Pale Queen Rising (6 page)

I wait until after breakfast the next morning to get Eli. And oh, how I draw it out.

I soak in the tub until I wrinkle. I shave my legs (manually, no magic, because sometimes you need an excuse to spend more time submerged). I take way too long to do my hair and pick out my outfit. Not because I actually care about any of it, but because these are my last few moments of Eli-less time, and those are precious. He’s not a bad guy, per se. But as I said before—I’m a loner. Eli knows this, and he delights in being the wrench in those gears.

Finally, after eggs Benedict and a plate of bacon and some bland black water that barely tastes like coffee (it has to be the water in Faerie; I get my grounds fresh), I can’t hold off any longer.

There’s a wall in one corner of my study that’s devoid of books. While everything around it is chaos, that wall and the space before it remain clear. Always. It’s exposed brick, and I’m not talking Winter obsidian brick, I mean New York Hipster Loft brick, with a semicircle of concrete like a hearthstone at its base. A single line of white chalk is drawn in an arc on the floor, the exterior scribbled with runes and glyphs that refuse to smudge or fade, no matter how many times I sweep or walk over them. A tin bucket filled with chalks of all colors sits to one side. The wall, however, is remarkably clean. No markings. Just a swath of red brick.

It’s funny. Kids in the real world think monsters come from the closet or under the bed. Which I suppose is true. Mostly. But the fact is, monsters can come from anywhere with a flat surface. We just need a door, and if it’s a flat plane, it can be a door.

Chew on that the next time you’re reading a book about demonic possession. Pages are flat planes, too.

The sensation of chalk scraping against brick makes my mind go silent. It’s about as meditative as I get, really, and as I draw the rough shape of a rectangle on the wall, I feel the power build within me. It starts as a vibration in my fingertips that could just be mistaken for the rough brick, if you weren’t attuned to that sort of thing. Then it spreads up my wrist and through my arm, loops over my shoulder and into my chest, until every breath is gravelly. Magic
feels
different, depending on the goal. And this magic is heavy, earthy. It’s the magic of dirt and cobwebs and layers of pressurized stone.

When the pale blue door is complete, I sketch out the symbols for travel, visualizing my destination with every stroke. Some are old—Norse runes, Masonic equations, Hebrew numerals—while others are so modern they’re laughable—GPS coordinates, a street address, the color of the floor (“concrete,” which I know isn’t a color but it works).

When I’m done, my body is practically quivering with power. There’s only a tiny nub of chalk left. I step back, my toes touching the circle on the floor, and grind up the chalk in my palm. Then I raise it to my lips and blow.

The feeling of power leaving my body is immense, like a coat of concrete sliding to the ground; only rather than leaving me feeling freed, it renders me exhausted.

Chalk dust floats through the air in a cloud. Slowly. Much too slowly for normal physics to allow. It dances and expands in the space before the door, forming shapes I’ve long since given up trying to understand. Some particles attach to the markings I made, thickening them or filling in blanks to equations and words. The rest twine down to the floor in a serpentine show, making new marks, new sigils, ones I cannot and will not ever write or try to discern.

Then the dust settles. Spell done.

That’s it. No flash of light, no Hollywood glow around the corners of the door. The brick is still bone-crushingly solid.

I grab a second piece of chalk—purple, because Eli hates purple—and slip it in my pocket beside one of twelve butterfly knives I’m carrying.

“What fresh hell awaits?” I mutter.

I step over the line on the floor, and the world of Faerie melts away.

The warehouse—or what used to be a warehouse—rises up around me like the ribs of a decaying dragon. In the late-evening sunlight, everything is rust and rot, all reds and umbers and grey. And it’s cold. Of course, this being southern Vermont, evenings are always cold, even in the summer. Summoning demons is best done at transitory times—dusk or dawn, preferably on some equinox or solstice—and, since I’m not really interested in mingling with Eli all day, I’m going with dusk. The joys of being able to manipulate time between the worlds. I zip up my leather jacket and step forward, kicking a small stone before me as I go.

The place used to be part of a cotton mill. The complex stretches along a lazy river, the trees garishly green against it all, foothills rising in the distance. It’s silent and oppressive in a way that only empty buildings can be—the empty space, the weight of history. It’s almost like being in some ancient cathedral. If you ignore the graffiti and beer cans, that is.

After last night, all I can imagine is Mab’s storeroom, and how it’s going to look in twenty years. Empty? Covered in Fey graffiti? Hell, at the rate we’re going, it may only take twenty days.

Trouble is, I can’t even feel that bad about it. I know Mab. She didn’t need to show me that. She knows she just has to point and I’ll kill. The storeroom was a ruse; she wanted me to forget that she never actually answered why I was sent to the circus. She wanted guilt to outweigh my desire for knowledge.

Whatever, she can keep her secrets. I’ll do the job like I always do and save the day and no one will know there was ever a problem to begin with. Like a good assassin. No statues made in my image, thanks. I’ll be lucky if I get a tombstone.

I kick the pebble a little harder across the broken concrete. It skitters straight ahead, then hits a point near the center of the warehouse and changes course entirely, veering off to the right to knock into a beer can. A few pigeons burst from the rafters at the sudden noise.

Bingo.

