Angie Fox - ADS 03 - A Tale of Two Demon Slayers

“Oh, so Max broke in here and did this?” Dimitri had blamed a lot of things on the half-human, half-demon Max, but this was stretching it even for him.

“No,” he said with a forced calm. “I’m merely giving you a timeline. Whoever—or what ever—has taken this thread of your magic hasn’t used it yet. Or you’d know it.”

Diana’s fingers shook as she brought them to her mouth.

I was both relieved and disturbed. “Why would they take part of my magic and not use it?” It didn’t make sense. “Are you sure I’d feel it?”

“Yes,” Dimitri said, with more conviction than I would have liked.

“Lizzie?” Pirate called from the hallway. “Ohhh biscuits,” he said, his voice wavering. “You have to see this.”

“Whatever it is, don’t sniffit, don’t lick it and don’t eat it.” I threw open the door and barely avoided running right into Dimitri’s killer slime.

Son of a sailor.

“Pirate?” I fought to keep my voice even. “Don’t move.”

Dimitri and I stood dumbfounded as Pirate hovered on the other side of the door. My dog drifted a foot above the slime, doggie-paddling in midair.

“Pirate?” My jaw slackened. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, Lizzie. I didn’t do a thing, I swear. I was sniffing the hallway, minding my own business, and bam!”

“Bam?” I stared at his furry paws churning in the air. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

Pirate gave me the startled, wide-eyed innocent doggie look he’d perfected after years of sneaking Pup-per-roni Bites out of my purse. “I hit a cold spot and it was like hopping in the bathtub at the Posh Pooch. Only not so smelly.” He did a doggie version of the breaststroke. “I’ll bet I look fierce.”

Concerning was more like it. “Dimitri?” I hoped he’d have some explanations. And fast.

“This isn’t my magic,” he said, watching Pirate doggie-paddle into the room. “Diana?”

“Not Skye magic.”

I reached down to touch the air under Pirate’s paws. “It’s cold.”

Pirate’s tail hadn’t quit. “I know. It surprised me too, but you get used to it after a while.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “It doesn’t feel demonic.” At least not like anything I’d ever seen.

Pirate’s tail stopped wagging. It was a valid concern. If Dimitri and his sisters hadn’t created it—and I certainly couldn’t fly—it stood to reason that someone else had left it behind.

“Come on, Pirate.” I reached down for him. “Time to get out of the pool.” While I was glad the power hadn’t come from the imps, I still didn’t want Pirate playing around with unknown entities. He must have seen the look on my face, because he started paddling harder—in the other direction.

“Hey.” I lifted Pirate off his invisible airstream.

“Aw, Lizzie.” He scrambled against my arms. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Stick close to me,” I said, “and don’t go near those arrows over there.” Exactly how did one go about cleaning up curses?

Dimitri left and came back with an industrial broom. He used it to sweep away the toxic remains of the imps, as well as the char marks on a section of red slate.

“Do you have an extra broom?” I asked. I was used to cleaning up messes in preschool. Granted, imp parts were worse than baking-soda volcanoes and half-digested hotdogs, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“I don’t have anything else soaked in enough protective magic,” Dimitri said, ignoring the fact that a quite a few of his broom bristles had, indeed, turned to ash. “If you can handle the curses, I’ll get the rest of it.”

“Deal.”

Dimitri began piling the imps in the fireplace while I went looking for curses.

I found both of the arrows near the back wall. They were rough-hewn and brown, made from a material I didn’t recognize. It could have been wood, except for the small moving particles inside. The points of the arrows had dug chunks out of the plaster wall, meaning they were sharp, or powerful—probably both.

“Stand back, baby dog,” I said, wondering if it would be safe to switch-star these things with other people in the room.

But Pirate wasn’t listening. He’d found Diana. Since she couldn’t clean, she’d plopped right back down on the windowsill and given Pirate a nice lap. He lolled his head off the side of her leg and arched his back as she scratched his belly and cooed sweet nothings into his ear. Some guys had all the luck.

I stowed my mom’s magical box on the fireplace mantel before returning to the arrows on the floor. I didn’t have much experience with demonic curses. If I tried to blow them up with a switch star, would they scatter cursed bits like a land mine? Would they rear up and attack? It didn’t look like they were alive, but then again, things had a way of popping up and surprising me.

“Dimitri, I’m going to have to fire on this,” I said, unhitching a switch star, hoping I was right.

“Okay, Lizzie. Give me a second.” He tossed the last imp into the fireplace. “Hell and damnation.” He patted himself down. “My matches were in the desk.” We both looked to where the desk had been. Only a few scattered ashes remained.

“Diana?” he asked.

The breeze from the window blew wisps of hair about her face as she stroked Pirate’s belly. “I quit smoking. Dyonne too.”

“Good,” he said, and then as an aside to me, “I’ve been after them for years.”

“Subtle as a sledgehammer,” Diana added. “But truly, why go to the trouble of quitting if we were going to be dead by age twenty-eight? It’s not as if we had to worry about our lungs, or even frown lines, for that matter.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as Pirate bucked and squirmed at the interruption. “Anyway, we’re alive and we quit,” she said, as if daring Dimitri to push it.

He didn’t.

“Do you need to burn the imps right now?” I asked. Dead was dead, when it came to imps. “I’d rather get rid of the curses.”

Dimitri used the broom to push a path through the slime outside his office. Then the three non–demon slayers took shelter behind the spelled door while I pulled out a switch star and—I’ll admit it—said a little prayer.

I hit the first curse with a switch star and it exploded with a screech worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I winced and heard Pirate howl. An acidic dust settled on my face and arms. I held my breath and blinked as my eyes watered. I could feel particles of it behind my eyelids, like hot sand. I used the inside of my shirt to wipe some of it away. My mouth tasted metallic. Still, I wasn’t writhing on the floor, so I took it as a good sign.

The thing had dented my switch star, however. I held my finger in front of the spinning blades in order to stop them. With some effort, I managed to bend the metal back into place. One blade remained a bit rumpled, but…well, I was about to damage it yet again. I threw the star at the second curse. That one wasn’t as bad, probably because I was expecting the shriek and the stink.

A breeze from the open window took some of it away as my friends ventured back into the room.

“Makes me wonder what they’d have done if they hit me,” I commented to no one in particular.

“Most of them fling you to hell,” Dimitri said. “Hence the expression.”

God, they tasted awful. “Excuse me?” I asked, sweeping up the remains of the curse.

“Go to hell.”

“Right.” I deposited the particles in the fireplace. We were going to have one big evil bonfire before we were through.

“Now that we’ve got that handled…” Dimitri popped open a floor panel to reveal a black metal door with a combination lock.