A burst of laughter greeted this news. The sorceress had finished sprinkling salt along the windowsill and came up behind us. “Oh, funny,” she said. “He gets seasick, you know.”
“He's been out there for weeks,” I told her. I looked at her speculatively, wondering if she had ever, ah, studied with Cecil.
“Yes,” she agreed, still chuckling. “And he will stay out there until he knows the danger is past. Our Cecil doesn’t take any chances with his current incarnation. He's having too much fun.”
“He's having too much sex,” I murmured.
“That too,” the sorceress agreed. She must have read my thoughts. She was a sorceress, after all. “Oh, not me,” she said. “I never needed anyone to help me fly.”
“I see you two have met,” Tamara observed. I was still staring at the sorceress, wondering if she meant what I thought she just said. Wondering, too, if she would give lessons. A flying wolf would be so cool.
“We have,” I nodded.
“But—” the sorceress added, “I don’t know your name.”
“And I don’t know yours. I’m called Amber, here.”
She bowed. “Well met, Amber. I am called Fireheart.”
“Lady Fireheart,” I nodded.
“I hear you found your demon boy.”
“I found him. I let him go.” I turned to Madam Tamara. “Do you still want me to call him publicly?”
Tamara nodded gravely. “I think you must.”
“So do I,” I admitted. “Everyone has got to finally figure out that it is over. The World Snake isn’t coming, and Richard isn’t mine anymore. And then everyone can damn well leave me alone!”
Lady Fireheart raised her brows. “Still trouble over the demon. Much as it grieves me to say it—”
“Yes. You told me so. But if it weren’t for him, we’d be snake food by now, so it's a good thing I didn’t listen to you.”
“You said it was dangerous,” Tamara reminded me.
“It is dangerous. And I don’t know if it will work. I did dismiss him, I don’t know if he will answer me anymore. But if he does come, and he can convince people, it will be worth it to try.”
“Then we will see you Monday night,” she nodded.
“I’ll be there.”
“Wow,” said Lady Fireheart. “This I must see.”
Tamara reminded me, “Everyone who comes will see how you do it.”
I met her eyes. “Yes,” I said. “That, too.”
The wards were not quite working, or they weren’t set up soon enough, because the police came before too long and broke up the party because it was spilling onto the sidewalk and people with drinks in their hands were dancing in the public thruway. Ariadne thanked them politely, apologized gracefully, and gave them food, but not drink. The drummers finished their last stomp while she did this, and the party broke up.
Yvette went off with Jason, and I drove home. Climbing the steps to my apartment door I realized all at once how tired I was. I ached in places I didn’t remember being hit. Once inside, where there was no one to see, I pulled off my clothes and made my way to the bathroom. I turned on the taps and drew a deep, hot bath, and sank into the water. I traced the lumps and lacerations on my arms, the white stripes edged with pink where the bruises went so deep, it would be days before they colored up. My bruises hurt all the way to the bone, where they throbbed in time with my heart beat.
I remembered Finley, beating on me. I remembered backing up, blocking his blows. I remembered thinking that he didn’t hit as hard as he used to, that maybe he was going easy on me, taking his time. And I realized again, as I’d realized it then, that he didn’t have it anymore. He couldn’t beat me. I had beaten him. If the evil vet hadn’t shot him, I could have killed him myself. And now he was on his way to Albuquerque. I sank under the water, eyes open, and softly sang my victory song.
I
drove down to Garden Grove the next Monday night, with a shopping bag of paraphernalia for the public raising of my demon, and Yvette in the passenger seat. Yvette said she wasn’t going to miss this for anything, but probably she was coming because Jason would be there. Garden Grove is about ten minutes north of Costa Mesa, and forty minutes south of Whittier; not what I’d call half way. But Tamara had chosen the ground for this event with care.
One of Tamara’s friends had the keys to an outdoor amphitheatre, and this had been determined to be the best possible space to do the raising. First, because it was outdoors and not indoors, thus preventing the possible destruction of a perfectly good building. Second, because the amphitheatre, though outdoors, could be closed against any uninvited observers. And because it had comfortable seats and accessible parking. But mostly because Tamara’s friend was giving her the use of it for free, for the evening.
