The Demon's Lexicon

13 The Trick

“NICE PLACE,” NICK DRAWLED. “MUST BE GOOD MONEY IN feeding people to demons.”

He climbed the steps and found his smallest knife. He’d learned how to pick locks when he was nine. It had come in handy at times when they had to run and sometimes found themselves with no money and nowhere to go.

There was a difference between breaking into a deserted house so you could sleep for the night and breaking into a house full of magicians. Nick tried to be very quiet. He didn’t glance behind him; he knew that Alan would have the others casually arranged in front of him so nobody could see what he was doing.

After a while, the lock whispered a soft surrender and the front door swung open. Alan was beside Nick with his gun already out, but the hall was empty. Alan took an amulet out of his bag and rolled it into the magicians’ hall. The amulet was a minor one, meant to neutralize all small magics, such as an alarm set to warn the magicians of intruders.

With the door to the magicians’ lair wide open and the wards neutralized, they turned and walked away. They went around the side of the house. Nick put his shoulder to the garden gate and broke it with ease.

Inside was an overgrown garden. This one had no willow, only high grass and the dry, tangled branches of dead rosebushes.

“That’s magicians for you,” Jamie said, his voice wobbling. “Everyone gets all caught up in the demon summoning. Nobody mows the lawn.”

Alan knelt with a moment’s difficulty in the high grass and began to rummage in his bag. He took out a climbing rope with a grappling hook attached. It had been Daniel Ryves’s once.

He passed it to Nick silently, and Nick whirled it over his head and caught the iron gutter of the house first try. He pulled at the rope a few times, testing the strength of the gutter, and then nodded.

He could’ve made the climb without a rope, but none of the others could.

Rope secured, they waited. Mae and Alan had planned this out. They had to give the magicians enough time to notice that the door was open and their wards were down. Once the alarm was raised, the magicians should start combing the house from the ground up. It would be the perfect time to enter from the roof.

There were bound to be lone magicians shut up studying or summoning on the upper floors. With luck and speed, they should be able to pick two of them off.

It would take a lot of luck, and first they had to manage to get up there.

They counted ten minutes before Nick climbed the rope. It was as easy as he’d thought it would be, and once he was on the roof, Alan attached the harness to his belt and Nick drew the rope up, doubling it around his fists and drawing Alan up along with it. That was easy too. Alan had grown thinner and thinner in the last month, and now he hardly weighed anything at all.

He hauled Jamie up as well, and then Mae did not put on the climbing harness. She gave Nick a look that said she was still angry about last night in the garden, and began climbing up the rope herself. Nick looked away over a sea of pointed slate-gray roofs.

He didn’t see her lose her grip on the rope and fall. He heard Alan cry out, looked around sharply, and saw her suspended in midair, looking confused and terrified. He saw Jamie, braced on the edge of the roof, looking terrified as well.

Jamie pulled on the air as if it were an invisible rope, and as his hands moved, Mae was tugged upward, inch by inch, until she reached the gutter. She grabbed it in a convulsive movement and scrambled onto the roof tiles, and Jamie let out a deep breath and let his shoulders relax.

Then Jamie cast a deeply apprehensive look around at them all.

“Well, well,” Nick said. “What have we here?”

He thought of Mae when they’d first met, talking about the weird things that had happened when she was young and saying she was psychic herself. He thought about how easily Jamie had believed everything they’d told him, and about Jamie’s plate breaking when all the glasses broke. He remembered Gerald and how he’d looked at Jamie, how Jamie hadn’t been blinded by the magician’s sand in the bar in Salisbury, and he thought about the timid air Jamie always wore, deliberately receding into the background, purposely camouflaged.

He thought about his own voice back in Exeter when all of this had just begun, saying, A few people in this world are born with a certain amount of magic, but they don’t grow out of it. They either learn to control it and keep it a secret forever, or they try to do something with the magic.

He cursed himself for a fool.

“You,” Mae said in a shaking voice. “It was never me at all. It was you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—” Jamie said, and stopped. “I didn’t want you to know,” he said softly. “I didn’t want you to — feel any differently about me. I wanted it not to be true.”

“I’m sorry,” Alan said in a quiet voice. “But we don’t have time for this. We have to move.”

Mae looked as if she was about to snap at Alan, but she controlled herself with a visible effort. She rose on trembling legs and went over to Jamie, pushing his hair back the way she did every morning at breakfast.

“All right. We’ll talk about this later, but — it’s all right.”

“Let’s go,” said Nick, and carefully, one by one, they lowered themselves to slip in through the attic windows and into the house of the magicians.

