"For the third time, Rachel. Would you like another piece of bread?"
I looked from the light glinting on the surface of my wine, finding Nick waiting with a curious, amused expression. He was holding out the plate with the bread. By his wondering expression, I guessed he'd held it there for a while. "Um, no. No, thank you," I said, glancing down to find the supper Nick had made for me almost untouched. Giving him an apologetic smile, I sent my fork under another bite of pasta and white sauce. It was his supper, my lunch, and both delicious, and even more so since I hadn't done anything but make the salad. It would likely be the last thing I ate today because Ivy had a date with Kist. That meant I'd be having dinner with Ben and Jerry in front of the TV. I thought it unusual she would go out with the living vamp, seeing as he was worse than a monkey when it came to sex and blood, but it was resolutely not my business.
Nick's plate was empty, and after setting the bread down, he sat back and played with the end of his knife, making it lay just so atop his napkin. "I know it's not my food," he said. "What's the matter? You've hardly said a word since you - ah - came over to the museum."
I covered my smirk with a napkin and wiped the corner of my mouth. I had caught him napping, sitting with his lanky legs up, his feet propped on his cleaning table, the eighteenth century tea towel he was supposed to be restoring draped over his eyes. If it wasn't a book, he really didn't care about it. "Is it that obvious?" I said, taking a bite.
A familiar, lopsided smile came over him. "It's not like you to be this quiet. Is it about Mr. Kalamack not being arrested after finding, er, that - body?"
I pushed the plate away in a flush of guilt. I hadn't yet told Nick I'd switched sides in the "Let's get Trent" issue. I hadn't, really, and that's what bothered me. The man was slime.
"You found a body," he said as he leaned across the table and took my hand. "The rest will follow."
I cringed, worried Nick might tell me I'd sold out. My distress must have shown because he squeezed my hand until I looked up. "What is it, Ray-ray?"
His eyes were soft with encouragement, their brown depths catching the glint from the ugly light hanging over Nick's tiny kitchen/dining room. My attention went over the short, chest-high mantel dividing it from the living room as I tried to decide how to broach the subject. I had been harping on him for months about letting sleeping demons lie, and here I was, wanting to ask him to call Algaliarept up for me. I was sure the answer was going to cost more than what Nick's "trial contract" would cover, and I didn't want to risk him paying it for me anyway. Nick had a chivalrous streak as wide as the Ohio River.
"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.
Nick dusted his hands together and resealed the bag. "You might be able to get away with that, but I can't. The guy at the store kept trying to sell me this outrageously expensive amulet to make a proper binding circle, not believing a human could close one of his own. He gave me ten percent off everything after I put him in a circle he couldn't break. I guess he thought I knew enough to survive to come back and buy something more."
His irritation had vanished the moment I quit barking at him. I realized that this was the first time - well, the second - he had the chance to show me his skills, something he was obviously very proud of. Humans had to work hard to manipulate ley lines as well as witches, which is why humans were known to align themselves with demons so they could keep up. Of course, they didn't last long after that, eventually making a mistake and being pulled into the ever-after. This was so unsafe. And here I was encouraging him.
Seeing my face, he came to me and put his hands atop my shoulders. I could feel the ash, gritty between his hands and my skin. "It's okay," he soothed, his narrow face smiling. "I've done this before."
"That's what I'm afraid of," I said, stepping back to make room for him.
As Nick tossed the zippy bag of ash to land next to the shoe box, I tried to wipe the ash off my shoulders. Nick got in the closet with me, and then, with a grunt of remembrance, wedged a piece of wood into the crack of the hinges. "He shut the door on me once," he said, shrugging.
This is not good, I thought again as the small of my back started to sweat.
"Ready?"
I glanced at the lit candle and its little mound of ash. "No."
My fingertips tingled as Nick closed his eyes and opened his second sight. An eerie feeling of my insides being rearranged started in my belly, swirling up into my throat. My eyes widened. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I cried as the sensation wrenched into an uncomfortable pull. "What is that?"
Nick opened his eyes. They were glazed, and I could tell he was seeing everything in that confusing mix of reality and ever-after sight. "That's what I've been telling you about," he said, his voice hollow. "It's from the binding spell. Nice, isn't it?"
I shifted from foot to foot, making sure I stayed in the circle. "It's awful," I admitted. "I'm sorry. Why didn't you tell me it was that bad?"
He shrugged, closing his eyes.
The pull through me strengthened, and I struggled to find a way to deal with it. I could feel the ever-after energy slowly building in him, paralleling what I experienced when I tapped into a ley line. The power swelled, and though it was a fraction of what I had channeled in Trent's office, it urged me to react.
With an excruciating slowness, the levels built to a usable level. My palms started to sweat and my stomach clenched. I wished he'd hurry up and close the circle. The eddies of power went deep through me, the need to do something growing.
"Can I help?" I finally asked, gripping my hands together so they wouldn't spasm.
"No."
The tingling in my palms rose to become an itch. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know you could feel all this. Is this why you haven't been sleeping? Have I been waking you up?"
"No. Don't worry about it."
My heel started tapping, the jolts going up my calves feeling like fire. "We have to break the charm," I said, jittery. "How can you stand this?"
"Shut up, Rachel. I'm trying to concentrate."
"Sorry."
His breath slipped from him in a slow sound, and I wasn't surprised when he jumped, mirroring the sudden cutoff of ever-after energy I could feel running through him. Through us.
"Circle's up," he said breathlessly, and I resisted the urge to look at it. I didn't want to insult him, and having felt its construction, I knew it was good. "I'm not sure, but I think because I'm carrying some of your aura, you can break the circle, too."
"I'll be careful," I said, suddenly a lot more nervous. "So what happens now?" I questioned, looking at the candle on the footstool.
"Now I invite him over."
I stifled a shudder as Latin flowed from Nick. My lips curved down at the alienness of it. As he spoke, Nick seemed to take on a different cast, shadows under his eyes growing, to make him look ill. Even his voice changed, more resonant and somehow echoing in my head. Again there was a slow buildup of ever-after energy, rising until it was almost intolerable. I was antsy and nervous, almost relieved when Nick said Algaliarept's name with a drawn-out, careful precision.
Nick sagged, taking a clean breath. I could smell his sweat over his deodorant in the close confines. His fingers slipped into my hand, giving me a quick squeeze before dropping it. The clock ticked from the living room, and the sound of the traffic past the window was hushed. Nothing happened.
"Is something supposed to happen?" I asked, starting to feel silly, standing in Nick's closet.
"It might take a while. Like I said, it's a trial membership, not the real thing."
I took three slow breaths, listening. "How long?"
"Since I've been putting myself in the circle instead of him? Five, ten minutes."
Nick's mood was easing, and I could feel the heat from our shoulders almost touching. An ambulance sounded faint in the distance, disappearing.
I eyed the burning candle. "What if it doesn't show?" I asked. "How long do we have to wait before we can get out of the closet?"
Nick gave me a noncommittal, stranger-in-the-elevator smile. "Uh, I wouldn't step out of the circle until sunup. Until he appears and we can banish him properly back to the ever-after, he can show up anytime between now and then."
"You mean if it doesn't show, we're stuck in this closet until morning?"
He nodded, his eyes jerking away as the smell of burnt amber came to me. "Oh, good. He's here," Nick whispered, standing straighter.