by D V Wolfe
Vix looked horrified. “I attacked an innocent?”
I shook my head. “No, it looks like...it might have been a demon.”
Vix closed her eyes and stood perfectly still. She kept a hand on the door frame to balance herself and I saw the muscles in her upper arm jerking. “No. The last thing I truly remember was being on the road with Sprig. There were moments of clarity with a druid, I think.”
“Kess,” I said. “You and Sprig have been at her house for a while now. You took off from there and Sprig called me, worried sick. Then, in an impeccable bout of timing, you attacked this demon that was about to carve me up like an old-timer whittling on the back porch.”
“I saved your life?” Vix asked, looking horrified.
I grinned. “Seems like it.”
“Are you sure it was me?” Vix asked.
I rolled my eyes. “You were a mess. I picked you up and brought you here.”
“Huh,” Vix said. She shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t remember coming here or making a conscious decision to attack or...save anyone.” She shrugged. “But, just so we’re square as it seems you got me out of there alive and here. And you called my brother to come get me. I suppose I could help you with a tranix scabbard. Just so we’re square.” She made a face. “I make it a point to never be indebted to mortals.”
I thought we were already pretty square with her saving me from Nigel, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially if there was a possibility that we could make this scabbard thing and I could skip off on my merry way to skewer Nigel on the end of it.
“I’d say that would make us square,” I said. “How do we make one of these ‘train-ex’ things?”
“Wait,” Stacks said, holding up a hand. “This is a metaphor, right? There’s not really a scabbard that can make that huge sword ‘disappear’.”
Vix studied Stacks with an assessing stare and I saw Stacks’ face starting to turn red. Vix turned her attention to me. “You’ll need to make a regular scabbard of some kind to actually hold the sword. The tranix is a spell that will give it the properties of the aether. It will go into the otherworld when it’s sheathed, hiding it from the mortal world. You will be able to feel it’s presence, but to anyone who touches you, bumps into you, sees you, you will appear unarmed.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “I’m never going to take this thing off.”
Vix gave me a sad smile. “You may want to, from time to time. It can be exhausting to bear both elements of the mortal and the other world.” Vix looked around at the rest of us. “I believe I heard you all had things to do?” Noah turned his attention back to his computer screen. Tags slipped into Stacks’ bedroom behind Vix, to get back to his pendulum. Rosetta got to her feet and followed Stacks across the room. Vix held up a hand to stop Stacks. “I’ll need a copy of the Tir na nOg celestial charts for centering the spell.” She raised a graceful hand and ran two fingertips through the hair over Stacks’ ear.
“Uh, ye-yeah,” Stacks said. He turned to look at me. “They’re in that book I gave you on fae.”
I nodded. “It’s in my toolbox. I’ll get it.”
“I’ll come help you,” Gabe said. “And I’ll help you make the scabbard.”
Vix turned her attention to Rosetta. “I could use a cappuccino.”
“And I could use a pot of black coffee and an iron crowbar,” Rosetta said to Vix, putting her hands on her hips. “But it ain’t happening, is it?”
Vix and Rosetta glared at each other. The fae versus the Southern Baptist. I expected Rosetta to fold first. After all, Vix was a fae. She could persuade and win over people if she wanted to. I could feel the slightest tickling of Vix’s magic roll off me as she turned it on for Rosetta. Rosetta’s expression never changed. She just glared back at Vix. Either Vix wasn’t at full power and knew she wasn’t going to win, or she just decided to call it a draw. Vix broke eye contact with Rosetta and turned her attention back on me.
“Bane, bring us coffees. Black for her, cappuccino for me,” Vix said.
I could feel her turning up the fae magic on me. I didn’t have much shirt left to turn inside out and there was no stale bread in sight. I wondered vaguely if there was some leftover pizza crust in one of the stacks of boxes around me. No time.
“Sure.” The word was forced out of me.
“Latte for me,” Stacks said.
“Me too,” Noah added.
“Chai tea,” Tags said, sticking his head out of the second bedroom.
I couldn’t vocally object, but as my feet started pushing me towards the trailer door, I gave them all the finger. Gabe laughed and followed me outside. We got everyone their coffee and Gabe ran them back inside the trailer along with the book on fae lore Stacks had given me. I didn’t want to give Vix another excuse to turn her hoodoo on me. She was doing me a huge favor, but there was no need to go overboard on the involuntary thanking her part. I pulled a new sports bra and a mildly-stained a-shirt out and changed with my back to the trailer, wincing as I disturbed the freshly cauterized wound on my chest. Then, I pulled the sword out from under the seat and set it on the tailgate along with some spare cardboard I’d found in the crawl space under Stacks’ trailer and a roll of duct tape from the toolbox.