It was a very fancy attic. There was an expensive-looking carpet on the floor, royal blue and goldenrod-yellow, and the ceiling was full of curves and shadows. They all stood looking at each other, panting in the silence, all a little uncertain now that the plan was about to be put into action.

Mae grabbed Jamie in a sudden hug.

“Don’t worry,” she said, holding his thin shoulders in a death grip. “I’m not worried. It’s all going to be okay.”

Jamie patted her on the back, looking shaky but enormously relieved, and said, “Okay.”

“All this time wasting is very touching,” Nick observed. “Shall we go?”

He turned his back on Alan without a word; next time he saw him, Alan would be unmarked and free to go and live in the world he had been born into. Nick did not plan to bother him again.

Behind him, Alan said, “Nick. Don’t — if you see Black Arthur, don’t talk to him. Don’t listen to a word he says.”

“Why?” Nick asked. “Will he lie to me? Imagine that.”

Twisting the knife worked. There was a significant pause before Alan was able to say, “I’m sorry.”

“For which lie in particular?”

Alan stood silent for a moment, and then he said, “You’ll see.”

Nick made a disgusted sound and jerked his head sharply in a summons at Jamie. Jamie swallowed again and followed Nick as he made his way down the stairs.

He hadn’t said much while the others were planning, but he had insisted on leaving the attic, and access to the roof, to Alan and Mae. That would give them the best chance of getting out.

The magicians’ Circle must have owned this house for some time. There were no signs of a rushed and recent move, and now that they were inside, it was obviously a magicians’ house. The place was filled with charms that would have fetched a good price at the Goblin Market. There were protective symbols cut into the glass of some windows. There was a chandelier in the shape of a dream catcher, feathers and net carved out of crystal and catching the pale noon light. Nick walked under it and along the corridors softly as a cat, glancing occasionally backward to make sure that Jamie was close behind him and not about to cause any trouble.

Once when he turned around, Jamie was not behind him but a few paces back, studying something on a table.

“What are you doing?” he snapped, but quietly.

“What’s this?” Jamie whispered.

He picked up the little glass shape in his hands, turning it over, and the glass, which had shown a flurry of golden autumn leaves, suddenly burst into green leaves and bright sunlight.

“It’s a season tetrahedron,” Nick said. “Like a snow globe, but depending what side you look at, it shows a different season.”

“It’s beautiful,” Jamie murmured. He turned the season tetrahedron again and got drifting white snowflakes.

“Yes, it’s lovely,” Nick agreed flatly. “And completely worth being killed because you were too busy looking at toys to keep an eye out for magicians. Don’t get left behind. Don’t think I will not leave you to die.”

Jamie put down the season tetrahedon in a hurry, the glass chinking against the marble tabletop. He took a step backward, toward Nick, and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you would.”

Nick was mildly startled by Jamie’s tone. As they walked on, he glanced over at Jamie, whose face was pale above a dark hooded sweatshirt. Nick took a moment to be annoyed by the flash of his earring. He’d never blend into the shadows if they had to hide. That little glint would catch anyone’s eye.

“I can’t work you out,” Jamie felt the need to inform him, because he was an idiot who never stopped talking. He seemed determined and was speaking low enough, so Nick didn’t even try to stop him. “You’ve been okay to me sometimes, but I can’t tell if that means you like me. I don’t know if you like anyone, I don’t know if you can like anyone. I thought at least there was Alan, but then you hit him.”

Jamie was furious with him, Nick realized. He supposed it made sense. Jamie hated violence so much.

“I’ve never thought about you enough to dislike you,” Nick said. “I just think you’re useless.”

“And I think you’re scary,” Jamie snapped. “So we’re even.”

There was not a sound, not even the creak of a floorboard, but Nick popped the knife from his wrist sheath all the same. He felt more comfortable with a knife in his hand.

“We’re not even. You’re causing me a lot of trouble, and I am saving your pointless life.”

“You wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help us if Alan hadn’t insisted. Alan’s the one who wants to help people. You don’t want to help people. I don’t think you even see most people as people. You remind me of — someone I used to know.” Jamie bit his lip. “He was terrifying as well.”

There was a moving shadow down the hall, but after a moment of observation, Nick saw it was a tapestry fixed to the wall only by the top. It was fluttering in a breeze and covered with symbols to attract wealth and power.

“You only do the right thing because Alan wants you to,” Jamie continued, still sounding furious. “Without him, I’m pretty sure you’d be a monster.”

