Page 101 of Demon's Bluff
“I do! Just give me a sec to orient myself.” The memory of fleeing before Trent’s hounds intruded, making it hard to think. I could not be caught. It would destroy the next two years, and I loved Trent desperately. Breath held, I followed the sensation of the ley line, sensing where it dipped and then rose anew. “This way,” I said, quickening my pace. “Follow the line, and we find the vault.”
I broke into a jog, Elyse tight behind me. “There,” I said as I recognized a corner. “Go right.”
“It’s a dead end.” Elyse slid to a halt after making the turn, and I slowed, confused at the small alcove set off the short hallway. There was a couch against the back wall, and several chairs around the low table, making aninformal meeting area. There was no locked door, no key panel, but the ley line had been pulled down to run through it. We were at the right place.
“Is it?” I asked as I unfocused my attention, shuddering when the walls and ceilings of reality went opaque and the multistoried, high-ceilinged demon mall flickered into existence just outside my blind spot. I could almost hear the Carpenters done instrumental. Under my second sight, my old demon marks practically glowed an evil, smutty black. Elyse’s aura, I couldn’t help but notice, was almost too clean.Is she sloughing her smut off on someone?
Just behind the wall with the red couch was Trent’s dad’s vault, accessible only through a ley line. You had to pass into the ever-after to go through the wall, then will yourself back into reality. It was only four steps, but two of them were in the ever-after.
“Stay here,” I said as I moved to the couch. “Keep watch. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“Rachel, it’s the demons’ underground! I can see it!”
“How did you think I was getting in there?” I said, annoyed. “You go into the ever-after to get through the wall, then come out in the vault. I thought you understood.”
White-faced, she stepped up onto the couch and then into the line, vanishing.
“Son of a fairy-farting whore!” I shouted, but no one was there to hear but me. She was there. In Trent’s vault instead of watching my back.
Frustrated, I stepped onto the couch and into the ley line. Energy played about my hands and middle, mystics snarling my hair when I shifted my aura to match the line, become a part of it—and I felt myself spill into nothing as I stepped into the ever-after.
Chapter
24
The step from the couchinto the ever-after was a long, sudden drop. I came down hard, the reek of burnt amber a choking assault as it filled my nose, my lungs, my very pores. If the surface was bad, this was almost intolerable. A sticky heat and a loud thump of music slammed into me, the myriad conversations continuing as if someone stepping out of nothing into a demon coffeehouse was commonplace. But when in the ever-after, it sort of was.
I didn’t see Elyse, but the door to the coffeehouse was before me and I grabbed it, wondering if my Kalamack Industries uniform glamour was any good here. The transposition curse was demon based, sure, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see through it.
But the scent of burnt amber was finally slipping into the background, and I opened the door and stepped in.
As I had already seen while using my second sight, the shop was busy. Everyone was talking, and I held the satchel with my bag closer as I scanned the familiars standing in line, their diverse outfits making it feel like a studio commissary. I wasn’t as out of place as I had first thought. More familiars served as baristas, efficiently moving the line as they used magic to prep the drinks and light fare. Their banter with their regular customers seemed cheerful despite their enforced servitude. Elyse wasn’t here, and my shoulders slumped.Crap on toast, you’ve got to be kidding me.She must have gone all the way into the vault.
“Hey, sport,” a low voice said, and I spun to see two demons sitting at a high table, one in a wide-lapel, bold-color seventies leisure suit, the other in a pair of running sweats and enough jewelry to please even Constance—both staring at me in interest. “Your aura is too bright to have been here long. Who let you out so soon, little man?”
Boz and Clemt,I thought, knowing every demon by their common name after having fended off their interests more than once. For as long as I had known him, Boz was stuck in the disco era. Clemt had recently abandoned his penchant for penal-colony Australia for the eighties rap scene. The two were somewhat ostracized for their modern tastes, hence them palling around in the Coffee Vault, but I’d always appreciated their attempts to fit in.
At least I know my disguise is holding.Even so, it was never good to be interesting to a demon, even one you knew, and I turned to the last person in line. “Hey, was there a, ah, guy just here?” I asked him. “Blond hair, dressed like me, scared looking.”
“I said, who owns you?” Clemt demanded, gold chains jingling, and the familiar ahead of me shook his head and pressed forward, divorcing himself from any possible trouble.
Boz smacked Clemt’s arm for his attention. “I think he’s from the Kalamack estate,” he said. “I swear he came through the line.”
“Yeah?” Clemt’s interest sharpened.
“Seriously?” I said as I decided how I wanted to play this. Elyse was nowhere. I didn’t want to leave her if I was wrong and she’d run out into the mall.Damn it, Elyse…
“Yeah,” Boz said, echoing Clemt. “That shiny little elf shit pulled the line down again. See?” He gestured at me with his cracked ceramic coffee mug. “Trying to get into the vault and lost your way, little elf? He’s a thief, I bet. Think he’s worth the effort?”
Clemt grunted in interest. “He’s not afraid, so either he’s really good or really dumb.”
The demon slid from his high chair, his intent obvious, and I took astep back into the ley line, my hair snarling in the unfocused magic. “Let’s go with dumb,” I said.
The demon reached for me, but it was too late, and I vanished, willing myself into reality. This time the move was seamless, and I blinked, trying to see in the utter darkness of the Kalamack vault. The reek of burnt amber lifted from me, and I felt the air, trying to find a wall or rack. Eyes open or shut, it all looked the same.
“Visio deli!”a high-pitched voice rang out, and I ducked, squinting as a brilliant light exploded into existence—headed right for me. If it hit, I’d be temporarily blind.
“Rhombus!”I countered, cowering as the glowing orb smashed into my protection circle. “Elyse, it’s me! It’s me! Demons can’t cross on their own. They have to be summoned. Damn it back to the Turn! What are you doing here? You were supposed to keep our exit open!”