Kindling the Moon (9 page)

I feigned casual interest, but I was dying to find out what she knew. “He wasn't warm and friendly. How do you know about him?”

“Everyone knows about him in La Sirena. He's got a cool piece of property at the edge of town on one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. He inherited it from his father and built a house up there, but the only way to really see it is from a boat.”

“Hmm.” Boring. “What else?”

“Let's see, he travels around the world to exotic locations for photo shoots. Umm … Oh, yeah—you know his ex-wife, that model, Yvonne Giovanni?”

I shook my head. I had no idea who she was talking about. “Where have you been living, Arcadia? Under a rock? She used to be a supermodel.”

“Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Back when I was a teenager, she was always in the gossip columns because she partied with tons of celebrities. I heard that's why they split up. His son goes to junior high with my cousin, Rosy. You remember her, right? I brought her by here a couple of months ago on my day off, that morning when you and Kar Yee were doing inventory?”

“Uh-huh, I remember.” I didn't, but whatever.

“Well,
she
said the rumor going around school is that Yvonne is only allowed supervised visits with the son a couple of times a year.”

I grabbed the box cutter off the bar counter and broke down the empty boxes that were accumulating at my feet. “That's a little weird. He mentioned that he had custody.”

“Yeah, and you don't see a father getting that very often, do you? I think it's fishy. Anyway, how did you meet him?”

Kar Yee walked up to the bar and took a seat. “Who did you meet?”

“Lon Butler.”

Kar Yee squinched up her face. “Who?”

“The famous photographer from La Sirena,” Amanda said in exasperation. I should have known she'd be a wealth of gossipy tidbits; if you listened to her weekly reports from the home front, you'd think that La Sirena was populated with nothing but soap opera characters with elaborate backstories.

“Aren't there like a billion photographers in La Sirena?” Kar Yee stuck her hand inside the box of rice crackers that I'd just opened and scooped out a handful.

“That's not sanitary,” I chastised. She shrugged and began munching.

Amanda made a frustrated noise, then proceeded to tell her about the model/ex-wife; Kar Yee hadn't heard of her either. “He's a local celebrity,” she finished.

Kar Yee gave me a sidelong glance as Amanda's back was turned. “Whatever you say.” She swiveled her chair around to face me. “Did you call Lisa?”

“Yeah, she's subbing for me tonight and tomorrow. I also called Heidi and asked if she'd help Amanda for a few hours tonight during peak hours since that concert will be letting out around midnight.”

“Well, I guess you're off the hook, then.”

I glared at her. “I'm half owner, you know. I don't need your permission.”

Kar Yee formed her hand into the shape of a yapping mouth repeatedly opening and closing.

I picked up the stack of flattened boxes and set them down on the bar in front of her. “Get your hands dirty, why don't you?” I motioned toward the back door with my head.
She grumbled and begrudgingly peeled herself off the bar stool to haul them out to the alley.

“Speaking of tips,” Amanda said, “we had a party of six last night and guess how much they gave me for a two-hundred-dollar tab?”

I put my hands on my hips and blew a stray hair off my forehead while checking the bar area to make sure I hadn't missed anything. “How much?”

“Sixty dollars, baby!”

Half the patrons didn't tip even twenty percent. “Good job,” I praised, then partially tuned her out as she continued to tell me how one of them had invited her to some party across town.

A flutter went through my stomach as she talked, then a familiar voice filled my head.

May I show myself?

My guardian, Priya. It almost never came to me uninvited.

“No!” I whispered. “Hold on!”

Amanda stopped talking and gave me a strange look. “No? You don't think I should go?”

“Huh? What—I didn't mean that. Sure, you should go. Why not.”

She relaxed and continued filling up the toothpick bin. “Yeah, I think I will. Like you said, why not. Have you ever dated a customer?”

“Excuse me, I'll be right back.” I tried not to bolt from behind the bar. I headed toward Kar Yee's office, heard her on the phone, and switched directions toward the restroom. Once inside, I locked myself inside one of two stalls.

