Downstage, Grant had opened the door to the box of vanishing and placed the ifrit’s jar inside.
A breath of cold passed through the theater, like an air conditioner had just come on. Then she was standing before the stage, looking up at him. I’d seen the woman only twice, once as part of Balthasar’s show, the dark priestess of a mock ceremony, and once as the real priestess, wielding a silver dagger over my heart. That time, I’d gotten a good look at her, a good smell of her, and knew she was a vampire. Now she was dressed in a black flowing gown, a robe wrapped around her, belted with gold. Her hair was long and loose down her back. She was like a statue, unbreathing, solid as stone. I swallowed back a growl. Ben squeezed my hand.
Her entourage accompanied her, a half-dozen young men who walked with graceful, easy strides and spread out around the theater, blocking the exits. They were handsome, decorative, and smug; they knew how gorgeous they were and knew how to show it off. The fur and wild smell of lycanthrope was thick around them. Their leader, Nick, stood at the top of the center aisle, gazing over the stage as if they’d already won.
I wasn’t sure Grant would be able to hold his own against the group.
“This is a trap,” the vampire, Farida, said, in a rich, clipped accent I couldn’t identify.
Flat on his palm, facing her, Grant held a cross. It wouldn’t stop her in an attack, but maybe it would make her hesitate. She stepped forward, moving to the side of the stage and a set of steps hidden there. Though she seemed to move slowly, she was on the stage in moments, approaching him. I blinked, sure I’d missed something.
Grant stood his ground and spoke as if placating a wild animal. “I’m only returning what belongs to you.”
She glanced at the jar with a look of distaste. “I do not want it. It has failed. As you will.”
“I should have done this a long time ago,” Odysseus Grant murmured.
I had to keep my breathing slow. I didn’t want to panic. Grant looked nervous, which made my heart sink. His lips were thin, his breathing was deep—I could see his chest moving. That cross wasn’t going to protect him if the vampire made a move.
He was drawing her in, waiting for her to get closer. I could almost see him counting, ticking off seconds as she stepped forward. She moved like she didn’t think his magic could hurt her, and I wondered if it was true, if there was a reason Grant had hidden himself away all this time rather than confronting her and stopping the cult earlier. For all his air of power, he was mortal.
She paid no attention to the box or the ifrit’s jar. Her gaze focused on him. A vampire’s gaze had power—all she had to do was make Grant look into her eyes, and she could immobilize him.
I crouched, getting ready to spring. I couldn’t defeat her, but I had to try. I couldn’t let her take down Grant. Ben put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed, holding me back like he knew what I was going to do.
Grant threw something to the floor at the base of the box, at the jar. A puff of smoke and sparks exploded around it. Special effects, I thought—a smoke bomb or explosive squib of some kind, a distraction. But the smoke spread, rose up, and from it emerged the outline of a figure, broad and hunched, licked all around with tongues of flame, rising from the broken jar.
I almost screamed, jumping forward and shouting a denial. All that work—we’d set a neighborhood on fire to capture that thing—and he just let it go. Ben held me back.
The ifrit clenched blurred, fiery fists, tipped its head back, and screamed, a sound like that of a flamethrower. Grant had vanished—probably not literally vanished, but had gotten well out of the way and out of sight. The demon hovering before the box had turned its rage toward the vampire—who took a step back.
We hadn’t been the first ones to capture the ifrit. Farida had trapped it first, then set it on us. The vampire priestess had used it as a tool, and now that it was free, it went for the closest target at hand. Blasting fire from its limbs, it reached for her, enveloped her—
Then something else reached for both of them.
I didn’t see what. What I did see: Enveloped together, wrapped in a struggle, they leaned toward the inside of the box, then they fell in. They both gave short cries, not of anger, but of surprise. Terror. The vampire was burning, struggling in the cage of fire that the ifrit had wrapped around her. The ifrit wasn’t looking at anything but her. Then it was like they’d been yanked off their feet, and they disappeared.
Grant stepped around the box, closed the door quietly, and held it shut, leaning against it for a long moment. The theater was quiet. I smelled burning fabric and brimstone.
The magician finally stepped away from the box and brushed his hands.
From the back of the theater, Nick might have shouted, “No!” but the word was lost in a full-throated feline roar. He must not have believed his vampire mistress could lose. I had to admit, I hadn’t quite believed it, either.