My bruises had stiffened up so that when I woke the previous day, it was an hour before I could raise my arms as high as my head. I was better today, though still sore. The bruises on my arms and body had begun to come up in all shades of red and purple. In another day or two, they’d be glorious.
I’d been told to come to the amphitheatre at eight, when the sun was just setting, but the parking lot held about twenty cars when we drove in. An old guy with a down-turned mouth and puffy, shoulder-length gray hair, bald on top, wearing a suit he’d had for many years, stood nodding at us by a locked gate leading into the Festival Amphitheatre.
He started talking as soon as we came in range, while he unlocked the gate with one of his many keys, let us in, and locked it behind us again, and then escorted us along a passageway until we emerged in the amphitheater. He told us that the theater was dark, but that wasn’t true. The sun hadn’t set yet, and besides, half a dozen really bright lights shone on the huge concrete half-hexagon that was the stage. The red folding seats rose up for dozens of steps on three sides to the high wall behind them. The middle section was divided from the two small side sections by a pair of aisles. Most of the people who’d come to watch had found seats in the center.
As I came into the amphitheater it became clear why everyone else had gotten there early, or I’d been told to come later. A dozen different wards had been laid in the theater in the last few hours, some set to protect the people in the audience, some to isolate the stage, and anything that was on it. Which was going to include me, thank you very much.
The theater itself had been in use for decades, and the tangle of energy that had been raised there, over and over, in one performance after another, lay like dormant fretwork in the air. Tonight’s workings had been woven into it, so they stood out strongly and were easy to sense.
Yvette broke away from me and climbed up the steps to the top row, where the four bears sat together, looking down on the rest of the audience. No surprise, they’d brought a picnic, and handed Yvette a bottle and a sandwich even before she finished hugging them. She sat down next to Jason.
My guide with the keys brought me to Tamara, who sat in the prime seats, four steps up so that she was just a little higher than the stage, and in the center. She wore her ritual clothes, her deep blue gown and robe of stars. Her turban tonight was black and purple and jewels gleamed blue and silver in her hair. Her eyes were distant, still tranced from the powers she had been raising. She nodded to me. “Wolf child.”
“Madam Tamara,” I nodded back.
“Are you ready?”
“Are you?” I asked.
She smiled slightly, acknowledging the edge in my question. “It was necessary. It will keep people from panicking.”
“Do you think it’s enough?”
“How strong is your demon?”
“I guess that’s what we’re going to see.”
I went down the steps, hopped up on the stage and turned around to view the audience. Some of them clapped. They stopped when I looked at them. It seemed as though all of them had brought food and drink. I guess they were expecting quite a party. And I would bring the entertainment.
I nodded to them, and some of them clapped again. I’d seen most of these folks before. A half-dozen Goth kids in black magician robes occupied the first row of seats at my feet. Each held a wand in one hand, and passed bags of chips with the other. At least they weren’t wearing the pointy hats with the stars on them. In the next row three people sat as far apart from one another, and the rest of the crowd, as they could get, like touchy wizards choosing distant territories. The two women, one sylph-like, wrapped in ceremonial clothes from her head to her slippered feet, and the big woman with the round face in a medieval cloak with the hood pulled up, I hadn’t seen before. The heavy-set guy to my left wearing glasses, with straight black hair and a sheathed sword resting on his knees, I’d seen once before at Tamara’s.
Tamara’s friends grouped around her seat in the middle like a star cluster, passing each other food from baskets and a hamper, leaning over to whisper or make comments. Van sat beside Tamara. On her other side, the sister of Tamara’s soul, Kat McBride, held her singing bowl on her lap. The guy from the theater with the keys sat in a seat by himself above the little group, in a proprietary way, looking around at the other folks as though keeping an eye on them on behalf of the Festival Amphitheatre.