“Okay,” I whispered. “You can appear now.”

Priya emerged from the air, its image so transparent, I could barely see it.

We are being sought
, it said plainly in my head.

“You and me? By whom?”

Searchers have been cast into the Æthyr. I am having difficulty hiding from them.

“What kind of searchers? You mean servitors?” Sometimes Priya's communication skills aren't the best.

No. Litchen,
Priya insisted.
Small insect Æthyr beings. They are commanded by demon host in the Æthyr.

Shit. My heart sped up.

“Are these searcher insects on earth too?”

No, only on my plane. They cannot be summoned to earth.

“It's got to be the Luxe Order. Can you avoid the insects? They can't injure you, right?”

I am doing my best to avoid them. If they kill me, I will be reborn in a new form and seek out a renewed link with you again, if you will wait for me.

Priya was nothing if not loyal. “Thank you, Priya. Is there any way I can help you? A spell I can do to fortify or hide you better?”

The spirit shook its birdlike head. The air undulated.
I merely wanted to warn you.

“I appreciate that. Please keep me updat—”

Litchen are scouts for their host demons. If they find me, our link can be used to locate you, and their host can be summoned to earth in a physical body. The host can harm you.

Great. That's all I needed. “I'll put up a continuous ward around me somehow.”

Priya faded.
I must go now. Guard yourself. I will do my best to stay hidden and keep our link safe.

“You always do,” I murmured as Priya disappeared, leaving me alone in the brightly lit restroom.

Not long after Priya left, Lon called at the bar, catching me right before I left. He didn't say much, just gruffly asked me to come out to his house. My first reaction was to insist that we meet at a restaurant or some other neutral location, but he refused, claiming that he had books to show me—rare books that couldn't be carted around. My curiosity got the better of me.

However, now that it was getting dark and I was lost in the woods, that curiosity was quickly dying. I pulled over to the side of the road and put my car in park so that I could study the GPS screen without running off the road.

“Turn left in two hundred feet,” the computerized voice said in a cheery voice.

“There is no turn in two hundred feet, you bitch,” I yelled toward the screen. “Zoom out.” Nothing happened. “ZOOM. OUT,” I said again, louder, before the screen responded to the voice-activated command. I studied the roads on the map; they didn't exist. I was stuck on the side of a small mountain, in the middle of the woods, at night. Beautiful.

I held down the button to turn off the GPS, then put the car in gear and began following the road up the mountain,
hoping I could just find it on my own; I wished that I'd written down the verbal instructions Lon gave me over the phone. The road was narrow and made hairpin twists as it snaked back and forth up the rocky, heavily wooded landscape. After five or six of these sharp, steep turns, I found one road branching off, but it was headed down the mountain, not up, so I kept going.

Just when I thought I couldn't go any farther, the road suddenly ended and turned into gravel, then a few feet away, the iron gates to his house appeared, just as he'd described; I stopped in front of them. A small speaker box sat atop a bent pole. I rolled down the window and pressed the button.

“Umm, hello? It's Arcadia.”

I waited for a response. Nothing. When I leaned out the window to press the button again, a buzz sounded and the gates began swinging open.

The gravel driveway was steep, but at least there weren't any more twists. Who the hell would choose to live way up here and navigate all those dangerous curves every day?
A mentally unstable person
, I thought,
that's who
. After a short time, my headlights fell on a break in the trees and his house came into view.

“Well, well, well,” I muttered to myself. It certainly wasn't a mountain cabin. The modern house was constructed from dark gray stackstone with clean, horizontal lines and large plate-glass windows. Several of them were brightly lit from the inside, radiating a pleasant orange glow.

The driveway curved into a loop. Gravel crunched under my tires as I drove to the front of the house and parked.

A set of dark red double doors marked the entrance. No doorbell that I could see, so I knocked cautiously and tugged my purse higher up on my shoulder. With a force that
suctioned wisps of my hair forward, both doors flung inward and orange light flooded the stone-paved entrance.

