Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
A dozen demons start yelling over each other, and it turns into a cacophony of overlapping outrage.
I put my hands up. “Waring didn’t even want me to come here,” I shout over the noise. “He wanted me to find demons that work for the other syndicates.”
(You may not remember this part of the conversation. That’s because it didn’t happen.)
“Why would he want you to find them?” the original demon sneers.
I scan the room, wring my hands, and generally do an amazing job at appearing nervous. “He…wanted to make them an offer.”
If they stop and think about it, they’ll see the cracks in logic. Why would Waring not go to his own demons? If the syndicates are working together, why does he need me to make the offer? But emotion overrides logic. Even, apparently, in demons.
“What offer?” the first demon asks.
“I…I don’t really know what he meant. He said if one of them would destroy the grimoire, he would offer them…a demon’s greatest desire.”
The room falls silent. I bite back a grin.
To con someone, you have to know what they want most.
Rook was right—I’m not dealing with humans. I’m dealing with demons. And I don’t know demons. That much has been obvious these past several weeks. I didn’t know they worked with syndicates. Or that they’re hellhounds. Or that they could shift into human form.
And I definitely don’t know what demons want most in the world.
So I’ll let them fill in the blanks.
Whatever they assume Waring meant will be more motivational than anything I could come up with. And now a room full of demons—who are the only beings who can produce the one thing that will destroy the codex—have incentive to do just that. How convenient.
The tension rises, threatening to break.
It helps that they also have a wave of paranoia creeping into their consciousness.
Because sitting alone in the back of the room wearing a slim-fit suit with roses and skulls stitched down the arms and outseams is CJ—with Poppy’s face-changing charm around their neck.
Turns out, demons are just like humans in another aspect: If you act like you belong, they’ll believe you do. And that’s exactly what CJ’s been doing for the past few hours: acting like they belong.
The murmurs rise. A demon with sheep horns and a wide-eyed expression is the first to make a move. A dark mist swirls around its outstretched hand.
Hades flicks her wrist, and her bident materializes, already crackling. A stream of energy fires from its tip, striking the demon in an instant. It disappears in a puff of black smoke, leaving behind nothing but the acrid scent of sulfur.
The room immediately quiets.
“Might I remind you,” Hades snarls, voice amplified, “that no reward given by a weak Titan will ever be worth risking my wrath.”
No one dares move. For a tense moment, her snarl remains. Then she lets out a sound that’s almost a giggle and sits back down on her throne.
“Now, where were we?” she asks. “Ah, yes. It’s time for our little necromancer to prove herself.”
She points at me with her bident, and I flinch. I didn’t want to have to actually do a resurrection, but I might have to if Hades doesn’t put away her weapon.
“Well?” she says.
I swallow and step up to the podium. Seeing the grimoire is almost comforting.
I would maybe even be excited about doing magic again if I weren’t surrounded by demons and a rotting corpse, held at bident-point by an undead god.
My hand trembles as I trace the page, the paper brittle under my fingertip.
I find the passage with the incantation.
Well. Here goes. I guess.
I take a deep breath, and just as I’m about to speak the first syllable, a side door slams open and a demon hauls in a very disheveled, very panicked Tolliver, who’s clutching a DoorDash bag like a lifeline.
His eyes widen as he takes in the sea of demons now watching him.
He fumbles for something in the bag and pulls out a sack of limes.
Hades scowls. “Fury’s sake, who keeps ordering entire bags of limes? Why would you need that many? Are you eating them whole?”
The demon holding Tolliver clears his throat. “He’s not actually with DoorDash, my lord.”
Tolliver’s eyes land on me and he blanches.
“Elle, what are you doing?” he breathes.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Damn it, Tolliver.”
“You promised you wouldn’t do this!”
I scoff. “I also promised I wouldn’t eat the last Eggo. Honestly, this is on you for believing me.”
“You should have just taken Waring’s offer,” he snaps.
The audience of demons tense as one.
“You’ll thank me when we get Dante back,” I say. “I’m not risking the grimoire, no matter what Waring offers.”
