He nodded a couple times, almost like he’d do the same thing, and flashed out.
“Christ,” Rohan said. “Leo, let me drive you to Harry’s.”
Leo agreed. I hugged her hard. Hugged Rohan hard, too, then gave him my car keys.
While they were gone, I sat there staring at the void where the mansion should have cast a foreboding shadow over me, but there was only the masonry foundation deep in the ground to testify that it had ever existed at all.
It was so impossible to comprehend that I walked its perimeter to convince myself, flicking the lighter that Esther had left me. Part of me believed that Esther was in that tiny flame and that I was still alive because she’d been here, watching over me. Dying from Lilith’s magic, being tortured, Satan, I’d assumed that each one was the final unthinkable event, but all I got was another stepping stone into darkness.
In the end, there would be light. I had to believe that, but how many of us would fall victim to this madness before dawn came? I flicked the lighter one last time, taking comfort in the small yet steady glow that had withstood time. Funny, how even this tiny flame caused a swell of hope in my ribcage. Tiny fires, tiny bursts of hope, together they would form that vanquishing blaze.
Rohan came up beside me. “Leo’s tucked away for the night.”
I blew out a curl out of my eyes. “I could have happily killed Drio. Even if that wasn’t fair. It’s not that Leo is more important than avenging Asha.”
“Leo’s alive. For that alone, she’s the priority now.”
I bent down and picked up a burned lump that might have been the finial from the railing on the back steps. “It’s all gone. My T-shirts. Leo’s print. My beautiful tap shoes.”
The clothes, the make-up, they didn’t matter, but the personal things, like the print of Neo New York that Leo had given me for my birthday and the customized tap shoes from Ro? My eyes welled with tears and I dashed them away. “Doesn’t matter. Especially not with Bastijn…”
I hurled the lump as far as I could.
“They matter,” Rohan said.
For all that I’d bristled against the command that I had to live at Demon Club, I’d become attached to the old girl. “I don’t have a home anymore, Snowflake.”
“Yeah, you do. Anywhere I am.”
“Then take me home.”
15
The Five Star Motel was a study in false advertising. Three of the stars in the neon sign were blown out, the restaurant offered an all-you-could-eat fish buffet that from the parking lot reeked like a salmonella extravaganza, and the pool hosted a thriving community of algae.
“I would have ponied up for an extra star,” I said, stepping over a broken bottle outside our scratched motel room door.
Oh, look. The outside was the nice part.
I eyed the brown, stained bedspread which complemented the water stains running down the stucco walls. “It doesn’t match, but it goes.”
Rohan smoothed the plastic tarp that we’d purchased on our way over and now covered the bed. “Isn’t this better than a chocolate on the pillow?”
“I wouldn’t trust that anything we found here was chocolate. You want first crack at the prison shower?”
Rohan eyed the bathroom dubiously. “Sure?”
We rinsed off in record speed, doing our best to wash our filthy clothes of death and nightmares. After a quick scarf-down of roasted peanuts, three chocolate bars, and a Coke from the ancient vending machine outside the motel office, with surprisingly recent expiration dates, I yawned and spread out on one side of the plastic-wrapped bed.
We spooned to fit on the lumpy double mattress. Sleep was a nice idea, if completely elusive. The plastic rustled every time I moved, which was constantly because any little sound had me twitching like I was on speed, while Ro snored softly.
Exhaustion claimed me at some point because Leo’s text woke me up. She’d sent an address, located on one of the Greek islands.
I pecked Rohan on the cheek, who mumbled something and rolled over. “Leo found Lilith’s place. I’m going to check it out.”
He yawned and cracked an eye open. “Want me to come? I can put off working things out with Drio until later.”
“No. Just don’t kill the angry Italian. And tell him I want to go see Kyle tonight.” I ruffled his hair making it even more bed head. “The fun never stops.”
“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, then bliss.” He caught my hand, giving it a tight squeeze.
