The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers (8 page)

Grandma nodded.

I didn't even know we could do that.

Well good. I reached out and gave him a comforting rub on the arm. I
couldn't help worrying about him. Besides, his close ties to Serena the demon
wouldn't exactly enable us to travel incognito.

"Something's not right," Phil said, furrowing his bushy brows
together. "Or is it me?"

I was trying to decide on a nice way to put it when I noticed the absence of
a certain furry companion. "Where's Pirate?"

"He said you'd be okay with him wandering."

"He lied," I said, annoyed with Phil (and myself) for losing track
of my dog.

I spotted Pirate down .an aisle of island-themed slots and scooped him up.

"Hey now!" He craned his head back as I beat a hasty retreat with
him. "I was only stretching my legs after the long ride over here. I mean,
you did strap me into that pet carrier and you know I don't like being strapped
down. My fur's smashed and I got bugs up my nose."

"Not now." Something was wrong. I couldn't quite put my finger on
it, but I didn't want to stick around the lobby any longer than we had to.

"Elevator's this way," Grandma said, glancing behind us. We
followed her toward the row of golden elevator doors.

"We'll be safer once we hit the magical floor," Grandma said,
corralling our odd little party into the elevator.

I hoped she was right.

The doors eased together, trapping us as the elevator jerked and began its
slow climb.

The presence grew stronger, even as the doors opened onto our floor. I took
a deep breath and stepped out.

A pair of beige wingback chairs flanked a glossy brown table. On top of it
lay fancy-looking books that were probably glued down. Sprigs of lavender, dry
and lifeless, huddled in a plain glass vase. I didn't feel magic. Only evil.

Phil drew a lavender stem from the vase and tucked it into his jacket
pocket, like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Come on, kids." Grandma led us down a seemingly endless hallway.
We passed a normal-looking couple and their three (presumably) human children,
off to the pool it seemed.

"What are they?" I asked Grandma, but she was several feet ahead
of us, and making good time.

"New Yorkers," she called back to me.

"Oh," I said, eyeing the back of the man's shirt. Red curling
script read:
Famous Ray's Original Pizza
.

I hoped Grandma knew what we were doing.

"I need to call Serena," Phil murmured, rubbing his ring finger.

"You know she's a succubus," I reminded him gently.

"Nobody's perfect," he said.

"We'll fix that as soon as we hit the room," Grandma said. When
she finally stopped, it wasn't in front of one of the cookie-cutter hotel doors
lining the endless hallway. She opened the industrial Exit door at the end of
the hallway and motioned us into the stairwell.

I wrinkled my nose at the stale, metallic air. "You have a magical card
from a slot machine that told you to go to the stairwell?" Maybe this
wasn't magic.

Let's see, Grandma was born in 1931. I started counting backwards.

"Cut it, Lizzie," she said, digging the key card out of her back
jeans pocket. "This is our entrance."

"The wall?" I stared at the cinder block in front of us. "Are
we going through?"

Grandma rolled her eyes. "Sure, Hermione, whatever you say." She
slipped her key into the maintenance closet door and shoved it open.

Instead of vacuums, mops and jugs of industrial carpet cleaner, I saw a
glittering hallway. "Oh my galoshes." I couldn't take my eyes off the
carpet. It shone like a lake on a sunny day. "Can I walk on it?"

"Unless you want to string a rope from the ceiling," Grandma said
as she tromped right in. Incredible. I'd never seen anyone walk on water.

"Come on, Lizzie. This entrance is private for a reason."

I stepped onto the liquid floor. It felt solid under my feet, even as I
stared down into crystal clear waters. Schools of flat, impossibly bright
yellow fish darted among twisting black eels and large puffer fish. Spindly sea
urchins clung to coral reefs ablaze with color. I dipped my fingers into the
warm water. It looked and felt like a tropical lagoon, but when I lifted my
fingers away, they were dry. "This is amazing."

"Yeah, it is pretty," Grandma agreed. "You forget what it's
like to see it for the first time."

The door shut behind us, and I felt the wards close in. At last. They were
the magical equivalent of covering up in a warm blanket after a long, hard day.
I glanced at Phil. Too bad we still had work to do.

Grandma led us down the porcelain white hallway.

