Chapter Nine
Nervous, I wiped my fingertips off on a towel and tossed it on the counter. Almost before it hit, I was reaching for it again, carefully folding it to drape over the oven handle, right in the middle. Exhaling, I turned to look over my kitchen, dim with only the light from the living room across the hall and the small bulb over the sink. Demons and shadows seemed to go together, but they craved the sun like an undead vampire.
Ceri's teapot sat between two chairs at Ivy's farm table. The antique porcelain was warm with Earl Grey tea, two of Ceri's best teacups beside it. A candle on the stove made it smell like a pine forest. If I was lucky, it might even overpower the burnt amber stench. Maybe. I had an hour before Trent brought Jenks home. I couldn't wait any longer. I'd promised Trent results, and it was time to call the demon.
I turned to Bis atop the fridge. "Well?" I asked him. "Look okay to you?"
The cat-size teenager brought his wingtips up to touch over his head, his version of a shrug. "I guess," he said, his pebbly skin flashing the entire range from gray, to white, to black, and back to gray again. He was anxious. So was I.
I spun to the sink and closed the blue curtains, not wanting Dali to see anything more than he absolutely had to. For starters, the leather outfit that I'd come home in was on a hanger, hanging from a limb and airing out. "Thanks for being here, Bis."
"I'm not afraid of demons," he said, his high but gravelly voice giving him away.
Smiling, I leaned my back against the sink. I didn't like anyone with me when I contacted Al, much less an unknown like Dali, but Bis was involved up to his pointy ears, and when he'd refused to leave the kitchen upon hearing my plans, I'd let him stay.
"Demons aren't that bad when you get to know them," I said as I got a plate from the cupboard and arranged the store-bought petits fours around the pile of homemade gingersnaps in the shape of little stars. I didn't know what Dali liked, and variety was nice.
The church felt empty with Ivy still gone and the pixies asleep or out in the garden. I'd been dogged by a growing feeling of unease since I'd gotten back from the ever-after, and not all of it could be lain at the feet of my current problems. Something was brewing with the vampires. Felix had asked after Ivy twice. And I knew Rynn Cormel, Ivy's master vampire, did not like that Ivy had left the state, even temporarily. At least he wasn't sending assassins this time.
"You sure you don't want to wait until Jenks and Trent get here?" Bis said. "What's to stop Dali from just snatching you?"
"Nothing. That's why he won't try. Besides, he knows I'm Al's student. What would be the point? You sure you don't want to wait in the garden? It's okay."
Bis shook his head, trying to hide his slight shiver.
If it had been Ku'Sox I was calling, I'd have used circles, traps, maybe waited for Trent. Dali, though, was like Al in that he got a kick out of those weaker than him trusting him to behave-as risky as it was.
"I hope he knows how to help you," Bis almost whispered. "I don't like demons." His red eyes darted to mine. "I like you, just not them. I mean, if Dali knew how to get Ceri and Lucy back, wouldn't he have done it already?"
I smiled faintly and nudged the teacups back from the edge. "No." A sliver of unease slid into me. The demons couldn't control Ku'Sox. If I couldn't, then they'd give me to him as a bribe to save them. Yay, me.
Bis looked toward the curtained window, then me. Turning slightly lighter, he nodded, his clawed feet shifting. "Okay. I'm ready."
"Me too." Nervous, I pulled out a chair and sat in it, reaching across the narrow space to where I kept my scrying mirror under the center counter. It felt cool on my knees, the glass seeming to sink into me. The ache at the back of my neck became more pronounced as I rested my fingers on the wine-stained glass. I really needed to make a smaller one I could carry in my shoulder bag, and I vowed if I ever got a weekend where I wasn't saving the world, I would.
There was a faint, unusual tingling from my wrist, and I turned my hand over. The raised circle of scar tissue there tied me to Al, a visible mark that I owed him a favor for bringing me home the night we'd met. I'd never gotten around to settling it, and that it was tingling now was curious. Maybe it was responding to his ailment. Slowly my frown deepened. "Tell Ivy I'm sorry if this doesn't go well," I said as I placed my fingers on the proper glyphs.
