The Outlaw Demon Wails (48 page)

I shivered, not knowing if I had just saved or damned myself. But I'd be alive, and that was what mattered right now.

“You as my protégée?” he asked, as if trying it on.

I felt dizzy. “Name only,” I breathed, putting a hand on the cold cement to ground myself. “You leave me alone. My family, too. Stay away from my mom, you SOB.”

“Priceless,” Al mocked. “No. If I am taking you, you will be here.” He touched the ground by his knee. “In the ever-after. With me.”

“Absolutely not.”

Al took a breath, then leaned forward with his brow furrowed, as if he was trying to impress me with the weight of his words. “You don't understand,
witch
,” he said, hammering in the last word. “There hasn't been the chance to teach someone worth the salt of their blood in a very long time. If we are going to play this game, then we will play it.”

He leaned back, and I remembered to breathe.

“I can't claim you as a student if you aren't with me,” he said, gesturing flamboyantly, his earlier mood of seriousness replaced with his usual dramatic flair. “Be reasonable. I know you can be. If you try
very
,
very
hard.”

I didn't like his mocking tone. “I'll visit you one night a week,” I countered.

He eyed me over his glasses, his gaze rising to the coming sun. “One night a week off, and the rest of the time, you're with me.”

My thoughts went to Trent. I could walk away from this right now, but I wouldn't be able to live with myself. “I'll give you one twenty-four-hour period—a full day and night every week. Take it or leave it.”
Damn it, Trent, you owe me big.

“Two,” he countered, and I stifled a tremor. I had him over a barrel, having shown him his freedom and the status having a teachable student would bring him. Still, he could say no, and then neither of us would have anything. And I was hoping that I might get something else out of him before we were done.

“One,” I said, sticking to my original offer. “And I want to know how to jump the lines immediately. I will not be stranded with no way home.”

A curious light flickered in his eyes. It wasn't lust, it wasn't anticipation. I didn't know what it was. “We will spend our time as I see fit,” he
said, then leered, completely wiping out the deeper emotion I'd seen in him. “Any way I want,” he added, licking his ruddy lips.

“No sex,” I said, heart pounding. “I'm not sleeping with you. Forget it.” It was now or never. “And I want that mark of yours removed,” I blurted. “Gratis. Call it a signing bonus.”

His lips parted and he laughed until he realized I was serious. “That would leave you with only Newt's mark,” he said, amused. “Her claim on you would be stronger than mine. Not a healthy place to be, when one is in the ever-after and…vulnerable.”

Okay. Good point. Backtrack a little.
“Then buy Newt's mark for me,” I said, shaking inside, “and take it off. You want me as an apprentice, I want some insurance.”

Face clouding, he thought about it, and I got really scared when his expression shifted to a devilish delight. “Only if you give me my name back…Madam Algaliarept. Do that, and we have a deal.”

I shuddered upon hearing the terms come from his lips, and I didn't care that he saw it. His grin deepened. But considering that I wouldn't have to deal with Newt ever again or risk being summoned into Al's circle, it wasn't a bad arrangement. For either of us. “You don't get your name until Newt's mark is gone,” I countered.

He looked at me, then turned to the bright horizon, his smoked glasses going even blacker. “The sun is about to rise,” he murmured distantly, and I held my breath, not knowing if he agreed or not.

“So are we doing this?” I asked. There was a jogger at the far end of the park, and his dog was barking furiously at us.

“One more question,” he said, bringing his gaze back to me. “Tell me what it was like, being trapped in someone's bubble like a demon.”

My face screwed up at the memory. “I hated it,” I said, and a small noise slipped from him, rising up from someplace deep inside him where only he knew his thoughts. “It was degrading—infuriating that a worm like Tom had control of me. I wanted to…scare him so bad he wouldn't ever do it again.”

Al's expression shifted when what I had said hit me and I put a hand to my chest. Damn it back to the Turn, I understood him. He hadn't asked
because he hadn't known how I felt. He asked so I would see we were the same.
God, help me. Please.

“Don't do that to me again,” he said. “Ever.”

My stomach cramped. He was asking for me to trust him out of a circle, and it was the scariest thing I'd ever had to do. “Okay,” I whispered. “You got it.”

Al looked at the bubble of ever-after over his head and tugged the lace of his cuffs down. “Come here.”