The brightness of the place, paired with the reflections from the water,
made me wish I had my sunglasses handy. Every few feet, alcoves cut into the
wall held bright burning orbs. "Are these for light?" I asked.

Grandma laughed. "Look up, buttercup." A series of ornate
chandeliers lit our way. "These balls of fire are Skeeps. A concierge
service, if you will. Pluck one from the wall, ask him his name and then ask
him to do your bidding. But remember, if you use one, make sure to give him
very, very good instructions. You don't want these little suckers filling in
the blanks."

I'd remember that.

"Oooh!" Pirate scrambled out of my grasp, his doggie claws
scraping my arms. He splashed down onto the carpet and raced into an alcove.
"Snacks!" Pirate adored vending machines.

"Hey," he called, "Why are there crickets next to the
Cheetos?"

"For the harpies," Grandma answered.

"Let's just find our room," I said. We had bigger things to think
about—like recovering Dimitri and fixing Phil.

"Right," Grandma said, two steps ahead of me. She shot me a look
over her shoulder. "We'll take care of Phil's, er, problem." I
followed her gaze to Phil practicing the wedding march behind us. Grandma shook
it off. "She's got hold of him all right. Why she feels the need to marry
him? Well, we'll find out soon enough."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, watching Phil wind two gold
rings around his finger and straighten his tuxedo tie. We couldn't possibly
know why a demon would want to marry my uncle. And he was in no condition to
tell us.

"I have an idea," Grandma said.

Oh no. "Let's keep it simple, okay?" We had enough to worry about
with unhooking Phil from the succubus and getting Dimitri back.

Grandma ignored me. "What those demons don't realize is we can use
their link to learn a few things."

"But we're going to break him free, right?" I was all for
knowledge, but Phil needed his brain unscrambled, the sooner the better.

"We'll disconnect Phil as soon as we see what's got hold of him. Trust
me."

"We know what's got him—a succubus in a wedding dress. I don't
need to know anything else."

"Yeah, okay, Einstein," Grandma stopped at our door and dug the
key card out of her jeans. "I didn't survive all those years against Vald
without learning a thing or two." She pointed the key at me like a warning
finger. "Information is power in this world, and until we know why a sex
demon wants to get all holy at the altar, we're behind the eight ball."
Grandma huffed. "I don't want any surprises. Do you?"

Pirate danced and nipped at our heels as we opened the door to a
surprisingly ordinary hotel room. Frigid gusts of air roared from a unit under
the window, causing the gauzy white curtains to billow and goose bumps to break
out all over my skin. Whew, the place reeked of carpet cleaner. Pirate gave a
big, wet doggie sneeze that landed on my foot. Lovely. I rubbed my arms against
the cold and fought the urge to wrap myself in the well-used hotel comforter.

"Serena's not here," Phil said to the empty room. Quilts in muted
green and blue covered the two double beds. A hotel-issue lamp sat on an
unremarkable desk.

I dumped my travel bag onto the bed nearest the window and reset the
thermostat from an inhuman fifty-eight degrees to a livable seventy-five. The
afternoon sun hung low behind the towers of New York New York. It was just dark
enough to see the light pouring from the top of the Luxor pyramid.

Phil worried me. He wandered the room, running his hand along the low TV
stand, peering into the ice bucket, attempting to straighten the picture of the
iris that I didn't have the heart to tell him was probably bolted to the wall.
He seemed utterly lost, his forehead crinkling between bushy eyebrows. Finally,
he said, "I can't stay here."

"We'll call down and get you your own room in a minute," Grandma
said, tossing her backpack onto the bed closest to the door.

He reddened. "Oh, no. I have to find Serena."

"Right," Grandma said, watching me.

"Someone left us a present!" Pirate jammed his nose into the snack
basket next to the television.

I dug through my bag and put on an extra shirt. "Is Phil going to be
okay?" He was going downhill fast. At least I hoped my uncle didn't
routinely sprinkle dust from his pockets while calling for she-demons.

"Don't worry," Grandma said. "He can booty call her until he
loses his mind for good. Which he might unless we fix him. But either way,
there's no way a succubus can get up here. Too many wards."

"What if she has friends?" I said, thinking about the creepiness
downstairs.