“Really?” Gabe asked, coming over to stand next to me. “Cardboard and duct tape?”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m fresh out of leather and metal scabbarding supplies.”
Gabe shook his head. “Alright, let’s get to work.”
It was just past seven when we finished.
“You’ll still need a strap,” Gabe said. “To keep it on. If you use duct tape for that, it’ll wear out pretty fast.”
I opened up the toolbox to throw the duct tape back in and I paused. Nya’s bags. Her black leather shoulder bag was tucked into one corner of the box. I did my best to ignore the emotion tightening my throat as I looked at it. Don’t think. Just do. I tugged the bag out and turned to Gabe, lifting the strap. “What about…” I paused and cleared my throat. “What about this?”
Gabe’s expression softened. “Perfect.”
Once we got the strap attached, we loaded on the sword, and Gabe helped me adjust the straps until it felt balanced.
“Ready,” I said as Gabe and I made it back inside the trailer. Ready was an understatement. I knew they’d all had good points, but I was regretting waiting around. What if Nigel was gone already? Moved on to parts unknown. Like Sister Smile?
“Good,” Stacks said. “I think we’re ready too.” He and Vix were standing next to the table, looking over a star chart Vix had drawn, comparing it to symbols on a page of the book.
Vix turned and held her hands out. “Give me the sword and scabbard.”
I hesitated. What if she just took off with them? This was Nya’s gift to me. Her dying gift. She’d be spinning in her grave if she was here, about to see me hand them over to a Puca.
Gabe put a hand on my shoulder and he whispered. “Don’t worry, I’m blocking the exit.”
I tugged the sword and scabbard off over my head and handed it over to Vix. Vix took them and studied the hilt of the sword with interest. I immediately started to regret giving it to her. She turned her attention back to the chart and when I saw her eyes again, I saw that they had gone silver. A soft purple glow had started to come from Vix, illuminating the runes that lay just under her skin as she began chanting. They weren’t words. They were more of a song and I could swear that I saw them leaving her mouth and wrapping themselves around the duct-tape and cardboard scabbard. When she finished, she handed it back to me. I stared at it. It didn’t look any different.
“Well,” Vix said. “Don’t just stand there, put it on. You look like my brother the first time he saw a watermelon.”
I pulled the strap over my head and settled it across my chest. It felt the same. I heard a collective gasp around me. I looked down at myself and I saw the black leather strap had disappeared. I reached back
and felt the hilt in my hand. I pulled the sword out and there was another gasp. Vix smiled and crossed her arms. “And now, we’re square.” I moved down the hallway and looked at my reflection in the mirror over Stacks’ sink. Sure enough. The sword and scabbard disappeared when the sword was sheathed. I pulled it back over my head and the leather strap, duct tape and unevenly cut cardboard peeking out of the top of the layers of duct tape materialized again. I came out of the bathroom, pulling the sword and scabbard back on.
I nodded at Vix. “We’re definitely square.” I felt Noah’s hand on my back.
“It feels like nothing’s there,” he said.
I reached back and I could still feel the hilt of the sword. Still there. I almost wanted to hug Vix. Almost.
20
“Ok,” Stacks said. “Now that we’ve got that problem solved…”
I turned, heading for the trailer door. “I’ve got a Nigel to find.”
“Hold up, Calamity Bane,” Gabe said, grabbing me by the back of my shirt.
“Yeah,” Stacks said. “Let’s get on the same page before the next phase of this shit plan goes down.” He turned to look down the hallway. “Tags!”
Tags opened the door to the bedroom and stuck his head out. “What?”
“Any luck on the Nigel hunt?” Stacks asked.
Tags shook his head. “Sorry, it’s not pulling anything up.” Tags looked over at me. “You don’t happen to have anything on you that was his, do you? I think there’s a variation of the spell I can do if I can attach something he touched to the pendulum.
I paused. He’d used his sword on my shirt. I wasn’t positive if he’d touched me while he was getting me into his house. Demons could levitate objects. I thought of the “many invisible hands” trick the compelling demon had tried on me when we first hit town. I sighed. “Sorry Tags. I should have grabbed his stupid coffee mug before we left.” Then another thought occurred to me. “If I go to his house now, I could get something for you to use to find him.”
“And if he’s hiding in a coat closet at his house?” Gabe asked.
I reached back and patted the sword hilt. “I’ve got the sword. And we won’t need to track him then.”
