Page 32 of Demon's Bluff
Ivy shook her head and gave the stone back to me.
“Me either,” Bis said. “But his aura is wrong. It’s too complex for a ten-year-old.”
“Huh.” I tucked the stone into a pocket. “He’s been spelled younger. I’m going to say demon curse, maybe, because it’s not a glamour.” I flushed, remembering his smooth skin and, uh, yeah. I’d obviously seen naked men before, but only when the person in question wanted me to, and I felt like a voyeur.
“Why would they do that?” Ivy asked, and I grabbed a couch pillow and set it on his lap.
“To put us off guard?” I guessed. “I’m going to wake him up. He might know where my book is. Bis, make yourself and the book we’re walking out of here with scarce.”
Bis’s haunches bunched, and then he launched himself into the air, landing awkwardly on the top of a bookcase, where he could watch everything and remain out of sight. Head down, he continued to read as I put a couple of zip strips on the guy, first around his wrists to keep himcontained, and then one about a slim ankle. Their core of magicked silver would keep him from tapping a line. It wasn’t hard to make a magic user impotent, which was why I kept my membership up at the local dojo.
He really was the size of a ten-year-old. But that was not what I saw through the stone, and I stood nervously before him.“Honna tara surrundus.”I said the elven words to break the sleep spell, hoping I got the pronunciation right. The kid, or guy, I guess, came to with a snort. His focus shifted from the three of us facing him to the pillow on his lap and back again. I could tell when he reached for a ley line, not because I felt it but because his expression went ugly. Too ugly for a ten-year-old.
Smug, I crouched to put us eye to eye. “Hi. We’re going to play a little game. Hot and cold. You know how to play that, right?” I pitched my voice as if I were talking to a kindergartner, and his expression darkened even more.
“You can go to hell on a stick,” he said, his high voice holding a scary amount of anger.
Ivy put her hands on her knees and bent over him. “I’d smack him, but I don’t like hitting people who don’t have to shave yet.”
“Mmmm, go ahead.” I stood, not comfortable with my head that close to Ivy’s. Not when her pupils were that big. “He’s not ten.”
Bis snickered. “Definitely not ten,” he said from the bookcase, and the kid twisted, craning his neck to try to find him.
“Hey. Hey!” Ivy exclaimed, snapping her fingers for his attention. “Eyes forward, sport.”
“You can see me?” the kid said, and I frowned as it began to come together.
“You knew me,” I mused as I peered through the stone, glad I’d put the pillow where I had. “Which isn’t unusual. Most of the city does. But why did the coven leave you here guarding a book?”
His gaze darted to the glamoured copy on the end table, and I set a gentle hand on it, feeling nothing from the disguisedReader’s Digest. “You’re coven, aren’t you. Are you Scott?” I guessed, and the “kid” lookedtorn between annoyance and relief. “You were like a hundred this afternoon. What happened?”
“Yeah, well, now I’m ten,” he said, high voice bitter. “I’ll be older in the morning.”
Ivy smiled, and a shiver crossed me. “If he’s not ten, I can bite him.”
Scott’s nasty smile faded, and I shook my head. “And add a vampire scar to his misery? We are not that cruel.” Head cocked, I considered him.Older in the morning?His body must shift with the sun, aging and youthing. I’d bet his clothes were spelled to shift with his body so he wouldn’t have to change them when the sun rose and set. That was why he wasn’t wearing any when I looked through the translocation stone. No wonder they put him on disability.
“That is a vile curse,” I said, and his gaze darted to me. “Who did this to you?”
“That’s funny,” Scott said, sullen and ill-tempered. “I warned Elyse not to renege on the deal. Your book is under the couch. Take it and go. You take the other, and we will follow you to the ends of the earth for it.”
“You put it under the couch?” I asked as Ivy pushed off from his chair, shifting it backward a few inches. Hips swaying, she dropped to the floor and stretched.
“Got it,” she said as she backed out from under the couch, my book in hand.
I turned to Scott, aghast. “You put it under thecouch?” I said again, and Scott winced as Ivy set it thumping onto the end table beside the glamouredReader’s Digest.
“I wasn’t going to answer the door with it sitting in the open.” Scott looked like an embarrassed kid. “I knew you weren’t going to fall for the ‘this is where we’re keeping your book and the word to unlock the safe’ routine. But try telling a twenty-year-old anything.”
He’d said the last with a sneer, and I felt a twinge of annoyance. “Don’t sell her short,” I said. “She’s probably on her way here right now.”
Scott flinched, and I felt my expression blank.
“Shit, we need to go,” Ivy said, and worry clenched my gut.
“Ah, Rachel?” Bis said from atop the bookcase, his heavy brow furrowed.
“She’s on her way, isn’t she?” I said, and Scott simpered at me. “How did she know we were here?” I asked, and still he stayed silent. Crap on toast. If the warning went out when we rang the bell, she could be here in as little as twenty minutes. We’d been here almost that.