“It’s my mantra, baby.”
“Wait.” He pulled me down for a proper smooch. Throwaway kisses that were dispensed freely because there was an endless supply might beat hot sexy kisses. I’d have to test both thoroughly.
The address Leo had given me led to a small cottage with colorful wildflowers running riot around the front door. The walls were white plaster and an azure blue sea danced down a hillside dotted with olive trees. I walked around the cottage sensing for wards, then up the flagstone path to the front door. On the third stone from the house, I froze, mid-stride. One more step and I’d unleash the ugly knot of magic warding the front door.
I had no way of defusing it. I held my hand half an inch from the ward. No change in the magic. I lowered it a bit more, feeling for any disturbances, any awareness of an intruder.
Slowly, I eased my hand down to the ground, until I touched the ward line. The magic recognized me as its creator. It was a hollow victory, further proof that Lilith and I were inexorably intertwined.
I strode to the front door and stepped inside.
While the furnishings were simple, they were of a high-quality craftsmanship.
There were no photos or personal mementos on the walls. I didn’t find anything useful in the living room, kitchen or bathroom, but when I got into the bedroom, magic tingled my fingertips like dowsing rods. I followed it past the elaborately carved wooden bed frame with four ebony posts and a lavender bed spread flecked with blue and white, capturing all the colors of the sea.
In the second drawer of Lilith’s art deco vanity, I found a metal box with a slight depression in the lid. When I pressed my thumb to it, the lid popped open.
Inside was a thin gold hammered circlet. I turned it over once, twice. Huh. Then, like an adult finding a forgotten childhood toy, memories rushed me like the tide. This was—I nearly dropped the circlet, blinking hurriedly.
Well, damn.
Two minutes later, Malik let me up to his apartment.
“You look more like yourself,” I commented, getting comfortable on the low, curved sofa that hugged his floor-to-ceiling windows with its multimillion-dollar view.
He rubbed a hand over his freshly shaven jaw, covered in dots of paint, his clothes and eyepatch spattered in a rainbow of colors. He picked up a palette from an easel and squirted blue paint from a mostly empty tube onto it, mixing it with his brush into a blob of white. “I feel more like myself. You, however, look like utter shite. Busy night?”
“Yeah. We were attacked. Everything I own was burned to the ground, a friend died, and one of Satan’s minions made me a heart out of people.”
Malik chuckled, dabbing color onto his canvas with broad strokes. “That’s quite imaginative for him, actually.”
I whipped the brittle circlet at him like a ninja throwing star. “If you’d stepped into the role you’d been bred for, then we wouldn’t have the current psychopathic fuck in the role of Satan. Isn’t that right, Shaitan?”
This knowledge had been dumped into my brain upon first sight of the circlet. I’d also been treated to far more information about what Lilith and Malik had gotten up to on that bed, but I’d added that to my To Do List as “things to cauterize out of my brain,” along with the sinking dread that I was going to end up with all of Lilith’s memories and knowledge, whether I wanted them or not.
Malik picked up the circlet, running his finger over the edge of the crown. “I was never Shaitan, but yes, I’d been raised with that expectation. Along with dozens of others. All
the royal families raised their best to challenge the throne.”
“‘Malik’ means ‘King of Kings.’ You threw that away.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Unless you never really had a shot.”
“Any more inanities you’d like to lob my way?”
“Let’s spend a few more minutes together. I’m sure something will come to me. As soon as I kill Satan, there’s going to be a power vacuum. You need to fill it.”
“No.” He set the circlet on a nearby table and resumed painting.
“Why not? Scared you can’t win the throne or toilet bowl or whatever Satan sits on?”
“I’m a simple marid. I enjoy good wine, painting, and making love. Not looking over my shoulder all the time.”
“But it’s okay for Lilith to live that way?”
He peered at me from around the canvas. “Technically, you’re the one living that way. As we’ve established, Lila is gone.”
