Chapter Two
The demon spewed a stream of obscenities. Most of them were spoken in a language I didn’t understand, but it was pretty easy to determine intent, what with the way he was hissing and growling.
“Take her out of here,” I said to Ida. “I’ve got this.”
“Well, I should hope so. It’s that fool highway demon, after all. Nothing to worry about.”
“Godsdamn it, witch, are you and the elder woman stalking me?” Gnath shrieked. “Because it’s really starting to look that way.”
I waited until Ida and Violeta had exited the room then reached through the computer screen and yanked Gnath into the salt circle. It was a risky move, since I was also in the circle, but one quick jump and I was out of danger. I plopped onto Violeta’s bed and eyed the little monster.
Gnath was short, hairless, and humanoid. He had dreary black eyes, skin the color of moldy bread, and a stench that followed him like a spirit.
Other than his smell, though, he was less frightening than the average dental visit. Not harmless—no demon was harmless—but largely ineffective.
“You’ve moved from hitching rides with lonely travelers, to pretending to be the Aztec god of death, to posing as Bloody Mary?” I shook my head. “You’re going to have to explain this bizarre trajectory, because I’m not getting it.”
“Don’t forget I helped you out of a sticky situation with that cursed tome.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I did you a favor, remember?”
“You repaid a favor,” I said. “It’s not like you did it out of the kindness of your heart. You don’t have a heart, and you aren’t kind unless it somehow benefits you.”
He slumped into the chair I’d vacated. “What do you want now? Another favor?”
“Yeah, for not smiting your ass into dust. Why aren’t you in Hell?”
“This sucks. You suck.”
“Clock’s ticking.”
“Fine. I’m not in Hell because my uncle kicked me out again.” A series of emotions crossed his green little face.
The one I homed in on was deceit. He was going to give me my answers, but in his own, jerk-me-around sort of way.
Nobody had time for that, least of all me.
I reached into my pocket and extracted a pinch of soil. Not the one mixed with salt, either. This was pure Siete Saguaro earth. My element. The primary source of my magic.
Gnath watched me, fear flashing in his eyes. “What’s that for?”
“This.” I drizzled the soil onto the back of my hand, where it steamed into a heated vapor that sank into my skin. It used to hurt, and though it was still hot, it no longer provoked a pain response. I’d grown used to the sensation.
“Wow, that’s so super awesome cool.” He rolled his rheumy eyes and clicked his tongue against sharklike, triangular teeth. “Whatever.”
With a flick of my hand and the whispered word, “Fuego,” silver flames appeared inside the ring.
Cecil’s eyes went wide. He and Fennel were now positioned outside the circle behind the desk.
“Mercury’s poison? Again?” Gnath pulled his arms and legs onto the chair. “Why not some new torment?”
“Because you enjoyed this one so much last time, I guess,” I said. “Are you back in Limbo? I can’t imagine you’d be anywhere else. Heaven won’t have you and the mortal world is out of bounds unless—” One way for him to enter the human realm was with a soul. Any soul would do, even that of a child.
Godsdamn him.
“Hey, can you turn down the heat?” The creature wiped what looked like oily sludge from his forehead. “I’m cooperating. No need to get testy.”
“You were going to steal a child’s soul just so you could come here, weren’t you?”
“No. As you already know, I can’t steal a soul. She’d have to give it to me.”
“She’s twelve. A child can’t consent.”
“She’s twelve? Lucifer’s horns, I thought she was an adult. I have trouble with human ages.”
That was bullshit. He knew it; I knew it. What fully grown human adult even believed in Bloody Mary?
“Go home, Gnath. If I find you out here again, I’m going to put you down. This was the final straw. Kids are off-limits. Old people, too. And animals. Humans. Paranormals.”
“You’re really hamstringing me here.”
I rose from the bed and toed the edge of the soil-salt line. Looked him directly in his bleak, empty eyes. “Killing you wouldn’t bother me.”
The demon went a darker shade of green as the silver flames licked at the chair legs.
“You need to understand how little your destruction would affect me, because if I catch you in my realm again, for any reason, I’m going to incinerate your soul.
” I strolled around the outside of the circle.
“Once you’re gone, I’ll go home and climb into bed with my boyfriend.
I’ll sleep like I don’t have a care in the world, and in a week’s time, I’ll barely remember what happened.
In a month’s time, I won’t remember your name.
In a year’s time, I won’t recall you at all.