“I hate to interrupt this lover’s quarrel,” Hades says. Her voice is lazy, but there’s tension in her posture. “But we were in the middle of a resurrection here. I don’t care about whatever Waring had to offer, and none of my—”
Before she can finish whatever it is she’s about to say, a demon breaks free of the crowd, heading straight for the grimoire. Hades zaps it without hesitation.
But it was a decoy.
Another demon has approached from the side and there’s already a ball of hellfire in its open palm.
Time seems to slow. I don’t have enough time to get out of the way, and though the codex will be destroyed, it looks like I’ll be destroyed with it.
I tense. The air ripples. The hellfire launches. The first blast of heat caresses my face.
And then I’m tackled to the ground.
I fall forward onto the pedestal, knocking over the grimoire on my way to the parquet floor. A weight lands on top of me, pinning me just as the hellfire screams overhead and ignites the curtains.
For one long second, no one reacts.
Then everything explodes into chaos.
Demons are jumping over benches to reach the grimoire, which I’m still huddled over. The weight pushes off me, and only then do I realize I was saved—
By Rook.
A swarm of demons closes in on me, but Rook waves his hand and casts a shield. With his other hand, he snaps his fingers, and something like water rains down on us, dousing the hellfire that’s spread up the wall.
For a moment I think he’s protecting me, but as Tolliver shoots toward me, Rook knocks him back with a burst of magical force.
It’s not me he’s protecting. It’s the grimoire.
He’s fighting off dozens of demons while the rest run for the exits, compelled by the panic CJ is projecting into their minds.
With the demons distracted, I turn to Hades—only to find her frozen, a scowl on her face, her bident half raised.
Ten feet in front of her stands Ezra, gripping a human femur etched with the rune for control.
Because CJ didn’t come alone. They arrived with a stone in their pocket—one that technically belongs to Rook, though he left it behind in his rush to escape. A limen stone, runed to summon the person holding its twin.
Ezra wears a powder-blue tuxedo T-shirt. I asked him to wear a suit since demons seem to like them. This was his compromise.
He definitely doesn’t blend in, but the chaos coupled with his ability to go unnoticed got him close enough to Hades to activate the rune and put her under his control.
Ezra took to runic magic like a fish to a sudoku puzzle written in fire.
But he also doesn’t give up. And even though there was absolutely no way to test if the rune even worked on a Titan until just now, he went for it anyway. That’s growth.
He’s struggling though. Sweat beads on his brow and his mouth grimaces around the incantation. He won’t be able to hold the spell much longer. I have to make this quick.
“Tolliver!” I call, looking for him through the chaos.
The bag of fruit he brought in doesn’t just contain limes.
It has everything we need for the banishment potion.
Everything except a strand of Hades’s hair.
Once I have that, he can mix everything up, and we can start the spell.
I don’t see Tolliver, but I have to trust he’s doing what he can to get to me.
I turn to Hades. Even frozen in place, she’s terrifying. That bident almost ended Tolliver, and just being near it sparks a reflexive kind of fear. I approach slowly, carefully. I only need a single hair.
She watches me, unmoving, eyes alight with fury.
I swallow hard and gently reach up, wrapping a single strand around my finger. Just as I start to pull, Ezra screams. I turn instinctually.
A demon has knocked the femur from his hand and tackled him to the floor. For a moment, I’m sure I’m about to watch Ezra die. But then Tolliver barrels in, yanking the demon off him.
I let out a sigh of relief, just as my body jolts forward.
Tolliver lets out a raw cry. Ezra’s face goes pale.
I look down. Two blood-soaked tines stick out from my torso, one through the gut, the other straight through my heart.
It doesn’t make sense. I don’t feel a thing.
The breath leaves my lungs. Everything goes quiet. Red starts to bloom around the wounds, and then Hades yanks the bident free. That part I feel, though it’s more like pressure than pain.
My knees hit the floor. I meet Tolliver’s gaze. His eyes are wide, mouth working like he’s saying something, but I can’t hear him over the rushing in my head.
The world tilts. I collapse onto the floor, landing right next to the other corpse.
My last thought is how this feels nothing like I thought it would.
And then—
I die.