Nick bared his teeth at Jamie. “So I’m a monster,” he murmured. “Are you scared?”

Below them came the sound of running footsteps, sudden and clear. Jamie jumped and grabbed for Nick’s arm, making a small, startled sound. Nick whirled and pushed Jamie up against the wall, a hand over his mouth.

“Shh,” he hissed. “Try to remember there are monsters here. Besides me.”

Jamie nodded. Nick could hear his own heart beating far too fast as they waited, both tense, for another sound, for a door to open or a voice to speak.

Nothing came. After a moment he released Jamie.

“Sorry,” Jamie whispered. “I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to say — that I think you should forgive Alan. We all have our secrets.”

“You certainly do,” Nick sneered, and Jamie bit his lip again.

He almost wanted to talk to Jamie about that. It was obvious that Jamie had as much potential to be a magician as Nick did. For days all Nick had been able to think of were images of Black Arthur and demons and death.

It was impossible to think of Jamie in those terms, though. Nick could ask him, perhaps, how he controlled his power. If Nick could find some way not to be like Black Arthur, Alan would be pleased.

Except that it would be impossible for Nick to be harmless and well-meaning, to be like Jamie. And Alan was a liar.

“I don’t want anyone to talk to me,” Nick snarled. “What difference do words make? He’s not my brother.”

“What does that matter?” Jamie demanded. “Don’t you understand—”

“No,” Nick growled. “I understood being brothers. I understood that word, but now I don’t understand anything and — Shut up and get behind me!”

Jamie went white and ran to obey him. Nick now had an unobstructed view of what he had seen bearing down on them over Jamie’s shoulder. He sheathed his knife, reached behind him, and drew his sword. Then he stood waiting.

Jamie’s voice quavered behind him. “Is that a magician?”

“It used to be,” Nick said.

A demon could animate a corpse. They didn’t like to do it. They preferred all the sensations that went with the living, and besides, the living lasted longer.

When there was no body but a dead one available, though, a demon would make do.

Nick recognized this one. She was the woman he’d killed last week as a wolf. Now her eyes were black and turning to fluid, her yellow hair was tangled, and the smell was worse than the sight of her.

Behind him, Jamie said, “I’m not all that accustomed to the walking dead. Is it all right if I cry with terror?”

Nick kept his eyes on the body. He stepped back a few paces, Jamie thankfully having the sense to step back with him, so he could get a proper look at her. She was shuffling rather than walking, hands limp by her sides even though her face was intelligent and purposeful. She was being careful, because this body was almost at its limit.

This was going to be almost too easy.

Nick grinned and waited, shifting the sword hilt in his hands. The body advanced, feet dragged forward by willpower alone, and as she did, her discolored lips twitched into a grin back.

Nick stepped backward again and took one hand off the sword hilt to beckon her on.

She lunged and he swung at the same time, the blow connecting powerfully with her neck. The body spasmed, and Nick had to swing and hit twice more, hacking at the neck, until her head came off. It rolled down that solemn, picture-lined corridor. Her hands clawed feebly at the air, trying to get to Nick, and then stilled.

Nick turned to Jamie before the body hit the floor. “They’re not hard to kill,” he said. “It’s just that most people panic, seeing the dead.”

“Oh, they panic, do they?” Jamie asked in a hollow voice. “I can’t imagine why.”

Nick knelt and wiped his sword clean with the charmed tapestry. Blood was much easier to clean off than the stuff that you got on your sword after killing the dead, and he was rubbing vigorously when he heard the voice.

It came from behind the nearest door.

It was a man’s voice, and it sounded like he was alone. Mae’s plan had worked. They’d caught a magician studying.

“Hellebore and belladonna in a true lover’s knot,” he said, as if he was reading aloud from a book.

This was a magician, all right.

“Get behind me,” Nick ordered again.

It was too good a chance to miss, but it could be a trick. He sheathed his sword and felt in the sheath at his belt for his throwing knife. A throwing knife was tricky; he might have only one shot, and that one from a distance. For a moment he wished for one of Alan’s guns.

The voice went on, quiet and familiar. Nick wondered where he knew it from, and then supposed it might be Gerald. He hoped it was. He wanted a chance to get even with Gerald.

“A child’s tear and a drop of running water blended. All these things make—”

Nick pressed his hand flat against the door, and the heavy slab of oak went back easily, its hinges moving smooth as silk. The swift glide of the door opening showed Nick an enormous room with a vaulted ceiling and a wide, polished expanse of wood floor.