At that instant, light spilled over the rim of earth surrounding Cincinnati. My scratched circle was still there, but Al no longer was. Shaking, I dropped the barrier of ever-after and brought my second sight into focus. Taking a breath, I stepped into the line to find him standing right where I'd left him, smiling with his hand extended. Around him, or us, rather, slumped the broken city, grass-choked chunks of pavement standing at odd angles thrusting upward from the earth. There was no bridge or ponds. Just dead grass and a red haze. I didn't look behind me to the Hollows as the wind blew grit into my face.

I was standing in a line, balanced between reality and the ever-after. I could go either way. I wasn't his yet. “One day a week,” I said, knees wobbling.

“I give you Newt's mark, you give me my name,” Al said, then wiggled his fingers as if he needed me to take them to finish the deal. I reached for it, and at the last moment, Al's glove melted away, and I found myself gripping his hand. I stifled my first impulse to jerk away, feeling the hard calluses and the warmth. It was done. Now I only had to roll with the surprises.

“Rachel!” came a call with the slamming of a car door. “God, no!”

It had been my mom's voice, and my hand still in Al's, I turned, unable to see anything.

Al pulled me into him, and numb, I felt his arm curve possessively about my waist. “Too late,” he whispered, his breath shifting the hair about my ear, and we jumped.

The jump through the line hit me like a bucket of ice water, an uncomfortable slap right from the start with the shock turning into the sensation of being wet where you don't want to be and left dripping. I felt my body shatter—that was the shock—and then my thoughts tightened into a ball around my soul to hold it together—that was the miserable, dripping-wet part. That I was holding my soul together and not Al was a surprise to both of us.

Good
, came Al's grudging, almost worried thought rippling over the protective bubble I had somehow made about my psyche. And then came the push back into existence.

Again the bucket of ice water hit my thoughts as he shoved me out of the line. I tried to see how he did it, coming away without a clue. But at least I had managed to keep from spreading my thoughts over the entire continent crisscrossed with ley lines—the stretchy stuff that kept the ever-after from vanishing, if Jenks was right.

I gasped as I felt my lungs form. Dizzy, I fell to my hands and knees. “Ow,” I said as I looked at the dirty white tile, then brought my head up
at the hammering of noise. We were in a large room. Men in suits were everywhere standing or sitting in orange chairs—waiting.

“Get up,” Al grumbled, bending to bodily yank me upright.

I rose, arms and legs flopping until I found my feet. Wide-eyed, I stared at the irate people dressed in a vast array of styles. Al jerked me into motion, and my mouth dropped as I realized we had popped into existence upon what looked like an FIB emblem. Holy crap, it even looked like the FIB reception room. Minus the demons, of course.

Feeling displaced and unreal, I turned to where the doors to the street would have been, seeing only a blank wall and more waiting demons. “Is this the FIB?” I stammered.

“It's someone's idea of a joke,” Al said, his voice tight and his accent impeccable. “Get off the pad unless you want someone's elbow in your ear.”

“God, it stinks,” I said, hand over my nose as he pulled me into a long step.

Al strode forward, head high. “It's the stench of bureaucracy, my itchy-witch, and why I chose to go into human resources when but a wee lad.”

We'd come up to a set of imposing wooden doors. There were two uniformed men beside it—demons, by their eyes—looking bored and stupid. They probably had stupid denizens in the ever-after just like everywhere else. Behind us was a rising angry mutter that I recognized from when I tried to sneak thirteen items into a twelve-item-only line.

“Docket number?” the more brilliant of the two asked, and Al reached for the door.

“Hey,” the other said, coming to life. “You're supposed to be in jail.”

Al grinned at him, his white-gloved grip tightening on the wooden handle, which was intricately carved in the shape of a naked, writhing woman.
Nice.
“And your momma wanted you to have a brain,” he said, yanking the door open and slamming it into the guy's face.

I danced backward at the ensuing uproar, but Al took my upper arm and strode forward, nose in the air, buckled shoes snapping, and velveteen coattails swaying. “You, ah, have a way with civil servants,” I said,
almost panting to keep up. I wasn't about to drag my feet. I'd stormed a few offices myself; you had to move quickly to get past the red-tape-loving idiots and find someone intelligent enough to appreciate the nerve of barging in. Someone dying for an interruption and the chance to procrastinate. Someone like…I peered at the nameplate on the door Al stopped before. Someone like Dallkarackint. Jeez, what was it with demon names?

Wait a sec. Dali, Dallkarackint…Was this the guy Al had wanted to throw my dead body in front of?

Al opened the door, shoved me in, then back-kicked the door shut to block out the uproar storming up the hall behind us. I felt a tweak on my awareness and wondered if he'd locked it. It was a thought that grew more plausible when the pounding on the door stayed pounding and didn't turn into a big ugly demon with a broken nose.