Gabe shook his head. “Not a good option. You’re already injured. We don’t need to hand him any other leg-ups, like the element of surprise.”
“Besides,” Rosetta huffed. “Have you forgotten about the demons at New Covenant and the souls they’re building their escalator from Hell with? What about them?”
For a second, all I’d wanted to do was kill Nigel. I’d already forgotten about what else was at stake. I gave myself a mental shake. If we all went after Nigel and he was somehow able to strike us all down with fast-acting cancer or make us kill ourselves, or turn our lungs inside out or something, who would stop the other demons? Who would break the blood oaths? Tunnel vision. It had bitten me on the ass so many times lately that it was like a bad joke. St. Louis? All I could think about was icing a demon and breaking my contract, not the people I dragged in there with me to get it done. Sicily? Getting Festus back. And I had lost Sister Smile and Joel because of it. Triton? Killing Ornias. And it had cost me Nya.
I took a deep breath. “You’re right.” I looked at Stacks. “Any progress on the Omnio Purgo spell?”
“Yeah,” Stacks said. “I think we’ve got it worked out. We just need to figure out which one of us is going to do it.”
“Can it be done from here?” I asked.
Stacks shook his head. “No, whoever does it will need to be standing on the black stones of the altar when they fire it off.”
“Then, it’s going to be me,” I said. There was an immediate uproar around me. I held up a hand. “Look, I have the demon-killing sword. At best, the rest of you have demon-killing shotgun shells and stakes.”
“And we only have a couple of the shells left,” Noah muttered. He was right. Even with the four left in my fanny pack, we didn’t have more than a dozen or so.
“So that settles it,” I said. “Holy water, salt, wrought iron, and the remaining shells and stakes for the rest of you to help keep them off me while I do the spell, down front and center. Any questions?”
“She’s got my vote,” Stacks said, moving down the table, picking up papers to look under them. Vix was perched on the arm of the couch. She’d moved so quickly that I hadn’t noticed her move at all. She was holding one of Stacks’ ratty towels and scrubbing at the blood on her fingernails, occasionally glancing up at us in mild interest.
“We’ll be doing more than keeping them off you,” Rosetta said. “We need to find the summoning circle and wreck it, remember?”
I nodded at her. “I’d forgotten about that.”
Stacks was pushing around files and books on the table, looking for something and becoming more frantic. Before I could ask him if he needed help, he started searching his pockets. He paused, visibly relieved, and snatched something off the table before moving back towards us. He pulled a Post-it note out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Damn, the top part is so sticky, when I folded it up, it stuck to itself. You’ll have to flip it over to read the whole thing.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You couldn’t find a receipt or something fancier to write it on? What about a cocktail napkin?”
“It should work,” Stacks said. “I used a spell developed by St. Talumus as a reference. It should clean up and remove any spellwork working in about a half-mile radius from where it’s performed.”
“So I just have to say these words?” I asked.
“And burn this,” Stacks said, holding out a baseball-sized hex bag.
“What is it?” I asked, fiddling with the drawstring.
“Trust me,” Noah said. “You don’t want to know.”
“You just have to set it on fire,” Stacks said. “And speak the incantation before the entire thing is engulfed, and it will Mr. Clean the shit out of that place.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. Will we even need to worry about the summoning circle then if this thing wipes out all spell work in the area?”
Stacks looked annoyed. “Unfortunately, the summoning circle is a rite. If the physical circle still stands, the Purgo spell will only delay them until they can recast the spells they’ve been using. We need to break the connection. Break the circle, break the connection.”
“So we find this circle and then what?” Noah asked.
“Summoning circles are usually drawn or painted on the floor and there’s a black altar and all manner of other party favors,” Gabe said.
Tags nodded. “Once we find it, we just break some stuff, scrape some paint, burn whatever is on the altar and the connection should be broken.”
“I’m in,” Noah said.
I grinned. “Yeah, I say Noah runs point on that mission.”
We all looked at each other. “So we have a plan?” Rosetta asked.
I nodded. “We have a plan. Well, most of one. There’s still one loose end. And his name is Nigel.” I shook my head. “Damn. I guess we’ll have to worry about him after we deal with New Covenant.”
“If there is an after,” Stacks muttered. I cut my eyes to him. He’d picked up the ratty towel that Vix had tossed on the table. It had been white at one time but yellowed with age. And now it had black and red streaks from the blood Vix had cleaned off of her…
“Tags,” I said, a realization hitting me. “What about blood? Can you track something if you have its blood.”
