Lisa Shearin - The Trouble With Demons

“Definitely, ma’am.”

Sora left the room; I followed. Vegard had waited outside. “Demons are turning up everywhere,” he muttered.

Sora strode purposefully down the hall. “Not just any demon, Vegard. And not just any place.”

What I knew about demons wouldn’t fill a hat, but I’d gathered from Sora’s reaction in that classroom that blue stripes were worse than green. “Blue stripes are bad, I take it?”

“They are. Greenies are as common as rats in a warehouse.

Officially they’re not even demons. They closely resemble Crogs, so most people just lump them together, most demonologists included.”

“So blue-striped Crogs are significant how?”

Sora kept walking, but her lips curled in a satisfied smile. “They’re not summoned.”

“Let me guess: they came through the Hellgate.”

“Correct. And they stay close to it.” Her smile broadened.

“Very close.”

“The Hellgate’s under the Scriptorium?” I asked.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Sora said. “The Scriptorium is in the center city, and under the city are-”

“Tunnels.” My lack of enthusiasm was evident.

Sora nodded. “Hundreds of miles of them, I understand. Never felt the urge to go exploring myself. Though it’s ill-advised to open a Hellgate in a tunnel. You’d need a chamber. Fairly large, definitely stable, and if you don’t want to get caught while you’re opening it, easily defensible.”

“Anything like that under the Scriptorium?”

“Too many to count. Though with very few exceptions, the center city is where most of the sightings have occurred.”

“Under the campus.”

“Unfortunately, yes. The largest area to cover and also the most densely populated.”

“How far is the Scriptorium from here?”

“Just two blocks.”

I looked down, wishing the Saghred had given me the ability to look through floors and rock. “Tunnels and chambers right under our feet.”

Sora lowered her voice. “Quite possibly.”

I swore silently. I hated tunnels. I especially hated tunnels probably seething at this very second with demons and dark mages-or Reapers. Thankfully, I had work to do up here. “Can I see Professor Berel’s office?”

“Follow me.”

Laurian Berel’s office was what you’d expect a department chairman to have. Spacious corner office with a window. At least it would have been spacious if it’d been cleaned out in the past couple of decades, and there was probably a window with a nice view behind those heavy and closed drapes. Permeating the place was a smell I couldn’t identify and quite frankly, I didn’t really want to. I was tempted to pull back those curtains and open the window to let in some fresh air, but something on a long table in front of the window made me reconsider that. Several somethings, actually.

Demons in miniature. Dead and otherwise. The dead ones were either preserved in jars or stuffed and mounted. The others were alive and in clear cases faintly glowing with containment spells. A couple of them were glowing a little too faintly for my comfort.

“Pets,” Sora told me.

I blinked. “What?”

“Most of us faculty feel the same way.”

Vegard’s expression was somewhere between appalled and just plain disgusted. “That’s creepy as hell, Professor,” he said. “No pun intended.”

They were all looking at us, and one looked uncomfortably similar to the yellow latrine demon, except this one was green. I didn’t want to ponder what caused the color difference. Its lips curled back, showing me several rows of needle-sharp green teeth. He glared at me. I stared back. Then I realized something and looked away-you can’t win a staring contest with something that doesn’t have eyelids.

“I don’t even want to ask how he fed them,” I muttered. “Or what.”

“Sometimes he did a better job of it than others,” Sora told me. “One time he was having a faculty meeting in here while he fed them. He got distracted, and Green Teeth there got a surprise treat. Laurian was certainly surprised. Did you notice he was missing two fingers on his left hand?”

My stomach did a little barrel roll. “I must have missed that one.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “You were face-to-face with a Volghul. You had more important things to do. Laurian always said that these little ones were bound and could do him no harm.”

Yeah, where had I heard that one before?

“If we’re all still alive next week, I’m sending these things back where they came from,” Sora told me.

Berel’s pets compared to what would be coming through that Hellgate were like house cats compared to lions-giant lions that were damned near impossible to kill. I looked down at the now chittering demon in the cage. I’d take Green Teeth here anytime.

I didn’t feel comfortable turning my back on the late Professor Berel’s pets, but I couldn’t exactly search the office while staring at a lidless mini-demon.

From the looks of things, Berel had been department chairman and had occupied this office for a long time. You just couldn’t get that kind of clutter overnight. There wasn’t room for one more book on Berel’s shelves. When he’d run out of horizontal space, he started stacking books vertically on top of other books. The shelves were floor to ceiling with a ladder on rollers that could slide down the entire length of the wall. That told me the shelves weren’t likely to fall on me, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Besides, I wasn’t looking for a book.

“Do you mind if I search?” I asked Sora. “I promise not to trash the place.”

“Search away. Anything I can do to help?”

“I know he hated daggers, but if he had kept one that he’d been given, where would he have put it? Did he have a safe, strongbox-”

Sora was shaking her head. Not the response I’d hoped for.

“Not that I’m aware of,” she said, “but I’ll look.”

“Thanks.”

“What can I do, ma’am?” Vegard asked me.

I nodded toward a row of file cabinets next to the table with the mini-demons. I smiled apologetically. “Check those, please.”

He gave me a flat look. “Professor Niabi?”

“Yes?”

“Permission to stab anything that escapes and jumps on me?”

“Feel free, Vegard.”

Before I started knocking on the walls to check for hidden compartments, I thought I’d eliminate the obvious. Berel’s desk. It was old and massive. I’d seen mages’ desks that had more hidden drawers than real ones.

The second drawer I searched had more of the usual desk contents-and a pair of small leather boxes, trimmed in gilt filigree, about the size of a man’s hand. I froze. My present problem didn’t start by my finding the Saghred or the amulet; my problem had started as a result of a thief friend of mine finding said amulet in a pretty little box much like these. That one had been closed with a black wax seal; these boxes were closed with latches. Still, there was no way I was touching them without asking a few questions first.

I took one step back. “Sora?”

“Yes?”

I leaned forward just enough to pull the drawer open wider.

“Any idea what’s in these?”

“These what?” She came over and looked. “The boxes?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know. Feel free to open them.”

I swore. “Gee, thanks.”

“What’s wrong?”

I told her.

Sora whistled. “I wouldn’t want to open any more boxes, either.”

Vegard came over. “Ma’am, maybe I should-”

I held up a hand. “I found them.” I sighed. “I’ll open them.”

“I’ll stand here,” he said, his hands now faintly glowing.