Three of the Thunder Mountain Boys sat with Marlin along the aisles about halfway up. I nodded to them, and they nodded warily back. Oliver was not among them. Marlin gazed around the place indifferently. He’d had a run-in with the Eater of Souls not long ago, and hadn’t been the same since. The Boys had probably brought him under the mistaken impression that Richard had something to do with it, and could put him back the way he was. As if he would.
I recognized Lady Fireheart, and some of the women from her Wicca group wearing their ceremonial robes, seated together high in the middle seats on the left. I nodded to her, and she nodded regally back. A scattering of other power raisers, in small groups or alone, dotted the back seats, but everyone had left a big circle of empty seats around the bears. And so it should be.
“I am going to call the demon that was once in my service,” I began, without preamble. It’s not like I needed an introduction, after all. They all knew why we were here. But I did need to make a few things absolutely clear. I didn’t raise my voice very much, but it was an amphitheater, so I didn’t have to. The tension in the theater rose as I started speaking. The attention of the power raisers, focused on me by people for whom concentration was an art form, set the residual energy of the place into a spin. I felt the gyre rising clockwise above me, slowly lifting out of the bowl of the theater.
“I am doing this,” I continued, “because a lot of people in this city don’t believe a couple of things that are true. One. The World Snake is not coming anymore.” I felt the audience’s reaction to my pronouncing the name in this place of power, a frisson in the air. Some of them jerked back. Idiots. I’d just said she wasn’t coming. Calling her name wasn’t going to make her come after all. “She has turned,” I told them, in case they weren’t listening. “She is not going to swallow Los Angeles, and she will not consume the cities of men again.” Some of them looked at each other. They still didn’t believe me. I felt the anger rise, where it sits above my heart. They had forced me to do this. And I did not want to do this. And by the gods, if my demon showed up, they were going to know why. The energy of the place was working on me too.
I went on, my voice rising. “My demon did this at my command when he was in my service. And in return for this great work that he did for me, and for all of us, I dismissed him, and gave him his freedom.
“But some people in this city are under the impression that he still belongs to me. He doesn’t. Just as some people still don’t believe that the World Snake—the World Snake—really isn’t coming. This needs to end. So, Madam Tamara told me if I call the demon one more time, and let him explain to you what he did, then everyone will be on the same page. He’s free of this world, and we’re free of the Great Snake. All right?”
I looked around in the fading daylight. The bright lights gleamed from above, making pools of sharp light on the stage, but I could still see the folks in the seats, staring at me. Some of them were nodding. Some of them spoke aside to one another.
“You are going to see me call the demon. Before I do this, I must have your word, your solemn oath, on whatever you hold sacred, that you will never call the demon for yourself. You will not attempt to command him, or take his freedom, or bring him into your own service. I will continue when everyone everyone here—” my eyes gleaming yellow, I raked them all “—has sworn.”
I sat down on the edge of the stage. I folded my arms. Tamara got up from her seat. She went from group to group, person to person, and spoke to each of them. The light faded from the sky. In the peaceful twilight, crickets began to call.
The stabbing bright lights seemed to grow stronger, but it was just the contrast of nightfall. Moths danced in the spears of light, seeking the source. At last Tamara came down the steps toward me. She nodded to me, almost a bow, and took her seat again.
I got to my feet. The air seemed to tighten, but it was just the energy of everyone’s attention gathering in anticipation, because I was going to call the demon. One of the Goth kids up front stood up. He was holding his phone up, using it as a camera. Well, that was all right. He’d get the preliminary stuff I did, but as soon as I did the summoning, something would happen. You can’t film a working. I looked up and saw that, nonetheless, a couple of other people in the seats were planning to try.
I opened my bag of stuff. I dug out a big fat piece of chalk, and drew a circle on the concrete stage, as round as I could get it at that scale, a little wider than my reach. Then I drew an even wider circle around it, with about four feet between the two. I felt the audience’s prick of interest at that; that wasn’t how it’s done. But this is what we’d worked out, Richard and I.
I was about to lose a bet. We’d been walking back up the hill toward my place, after dinner, not long before the end of his time with me, when Richard said to me, “You aren’t going to be able to let me go.”