Across the floor a dozen summoning circles were drawn, as if someone had decided to create designs rather than laying down a carpet. The lines for communication and the borders between the worlds cut the floor into gleaming slices. Walking on that floor would be walking into a minefield of magic.

In the center of the minefield was an indoor bonfire. Flames rose high from every line inside the summoning circle at the middle of the room and arched to meet up near the ceiling in a great golden dome.

Under the golden dome was Anzu, looking far more birdlike than he had at the Goblin Market. He had a pair of heavy, dark wings that made him sit hunched forward in the flame, and a sharp, curved beak on a human face. From that predator’s beak a quiet voice issued, sounding as if he was reading from a magician’s book.

“All these things make a trap,” finished Anzu, his beak stretching impossibly into a smile.

Nick stared and then, under the hiss of the fire, he heard a tiny stifled gasp. That was when he realized the trap was behind him.

He spun around, but a magician already had one arm locked around Jamie’s throat and a gun pressed against his temple. He was standing directly behind Jamie, and he was no taller; all Nick could see was the graying top of the magician’s head. Nick hoped for a moment that Jamie would do something magical, but then he realized that Jamie had probably used all his magic getting Mae to the roof.

Magicians didn’t have much power on their own. That was why they used demons.

Jamie was helpless.

If Nick tried to throw the knife at the magician, he would hit Jamie.

Fortunately, there was another option.

Standing beside Jamie and smiling was another magician. This one was familiar. This one was Gerald.

He looked as pleasant and foxy-faced as before, his arms folded and his eyes wide. He looked like the perfect target.

Nick badly wanted to throw the knife, and he would have done it, if the talisman against his chest had not stirred into sudden restless life. The talisman burned, and suddenly the world looked different.

Gerald’s harmless look was another trap. The way Nick’s talisman was reacting, Gerald was already working a spell, something building in the air and ready to be unleashed. It was obvious he had a lot more power than someone his age should. Enough to have hidden all of it before. Enough to make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt that he’d been captured on purpose before. Enough not to bother hiding any of it now as Jamie’s breath came too fast and Nick gripped his knife too tight and the talisman warned him about danger he could not escape.

Nick lowered the knife slightly, and the burning of his talisman eased.

Gerald ducked his head and smiled, for all the world as if he wanted to make friends.

“Should I cut the boy’s throat?” asked the strange magician, who turned out to be a woman.

Nick noted her cool, upper-class voice. He wanted details to remember her by.

“No, Laura,” Gerald ordered. “Wait a minute. I want to see something.”

So Gerald had authority as well as power. Interesting.

“Nick?” Gerald said in a careful tone, as if talking to a pet who showed signs of turning savage. “Would you put down your weapons?”

The magician called Laura snorted. “You must be mad. Why would—”

Nick smiled slowly. “What?” he drawled. “All my weapons?”

“Yes. Put down all your weapons,” Gerald confirmed, in his mild, patient way. “Or we cut Jamie’s throat.”

He’d never liked Jamie all that much anyway.

That was Nick’s first thought. His second thought was that Alan did like Jamie, that Jamie made him laugh, and that there had always been more to Alan’s protectiveness of Jamie than a desire to impress Mae. Blond, sunny Jamie was probably Alan’s idea of a proper brother, a real one, the one he could’ve had if his mother had lived. Alan would want Jamie safe.

Besides, Jamie was Mae’s brother. Nick found he did not want to think about how Mae would look if she learned that Nick had let her little brother die.

Nick would have preferred not to see Jamie die, given the choice, but he hadn’t been given a choice. It was not as if the magicians would let Jamie go if Nick put down his weapons. They would only kill Nick too, and then he would have committed a very noble and totally pointless suicide.

“We won’t hurt you,” Gerald promised.

“Oh, really? On your honor as murderous magicians?”

Laura made a choked-off sound of surprise or indignation, but Gerald kept his eyes trained on Nick’s face.

“Black Arthur doesn’t want you hurt. Do what we ask, and the boy won’t be hurt either.”

“Gerald, this is ridiculous,” said Laura sharply.

It could be true, Nick thought. Even if Arthur had been hunting them for Mum’s charm all this time, he might not want Nick killed. He was Arthur’s son.

He could use that.

It was a risk, though. The magicians might just want two intact bodies for the demons to possess. Nick looked down at the reassuring gleam of his knife and then over at Jamie.

Laura the magician had tight hold of Jamie, one hand in his hair, pulling his head back to bare his throat for her blade. The knife was so close to his skin that he could not even tremble in case he opened his veins against the edge. Jamie was keeping still, with his back arched taut as a bowstring and his eyes wide, scared and hopeless.