You’ll be dead and forgotten and no one will mourn you. No one will even notice.”
The sound of his ragged breathing echoed in the still room.
I snapped my fingers, and the silver flames banked like a gas burner set to low. The chair was unharmed, as was the floor. But then, that wasn’t what the flames were meant to burn.
“Go now.”
“There’s nowhere for me to go,” he whined. “My uncle had me kicked me out of Hell, and my girlfriend kicked me out of her part of Purgatory. Now you’re kicking me out of this realm—not that I was in it, since I can’t do that without a soul or summoning, but you get what I mean.”
“What you’re telling me is no one would miss you.”
“Hey, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” He sat up taller on the chair. “My cousin Horticulous would. He’s in Hell—for now. Our uncle doesn’t like him, either.”
I held up my index finger. “One last chance, Gnath. One. One chance and one favor, no conditions. No bargaining.”
My anger must’ve shown in my eyes, because he nodded. “I swear on Lucifer’s crown that I won’t return to this realm—unless summoned by my true name, because I can’t help that—and I will grant you two favors. Now will you put out that fire? It’s already singed off my toenails.”
The computer lit up behind him, and he eyed the monitor with real fear. “Please. I’m caught in the dead space between this world and Limbo. You have to release me,” he said. “I won’t hurt anybody. I just want to live.”
“Release you on this plane? Not on your miserable life.” I pulled a bundle of my home-grown and specially dried rosemary and a lighter from my back pocket. “But I will do one thing for you.”
“Probably not going to be something nice,” he grumbled.
A few months ago, I would’ve needed to chant a banishment spell and draw a tremendous amount of my energy and personal magic to power it. Now that I’d connected with my home soil, I needed only to say the words. The magic was already with me.
“Gnath, servant of iniquity, commander of the second brigade of malfeasance, demon of Highway 86, I banish you, body and spirit—to Hell.”
His body crumpled until it resembled a damp pile of laundry rather than a living being. A ball of green light burst out of his remains.
“When I call upon you, you’d better show up,” I said. “You owe me a favor.”
The demon's essence blinked twice—I took that as a yes—then shot into the computer screen. The monitor glowed digital green, and a stream of stench like thick, black smoke seeped out of the vents. Cecil and I coughed.
Fennel sneezed then broke the containment circle with a stroke of his tail so Gnath’s spirit could leave this plane.
The screen went dark.
“Goddess, he’s a pain in my ass,” I said between coughs. “A stinky pain.”
Cecil chittered something that sounded like agreement and yanked the plug out of the wall. Fennel sneezed again.
I stepped into the broken circle and bent over the discarded human form of the demon. It was already disintegrating. In another few seconds, there’d be nothing left of it.
The monitor screen lit up again, this time an empurpled shade of crimson.
“Who calls my name? I sense a child. A delicious child.” The voice was hundreds of tiny worms wriggling into my ears.
It wasn’t Gnath. Not only did he not sound anything like this, I’d banished him to Hell, which was where he wanted to be.
Sure, his uncle could cast him right back out again, but I didn’t think so.
Gnath wasn’t the sort of demon you kept watch over.
He was more of a fly you swatted when it started buzzing around the potato salad at the picnic.
“Chiiild.”
“Fennel, Cecil, fix the circle—now.” I took more soil from my jeans pocket and dusted my bare arms. It sizzled below the surface of my skin and into my bloodstream. Magic crackled in the air.
The creature pushed its, for lack of a better word, face through the screen as if the display were liquid.
I couldn’t tell the gender, and perhaps it didn’t possess one.
If I had to gender it, I’d have said it was female, but it could just as easily have been male.
Gender was complex and multifaceted in the human world, but it was a veritable kaleidoscope of intricacies for otherworlder denizens, particularly demons.
Fennel fixed the salt circle, and I took a moment to redo the spell. It didn’t take long, only a few more ear worms. Ick.
“Come to me, chiiild.” The voice went sing-song and yet remained wriggly and slick in my ear.
“Who are you?” I wanted to pump my fingers in and out of my ears the way I did after a swim. It was as if the sound of the creature’s voice was leaving an oily residue in my auditory canal.
“I am the one who was summoned.” The head, one shoulder, and two arms punched through the screen. The arms were hairy and tapered to a single sharp claw that clicked against the glossy desktop as it fought for purchase.
“No one summoned you. Go back where you came from.”
“The child summoned me.” She smiled, her teeth as white as a grain of rice. “By name.”