Squinting, I caught my balance in the…
sand?
Shocked, I looked up as what had to be a fake breeze smelling of seaweed and burnt amber shifted my hair. I was standing in hot sand in the sun. The door had become a small changing hut, and a boardwalk ran from right to left to the surf-soaked horizon. Stretching into the almost green water was a canopy-covered dock. At the end was a large platform on which a man sat behind a desk. Okay, he was a demon, but he looked like an attractive fifty-something CEO who had brought his desk with him on vacation instead of his laptop. Before him in an upright deck chair was a woman in a purple sari. The scrying mirror on her lap flashed in the sun angling under the canopy that shaded the desk. His familiar?

“Wow,” I said, unable to look at everything at once. “This isn't real, is it?”

Al straightened his crushed velvet and pulled me onto the boardwalk. “No,” he said as our heels clunked on the wood. “It's casual Friday.”

My God, the sun sliding under the awning is even warm
, I thought as we found the dock and started down it. I suppose if one was a demon and had unlimited power, why not put the illusion of the Bahamas around you at the office? Al yanked me forward when I lagged to see if there were fish in the water, and I yelped when I felt a cascading shimmer cross over me.

“There,” Al soothed, and I shoved his hand off me. “Now don't you look proper? Must wear our best when before the court.”

My pulse quickened as I realized I was wearing my usual working leathers, my hair back in a scrunchy and my butt-kicking boots on my feet. The purple scarf around my waist was new, though. “If you're trying to make nice-nice, this might not be the best way to do it,” I said to Al when the guy behind the desk leaned back in annoyance as he saw us and the woman took her hand from the mirror.

“Relax.” Al pulled me further into his burnt-amber scent as we came to a respectful halt on the round rug laid on the rough planks before the desk. “I'm supposed to be exiled this morning. They would have been disappointed if I didn't do something dramatic.”

A puddle of gray in the sun-soaked dinghy tied to the dock moved, and my gaze shifted.

Oh, God. It was Trent. He looked washed out and thin as he bobbed on the fake tide in the sun, and when he saw me, hate filled his bloodshot eyes. He had to know I was here to rescue him. Didn't he?

The demon behind the desk sighed, and my attention shifted to him. Somehow he looked right out here in the cool, Brimstone-scented, breezy shade of the canopy, his desk perched over the water with a coffee cup and a stack of files on it. Flip-flops poked from under the dark mahogany desk, and his Hawaiian-print top showed a wisp of hair at his chest. Setting his pen down, he gestured sourly. “Al, what, by the two worlds colliding, are you doing in my office?”

Al beamed as the demon recognized him, pulling himself straight, tugging the lace at his wrists, and scuffing his shiny-buckled boots on the planks. “Elevating your status, Dali, dear.”

Dali leaned back in his chair and glanced at the woman silently waiting. “Before or after I sling your ass to the surface?” he said in a bothered tone, his fast voice rough. His eyes flicked to me, and his lips pursed briefly. “You don't have anything left to elevate anyone. And killing her before the courts will not excuse you from teaching her how to spindle line energy and let her run about with no compulsion to keep her mouth shut.”

“Hey!” I said, not wanting that to stand without correction. “I was under compulsion to keep my mouth shut. So was Ceri. We were under lots of compulsion.” Al gripped my arm and dragged me back a step as I added, “You've no idea the amount of compulsion we were under.”

“You misunderstand, my most honorable ass-kisser,” Al said, jaw clenched at my outburst. “I'd sooner
die
before giving Rachel Mariana Morgan to the courts. I'm not here to
kill her
, I'm here to demand that the uncommon stupidity charge against me be dropped.”

My shock at the honorable-ass-kisser comment was pushed away by the thought of a law against uncommon stupidity, and I wondered how we could get one. Remembering Trent, I nudged Al.

“Oh, yes,” the demon added, “and I would ask that my student's familiar be released to my custody. Busy day planned. We could use his help. Must get him trained up, up, up!”

In the dinghy, Trent pulled himself up and sat on the bench, his motions slow as if he was in pain. There was a humiliating red ribbon about his neck. I wondered why he wore it, but upon seeing that his fingers were red and swollen, I decided they weren't letting him take it off.

Dali pushed his papers away and glanced at the woman. “I appreciate your efforts to weasel out of a hundred years of community service, but you've nothing left. Get out.”