An adolescent boy stood inside the open doorway. Taller than me, he was lean and gangly, all arms and legs. Dark brown hair rose up in a mass of long, frizzy spiral curls that defied gravity and sprung out several inches from his head in all directions. His skin was the color of a chocolate milk shake.

“Hi,” he said, unabashedly looking me over from head to foot, his eyes lighting up with curiosity when he spotted my halo.

“Hello.”

He looked so much like his father—same green eyes, same long face and high cheekbones. A few things were different. His race, obviously. He was also skinnier and longer than Lon, which wasn't surprising, I supposed, his mother being a model. His halo was the normal demon green, not gold and green like Lon's.

“What's your name again?”

“Arcadia.”

He scrunched up his nose and smiled. “Arcadia, that's right. What a weird name. It sounds like you should be a movie star or something, especially with that crazy silver halo of yours and that Bride of Frankenstein hair.”

I laughed. That was better than the skunk comments I usually got. “Nope, just a lowly bartender.”

“Do you like classic movies?”

“Sure.”

“Ya know which one I'm talking about?
Bride of Frankenstein
? Elsa Lanchester had her hair kinda like that. She was really the Monster's bride—Frankenstein was the doctor. People always screw that up.”

“Wow, I'm impressed. I dressed up as her last year for Halloween.” I pulled up my hair to better show him the bleached-white strands that contrasted against the dark.

“Yeah, that's it! Cool,” he said brightly. “You're human, right? My dad said you weren't demon, but you're not a savage either, so I should just treat you like another demon.”

“Yep. I'm human, but I can see your halo. What's your name?”

“Jupiter.”

“Jupiter?” I teased. “Talk about a weird name.”

He grinned and leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest with a geeky sort of grace. “I know. Stupid, right? I was named after some poet—not the god. I hate poetry.” He rolled his eyes and made a fake vomiting noise. “You can just call me Jupe. That's what my friends call me.”

“And you can call me Cady if you want.”

“Cady,” he repeated, as if he were trying it out on his tongue. He was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a loose white T-shirt that fell at a crisp angle from his bony shoulders.

“Whoa, is that a charm?” He reached out to grab my necklace. I instinctually jerked back—I don't like people invading my private space, and I'm not a hugger—but he didn't seem to notice. He leaned closer and inspected the small metal pendant, holding it in his flattened palm.

After my worrisome visit from Priya, I realized I needed more continuous protection than my tattooed sigils offered. They were convenient, quick fixes, but because they wouldn't hold a permanent charge—allowing me the flexibility to turn them off and on at will—they required a constant influx of Heka to power; the longest I'd ever powered one was about an hour, and I passed out afterward. Seeking something more substantial, I dug out an oldie-but-goodie charm I'd created
a few years back, at a point in my life when paranoia was getting the best of me. It was a basic deflector, which should keep me safe from hostile magical attack, and, with any luck, hidden from anything malicious originating from the Æthyr.

“Did you make this? Is it magick?” Jupe asked.

“Uh, what? Magick?” I said, as if he were crazy, pulling the pendant away from him and tucking it under the neck of my shirt.

“Yeah, magick. Dad told me you're a real magician. That's so cool!”

“He did, did he?” Shit, what the hell was I supposed to say? How much did he tell his son about me, anyway?

“I've read tons of books about famous magicians like Aleister Crowley. I have some questions for you—”

Lon's hands appeared on his son's shoulders and pulled him backward. “Don't talk her ear off yet. You'll scare her away before she even gets in the damn door.”

“Hi,” I said, smiling. He smiled back and an unexpected feeling of relief flooded through me. Call it instinct—or fool-ishness—but I was instantaneously confident that I could trust him; all my worries about his discretion over my true identity vanished on the spot.

“Come on Jupe,” he said, “where are your manners?”

“Huh? Oh, come inside. You're letting flies in.”

“Jupe,” Lon chastised.