Chapter 18
By midnight, they’d cleaned things up and put the sadly over-proofed rolls into the oven anyway.
Gisele emerged from her room when the pans banged into the oven. She pulled Morgan aside as Lucareoth unpacked the chicken hearts they had picked up from Whole Foods on the way home.
“A) You go girl! Congrats on ending the dry spell, you have no idea how bad this is straining my ‘don’t kiss and tell’ rule,” Gisele said in a low voice. “But also, B) this isn’t my business but you’re my best friend and I’m worrying here—demon-to-human STDs aren’t a thing, are they?”
“We used protection,” Morgan assured her. “Both the magical and the latex kind.”
“Oh good, because I’m pretty sure the clinic can’t handle it if you sprout horns or something.”
Morgan almost snapped at her—of all people, Gisele shouldn’t be making ignorant comments.
But she looked again at the strain around her friend’s eyes.
This was a lot for anyone to handle. And the only reason Morgan even knew the protocols for interspecies sex was because her mother had drilled her in them in a series of mortifying conversations when she was fifteen.
Weirdly, interplanar coupling was less risky than with merpeople—there were a couple of deep-sea-borne diseases that humans were particularly susceptible to that didn’t seem like the kind of thing that should be able to jump species but nonetheless could.
Horns would be the least of your worries.
“I’m almost set up,” Lucareoth said. He’d stayed in his demon form and Morgan felt vaguely guilty for not having encouraged him to drop the illusion when he was at home earlier.
“There are a lot more chicken hearts in this container than we need. I don’t suppose you folks are willing to eat these, at least? ”
“I’ve never had a chicken heart,” Morgan said. “But if they sell them at Whole Foods, someone must eat them, which means someone must have a way to make them tasty. We bought them—I don’t want to throw them out.”
“I’ll text my abuelita, she probably has a recipe,” Gisele said.
“Gisele, could you hide in your room again?” Lucareoth said, looking worried. “I don’t mean to boss you around in your own house, and I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of human etiquette I’m already breaking here, but I don’t want Bel’aliol to know you exist.”
“In terms of etiquette, it would be great if you two could keep me up to date on whether your official household status is boyfriend/girlfriend or just friends with benefits, but no pressure there,” Gisele said easily as Morgan blushed.
“And I also would prefer if your terrifying boss never knew I existed. It’s sweet of you to protect me. ”
Lucareoth looked abashed. “You’ve been really nice. And you keep replacing the ice cream.”
“I understand my role as chief ice cream procurer.” Gisele rolled her eyes. “I’m taking Rix with me so he doesn’t interrupt your call. Try not to promise them even more souls, OK?”
“Is that a thing we’re risking?” Morgan asked. “Please tell me that’s not a thing.”
Lucareoth swallowed. Suddenly, he headed for her bedroom door. “I can’t do this.”
“Wait a second, hold up,” she said, stepping in his way. “You can do this, because we have to do this.”
“I’m going to screw it up and you’re going to be in even more danger.”
“This is how we get out of danger,” she said, touching him on the shoulder. He pulled her into an embrace suddenly. He was trembling, she realized.
“Morgan,” he said into the top of her head, his voice muffled by her hair. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She laughed weakly. “I don’t think I ever know what I’m doing. But we’re going to do it together, OK?”
Slowly he stopped trembling. “OK.”
After a minute, she glanced at the clock. “If we want to take advantage of him being more receptive at midnight, we need to do it now. Then afterwards, we’ll have hot rolls with melted butter.”
“I don’t know what’s that’s like,” he said, still into the crown of her head.
“It’s worth making a scary call for,” she promised.
“OK.” He straightened up. “Let’s do this.”
If she’d kept the ritual dagger she’d been given in kindergarten, the ritual would have been much more dramatic. But she’d left that in a box somewhere in her childhood bedroom, probably with a pile of My Little Ponies. The cheap paring knife lacked gravitas, but stabbed hearts just fine.
Smoke billowed up out of nowhere. She fanned it away from her face. “Ugh, this smells like Taco Bell farts.”
“That’s brimstone,” Lucareoth corrected her, drawing runes in chicken heart juice. It wasn’t really blood so much as clearish goo.
“Brimstone is sulfur, and sulfur smells like farts,” she said.
“Shush before the connection kicks in and he hears you.”
The smoke twisted into a sheet, and the sheet shimmered. Bel’aliol’s eyes appeared first, staring at them with icy disdain. A cold sweat broke out down Morgan’s spine. Slowly, the rest of his face came into focus, which did not significantly improve the atmosphere.
