Page 18 of Demon's Bluff
I stood, tugging at that damned pin until the leather tore. Jaw clenched, I set the pin on the table, a long rip of leather dangling from it.Son of a moss-wipe troll turd.
“Elyse,” someone hissed, and I yanked hard on the ley line until my aura sparked. Elyse had stood, and four wary faces watched me as the woman moved to one of the locked glass cabinets. Jenks stood on the light fixture, unnoticed by all but me and that crow, his garden sword in his hand.
“I’m glad you brought the book,” Elyse said tightly, her back to us. “I have the one you are interested in right here. Perhaps we can trade.”
I jerked, my gut seeming to fall to my ankles. “It’s real?” I said, incredulous. “I thought you were lying.”
“I don’t lie.” Elyse murmured a few words of Latin and the glass case unlocked.Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?I thought, memorizing the simple magic.Who guards the guards?
“Elyse. We haven’t voted on that yet,” Scott warned, and Elyse turned with a book, her eyes holding a mocking cruelty. “She wants to see it. I want to see the curse she used on Brad. We have to give her something or she’s going to walk out of here. All for letting her see?”
“Aye,” Orion, Yaz, and Adan all said, and Elyse dropped the book onto the table to make the cider in the cups jump.
“And with me, that makes four,” Elyse said needlessly.
“That’s coven wisdom,” Scott protested. “We don’t have a quorum. It’s not a legal vote.”
“Just because you lost doesn’t make it an illegal vote.” Elyse confidently paged through the book until she found the spell she wanted. Taking a napkin, she stuck it in like a bookmark and closed the tome. “Well? You want to see it or not?” she added, eyebrows raised mockingly high.
“You can look at it here,” Orion said somewhat nervously. “As long as you show us the curse you used on Brad. Illicit or legal, you will still have until June to uncurse him.”
There was something here I wasn’t getting. Why the rush all of a sudden?
“Or,” Elyse said, fingers sparking as they rested on the old leather, “you could agree to become a coven member right now, the legality of that curse aside.”
Scott was frowning. I didn’t trust this at all, but I really wanted to know how to recover Kisten. Yes, I loved Trent, but I missed Kisten’s smile, his ability to say just the right word or know when to not say anything. Besides, he could run Cincy’s vamps better than I ever could, a much-appreciated cushion to Constance’s brutality. He’d been trained for it from birth, knew all the players through birthday parties and weddings. I was winging it.
Jenks’s dust went a dismal blue as I inched forward, my hand shuffling into my bag. “Just so we’re clear, I see the spell to bring the undead to life, and you see the spell I used on Brad Welroe. You don’t get to keep my book, and I walk out with it whenever I feel like it. I have until June to break the curse.”
“Or become coven. Refuse and you are in Alcatraz,” Elyse said, and Scott stiffened at Jenks’s tiny snort of derision, his eyes going wide as he spotted the pixy and Jenks shrugged. By the window, the crow bobbed his head up and down, clearly agitated.
I knew how the bird felt. I didn’t trust Elyse. And I really didn’t like how eager Orion and Yaz were to get their hands on my book. “You’re looking only at the one curse,” I said, and Elyse nodded. “I can do that,” I added, and Yaz turned from Jenks, the pixy forgotten as she scooted eagerly to the edge of her seat, all grabby paws.
And still, it felt as if I was making a mistake as I sat down again, the book in hand. “Clean your hands first,” I warned. “And dump the line. I don’t want you stimulating it.”
“I know how to handle demon texts,” Orion muttered, and I quit leafing through the pages, staring at him until he dropped his eyes.
“It’s three pages including the countercurse,” I said. “Hodin concealed the illicit ingredients and how it worked from me until after I’d used it.”
“We understand,” Elyse said, but I wasn’t sure they believed me. Licking my lips, I spun the book to Orion and Yaz and pushed it across the table.
“This is it,” Orion said, tone muted, and only then did Elyse reopen her book and slide it across the table to me.
My pulse quickened as I drew the book close. I wouldn’t lie to myself and say that I didn’t miss Kisten. I’d had relationships with ghosts before, and if it took me twisting the curse every night, I would. Not to mention Pierce had eventually parlayed his ghostly existence into a real one with the help of a demon. It hadn’t ended well, but that’s what happens when you try to kill a demon. Perhaps I could do something like that here. I’d become quite good at modifying curses.
And yet as I set my fingers atop the cramped print, my hope turned to an annoyed confusion.
“This is ancient elven,” I muttered, peeved. “I can’t read this.” I looked up, angry at Elyse’s self-assured smile. “You are sucky. All the way through.”
Scott grimaced where he sat, hunched over his widely spaced knees. He didn’t seem happy. I think he had known. I think they all had.
“The deal was see, not read,” she had the audacity to say, then moved to peer over Orion’s shoulder. The two earth witches were whispering excitedly, flipping back and forth as they dissected the curse. They weren’t appalled at all, which made me feel a little ill. It was an illicit curse. It did ugly things. And they were as excited as if they had found a way to make ponies pink.
“Elyse, she wasn’t lying,” Orion said as Yaz shifted the pages, his fingers hovering over the now glowing print. “The countercurse requires an Atlantean mirror.” Expression holding a heavy satisfaction, he turned to me. “You can’t break this.”
My face warmed as I rested my hand on the spell I couldn’t read. Elyse had asked me here to trick me, tempting me with something I couldn’t have.And they called me a demon.“I’m trying to find a substitution,” I said through my gritted teeth.
“There isn’t one,” Scott said, and Elyse looked up, brow furrowed for him to stay quiet. “The only Atlantean mirror known to exist was in the possession of a demon named Newt.”