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

The rest of us gathered around, eager.

Dimitri glanced up and cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind. If someone is going to bewitch and torture this combination out of anyone, I’d prefer it to be me.”

Diana nudged me as she crossed her arms, and we turned our backs. “Gallant, as always.”

Dimitri dialed the longest combination in history, then pulled the vault open. Inside lay an envelope, a homemade book made of orange construction paper and something small wrapped in blue cloth. He carried the objects to a clean spot in front of the fireplace and we gathered around.

He shifted his weight from side to side and for the first time seemed uncomfortable. “I don’t see what anyone, besides me, would want with any of this.”

I touched the old orange book. A green string bound together several pages and on the cover, written in a child’s hand, it said, Dimitri’s book about Dimitri . Two smiling creatures flew in the clouds below the title. From my experience with preschool drawings, I knew they could be anything from bears to ice cream cones, but I had a feeling these were griffins.

“Mom made that with me shortly before she died,” Dimitri said.

Diana took the book and studied it.

“This,” he said, pulling a folded parchment from the envelope, “is a copy of our family tree. There are others in the house. But this one was illustrated by my father, for me. It was a tradition in our clan.”

Diana looked up from the picture book. “I still say we should hang it.”

“I know,” he said, automatically. “I remember the day we drew it together. His leaves were green, as they’re supposed to be. I made mine yellow for fall.”

Diana snorted. “You just had to be different.”

“Yeah, I did.” He folded up the paper quickly, as if the memories were still too fresh.

“And what’s that?” I asked, resisting the urge to pull open the blue cloth and see what it hid.

“It’s important to me,” he said, lifting it gently, “but nothing of interest to a demon.”

The mention of the word demon jarred me out of the moment. I pushed it down. Focus. I had a fresh perspective on this. Maybe I could see something the rest of them didn’t.

Dimitri unwrapped the package to reveal a jagged aquamarine stone. It fit easily in his palm and radiated a quiet beauty. One could feel calm and harmonious simply looking at it.

“This is a piece of our mother’s Skye stone,” he said. “It’s the only part that she didn’t—” He stopped, unwilling to go on. “I’ll tell you later.” He cleared his throat. “My sisters work with their own larger stones, the ones that contain the most energy.” He touched a reverent finger to the very center of his mother’s stone, and it glowed in recognition. “This fragment is of sentimental value only.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He tried to smile. “Yes. Diana and Dyonne have the real power over our ancestral home and lands. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. My sisters will be more than glad to tell you how the lines of ancestral magic run through the women in our line.”

“It’s true,” Diana said, touching him on the shoulder. “Big Brother here may have the strength to protect, but we’re the ones most closely tied to our home. It’s the way it’s always been.”

I nodded, realizing how it had been even more tragic, then, when the women in his clan had no hope of living to an old age. They died young, knowing their clan would wither and fade. I’d seen how Dimitri’s tree narrowed rather than widened at the top.

He gave the stone to Diana and it practically pulsed in her hand. “Diana is regaining more of her powers every day.”

“More like refinding.” She stroked the stone and it glowed even brighter. “We’d been so focused on the curse, we hadn’t spent much time exploring what else we could do.”

Now they’d be free to live.

Too bad I was still trapped. I’d never be free until we could find who had taken that part of me. “So if we assume the imps weren’t after anything in your safe, and my magic has already been stolen, why did they break in today?”

Dimitri tugged a hand across his forehead. “I don’t know.”

“Did you use that Skye stone to track me?” I asked. “Maybe they need it to use what they stole.”

“Impossible,” Dimitri said. “The stone is merely a conductor. We use them to capture words and emotions—the things we put out into the universe.”

Diana broke in. “In English, what he means is that our magic isn’t about focus objects, but rather, how they’re used.”

Now I was officially confused. “Let’s bring it down a notch.”

Dimitri took my hands. “I employed protective magic to track you.” He smoothed a wisp of hair away from my face. “I wanted to watch over you and learn whether you could be the person to save my sisters. I used my mother’s stone to channel my energy, but it was only a tool, not the source of anything. Dark powers wouldn’t use a Skye stone.”

“Oh yes?” I asked. From my experience, dark powers would use anything that would suit them.

“A dark-magic practitioner or any creature with a strong enough tie to the evil arts would use their own conductor.” He grew somber. “Lizzie, it’s important that we retrieve the protective thread. Whoever stole it could use the connection to harm you or manipulate you in other ways.”

My stomach sank. “How so?”

“They’ll try to direct you, to guide your feelings.”

“I can fight back,” I said, hoping I was right.

“It’s more than that,” he said. “They’ll use it to rob you of yourself, to dilute your free will.”

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule. Now what the heck was I supposed to do about that?

“At least it hasn’t happened yet,” Diana said, trying—and failing—to sound optimistic.

We were in trouble.

My magic was gone. We didn’t know where to find it. And the big question still hovered over our heads: when would whoever had it use it?

Dimitri thought for a moment. “Perhaps Amara can help.” He glanced at Diana. “Is she here?”

“Not right now,” Diana said, “but later, yes.”

“Amara?” I asked.

“You’ll meet her tonight,” Diana said.

“Be on guard,” Dimitri added, only half-kidding. “It’ll be an experience.”

Dimitri returned everything to the floor safe and secured it once again. While he cleaned up the slime and re-spelled the office, I gathered up my mom’s wooden box and let Diana show me my room. Pirate followed a few feet behind, sniffing at the corners of the hallway.

I knew what he was doing.

“Pirate, I don’t want you floating again.”

“Aw, but Lizzie—If it was demonic you’d know about it and I always wanted to be able to jump really, really high and this is kind of like that and I don’t see why—”

“Pirate.” For all my powers, I wasn’t particularly crazy about magic, especially the kind I couldn’t control.

He mumbled to himself the rest of the way, something about the unfairness of being a dog.

Diana led us from Dimitri’s study to the second floor of the building. The white hallways left plenty of room for all three of us to walk side by side if we’d wished. That is, if Pirate hadn’t been ten feet ahead with his nose to the ground. At least he was where I could see him.

“Amara and her brother are staying in these two bedrooms,” Diana said as we came to the rooms closest to the stairway.

“Oh,” I said, pausing outside a yellow painted door, unable to think of anything else to say that wouldn’t be downright rude.

Diana guessed. “I think Dimitri assumed they’d be gone by the time you two returned,” she said, touching a conspiratorial hand to my arm. “I don’t blame them for wanting to stay. They come from the Dominos clan, which is very large—and loud.”