“To be clear, you won’t take on the mantle that was expected of you?”
Malik snapped the circlet in half, strolled over to me, and dumped the pieces in my lap.
I pulled out a gaudy paper crown from a fast food kid’s meal that Cole had bought for me on our first date and that I’d had rolled in my shorts back pocket, hidden by my T-shirt. I’d quickly swung by my parents’ place to grab it. “Excellent. Since you have no interest in playing by the establishment rules, you’re free to make your own.”
Standing up, I settled the crown on him with a little pat.
Malik whipped it off like I’d dumped a batch of lice over him.
“Ari was raised with an expectation, too,” I said. “You know what came along with that?”
“I couldn’t begin to imagine.” He returned to his easel.
“A lifetime of indoctrination. If you spent your life being trained to be the ultimate demon leader, then you spent your life being schooled in rules and etiquette, but you walked away from it.”
“The politics and constant challenges held no appeal.”
“Mmm. Perhaps. The demon realm must have freaked out when you didn’t take the throne and went to live on earth. How common.” I widened my eyes. “Were you branded a traitor for turning your back on your destiny? That must have been tough.”
Malik looked away from his canvas, just long enough to scowl at me. “You pity me? How dare you.”
Picking up the paper crown, I straightened out the folded-up ruby that adorned it. “When I lost my dance dreams, I figured that my only other option must be being a fuck-up. All or nothing. The Brotherhood maintained that Rashas could only be men or nothing. Life is not all or nothing. Look at me. A demon hunter, a witch. I’m forging my own road and living life on my terms. You could do that.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. You were born for more and you can have it.” I scooted over to see what he was painting but only caught the edge of thick, vibrant strokes.
He slapped paint onto the canvas. “Why are you pushing so hard for me to have this power?”
“Better the devil I know. Literally. You genuinely enjoy earth and humans. Aspects, anyway. That puts you miles ahead of whoever we could end up with.” I set the paper crown on my head at a rakish angle. “One of us is going to have to kill the other. With you as Satan, it’ll give us something to look forward to. Come on. I can’t believe I have to convince you to be the next Dread Pirate Roberts.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? You and what demon army?”
Malik was silent for a moment, the swish of his brushstrokes the only sound. “Do you have any idea what’s involved in taking the throne?”
“No, tell me. Is Satan really that scary? I haven’t heard of him here on earth since Adam and Eve’s time. A lot of temptations are ascribed to him, but I couldn’t find any concrete record of evildoings.” I’d looked him up before the chapter house had burned down.
“Satan doesn’t leave the demon realm,” Malik said. “He doesn’t need to. He’s the spider in the center of a web, pulling on one thread to arrange a mudslide after an earthquake to wipe out a region, sending whispers along another into the ear of a despot to commit genocide. Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler.”
“Hitler was Samson King’s doing.”
“On whose orders? Nothing happens that he doesn’t have a say in. And it’s not just about Satan. You’d have to kill all his guards.”
“I’ll have to do that anyway.”
“They’re the upper echelon of Hell and eat runty little witches like you for breakfast.”
“Pfft. We time our attack for after I secure the Ring of Solomon. Then I can keep all the demons away from you.”
Malik shook his head. “That ring has been lost for centuries. Even if you do find it, you’re not bringing it into the demon realm.”
“You don’t even like most demons. Why do you care?”
“Don’t test me on this, petal.”
I snorted. “You won’t hurt me because you won’t hurt Lilith.”
“I won’t physically hurt you, for now, but hurt comes in a lot of forms and I did swear to rain it down on you. I could have a lot of fun with your brother. Or keep that lovely PD as a toy. I can give Satan the keys to your undoing and I will if that ring gets anywhere near me.”
With Malik bound, he could never hurt me again. The paper crown turned to ash in my hands. Hmm. Malik’s wrongs towards me personally were pretty minor on the scale of things. Lilith on the other hand…
Lilith’s magic was dangerous and had to go before I was lost to being some pale shadow of her, living out her hurts and vendettas. The attack on us last night had shaken me to my core. Big bads were crawling out of the woodwork to come after me and mine, but this situation with Lilith was crumbling me from within.
