Page 61 of Demon's Bluff
She sounded like Jenks. Her expression was just as determined, and I went to get my jacket, seeing as she had her lost-and-found special.Rhinestones…“I could.” I let that sit there for a moment. “You can’t tap a line yet, and I doubt you spent your adolescence in the gym learning how to fend off creeps.”
Her eye twitched. “I can help,” she said, switching tactics. “I’ll be quiet. It will be good experience. I bet Newt knows how to collect enough energy to live on for two years.”
This was exactly what I had wanted to avoid, and I stiffly shoved my arms into my jacket and tugged it straight. “I know she does. Where do you think I got the spell?”
“Then I can bargain with her for it.”
“That’s why you aren’t coming.” I gathered myself to leave, not sure what to do anymore. “Stay here. Concentrate on the demon tomes. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Because if you ask her, she’ll want your soul. I guarantee it. Nice young coven member. She won’t have to break you of any bad habits.”
Bag over my shoulder, I strode through the freestanding racks of musty books. Her scuffing steps were right behind me, and I half expectedher to try to hit me on the way out. I shoved the chain-link gate open and stepped into the darker hallway, senses tingling as the wire door scraped loudly.
And then I made a mistake. I turned to latch the gate shut.
Elyse was standing there looking desperate: desperate to help, desperate not to be left behind, desperate to be taken seriously. It was the last that broke me, and my grip on the chain-link tightened. Suddenly I couldn’t bring myself to shut it. “Okay. Seriously,” I said, and the light of hope brightened her expression. “Can you pretend to be my familiar? Do what I say? Take all manner of insults? Keep your mouth shut? I mean it. Can you? Because familiars take a lot of shit.” But the real question was, would she?
“Yes,” she said immediately, and my mood soured.I am so stupid.
“Fine, you can come. It’s probably a good thing you can’t do any magic, because if you did, Newt would flatten you like a bug. Let’s go.”
Elyse stepped into the hall and slammed the gate shut behind her. She had left her hoodie, but I was betting she didn’t trust me enough not to lock her in if she went to get it. “You didn’t prep anything,” she said as I secured the gate with the mundane key.
“Okay, what would you do?” I said as I tucked the key into its hidey-hole where Nick kept it. “Summon Newt into a circle? Demand the information? Trick her like you tricked me?”
The young woman flushed.
“I saw her take down a three-ringed blood circle not three days ago local time. Anything you could spell wouldn’t stand. Any information you gained from her wouldn’t be a lie, but she’d leave something out that would make it worthless. You trick her,” I said, voice gaining strength as I stared her down, “and she will kill you where you stand with no more thought than swatting a spider. There’s nothing wrong with an up-front, honest deal, Elyse.” I reshouldered my bag and started down the long hall, chain-link cages to either side. “Demons don’t have to do anything, even if you circle them. And Newt? She’s the worst. No one, even her, knows her summoning name. She just shows up wherever and whenever she feels like it,as if she was immune to the curse that imprisoned the rest in the hellhole of the EA.”
I was telling Elyse how to survive, but I didn’t think she was listening.
“It’s not as if I can do any magic anyway,” she said sullenly, and I stopped.
“Look, you wanted me in your coven to learn about demons, right?” I said. “I’m trying to tell you something. How about listening?”
Elyse stared belligerently at me. I knew she wasn’t eighteen, but twenty wasn’t much better. “Here,” I said as I took the chalk from my pocket and snapped it in two. “Before we get started with Newt, draw a circle and I’ll invoke it for you.”
“Why not circle Newt?”
I shuddered. “Not her. Never her. That would only piss her off. She might laugh if you circle yourself. It won’t last long if she wants to take it down, but I might be able to distract her in the meantime.”
Elyse considered the chalk in her hand as if I’d given her a slingshot against a tank. “You’re asking me to go against thousands of years of lore and trust you? Seems to me that a coven member for a mirror would be a damn fine trade. No one would ever know.”
“I would.” Somehow the dim lighting made her seem older. Or maybe it was her skeptical expression. “I told you to stay here, remember? Besides, Newt already has a demon for a familiar. You’d be a step down. Just because people have been circling demons for thousands of years, it doesn’t mean that it’s right or that there isn’t a better way.”
Elyse put the chalk into a pocket. “How are you going to find her if you don’t summon her?”
I peered up the grungy stairway. “I have an idea,” I said as I started up. “One that will keep Minias out of the equation, too.”
Elyse’s shoes scuffed on the cold cement as she followed me, the sound uncomfortable in the tight confines. I was beginning to think Elyseshouldsee the ever-after, witness firsthand what five thousand years of a magic war does to a world. But then again, I didn’t want to spend my life tryingto free Elyse from a demon. Getting her free from the I.S. had been hard enough.
“You know,” Elyse said from three stairs down, “we could end this and go home right now if you agree to be coven.”
My grip on the filthy banister tightened. “I’m not doing this for the coven. I need to uncurse Brad. Evading the coven was always secondary. Besides, easy always bites me on the ass, and baby, you’re easy.”
Her heavy sigh turned me around and I winced at her gray sweats. Sure, she was glamoured, but it was a demon curse and Newt might be able to see through it. “Hey, ah, does Vivian give you an allowance when you’re at coven camp?”
“Yeah, why?”
I glanced down at myself, cringing at the sequins. “If you are going to be my familiar, you can’t go in like that. You need some style. We both do.”