My brain slips back into business mode as I walk over to where the stone changed course. It’s no different from any other place on the floor, no debris to have caused the stone to ricochet. Just dusty, relatively smooth concrete. I grab the chalk from my pocket and kneel at the point where the ley lines converge. A crossroads of energy. The perfect place to summon an astral creature.

“Okay, Eli. Time to say hello.”

I’ve heard that the ability to draw a perfect circle freehand is a mark of insanity. If that’s the case, I’m outright demented. Then again, I kill for a living and live with faeries—I can’t imagine too many institutions passing that off as normal. The circle I draw is absolutely perfect, damningly so. Mab taught me everything I know about magic, which still isn’t much, and remembering the months she forced me to practice drawing circles of varying sizes still makes me want to rip my hair out. Circles every day, every hour, at every angle. I didn’t shy away from the work, though. On day one she showed me what happened if you tried to summon from an imperfect circle.

I didn’t sleep for weeks.

And even then, I only relaxed after Mab let me change rooms. To one not covered in blood and . . . well, whatever else the summoned monstrosity had left behind.

After the circle comes the series of markings ringing it. These are a little more archaic than the portal spell—summoning spirits has been around since mankind recognized that there was something bigger than them in the universe. I lay out the symbols carefully, first drawing a large serpent eating its own tail around the perimeter, then a half-dozen god names in Aramaic. Technically speaking, if I were a ceremonialist, there’d be incense and candles and probably some blood, but I don’t have the time or patience for that. Besides, Eli and I have a . . . rapport.

The first time I’d dredged him up from the netherworld, it had taken half a moonless evening and two sacrificial lambs. Thankfully we’re okay forgoing that formality now—livestock get expensive. But there’s one thing astral creatures
do
need, no matter your relationship.

I reach into my pocket and grab a butterfly knife, flipping it open with a small flourish.

“Dinnertime,” I mutter as I stand. Then I slice a triangle on the palm of my hand.

The crescendo of power in my body is almost more painful than the cut. Eli’s
very
hungry today. I reach toward the rim of the circle and press against a wall of energy. The invisible barrier hums under my hand, but as the blood drips down, it doesn’t fall to the floor—each drop bursts into flames that twist and spiral, caught in some inner whirlwind, and soon the space before me is a tunnel of flame, a whorl of silent heat and ferocity. I don’t remove my hand as more and more blood fuels the fire. The inferno spirals up toward the sky, raging in a pillar brighter than the sun, but somehow dark, as though it isn’t a light that exudes, but instead consumes. Sweat breaks across my skin as my knees go weak and more power pulls from me.
Damn it, dude, stop being a dick.

Then a hand slaps against mine, palm to palm, and the flames spiral down, sucked up into the form of a man standing in the circle.

He’s tall and suave, and this time around he’s decided to wear the skin of a Japanese pop star. Lithe and angular, with mussed black hair and sunglasses. And a very fitted, very lavender suit. That’s one small quirk of using chalk to summon a demon—they appear in whatever color you used. Explains why so many demons of old were red and black. All that charcoal and blood.

“Purple, Claire? Really?” His voice befits him, but there’s a hint of crackling under it, a power slowly subsiding.

“It’s a good color,” I reply. Neither of us moves a muscle. Our hands are still pressed together, my palm now slick with blood that drips to the concrete in quiet pats. He examines me for a while, and once more I’m hit with the question—what side of the looking glass am I on?

“What do you need?” he asks.

I don’t tell him anything about Mab, not yet. This is the negotiation phase. And like with all contracts with an otherworldly creature, I have to be numbingly specific.

“I need you to be my ally and follow without question. I need you to do exactly as I say and nothing more. You will be bound to me and only me, to serve as I command for as long as I need you and no longer.”

“Is that all?” His lips quirk in a smile.

“And I need you to not be such an ass.”

He chuckles.

“You are always a delight to do business with,” he says. The embers from his voice are gone now, and his tone slowly slips into something a little more human.

“Your terms?” I ask.

“One human soul,” he responds. “Of my choosing.”

“Of
our
choosing.”

“Too many hands in the kitchen. But fine. If you make it two.”

I sigh. This is getting pricey. Too bad Mab was so intent on me having him around.

“Fine,” I say, pushing that train of thought down. Losing steam now could be deadly. “But no kids.”

“You ruin all the fun.”

But he doesn’t change the terms. Instead, he curls his fingers around mine. I do the same. A lancing pain shoots up my arm and through my heart, a power that makes my eyes burn and my blood boil. I bite down the gasp. A second later, our terms are signed and sealed. The pain vanishes in a blink.

I drop my hand and pull a rag from my back pocket, wiping clean the now-cauterized cut.

Eli brushes the blood off on his pant leg, leaving a smear that fades by the second. Not the most charming, but it’s much better than the show he made the first time we met. Apparently licking off the blood of your host is considered good manners. Especially creepy when he’s standing between two dead ewes.

“So,” he says, stretching his arms up. “What brings you my way?”

I try not to notice as his black T-shirt becomes untucked, revealing smooth abs and the wing of an angel over his hip. How ironic. Eli’s not necessarily a sex demon. But he’s also not necessarily
not.
He clearly sees where my mind is going; he steps closer and brushes aside a strand of my hair.

“Or is it
that
sort of visit?” he whispers.

I bat away his hand and begin brushing away the summoning circle with my foot. I’d hate to have a drunken teenager accidentally summon something. And by
hate
I mean would hate to miss seeing it.