I brushed the ash off. “You want me to swear some kind of oath that I won’t use the ring on you? I will. A one-time usage then I’ll destroy it, but this is the only way I can take Satan down. I’ll kill myself before I let him use me like that.”
“One time,” Malik finally said. He crossed the room and picked up the discarded circlet halves. “To bind a demon with the ring, you need to call him by his true name.”
The ring wasn’t so much a mass exorcismy device as a one-at-a-time tool. There went my fantasies of binding all the demons in existence at once and forcing them to kill each other, game over, buh-bye.
“Which is what?” I said.
“I have no idea. You’ll have to pull it from Satan’s memories.”
“Don’t overwhelm me with useful details or anything. We bind Satan, what then?”
“You have to keep the throne clear. It’s sentient. The throne. Whichever demon sits on it first must undergo a trial to claim it. If another demon touches the throne before I’ve solidified my claim, I die.” He wiped off a daub of paint that had gotten on one of the circlet halves.
“What do demons without the benefit of me do?”
“They have their entire clan at their back.”
“We can be your family!” I said. “Temporary clan. Who will then probably murder you sometime in the future, but we’re living in the moment.”
“You’re amusing. Baffling, but amusing.” His expression turned wistful. “Though you’re not as smart as you think you are. This wasn’t my crown. Lilith was supposed to rule with me. My family made it clear that wasn’t an option.”
“You gave up the throne for Lilith. Now take it for her.”
Malik brushed his hand over the two halves, making them whole once more, and put on the crown. “All the better to kill you later.”
I called Catalina while I was in the elevator. “It’s a go for Satan’s blood. How much will I need?”
“A vial should do,” she said. “We’ll mix it with the purified water for your immersion.”
“What about the mikvah bath?”
“We’ve already ordered one online that’s in accordance with the laws of Judaism.”
&nb
sp; “The internet is an amazing place.”
“We have the magic flame,” she said, “so once I’ve decoded the purification ritual, all that remains is a way to seal the mikvah with some kind of resin, so the magic doesn’t eat through it. I haven’t found anything strong enough yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Could the ritual be modified to dump all traces of Lilith but still leave my enhanced magic?”
“No. You’re stronger than you were precisely because of the lingering remnants of Lilith inside you amplifying your magic. Do you not want to do it?”
Was “yes, but no” an acceptable answer? I wanted Lilith gone, no doubts on that score, because I wouldn’t rest easy in my own skin until she was, but after the Night of Fog and Monsters, every bit of enhanced magic had become a security blanket that I took comfort in.
“Totally committed.” I’d still have my regular witch magic. “Are we sealing me as well? Is the magic going to eat the flesh off my bones?”
“Highly unlikely.”
Between that reassuring note and the continual joys of dealing with Malik, I was very glad that my next stop was a training session that Rohan had insisted on before we met up with Kyle. Punching things good.
We no longer had the Vault, but that didn’t mean I was stuck in a sweaty gym with a bunch of strange men watching and commenting. Rohan had rented a boxing gym out so it was just the two of us, able to train and more importantly, speak freely. The gym walls were crumbling exposed brick and the air smelled like rancid sweat from inside of a boxing glove combined with bruised leather and grubby canvas.
Ro had already put me through a punishing circuit of pull-ups, squats, the dreaded burpees, jumping on and off low benches, and working with a medicine ball.
I’d been grossly sweaty, my limbs shaking after that. Then he got me in the ring. Two minutes running around on that canvas and I was panting, my heart booming like a timpani. The padded floor in the ring fatigued my legs much faster than the mats I usually trained on.
“The challenge is opening a rift to the demon realm so we can go through.” I threw a right hook at Rohan, who easily dodged it.
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