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

“Of course,” I said.

“Tell me why,” he instructed, his expression earnest.

As if it weren’t obvious. This guy was the magical equivalent of Harvard. Everyone said so. “Well for starters, you’ve trained one of the greatest demon slayers in my family. There’s something to be said for references. You’ve been chairman of Demon Slayer Development for the last nine decades.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “You’ve won the Department of Intramagical Matters’ Gold Halo Award for twenty-eight years running.”

I’d done my research.

He wrapped my hand in his, gently closing my fingers as he brought it down between us. “Those mean nothing. You should trust me because of this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold cord, thin as a piece of twine.

He tilted his head and I offered him my right hand, just like that. I watched with an utter lack of understanding as he tied the ropy cord around my wrist.

“When you understand this”—he held my wrist—“you will have learned much.”

“Okay, Yoda.”

“Yoda?” he asked with the seriousness of a scholar. “I don’t understand.”

I felt my ears turn pink. “I’m sorry. It’s a dumb popculture reference.” One that was completely out of place, given what this man wanted to do for me. I’d been a teacher. Granted, my classroom had consisted of a motley bunch of three-year-olds, but I did know good teachers taught through experience instead of just lecturing endlessly. He was trying to help me learn about myself and my powers, and I was making light of his methods. Well not anymore.

Praise be, I’d learned something already.

I left Zebediah Rachmort talking with Grandma and went upstairs to get the training bar. Dread settled in my stomach as I opened the door to my room. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the bar was nothing but trouble.

Pirate nearly leapt out of the armoire. “Lizzie! Whatcha doing?” he asked, eyes wide.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said as the door of the armoire swung back an inch or so.

“Oh, you know,” he said, his white and brown body strangely motionless, except for his slightly shaking ears. “Just hanging out.”

“You?” I said, moving for the armoire. Pirate never hung out in a room unless there were ghosts around to play Scrabble with. Sure enough, Pirate was up to something.

I opened the doors to the armoire and found the dragon. And it had grown.

It was as big as Pirate.

The snaggletoothed beast sat on top of my best—and only—pair of black heels, blinking at me with big orange eyes. Next to him lay the charred remains of my Adidas Supernova cross-trainers, the white and silver stripes now curled and black. The soles had melted and the singed laces were still smoking.

“Pirate, that was my last pair of comfortable shoes!” I exclaimed. The dragon had slopped birth goo and Lord knows what on my other ones.

“I’m sorry,” Pirate insisted. “He sneezed.”

“I told you we couldn’t keep it.” We had enough going on without my dog adding pets to the mix.

The dragon unfurled a pair of dingy white wings and fluttered out of the closet. He landed on his chin, popped up and toddled over to Pirate.

“He needs me,” my dog protested. “He even likes Healthy Lite dog chow and look! I taught him a trick!” Pirate turned in a circle and sat. “Okay, Flappy—,” he began.

“Flappy?”

“On account of his wings. Okay, Flappy,” Pirate said in his most stern voice. “Roll over.”

Flappy tottered back and forth on tiny dragon legs.

“That’s it!” Pirate said. “Roll over!”

Flappy licked Pirate’s paw.

“He did real good this morning,” Pirate said, trying to nudge the dragon over with his nose.

“That’s what they always say.” I slipped my key into the locked compartment in the bottom of the armoire and retrieved the small wooden chest with the training bar inside.

“Don’t get too attached,” I warned. “Flappy is a wild animal. We’re going to have to let him go, okay?”

Pirate let out a loud doggie whine.

I felt bad. I really did. But Pirate was a pet. He didn’t need a pet. We were here to save the estate—and my life—not to foster wild animals. Besides, I could do without any more complications.

Or sandpapery dragon tongues licking my leg. My heart softened for a moment before reality crashed down again.

“No. No pets and that’s final.”

When I went back outside, Zebediah Rachmort was doing a pretty good impression of Rip van Winkle under an oak tree. Before I could figure out how to wake him, he opened his eyes.

“Ah, very good,” he said, eyeing the wooden box under my arm.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked. When he didn’t make a move to stand, I sat across from him in the grass, placing the box between us.

“This is a tool. Nothing more,” he said. “You must learn to stop assigning meaning to things.”

Easy for him to say. “But I’m afraid—”

“Nothing is to be feared except evil,” he said. “This bar is not evil.”

Yes, well my encounter with the thing hadn’t been pleasant. “You have to understand. I touched it already and it showed me a vision of my death.”

I waited for him to be horrified. Instead, Rachmort shook his head. “This bar does not predict. It merely showed you a possibility. Now take it. Without fear.”

That was tougher than he thought. I hesitated before touching the thick iron bands that supported the bottom of the chest and wrapped around the lid.

Now or never.

I touched each of the fingers on my right hand to each of the five switch-star adornments on the box. They warmed under my fingers and I fought the urge to leave Zebediah—and the box—out here on the lawn.

Instead, I pulled the lid back. A wisp of smoke seeped from the box. It snaked across the ground below. The tips of the grass crackled and browned. The lavender velvet at the bottom looked empty. I knew it wasn’t.

Heart hammering, I reached down for the bar.

“Without fear,” Rachmort reminded me.

Right. And snakes don’t bite. Fire won’t burn. And imps bake cookies.

I did my best to tamp down my dread. “I’m not afraid,” I said, not convincing anybody.

“May I?” Rachmort asked. He ran a ringed hand lovingly over the box before sliding the invisible bar out of its holder. I watched as he placed it in his other hand, palm up.

Bit by bit, a cloudy glass bar took shape.

“Holy Moses,” I gasped. “How did you do that?”

“I decided to do it,” he said simply. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Now?” Part of me was still waiting for yet another horrible vision.

“Take it,” he said, sliding it into my hands.

It felt smooth and cool. “Amazing,” I said, shaking slightly and watching the cloudy glass shift. “How can I hold it now, without the visions?”

“This is a tool,” he said. “Nothing more. I can only guess that when you first held it, you projected your fears onto the bar. As a consequence, it showed you what you should most fear.”

I didn’t understand. My vision had seemed so real. “So what I saw wasn’t true?”

“No,” he said, “it was true. And you should strengthen yourself against it. But your, er, method is only one way to use the bar.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you ask it to show you a triumph, Lizzie?”

That seemed kind of beside the point.

Wasn’t I supposed to be looking for things that were wrong? Not that I wanted any more visions.

Darned it if there wasn’t something downright persuasive in his wind-chapped cheeks.

“Okay,” I said, holding the bar tight in both hands. I closed my eyes and focused on what it felt like to win a battle.