I turned to Al, seeing his complexion take on a new hue of red. “Community service? You told me they were going to banish you to the surface.”

“They are,” he growled, pinching my elbow. “Now shut up.”

I fumed, but Al was already facing Dali. “I've taken Morgan as a student, not a familiar,” he said. “It's not illegal or uncommonly stupid to teach a student how to spindle line energy. I simply didn't think it was worth mentioning…at the time.”

Dali's eyes widened. On the floor, Trent's hatred grew directed, and I winced. This was looking really bad, and I'd have done anything to have been able to explain. Smiling, Al looped his arm in mine. “Try to look sexy,” he muttered, poking me until my back stiffened.

“Student?” Dali blurted, both hands going palms-down on the desk. “Al—”

“She can spindle line energy,” Al interrupted. “Her blood can twist demon curses. She took a human as a familiar before I broke the bond.”

“Common knowledge,” the demon said, pointing irately. “You said something about status. Give me something I don't know, or get the hell onto the surface where you belong.”

Al took a worried breath. His face never changed, but I was standing so close, I felt it. And somehow, that was scary. Exhaling, Al nodded once, as a student might to an instructor. It was the first show of respect I'd seen from him, and I grew more frightened yet. His gaze flicked to the woman with the scrying mirror, and Dali's eyebrows rose.

The older demon pressed his lips and gestured for her to leave. She silently stood, set the mirror on his desk with disgust, and then vanished in a pop that was lost in the sound of the wind against the water. “This better be good,” Dali grumbled. “I rent her by the hour.”

Al swallowed, and I swear I could smell the faintest hint of sweat on him. “This witch can be summoned,” he said softly, an arm behind and before him. “She can be summoned through the lines by way of a password.” Dali made a puff of air, and Al added in a louder voice, “I know this because she stole mine and was summoned out in my stead.”

Dali leaned forward. “That's how she escaped?” He turned to me. “You
stole
Al's summoning name? Voluntarily?” he asked. I opened my mouth to tell him it was so Al would leave me and my family alone, but Dali had returned his attention to Al. “She was
summoned out
? How did you get out, then?”

“She summoned me in turn,” Al said, his voice dropping in pitch. “That's what I'm saying, old man. She integrated her password into our system well enough for it to be used in summoning. She can invoke demon magic. She
accidentally
made her boyfriend her familiar.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I muttered, but neither was listening.

“Now are you going to hand me a shovel so I can dig my way out,” Al said, “or are you going to banish me to the surface and throw this pretty little ball of chance against the wall of elf-shit and watch it shatter? None of
you
have the finesse for this. Newt, perhaps, if she were sane, but she isn't. And would you trust Newt not to kill her? I wouldn't.”

Dali's eyes narrowed. “You think…,” he mused.

“I know,” Al said, chilling me with what he might have said, and my gaze flicked to Trent, listening in the dinghy. Damn it, Ceri said I wasn't a demon, but this…looked really bad. “She is my student,” Al said loudly. “I already made the deal; she's mine. But I want her free of Newt's mark to prevent any—misunderstanding. All I want from you is to serve as witness and to set up a safe place for me to do a deal with Newt.”

Fear jerked me straight.
He's going to do the deal now? With me here?
“Ah, wait up, boys,” I exclaimed, backing up until Al gave me a withering look. “This is Newt we're talking about, right? No way. No freaking way!”

Ignoring me, the demon behind the desk hesitated nevertheless. He reclined with his fingers steepled against the colorful pattern of flowers on his shirt as the wind ruffled his hair, and I was suddenly struck with the memory of me asking Edden to throw me a preserver to get myself out of my personal crapfest just last year. Damn, were we that much alike, Al and I? Using what we had and scrambling to stay alive?

“Call her,” Al said as he picked a tin of snuff from an inner coat pocket. A whiff of Brimstone came to me as he delicately sniffed a pinch. “Newt doesn't remember shit about Morgan, but she knows she forgot something. She'll give me the witch's mark in return for her memory, and when she finds out Minias wiped the knowledge from her, accident or not, she'll bloody kill him. That leaves three knowing.” His smile grew devious. “Three is a very stable number.”

“What about Trent?” I questioned, thinking this was getting more complex than I'd dreamed it would be. “The deal was I get him.”

“Patience, itchy-witch,” Al muttered between his teeth as he smiled at Dali and put an arm over my shoulders. I shoved his hand off me and glanced at Trent. He had to have known this was all to get him free and that he wouldn't really be my familiar. But his look was one of pure hatred.