“All right,” Nick said. “I’ll put down my weapons.”

He knelt and put down the knife, then unsheathed his sword and laid it the ground, looking warily up at Gerald as he did so, ready to snatch the sword back up if he made any sudden movements. Gerald just smiled like a king well-pleased with the tribute laid at his feet.

He rose slowly, and Gerald murmured, “All of the weapons, Nick.”

Nick snapped one knife from his wrist sheath and threw it down. Then he reached into his pocket for his switchblade, and drew that out too. Gerald’s gaze was fastened on him, watching every movement, and Nick regretted putting any of his weapons down. Anything would have been better than this slow, enforced stripping of Nick’s defenses under the eyes of the enemy.

He let the switchblade fall out of his open palm. He made sure that every weapon he dropped landed within easy reaching distance.

He left the knife in his boot and the knife fastened inside his belt and jeans, against his thigh, where they were. What Gerald didn’t know might end up hurting him, if they were lucky.

“Now take three steps back,” Gerald said quietly.

That would put Nick across the threshold into the room where Anzu waited, and a safe distance away from the weapons. Nick checked over his shoulder and saw that three steps would not bring him anywhere near Anzu, waiting in his simmering flames.

He looked back at Gerald and nodded. He took three deliberate steps back.

He immediately felt the difference, a sudden sensation as if walls had slammed down all around him. Claustrophobia seized him, the feeling pressing on his chest and squeezing his lungs so he could only breathe in short, shallow pants. He looked around and saw that there was a circle of imprisonment chalked onto the floor around him.

Nick looked up sharply at Gerald and saw his eyes flash with triumph.

He wondered when magicians had learned how to trap a human in an imprisonment circle. This wasn’t one of those where you would die if you crossed the line; it did not even offer you that choice. Nick could feel the barriers in place. He risked it anyway, tried to step forward and simply could not do it, any more than he could have walked through a wall. This was a genuine imprisonment circle, and he was trapped inside as surely as Anzu was trapped inside his.

Inside his, Anzu was laughing.

The magician Laura had loosened her hold on Jamie. She had one arm looped casually around his neck, and it would have looked like a gesture of affection if she had not still been gripping the knife. Nick could see her properly now, a small middle-aged woman with an intelligent face. She looked surprised that Nick had put down his weapons, although not half as surprised as Jamie did.

“How did you know it would work?” she asked Gerald.

“I guessed,” Gerald replied, his voice as soft as ever, belying that hard, triumphant gaze. “I was assigned to watch them, remember? I wasn’t sure it would work, but I wanted to test my theory.”

Nick did not care what Gerald’s theory might be. He was busy calling himself a hundred kinds of fool for putting down the sword. It was becoming more and more obvious that they were outmatched. The magicians had tricks none of them were prepared for. The magicians had clearly planned this. Nick should have let Jamie be a casualty and got out of there. Jamie didn’t matter at all, not compared to what else Nick might lose.

He felt something colder and sharper than regret, turning in his belly as if he’d swallowed a needle, when he heard the footsteps coming down the stairs and down the corridor toward them.

There were at least four people, and one set of steps Nick knew by heart: fast as anyone’s step but with that slightly dragging foot. When the magicians came closer, he saw that one had a knife to Mae’s throat, and Alan’s hands were tied. The magicians had done just the same as they had with Nick and Jamie, targeting the weak one and using them as leverage. Of course it had worked on Alan, but it should not have worked on Nick.

Alan looked at Nick. His eyes widened slightly when he saw the imprisonment circle. His gaze traveled from Nick to Jamie. Nick saw him putting together what must have happened and he wanted to say he was sorry but then, incredibly, Alan smiled.

His eyes were shining as he asked, “Are you all right?”

Nick nodded. It wasn’t a lie. He was going to be all right. He was going to get out of this circle, and he was going to kill every magician in this house. He looked at Alan, and Alan seemed all right too, wrists bound tightly but unmarked. After a moment he looked at Mae and saw that she, unlike Jamie, had clearly struggled. The knife must have just grazed her. Her throat was bloody but not bleeding too much, and she looked steady on her feet.

Nick kept cataloguing these details, all the while hollowly aware that he could see no way they were going to survive this.

“Let’s all go inside and talk, shall we?” said Gerald, making an inviting gesture to the room of circles and pentagrams. “Black Arthur will be here soon.”

His eyes moved from Jamie to Mae to Alan, as if taking a survey, and then they turned to rest on Nick.

Gerald smiled and added, “He’s been waiting a long time to meet you.”