His mouth moved but no sounds came out.
“Wait a second, I don’t think I got the audio right,” Lucareoth said, fiddling with the chicken heart.
“—you hear me now?” Bel’aliol’s voice boomed out, far too loud, but the image disappeared.
“Hold on. Umm.” Lucareoth poked the heart again.
“I still can’t see you.”
“We can hear you OK,” Lucareoth said. “Is that better?”
The picture finally snapped into focus. The senior demon snorted.
“I saw the paperwork for one soul,” Bel’aliol said without preamble. “With multiple add-ons. Which is a more promising start. You have yet to balance your expenditures though, and you still owe another soul for the transfer.”
“We’re working on that,” Lucareoth promised.
“Then this call could have been a message.” Bel’aliol moved to cut the connection.
“We also have something to report that we thought might be of interest,” Lucareoth added quickly.
Bel’aliol’s eyes narrowed but he allowed him to continue.
“It turns out we’re not the only House operating in this space,” Lucareoth said. Out of view, the tip of his tail lashed back and forth.
“We have good intelligence that another company, GreenField UnLtd., has signed their own Deal,” Morgan added.
Bel’aliol looked at Lucareoth. “Pets may be visible on calls, but only if they’re not disruptive.”
Morgan glanced around to see if Rix had snuck out of Gisele’s room and then took his meaning. She shut her mouth with a snap. Lucareoth’s tail curled around her ankle apologetically.
“I’m reasonably certain the signatory is a human named Hawk, a male of approximately forty human years of age with two descendants, born in the sign of Sagittarius. Baptized but apparently lapsed, no magical lineage I can find.”
“I’ll have it looked into,” Bel’aliol said. “But you need to deliver something to your client that’s better than pens and event invitations. Get those charges racked up, you’re still netting negative.”
“We have a meeting scheduled with Ravenfell,” Lucareoth promised.
“Yes,” Bel’aliol hissed. “Bleed the bloodsuckers for all they’re worth. But be careful; they’ll try to turn the terms on you. I don’t have to warn you not to be overconfident.”
“No, sir,” Lucareoth gulped.
The smoke suddenly dissipated, leaving them alone in the apartment.
The oven timer beeped.
“Well, that was unnerving yet anticlimactic,” Morgan said, pulling the rolls out of the oven. Lucareoth picked one up and she gasped. “You’ll burn your fingers!”
“The metal isn’t even glowing, I’m not going to burn my fingers.”
“Fine, next time you can take the pans out of the oven, Mr. I Don’t Need Oven Mitts,” Morgan said.
“Is it safe to come out and get butter?” Gisele poked her head out of her room.
“Yeah,” Morgan said, grabbing the butter from the fridge. “I’d say to leave them until they’ve cooled, but I already wrecked the structure by letting them proof too long, so we might as well slather them in butter and make the evidence disappear.”
They paused for a moment to give the rolls the respect they deserved. She was right, the rolls were over-proofed. But the giant uneven holes in the structure only gave more room for the salty melted butter to pool into. Lucareoth closed his eyes in bliss.
“Did you get what you wanted out of the meeting?” Gisele asked after a suitable pause.
“If you mean, ‘did I get called an animal and receive no information in exchange,’ sure,” Morgan said, trying not to be too offended by being insulted by a demon. Although if Lucareoth could be held to human standards, so could Bel’aliol.
“I’m so sorry,” Lucareoth said. “Next time, I’ll talk to him alone.”
“No, I want to hear,” she insisted. “It’s not your fault.”
The smoke suddenly roiled back up. Morgan yelped and dropped her roll. Rix happily grabbed it and ran behind the couch before someone could take back his prize. Gisele looked around wildly and then crouched behind the kitchen counter.
“Sir?” Lucareoth said through a mouthful of roll and then choked it down.
“You’re right,” Bel’aliol said, again without a greeting. “And it’s House Valefar, bless them to the Upper Planes. They’ve slipped into our sales territory right under our noses.”
“Oh no,” Lucareoth said. Morgan tried not to wince. Weren’t they the ones Ravenfell had bested? They’d really be out for blood now. Maybe literally.
“Oh no is right,” Bel’aliol repeated. “The ones Upstairs are not going to be pleased, and it’s us who are going to pay. This breaks the accord, you realize. Valefar has claim to Paris and Washington, but New York and London are supposed to belong to House Berith.”
Rix put his paws up on the counter and panted happily at Bel’aliol’s image. Bel’aliol’s voice changed abruptly to something lighter than Morgan had realized he was capable of producing. “Oh, hello there. Are you being a good boy?”