"Roses on your grave. Right." Bis dropped to the chair nearest me, his craggy feet denting the back as he caught his balance. He really was a good kid.
The coolness of the mirror ached into me, and a new, slight discord blossomed into an irritating whine at the back of my ears. Dallkarackint? I thought in my mind, avoiding saying the demon's true calling name aloud. It wasn't that I had a problem saying it, but Dali wouldn't appreciate my speaking his name on this side of the lines, seeing as anyone who heard it would be able to summon him. Dali had taken great pains to keep his name secret.
Almost immediately the cloud of buzzing seemed to hesitate, part, and with a surprising suddenness, I had a second presence beside mine.
Rachel?
It was Dali, and I warmed in embarrassment. I didn't often talk to demons through my scrying mirror apart from Al, and having Dali in my thoughts was unnerving. Whereas Al used bluster and show to hide his true self, Dali was like a steel pillar, everything seeming to slide off him. "Um, I'm sorry to bother you," I said, my thoughts carrying through the mirror to him.
Irritation predictably joined my embarrassment in our shared thoughts. I'm busy. Make an appointment with my secretary.
He was about to break the connection. I was kind of surprised I'd gotten him at all and not one of his subordinates. "Dali, wait. I have to talk to you, and Al is . . ."
I stopped, not knowing who might be listening in.
Al is what? Dali asked, interest coloring his thought.
I hesitated, looking up at Bis's drooping wings. "I've made some tea," I started.
Outrage flooded me, and I almost yanked my hand from the mirror. You're summoning me! Dali exploded, and I scrambled to assert myself before he drowned me.
"I made some tea!" I said, trying to match his anger, and Bis's eyes grew round. "You want to come over here and drink it or not? It's Earl Grey. I don't particularly like it, but most men I know like bergamot. I don't give a flying flip if we do this here or your office, but if I have to bring the cookies over, they'll taste like burnt amber and I spent two hours on them!" I took a breath, feeling his anger subside. "I need to talk to you," I said softly, my thought mirroring the pleading sound I had. "My kitchen isn't much, but-"
My words cut off as I felt our connection shift, turning from the light, uppermost thoughts to a more enveloping, place-finding sensation. He was coming over, using the mirror to locate me. My eyes widened at the feeling, and a small noise of I-don't-know-what slipped from me, part alarm, part surprise, part sexual titillation as he drew a small trace of ley line through me so he'd show up next to me and not in the garden's ley line.
"He's coming," I said as I lifted my head, flushing because of that weird noise I'd made.
"Holy sweet seraph," Bis swore as a swirl of red ever-after coalesced in the corner of the room beside the fridge. I didn't have a formal circle to mark a spot to jump in at. Maybe I should remedy that if I survived the next couple of days.
"Earl Grey?" Dali's Americana businessman accent drawled as he shook off the last of the black-tainted swirls, showing up in a gray suit and a red power tie instead of a toga-thank God. He looked like a slightly overweight mob boss with his expensive dress shoes, tailored pants, and graying, styled hair.
Uneasy, I stood. Bis shrank back, his red eyes going wide. He held his ground, though, trusting my judgment. "Thank you," I said, wiping my palms on my jeans. Crap, I should have put on a dress, but it was my kitchen, and I'd have felt stupid wearing a gown-again.
Dali's attention had been running over my kitchen, but at my whisper, it returned to me. "You are far too quick in assuming this is a good thing." He glanced at his watch; then his red, goat-slitted eyes returned to the spell pots and the tea steaming on the table. "You don't have any wards protecting your spelling area?"
"I don't need it." I looked away, used to dealing with egotistical, powerful people who got a kick out of my apparent total disregard for the danger they represented. "You want to sit down?" I said, looking at the chair kitty-corner to mine.