Storm in a Teacup (5 page)

It lets loose a shriek. It's ten feet away, and it's wary now. Its black eyes dart back and forth, as though its considering flight. I can't let it get away.

The slummoth solves my problem.
 

Its legs bunch beneath it. It leaps at me.

I'm hurt and too slow even with the warning. I jab it with the sword like a five-year-old pretending to fence. The blade sinks into the leathery, slime-covered flesh, but the slummoth doesn't slow.

The demon's arms are fine. One claw catches me in the side, and I drop my weight to the ground, rolling away. My throat tightens. If I don't get this back on my terms, there's going to be one less Mediator to fight these bastards.

I stumble away, back toward the oak. My belt knife is lying next to the carcass of the first slain slummoth, and I bend to pick it up with my right hand. The blood makes my fingers slip on the hilt, but I grasp it in spite of the icy pain that coats my hand. The slummoth shuffles after me.
 

The knife feels warm in my hand. I breathe out.

Then I throw.

At first I think I missed, think the slummoth dodged.
 

The knife protrudes from its nose hole. It's dead.

Five inches below the hilt is a familiar-looking matted string of human hair.

I see it just before the corpse topples to the ground.

CHAPTER SIX

Times like this, I'm glad I cover my car seats.

On a normal night, I'd take care of the bodies, but tonight is few ticks outside of normal. The Mediators keep a team of volunteers — a term used loosely to encompass adolescent Mediators-in-Training who've pissed off the Summit — on call for demon disposal. Sucks being an MIT sometimes.
 

The perk is that when we're out, we get some cool tech. Among the cool tech is the tiny beacon I attach to a tree. When I press it into the bark, it beeps once. The locator in the beacon will tell the kids where to go, and I can just go home.

The plastic seat covers in my car are slick with my blood by the time I arrive home.
 

I strip down in my bathroom, peeling my clothes from my skin. It feels like I'm removing a sticker left too long, and pulling the slivers of fabric from the bite in my shoulder takes five excruciating minutes.

Mediators heal fast. It's a perk. Some places have dental insurance; I get to go to bed bleeding from various areas only to wake up unmarked but sore. For now, though, my skin hasn't begun to knit together.
 

I rinse the wounds with a saline solution, and it feels just about as good as you might expect pouring salty water in open wounds would.
 

I've never taken down three full-sized demons before.

Sure, I've faced down a few imps at a time. Usually they're dumb enough to all rush me at once, and one wide arc of my sword cuts them in half. Imps are something else no matter how you slice it.

Sorry. Couldn't help it.

The major difference between imps and demons is that imps can scamper about in the sun for a while, sizzling like bacon on a hot griddle. Real demons can't. Don't ask me what happens to them. I have no idea. They always manage to tuck themselves into their slimy beddy-byes or die before the sun hits the horizon.

Imps can't be in it long, but they like to cause mischief. They're not even that dangerous — though if you ask Ben or Ripper about their faces the other day, they might tell you another tale.

Once cleaned, my shoulder wound looks even worse. Demon saliva is poison, and there are yellow and black spots in the torn flesh. A normal human would be in the hospital hooked up to specialized anti-venom. My blood is hellkin anti-venom. Another perk of being not a normal human.
 

The claw I took in my side sliced a six-inch gash, but the edges are already healing. My hand's the same.
 

I need to tell Gregor about what I saw, but something stops me from making the call even after I'm no longer dripping red and green blood like a garish yuletide tree. If he gets to keep things back from me, I can keep things from him. At least until I know more.

Now that I'm home and wearing my Injured Robe — a special black microfiber thing I bought for the days I don't feel like bleeding on my ivory satin one — I feel like there has to be something more going on with the demons. Midday is brighter than most imps would brave, so finding two in Miller's Field is the first item on my list of oddities. Then two slummoths and a jeeling conspiring in Forest Hills. Imps and demons wearing necklaces of human hair like trophies. Forget The Righteous Dark and their cracked-out demon summoning. There's enough weirdness happening without their contributions.

Beneath all of it is the memory of seeing my birth mother's name in a Memphis newspaper headline. I'm connected to all this, and it makes me feel as dirty as a pig's backside even as the everyday weight at the center of my chest grows heavier.

I haven't checked my phone all night, and when I turn it on, it explodes in a cacophony of beeping. Emails, texts, notifications from a stupid tic-tac-toe app I downloaded and got sick of — the thing lights up like East Nashville at Beltane.

Two calls from the same unfamiliar number. One from Gregor. And another from Ben.

I want to flop down on my couch, but that would hurt more than the gesture is worth.

I don't return Ben's call. He leaves a message when it's something important, and when he just hangs up, it means he was calling "just to talk."

I hate talking on the phone.
 

Each time this happens — with a growing, alarming regularity in the past month — I imagine he wants some montage from an 80s movie with a split screen. Me in a baggy pink over-sized sweater, him with an unbuttoned blue jean shirt, both of us laying on our beds and scissoring our legs in sexual anticipation. None of which sounds appealing to me.

Gregor's message is two sentences. "Hear you had a rough time tonight. Call me."

There are two messages from the unknown number.

"Hey. Um. Look. You didn't give me your name, and I know I was only supposed to call if I heard something about Lena, but I found something I think you should have. It looks like a talisman. Can you come get it?"

