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

"Tell me?" he asked, ducking his head to try and see my eyes.

I licked my lips and met his gaze. "It's about Big Al." I didn't like chancing that Algaliarept would conveniently assume I was calling it every time I said its name, so I had begun referring to the demon by the somewhat insulting moniker. Nick thought it was funny; that I was worried about it showing up unsummoned, not that I called it Al.

Nick's fingers slipped from mine and he pulled away to take up his wineglass. "Don't start," he said, his eyebrows furrowed in the first signs of anger. "I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to do it whether you like it or not."

"Actually," I hedged, "I wanted to see if you might ask it something for me."

Nick's long face went slack. "Beg pardon?"

I winced. "If it won't cost you anything. If it does, forget it. I'll find another way."

He set the glass down and leaned forward. "You want me to call him?"

"See, I talked to Trent today," I said quickly, so he couldn't interrupt, "and we figure that the demon that attacked us last spring is the same one that's doing the murders—that I was supposed to be the first witch hunter victim, but because I turned Trent's job offer down, it let me go. If I can find out who sent it to kill us, then we have the murderer."

Lips parted, Nick stared at me. I could almost see his thoughts fall in place: Trent was innocent and I was working for him to find the real murderer and clear his name of suspicion. Uncomfortable, I pushed the fork around on the plate. "How much is he giving you?" Nick finally asked, his voice giving me no clue to his thoughts.

"Two thousand up front," I said, feeling it light in my pocket, since I had yet to go home. "Eighteen more when I tell him who the witch hunter is." Hey. I'd made my rent. Whoop-de-do.

"Twenty thousand dollars?" he said, his brown eyes large in the fluorescent light. "He's giving you twenty thousand dollars for a name? You don't have to bring him in or anything?"

I nodded, wondering if Nick thought I was selling out. I felt like I was.

Nick held himself still for three heartbeats, then rose, his chair scraping the worn linoleum. "Let's find out how much that costs," he said, halfway out of the room.

I was left blinking at his wire and plastic chair. My heart thumped. "Nick?" I stood, taking a moment to move our plates to the sink. "Doesn't it bother you I'm working for Trent? It bothers me."

"Did he kill those witches?" came his voice from the hallway to his room, and I followed it through the living room to find him moving everything out of his linen closet and stacking it on his bed with a methodical quickness.

"No. I don't think so." God help me if I misread his tells.

He handed me a stack of brand new, lusciously green towels. "So what's the problem?"

"The man is a biodrug lord and runs Brimstone," I said, juggling the towels to take the oversize gardener boots he handed me. I recognized them as the ones from my belfry, and I wondered why he was keeping them. "Trent is trying to take over Cincinnati's underworld, and I'm working for him. That's what's the matter."

Nick grabbed his spare sheets and edged past me to drop them on his bed. "You wouldn't be helping him unless you believed he didn't do it," he said as he returned. "And for twenty thousand dollars? Twenty thousand dollars buys a lot of therapy if you're wrong."

I grimaced, not liking Nick's "money makes everything right" philosophy. I suppose growing up watching your mother struggle for every dollar might have a lot to do with it, but I sometimes questioned Nick's priorities. But I had to find out just to save my own skin, and I'd be damned if I cleared Trent of suspicion for free.

I stood sideways in the hallway as Nick went into his room with a pile of sweaters. The closet was empty—there hadn't been much in it to start with—and after dumping everything, he took the towels and boots from my arms, adding them to the mound on the bed before returning to the closet. My eyebrows rose as he pulled a square of carpet up to reveal a circle and pentagram etched in the floor. "You summon Al into a closet?" I said in disbelief.

Nick looked up from where he was kneeling, his long face devious. "I found the circle when I moved in," he said. "Isn't it a nice one? It's lined in silver. I checked it out, and it's almost the only spot in the apartment where there are no electric or gas lines. There's another in the kitchen that you can see with a black light, but it's bigger and I can't make a circle that large that's strong enough to hold him."

I watched as he wedged the shelves off their brackets with a stiff, underhand thunk, stacking them against the wall in the hallway. Finished, he stepped into the closet and held out a hand for me to join him. I stared, surprised.

"Al said the demon was supposed to be in the circle, not the summoner," I said.

His hand dropped. "It's part of the trial membership thing. I'm not so much summoning him as asking for an audience. He can say no and not show up at all, though that hasn't happened since you gave me the idea to put myself in the circle instead of him. He shows up just to laugh now." Nick held out his hand again. "Come on. I want to make sure we both fit."

I looked to the slice of living room I could see, not wanting to get in a closet with Nick. Well, not under these circumstances, anyway. "Let's use the circle in the kitchen," I suggested. "I don't mind closing it."

"You want to risk him thinking you called him?" Nick asked, eyebrows high.

"It's an it, not a him," I said, but at his exasperated expression, I took his hand and stepped into the closet. Immediately, Nick dropped my grip and ran his gaze over where our elbows went. The closet was good-sized and deep. Right now it was okay, but add a demon trying to get in, and it would be claustrophobic. "Maybe this isn't such a good idea," I said.

"It'll be fine." Nick's motions were quick and jerky as he stepped out of the closet and reached up to the last shelf, still in place above our heads. Taking down a rattling shoe box, he opened it to show a zippy bag of gray ash and about a dozen milky green tapers already burnt. My mouth opened as I recognized them as the candles he had lit one night when we were, ah, utilizing Ivy's tub to its fullest potential. What were they doing in a box with ashes?

"Those are my candles," I said, only now realizing where they had gone.

Setting the box on his bed, he took the zippy bag and the longest candle and went into the living room. I heard a thump, and he soon reappeared, dragging the stool that I had put his obligatory housewarming plant on. Still silent, he set the candle where the peace lily had once been.

"Buy your own candles for summoning demons," I said, affronted.

He frowned as he opened the drawer under the footstool to pull out a box of matches. "They have to be lit the first time on hallowed ground or they don't work."

"Well, you've got everything figured out, don't you." I sourly wondered if the entire night had been an excuse to get those candles. How long had he been calling this demon anyway? Lips pursed, I watched him light the candle and shake the match out. But it wasn't until he took a handful of gray dust from the zippy bag that I started getting nervous. "What is that?" I asked, worried.

"You don't want to know." His voice carried a surprising amount of warning.

My face warmed as I recalled that I use to bring his kind in for grave robbing. "Yes, I do."

He looked up, his brow pinched in irritation. "It's a focus object so Algaliarept materializes outside the circle instead of in it with us. And the candle is to make sure he doesn't focus on anything but the ash on the table. I bought it, okay?"

Muttering a quick, "Sorry," I backed off. Somehow I seemed to have found the only nerve Nick had and stomped on it. I wasn't up on my demon summoning; obviously he was. "I thought all you had to do was make a circle and call them," I said, feeling nauseated. Someone had sold their grandmother's ashes so Nick could call a demon with her remains.