Chapter 205: Games of magic
SÉVERINE
The bathroom was the only place that felt quiet.
I sat on the edge of the tub and let the water run warm over my fingers, trailing patterns across the porcelain without deciding to, the rune shapes arriving instinctively the way language arrived when you had been speaking it long enough that it stopped feeling like construction and started feeling like thought.
The demon’s gift.
I had been turning it over since the conversation, examining it from every angle, trying to identify the trap inside it, because there was always a trap inside the things that demons offered.
Destiny swap.
The mechanics of it were simple enough in outline. Complex in execution, the kind of working that required preparation and proximity and a specific vulnerability in the target. But simple in concept. Take what belonged to someone else and give them what belonged to you. Reroute the thread.
I traced one of the rune shapes on the tub’s edge and thought about what it would mean to wear a different fate.
I could barely relish it when the bathroom door flew open.
Grigori came through it moving fast, a towel he had been folding dropped and forgotten somewhere behind him, his eyes carrying a crazed look I could only surmise meant he had felt something through the wards he had set around the hotel room.
"Someone just triggered the alerts," he said. "Something or someone could be coming. This place is not safe. We need to leave now." He was already reaching for me. "I will teleport us—"
The door blasted inward.
The fireball came hard and true, but Grigori caught it on his forearm with effortless precision, the movement so instinctive it spoke of a creature that had survived countless attacks and long ago learned exactly how to take a blow without surrendering an inch.
Which was the point.
As he absorbed the blow, the creature moved.
Not through the door. Through the space between things, slipping across reality without ever crossing the distance, as though walls, angles, and the architecture of the world were little more than suggestions. One moment it stood across the room. The next, it was beside Grigori.
A single finger settled against the back of his neck and Grigori immediately collapsed.
I watched him fall.
Then I looked at the creature.
"Hello again," I said. "Demon. Or do you prefer Amine?"
"Irrelevant," it said.
Though it was wearing the face it wore the first time that we met, it looked at me with now orange-white hellish looking eyes and the impatience of a hungry dog.
"When do you intend to change your fate?" it said.
"I am biding my time," I said. "Working out the details."
"Only fools who are not certain of their own capabilities do that," it said pleasantly.
I smiled. "You should be nicer to me. You cannot force me to do anything and we both know it."
Something shifted in its expression.
"They had sex last night," it said. "Mind-blowing, from what I observed. Genuinely impressive." It tilted its head. "I remember from my short stay at Valcourt that he never could manage it with you. It is only a matter of time for them however, before a child follows."
The warmth drained out of me so fast it was almost physical.
"Fuck you," I said.
"I am only being forthcoming." It turned its attention to Grigori’s crumpled form on the bathroom floor, studying him with the detached curiosity of something classifying a specimen. "I can tell you had fun too. Which is sad. Because every time I encounter you two, you have descended to new lows. Sex with your familiar? Really?" It shook its head. "He may genuinely love you, which is its own kind of tragedy and maybe a girl has needs, that’s fine. But your own familiar." It clicked its tongue. "How the mighty have fallen."
I laughed.
"You are one to talk," I said. "Everything you say to me is designed to push me toward doing your work for you. When we swap, you intend to go to her. Margaux. You want her to make a deal." I watched its face. "Yeah, I know everything. That is the whole of it, is it not? You are a primordial. You are tired of Gehenna. This form you are wearing is not your true state and you cannot do half of what you want to do in it. But if she takes your hand, if she makes a pact, you get your anchor." I held its gaze. "And what better way to arrange that than to promise her revenge on me, make her think you are an ally, get her to make a witch of herself."
The creature was quiet for a moment.
"That love-sick fool told you," it said.
"It does not matter who told me," I said. "What matters is that you and I cannot be allies if your goals run directly against mine. You want her to become a witch. I want her removed from Étienne’s orbit. Those two things are not compatible."
"We can arrive at a compromise," it said. "I am, unfortunately, currently operating under certain constraints where you are concerned." The admission came out with the quality of something genuinely irritating. "The girl is going to another whisperer. One who has knowledge I cannot read or sense, likely because she made a pact with a superior spirit at some point in her life. If you can intercept Margaux before she reaches that woman and gains some knowledge, then I do not need Margaux to make a deal with me under duress that is not of my own creation. I will not even need to approach her at all. The other whisperer will be my new target, naturally."
"Oh really," I said. "Is that so?"
"Of course. You win, I win," it said. "Clean arrangement."
"Why would I believe you about any of this?"
It looked at me steadily.
He rolled his eyes.
"I consumed a spirit that wants you dead," he said. "She calls herself Prim."
My eyes went wide before I could manage the reaction.
He smiled at that. He enjoyed it.
"She is currently inside me and not going anywhere." It paused. "If Margaux however reaches the other whisperer and comes back with genuine knowledge and sufficient time to act on it, she will be able to break your marks on those Omegas. That is the only thing preventing Prim from sending you somewhere considerably worse than where you are currently. That and me of course. If that obstacle is not removed, I might just let her go, even if I lose the leverage too." Something that was not quite a smile crossed its face. "I could be banished from this realm if discovered. You however will simply die. So... with that said... Our interests converge on this one point quite cleanly. I am not trustworthy. I am telling you that plainly. But on this specific point, I am the most useful ally you have. Do not let her reach the other whisperer."
I held his gaze.
"Of course," I said. "One good turn deserves another after all."
I then paused before looking at Grigori on the floor.
Then I looked back at the creature.
"Let my familiar go," I said.
"Sure thing," he said, as he snapped his fingers and then disappeared.
Grigori drew in a ragged breath.
His palms hit the floor before he seemed aware of them, his body hauling itself upright on instinct alone. His gaze swept the bathroom in sharp, frantic jerks, searching corners, the doorway, the ceiling, anywhere danger might still be waiting. For a heartbeat, he looked like he had no idea where he was, only that he had awakened in the middle of a fight.
"Where is it?" he demanded, his voice rough with confusion.
"Handled," I said. "We need to go."
His eyes finally settled on me, unfocused at first, then narrowing as recognition slowly returned. He blinked once, as though trying to force his thoughts into place.
"Go..." he repeated, the word sounding foreign on his tongue. "Go where?"
"I am working that out." I stepped over him toward the door. "Do you still have Margaux’s hair?"
He sat up and looked at me with the expression I had come to recognize as concern that he was not quite ready to name yet.
"What is happening?" he said.
"Grigori."
He reached into the air and the strand of hair materialized in his palm, dark against his skin.
"Voodoo attacks takes considerable energy," he said. "It could drain half of your marked Omegas just to sustain it. If the spirit comes after you while those marks are compromised—"
"The spirit is not coming," I said. "Trust me on that and I am not attacking Margaux. I am doing something else." I took the hair and moved to where I had left my damaged phone. The screen was cracked in patterns that made most of the display difficult to read, but the map application still loaded when I pressed it. "Help me."
He came to stand beside me.
Together we drew the working, his energy stabilizing mine, and I pressed the strand of hair to the cracked screen. For a moment nothing happened. Then the map began to move on its own, the view pulling back and reorienting, zooming in with the deliberate focus of something following a signal.
It settled.
Moved slowly along a route heading away from Valcourt.
"Should I teleport us there?" Grigori said.
"No," I said. "Give it time."
I watched the slow movement of the locator on the broken screen and thought about the demon’s proposition and all the ways it could go wrong and all the ways I could make sure they did not.
The demon had its plan. That stupid deceiver.
But I had mine if it thought it could bank on my desperation and thinly veiled threat.
I had also learned a very long time ago that the only person whose plan ever mattered was the one who had thought three steps past where everyone else was looking.
Me.