It's got to be the witch sound guy from The Hole. The second message is from only a half hour ago.

"Okay. This is freaking me out. If you don't come and get it tonight, I'm going to call my circle leader and have him ground it. It's...I don't know what it's doing. Just come get it. Please."

I stick out my lower lip and pull my fluffy Injured Robe around my midsection. It's already three in the morning, and going out again will cut into my precious six hours of sleep. But the guy sounds like his broomstick is in a bunch. I throw on a pair of black sweats and a black tank. It makes my orange hair stand out almost as much as the speckled wound on my shoulder, but it's hot out, and I don't want to cover up the bite.

Even at three the humidity outside is like hanging out in a pressure cooker, and I hit the post-witchy-happy-hour traffic surge to boot. Getting to The Hole takes fifteen minutes longer than it should. I arrive to find the sound guy tugging at his wisps of pale yellow hair, flabby face contorted into wrinkles.

"You're here. Good. I don't get paid enough for this," he says without preamble. He starts walking toward me and stops when he sees my shoulder. "What the hell happened to you?"

"A couple slummoths thought I was lunch."

He peers at the bite. "Tea tree and eucalyptus should help it heal faster."

"It'll be fine by morning. I didn't extend my bedtime to come and get medical advice. Where's the thing?"

"Over here."
 

I follow him over to the bar, where a small circular object about the size of a teacup saucer gives off a pulsing yellow glow. "Where did you find this?"

"In the green room. We don't clean it every day, or I would have found it sooner. It wasn't glowing before." He sidesteps away from the talisman, and I don't blame him.

I've seen one of these before, and it didn't belong to a scraggly kid in a shitty metal band. When I was fresh out of MIT five years ago, I tagged along to a demon-summoner bust in Little Rock. Back then, Little Rock was a cesspool of demon activity, and it attracted the very stupid from among the human population. One middle-aged summoner had found himself a witch buddy who made talismans like this.
 

They were kind of like the beacon I'd stuck in the tree in Forest Hills. They made it so the demons could find the summoners. What happened then, I still don't know.

And now I'm staring at one.
 

Sound witch here has the right idea edging away. Witches can sometimes hold their own against demons, but only a few spells will do anything. Most are just like trying to shoot a demon with a gun — spells and bullets just bounce off. A keen edge is all that kills them.
 

Now I'll have to call Gregor. I don't want to handle the thing.

The witch has his gaze tacked to the talisman.
 

"Hey." I snap my fingers to get his attention. "Witch. What's your name?"

"Gryfflet Asberry."

"Gryfflet, stay right here. Don't touch it, but keep an eye on it."

"Where are you going?"

"Just out to my car. I'll be right back."

I want my sword before I call Gregor. I hurry to my car and grab it, the feel of the hilt a comforting weight. My right hand still throbs, but the deep gashes are scabbed over now.
 

Gryfflet yells as I walk back through the door, and I unsheathe my sword. I always love the hiss it makes, like dropping water on a hot griddle. But Gryfflet's just hollering at nothing. The talisman hasn't moved or changed brightness. And there's no rakath demon shooting him full of spines, either, so I don't get his increase in volume.

"What happened?"

"Um. Nothing."

"You were yelling."

"I uh, saw a cockroach."

I resist the urge to sigh and dial Gregor. I hope he's awake.

Gregor answers on the second ring. I tell him about the talisman. "What do you want me to do?"

"Don't touch it or move it. I'll send a witch to ground it."

"Send one with some slay spells this time, will you? The last one got pulped."

Gryfflet goes even more flabby at that.

I cover the mouthpiece on the phone and mouth
relax
at him. For some reason, it doesn't help.

"Am I staying here to wait?"
 

"No. I've got this one. Already on my way. You and the kid who found it go ahead and clear out."

Gryfflet scoots out the door almost before I can tell him.
 

Now it's half past four, and I'm getting cranky. I stop by Krystal and stuff my face with four baby burgers that taste like they're made of slummoth slime. I guzzle a glass of orange juice before bed, but it doesn't dispel the taste.

My phone rings just as my eyelids flutter, heavy after four hundred thirty-two sheep. Gregor.

"Whaddya want, Gregor? I have to work in the morning."

He ignores me. "You saw the kid leave, right?"

I rub my eye with my right hand, twisting my scab. Ow. "He bolted out of there. You'd probably find tire marks on the street if you look."

"When our witch got there, the talisman was gone."

Shit. "I should have stayed."

"So you don't think the sound guy took it?"

"I don't think he'd touch it if you paid him. And I certainly didn't."

"I'll call you if I hear anything."

"Try to do that during normal wakey hours, will you? Some of us have day jobs."

"It's Sunday, Ayala."

Oh.

Gregor hangs up, and I fall back onto my puffy pillow.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I spend Sunday giving Gregor's articles a solid perusing.

Maybe a detective would find something. Or a beagle. Since I'm neither, I don't feel too badly about my failure.
 

My apartment is my safe place — excepting the times when Gregor picks my locks and turns up on my sofa — but today it doesn't give me the normal smidgen of comfort. I'm lucky demons are worse detectives than I am, otherwise I'd probably live in a fortress surrounded by kudzu and swamp instead of in downtown Nashville. At least then I could pour burning pitch on their heads. If any demons ever decide to start making house calls, I'll need a better security system.