"Yeah, let's fix this," Grandma said, rifling through her pack and
pulling out a pair of fat crimson candles.

She raked one of the candles against Phil's fingernails, like a cat on a
scratching post. My poor uncle merely mumbled as he watched the wax curl from
under his nails and fall to the aqua carpet. Whatever hold Serena had on him
was affecting his brain. I didn't know how long a person could hold on in those
kinds of conditions, but I didn't want to find out.

Grandma spared a glance at Phil, before focusing once again on her task.
"Watch and learn," she said to me. "I'm going to open the
pathway before we cut him loose." Her voice dropped. "Then you can
use that demon slayer mojo of yours to see what's gone wrong in this city."
She eyed me from my uncomfortable leather pants to the
Don't Mess with
Texas
T-shirt I'd tossed over my lavender bustier. "Look. Don't
touch. We only want information."

I nodded, tucking my hair behind my ears. It's not like I could take on
every succubus in Vegas.

Grandma dumped the clawed-up candles on the bed and unscrewed the top of the
silver eagle ring on her middle finger.

Not possum tongue again. "Is this for Phil's ceremony?" I asked.

A girl could hope.

Grandma dug put a finger full of rust-colored pulp. Maybe she was going to
lend her stinky power to the man who had saved my life. And, I realized to my
dismay, the man currently enlisting my dog as a ring bearer.

"Hold still," she said, her breath tickling my bangs. She aimed
the musky sweet goo for my forehead, hitting me square above the left eye. It
felt sticky, wet and it smelled like roadkill. "You need all the help you
can get."

"Thanks," I said, my learner's permit burning a hole in my pocket.

"I have to go," Phil said, breathing heavily as he leaned both
hands on the windowsill. "She needs me. I need her. I need…" He
trailed off, confused.

"Don't worry, bro. We're gonna fix it." Grandma tossed a packet of
dental floss at my head. Oral-B Superfloss, mint, to be exact. "Give me
two long strips, Lizzie."

I knew better than to ask.

Glad to be focused on Phil, instead of worrying about Dimitri, I unwound the
floss until it curled at my feet.

"Now where's my Scope? Blasted travel size sinks right to the
bottom," she said, digging past her spare jeans. "I hate to be a candy-ass,
but sometimes I miss staying in one spot. Back in the day, we blessed a wood
cabin in the garden behind the coven house. Ant Eater planted mint, motherwort,
sage all around. They're the pit bulls of protective herbs, smell nice
too." She whistled through her teeth. "Good times."

Before the coven was betrayed. Before my mom shirked her duty and the
witches were forced to run, go biker. I'd never realized Grandma missed her old
home. She played the part of the road warrior so well.

I handed the lengths of floss to Grandma. She nodded, stuffing the candles
under her arm. She jerked her head toward the bathroom and, past the travel
Scope bottle in her mouth, said, "Thwiss way."

She dumped the candles into the bathroom counter and spit the Scope bottle
into the sink while I turned on the light. "No," she flicked the
lights back off. "We have to do this in total darkness, so you might as
well get used to it." She glanced at the door. "It's the best way I
know to see what the hell is after him. And us."

Phil peered inside the bathroom, confused.

"Oh good," Grandma said, filching his white bowtie. "Focus
object," she said, twirling it around her finger.

"Maybe we'd better get rid of Serena and be done with it." I
wasn't a big gambler. Sure, I wanted to learn about what I'd have to face in
the supernatural world, but not if it endangered Phil. As far as I was
concerned, we needed to free him and get him out of here.

"Patience," Grandma said, easing Phil into the other room before
she closed the door on him. She placed the candles on either side of the sink,
with the bowtie in the middle. Then she lined the strips of dental floss above
the mirror and broke open the Scope. "Mint," she said, sniffing the
bottle. "It may not look as pretty as fresh herbs, but it'll work."

"The floss too?"

"This is road warrior magic. We have to use what we've got,"
Grandma sprinkled the Scope all over the sink, adding a liberal dose around the
base of each of the candles. "Mint on the altar is good for protection.
It'll help draw the magic too."

I studied the plain hotel sink. So this was our altar.

Grandma tossed me the Oral-B packet. "Why don't you floss up the place
while I go find some matches?"