Ким Харрисон - The Good, The Bad, And The Undead

That I could live with, and I said it, feeling nothing. We both peered in at Bob, waiting for the amber liquid to go clear. My head pounded, but other than that, nothing happened. "I think I did it wrong," I said, scuffing my slippers.

"Oh—shit," Nick swore, and I looked up to find him staring over my shoulder at the doorway to the kitchen. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

The hair on the back of my neck pricked. My demon scar gave a pulse. Breath catching, I spun around, thinking Ivy must be home.

But it wasn't Ivy. It was a demon.

"Nick!" I cried, stumbling back. The demon grinned. It looked like an aristocratic Brit, except that I recognized it as the one who put on Ivy's face and tore out my throat that spring.

My back found the counter. I had to run. I had to get out of here! It would kill me! Flailing to put the counter between us, I hit the spell pot.

"Watch the brew!" Nick shouted, reaching out even as the bowl tipped.

I gasped, tearing my gaze from the demon long enough to see Bob's bowl spill. Aura-laced water spilled over the counter in an amber wash. Bob slid out, flopping.

"Rachel!" Nick exclaimed. "Get the fish! He has your aura. He can break the circle!"

I'm in a circle, I thought, strangling my panic. The demon isn't. It can't hurt me.

"Rachel!"

Nick's shout tore my eyes from the grinning demon. Nick was desperately trying to catch Bob, flopping on the counter, and keep the spilled water from reaching the edge. My face went cold. I was willing to bet just the aura-laced water would be enough to break the circle.

I lunged for the paper towels. As Nick fumbled for Bob, I made a mad dash around the counter, laying squares of white to sop up rivulets before they could make puddles on the floor that would run to the circle. My heart pounded and I frantically alternated my attention from the water to the demon standing with a bewildered, amused expression in the archway to the hall.

"Gotcha," Nick whispered, his breath exploding from him in a ragged sound as he finally gained control of the fish.

"Not the saltwater!" I warned as Nick held him over my dissolution pot. "Here." I shoved Bob's original bowl at Nick. Ordinary water sloshed out, and I blotted it up as Nick dropped Bob in. The fish shuddered, sinking to the bottom with his gills pumping.

Silence descended, framed by the heavy rasping of our breathing and the ticking of the clock above the sink. Nick's and my eyes met over the bowl. As one, we turned to the demon.

It looked pleasant enough, having taken the shape of a young man with a mustache, elegant and polished. It was dressed as an eighteenth century businessman in a suit of green velvet with lace trim and long tails. Round glasses were perched atop its thin nose. They were smoked to hide its red eyes. Though able to shift its form and shape at will—becoming everything from my roommate to a punk rocker—its eyes stayed the same unless it made the effort to take on all the abilities of whomever it was mimicking. Hence, my demon bite laced with vamp saliva. A tremor shook me as I recalled that its pupils were slitted like a goat's.

Fear tightened my stomach, and I hated being afraid. I forced my hands to unclench their grip on my elbows, pulled myself straight and tossed my head. "Ever think of updating your wardrobe?" I mocked. I was safe in a circle. I was safe in a circle.

My breath caught as a red mist of ever-after hazed it. The demon's clothes molded to a modern-day business suit I'd expect to see on a Fortune-twenty executive. "This is so… common," it said, its resonate, British-laden accent perfect for the stage. "But I wouldn't want it said that I wasn't accommodating." It took its glasses off, and my breath hissed in. I stared at the alienness of its eyes, jerking as Nick touched my arm.

Nick looked wary—not nearly scared enough to please me—and I felt a flush of embarrassment at my earlier panic. But damn it, demons scared the crap out of me. No one risked calling up demons since the Turn. Except for whoever called this one up to maul me last spring. And then there had been the one that attacked Trent Kalamack. Maybe demon summoning was more common than I wanted to admit.

I hated that Nick's respect for them stopped short of terror. They fascinated him, and I was afraid his search for knowledge would someday lead him to make a foolish decision, letting the tiger turn and eat him.

The demon smiled to show thick flat teeth as it glanced over its attire. It made a deep-in-thought sound and the wool disappeared, to become a black T-shirt tucked into leather pants with a gold chain belted around narrow hips. A black leather jacket appeared, and the demon stretched in a cloud of sensuality, showing every curve of the new, attractive muscle pulling its T-shirt tight across its chest. Blond hair cut short grew as it shook its head, and its height lengthened.

I felt myself pale. It had become Kist, pulling my old fear of him right out of my head. The demon seemed to take great delight in changing into whatever frightened me the most. I wouldn't let it shake me. I wouldn't.

"Oh, this is nice," the demon said, its accent shifting to a sultry, bad-boy drawl to match its new look. "You're afraid of the prettiest people, Rachel Mariana Morgan. I rather like being this one." Licking its lips suggestively, it sent its gaze across my neck, lingering on the scar it had given me while I was sprawled on the floor of the university library's basement, lost in a haze of vamp-saliva-induced ecstasy as it killed me.

The memory sent my heart pounding. My hand rose to cover my neck. The pressure from its gaze pushed on my skin, making it tingle. "Stop it," I demanded, frightened as it sent the scar into play and tendrils of feeling ran like molten metal from my neck to my groin. My breath hissed in through my nose. "I said stop it!"

The blue of Kist's eyes went wide and flashed to red. Seeing my resolve, the demon's outlines blurred. "You aren't afraid of this one anymore," it said, its voice shifting to become lower and laden with a proper British accent again. "Pity. I do so like to be young and testosterone laden. But I know what frightens you. Let's keep that a secret, hum? No need to let Nick Sparagmos know. Not yet. He may want to buy the information."

Nick's breathing sounded harsh beside me as the demon doffed the biker's hat—which promptly vanished in a haze of ever-after red—and shifted, returning to its previous form of British nobility in lace and green velvet. It smiled at me over its round smoked glasses. "This will do, in the meantime," it said.

I jumped as Nick touched me. "Why are you here?" he asked. "No one called you."

The demon said nothing, glancing over the kitchen with undisguised curiosity. Showing a predatorial grace, it began to circle the bright room, its shiny buckled boots silent on the linoleum. "I know you are new to all of this," it mused aloud as it tapped at Mr. Fish's brandy snifter on the windowsill and the fish quivered, "but generally the summoner is outside the circle, and the summoned is on the inside. " It turned on a heel to send its long coattails furling. "I'll give you that for free, Rachel Mariana Morgan. Because you made me laugh. I haven't laughed since the Turn. We all laughed at that."

My pulse had slowed but my knees felt watery. I wanted to sit down but didn't dare. "How can you be here?" I asked. "This is holy ground."

The vision of British grace opened my fridge. Making a tsk-tsk sound, it shuffled through the leftovers, coming out with a half-empty container of fudge frosting. "Oh yes, I do like this arrangement. Being on the outside is ever so much more interesting. I think I'll answer that query for free as well."