44. Syneca #2
“Most people in this fucking world want her dead. Blood is always the answer. His father ordered a fucking massacre.”
“His father.” Ramiel spread his hands. “Not him. And from what I understand, the current king has been running interference for witches for years. That’s not the behavior of a man following his father’s playbook.”
I looked between them. He wasn’t wrong. But what he’d been doing to those witches Wickett had been sending north was yet to be discovered. Rulers didn’t survive by fearing monsters. They survived by keeping them on a leash.
“There’s more to this story than we know,” I said.
Ramiel snapped his fingers and pointed at me.
“Exactly. Which is why we don’t announce ourselves until we understand what we’re walking into.
You don’t request an audience with a king you know nothing about and hand him the location of the Phoenix in the same breath. That’s not strategy, that’s surrender.”
“Your way gets us killed before we make it through the gate,” I said, making it clear I wasn’t on his side either. “That’s not a plan, that’s a funeral.”
The demon prince had the decency to look only mildly offended.
“We send a request,” Silas said. “Formal. Careful. We give him two weeks to respond through magic and we don’t give him this address.”
“Three days,” Ramiel said, scrunching his nose like the words tasted bad.
I nodded. “Agreed. We give him less time to prepare. If we don’t hear back, we revisit your approach.”
“We bombard the place,” Silas said.
The demon prince scowled. “That’s not what I said.”
I leaned back in my chair, swiping the last bit of meat from my plate and dropping it for Timber, who hadn’t left my side since the moment he’d come in, days ago. “It’s what you meant.”
“It is absolutely not what I meant.”
“You know, I’m actually kind of proud of you Ramiel. You barely put up a fight this time.”
“As long as I get to go, I don’t care when.” Ramiel set his cup down and looked at me across the breakfast table. “Come into the city with me today. There’s a shop with things that have no business existing in this world or any other. I think you’d find it interesting.”
Timber raised his head from where he’d been sprawled across my feet, fixing Ramiel with a long, unimpressed stare.
The prince reached across the table, picked up a strip of bacon from his plate, and set it on the floor beside the cinderhowl without so much as glancing down.
Timber’s nostrils moved. He caved five seconds later, going straight for the bacon.
“I suppose a little adventure wouldn’t hurt,” I said. “As long as they’re not collecting body parts or something weird. I can never tell what you demons obsess over.”
“Body parts?” Ramiel looked genuinely offended this time. “She collects enchanted objects. Magical artifacts and trinkets and stuff. Your opinion of me is honestly insulting.”
I smiled. “I’m working with the information provided.”
“And what information is that?”
I lifted a brow. “You have the face of someone I should trust and the energy of someone I absolutely shouldn’t.”
He blinked. Then he grinned and all of his demonic charm came rushing forward. “You think I have a trustworthy face?”
I stared at him. “You ignored the important part.”
“Mm. That’s your opinion. Now about these body parts.”
Silas’s kick from under the table wasn’t subtle.
“Trinkets. I meant trinkets,” Ramiel said, rubbing his shin. “Mostly I mean trinkets.”
“Fine. I’m in.” I looked across the table at Silas. “You could come.”
Something shifted in his expression. The edge of a yes, I was almost certain of it before Dez appeared in the doorway with a book tucked under one arm and an ink-black pen behind his ear, already dressed for the cold outside.
“Ready, Si?”
Silas looked at me for one more second before lifting a shoulder. “Next time.”
The entire way, only three banners of my face lingered in the air, naming me the Phoenix and demanding information be reported to the capital city. Only three.
“Maybe the magic that hung them isn’t very strong,” Pip offered as we walked beneath the second.
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s that.”
“Maybe the city is as sentient as that forest you were in,” Ramiel said, staring up at the third. “Maybe it likes you.”
“I am a delight,” I said, keeping my theory to myself for now.
He snorted. “To the city, maybe. The rest of the world remains unconvinced.”
Blackwell’s Cabinet of Curiosities was wedged between a tailor and a tea house on a street that smelled of woodsmoke and fresh bread. Inside, shelves climbed every wall, packed with the kind of objects that made Ramiel’s eyes go wide and made Pip and me feel entirely at home.
A broom worked its way methodically across the far corner without a hand to guide it.
Dishes stacked themselves in a basin of soapy water near the window, a book lay open on a stand near the door, reading itself aloud in a low murmur to no one in particular.
Along the back wall, pairs of mirrors hung facing each other, each one showing not its own reflection but a live image of its twin across the room.
Ramiel moved through it all with the reverence of a man in a temple. Pip and I trailed behind him, deeply unmoved.
“The dishes alone,” he said, lifting one to examine the rune etched into its base. “Do you understand what demons would pay for self-washing dishes?”
“Every kitchen in Grimora has them,” Pip said, raising a shoulder.
“Every kitchen,” I confirmed.
He set the dish down and picked up a small brass object from the nearest shelf, turning it over in his hands. “I could make an absolute killing selling this world’s castoffs to the Underworld.”
“First of all, no.” Pip said, taking the object from him. “And second, are you even allowed to be richer than the other princes, Rami? Don’t you have to be exactly the same?”
He poked a writhing plant from a wooden desk beside him. “The pact covers power, not riches.”
The shop door opened behind us.
A shifter was walking out, bearded, moving fast, his jaw already shifting before he’d cleared the threshold.
Mid-transformation, his face elongating, hands spreading into massive brown paws, everything stopped.
He froze in the horrible in-between, half man and half beast, stuck there, a sound coming out of him that was equal parts human distress and animal panic.
Shiftlock.
My heart dropped straight into my stomach. He’d die. Right here and now and there was nothing anyone could do to save him. He was begging. The words came out garbled through a mouth that wasn’t quite either shape. His eyes found mine, desperate and wild.
“My bag,” he rasped. “In my bag.”
The satchel had dropped when he’d frozen.
I raced forward, hitting the floor beside him as I grabbed it and searched.
With no idea what I was looking for, my hands moved fast through the contents.
A folded cloth, two strength-enhancing runes, a water flask, a handful of coins and buttons, a small leather journal, and there, at the bottom, a smooth flat stone with a rune etched so deep into its surface I could feel the grooves and the trace of a familiar power pulsing through it.
I pressed the stone into his locked paw.
The magic activated the second his skin made contact.
The transformation completed in a rush, his full shift snapping into place.
An enormous bear stood where the man had fallen.
In the span of a heartbeat, the shift reversed and he stood before us fully human.
He braced his hands on his knees with a long exhale. “Thank you.”