Rix ruffed and wagged his tail.
“That’s nice, you keep doing that.” Bel’aliol’s tone dropped back into the register she associated with him. “Because someone else is not being a good boy.”
Luke swallowed. “What will Upstairs do?”
“They can’t be allowed to outcompete us,” Bel’aliol snapped.
“This signatory of yours, Brad—he has to destroy them. Get that Ravenfell agreement, with favorable terms. And then bankrupt this GreenField group. I want you to make Brad the most well-favored man in the city. Hawk needs to be nothing. Nothing, do you hear me?”
“They’re farther along in their Deal than we are,” Lucareoth said hesitantly.
“Ah, but you have a secret weapon, don’t you?” Bel’aliol smiled. “You’re on that plane. And they are not. You can move directly, you and your pet. So move. Or you won’t enjoy the consequences.”
“Consequences?”
Bel’aliol’s smiled flattened out. “You’re young.
You don’t remember the last war. If you don’t like being in sales, I don’t think you’ll enjoy being cannon fodder.
Land another Deal and upsell the one you’ve got.
Now, before House Valefar realizes what you’re doing.
And maybe you’ll survive what comes next. ”
Again, the smoke collapsed.
Lucareoth swept the circle away, flinging chicken heart pieces at the wall.
Then he staggered over to the sofa and collapsed.
Rix scrambled over to the chicken heart bits, gulping them down before someone could sweep them up and throw them away.
Humans and demons alike were so wasteful, throwing out all manner of things that could be food if you believed in yourself.
Gisele picked herself up more slowly. “Did he say war?”
“Yeah,” Lucareoth said.
“Like, war on the demon plane?”
“It would start there,” he said.
“But the last time there was a war on the Infernal Plane, some of it spilled over here,” Morgan said, remembering some of the history her father had tried to drill into her.
“What does that mean, exactly?” Gisele asked, slowly buttering another roll. If things were going to be terrible, they needed comfort carbs.
“Remember the great earthquake of Lisbon?”
“Only because it was in Candide.”
“If you say so. But it was a real thing,” Morgan said. “Same thing happened to San Francisco back at the beginning of the twentieth century. I think Krakatoa was an Infernal Plane conflict, too.”
“They used to be more common,” Luke said heavily. “The Accord was supposed to stop that. But if House Valefar is sneaking around…”
“Can you call in help from the opposite? If demons are real, what about angels?”
“No angels,” Luke and Morgan said at the same time.
“Angels don’t think like we do,” Morgan said. “Their idea of making things better can be the opposite of ours. They’re way too dangerous.”
“I don’t want New York City to burn down,” Gisele said in a small voice.
“I especially don’t want it to burn down while I’m in it,” Lucareoth said. “Especially since all the ice cream would melt.”
“And millions of people could die,” Morgan pointed out.
“That, too.”
She stared out the window into the darkness, still lit by streetlights and the constellations of a hundred lit windows scattered down the blocks. People going about their lives, oblivious of the disaster looming over them.
“I’m texting my mother,” Morgan said.
It’s House Valefar
Valefar? Shit
They’re not supposed to operate in NYC
Does that help?
Her phone rang. “This could have been a text, Mother.”
Fiona ignored that. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but I appreciate it and I’ll see what I can do with it. Good job, pumpkin.”
“And?” Her mother wouldn’t have called just for that.
“Your young man—the Tidepools grad. Are you still a thing?”
She looked at the demon on her couch, shirt unbuttoned. She hated admitting her mother had been right, but she wasn’t going to deny him to his face. “Yes.”
“Keep him close, all right?” Her mother sounded worried. “He can see things you can’t.”
It stung, even if it were true. She was so tired of her mother treating her like a child. Like all Fiona could see was her disability. “Fine.”
“He has my number? Just in case.”
There was no circumstance in which she could imagine Luke willingly calling her mother. “I’ll make sure he does.”
“Keep me posted,” her mother instructed.
“You’re welcome,” she told the dead line.
She rubbed gritty eyes. One AM was somehow much later than it had been in college. “Don’t worry too much. She’ll fix it. She always does, in the end.”
“And does everyone always survive the fixing?” Gisele pointed out.
She didn’t have an answer she liked for that.
“I guess we should go to bed,” Morgan said finally.
“Since we need to get the demo working tomorrow so we can spend the evening trying to convince vampires to give us large sums of money so we can save New York City and get Brad on the cover of Forbes for whoever still gets a print copy of Forbes these days.”
“I need another roll,” Lucareoth announced. “For fortitude.”