head.
Ezra was a demon mage. He had a death sentence on his head. He had a demon inside him. All those times his face had gone blank, I’d thought he was restraining his temper … but he’d been resisting his demon.
“Does Ezra even have a bad temper?” I blurted.
Aaron smiled weakly. “He’s the most laid-back guy I know.”
It made so much sense. I’d never understood how Ezra could give off such calming vibes while battling an anger management problem.
“Did he …” I hesitated. “He had to have chosen this, right? Contractors are made, not born, so a demon mage … Ezra must’ve chosen it.”
Aaron pressed his lips together. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
My eyes darted to my bedroom door and back. With a shuddering breath, I attempted to pull myself together. “All right. Ezra is a—a demon mage. You two have been hiding it, but now the Keys know. What’s the plan?”
Aaron and Kai exchanged another long, meaningful look. I watched anxiously, my hands twisting in my lap.
Finally, Kai regarded me. “Burke wants all the glory of killing Ezra for his team, so I doubt he’s told anyone else or reported his discovery to the MPD—yet.” His expression flattened. “I would prefer to kill the three of them now, before they can—”
“But,” Aaron cut in sternly, “Ezra won’t agree to it. He already told us what he wants to do.”
Kai gave a slow nod. “Yes, I know. We planned for this eventuality.”
“Is everything ready?”
“It’d be better if we could stop at the house first, but the Keys will be watching it. We’ll have to make do with—”
“You’re running away,” I whispered.
They looked at me, Kai’s dark eyes unreadable, Aaron’s tight with unhappiness.
“We have no choice, Tori,” Aaron murmured. “Once it gets out what Ezra is, me and Kai will be branded as rogues. Harboring a demon mage is illegal. We’ll face the most severe punishments the MPD can give.”
My mouth went dry. I tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“You’re fine,” he added reassuringly. “You didn’t know long enough to get more than a slap on the wrist.”
“Like I said, Tori,” Kai told me, “we won’t be here long. We need to make it out of the city before the
Keys can organize a chase.”
“But—but—” My gaze darted desperately between them. “There must be another way. There must be … something.”
They didn’t reply, their silence my answer. There was nothing else they could do. The Keys team knew. If Ezra stayed, they would attack him again, but as soon as he fled, they would reveal him to the mythic world. The entire Keys of Solomon guild would hunt him, as would every other guild equipped to hunt demons.
I thought of the MPD alert about the unbound demon. Would they send an alert about the illegal demon mage in their midst? Would thirty teams of combat mythics set out to hunt Ezra down? Izzah and Mario from Odin’s Eye, that Robin girl and her freaky demon from the Grand Grimoire, even Crow and Hammer members?
Panic squeezed my lungs. I pushed off the coffee table with trembling hands.
“Bathroom,” I mumbled, hurrying past the guys. I ducked into my small bathroom and locked the door, then grasped the sink’s edge and allowed myself to hyperventilate for a solid two minutes.
This was it. This was the end. Aaron and Kai were planning to take Ezra and flee, to drop off the map and disappear forever.
How could I have ignored this for so long? I’d known Ezra’s secrets were dangerous, but I’d never imagined something like this. The queen of delusion, Kai had called me.
Gazing at my reflection, I saw shadows of my younger self. She’d learned to fake normalcy to survive. She’d pretended everything was fine until it stymied her ability to act. When you refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong, you couldn’t fix it.
I was done being that girl.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I pushed away from the counter and slipped out of the bathroom. I marched purposefully to my bedroom. Aaron and Kai’s low conversation broke off, but neither called out to stop me.
I faced the closed door. Deep breaths. I rapped lightly on the wood, then opened the door without waiting for an answer.
Ezra sat on the floor, his back against my bed and knees drawn up. Surprise flickered over his features at my appearance. As I stepped into the room, I saw both parts of him for the first time.
Demon Magic and a Martini: The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Four Page 16