He ran, straight for the stage and Odysseus Grant.
I sprang to intercept him. Ben couldn’t hold me this time.
Nick was fast, with a feline grace that gave him a powerful sprint, bent low, head down, strides long, muscles working. I could see the tiger in him, all that instinct and power coming through. He made an inhuman leap and reached the stage easily, his next stride ready to take him to Grant and tackle him.
My own jump across the stage, aiming for Nick, wasn’t nearly as graceful, but it worked. My legs went wild, but my arms got him, wrapped around him, tackled him. Our combined momentums sent us rolling, limbs tangled, bodies hitting the stage and each other. I was going to be seriously bruised after this. And I wasn’t quite sure what the move had gotten me.
Nick didn’t waste time. He kept the roll going until he landed on top of me, wrenched me facedown, and bent back my arm. His breath blew on my cheek, and his teeth closed around my throat, going for blood, with nothing sexy about him at all. Growling, I bucked, looking for the leverage to throw him off me.
Then he was just gone. I scrambled to all fours, bracing for the next attack, sure that Nick had let me go so he could play with me like a cat with a struggling mouse. But no—my pack had come to save me—or at least Ben had. He’d grabbed Nick from behind, arm across his throat, weight bracing him off-balance. Nick kicked and struggled, hissing, spitting around sharp, half-transformed teeth.
This was exactly why wolves traveled in packs. We weren’t meant to hunt by ourselves.
Nick was thrashing, and Ben’s grip was slipping. The struggle showed in his grimace.
Grant opened the door to the box and nodded at me.
I grabbed Nick’s flailing feet and dragged him toward the box. Ben followed my lead. With Nick howling, we managed to wrestle him into place, half throw and half drop him through the doorway. If it had been just a box, Nick’s struggles would have knocked the thing over, but when he fell in, he fell all the way in. I smelled something dank, and a draft came in through the shadowed interior.
Clinging to Ben, I lunged away from the box, lest the thing inside make a grab for us, too. Grant slammed the door shut again.
Ben and I crouched on the stage, gasping for breath, not letting go of each other. My fingers were knotted in his shirt, which was damp with sweat. He’d wrapped his arms around me and stared at the box.
“What the hell is that thing?” he said to Grant.
“Stage prop,” Grant said. “Among other things.”
“Shit,” Ben said, then buried his face in my hair and took a long, comforting breath. I giggled, a tad hysterically.
The rest of the Band of Tiamat approached, stalking like cats but not attacking, fearful maybe, as if unsure of what they’d seen. Grant moved to the end of the stage and addressed them, his voice calm but tired.
“The show’s over. Leave. Scatter. Or follow your masters into that place.”
The half dozen lycanthropes who were left looked at us, looked at each other. Without their show, their alpha, their context, they just looked like young men in jeans and T-shirts. Good-look
ing, but maybe a bit lost. Would they be able to make it on their own, without their pack? Without their show and their cult? Were they thinking the same thing?
The answer must have been yes, at least to the first one who turned and walked away. One by one, the others did likewise, glancing over their shoulders, resignation settling over their features.
The show was over, and maybe, just maybe some of them were relieved. Maybe this was for the best.
Eyes wide and shocky, Peter emerged from backstage. The theater was quiet now, as if nothing had happened. The box was still, and the scent of fire had faded. The only clues that there’d been a fight were Ben and me, hugging tightly, and Grant, who sat down on the edge of the stage, his shoulders slumping as he ran a hand through his hair.
“It’s over?” Peter said.
Grant looked up at him; his smile was tired, but he was smiling. “It’s over. Though I think it may be time to retire that particular prop.”
It wasn’t over. This battle was over, but Roman—Dux Bellorum—was still out there, scheming and plotting, a major player in the Long Game. This cult had been one of his pawns. He’d tried to use it to get a wedge into Denver, and he’d failed. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d let a defeat like that pass.
For me and my city, this wasn’t over by a long shot.
Epilogue
This time, I was excited about going to visit Cormac in prison.
This wasn’t to say I usually hated going. Hate wasn’t the right word. Seeing how Cormac was doing, live and in person, on a regular basis, was reassuring. But the situation was uncomfortable. The prison, even the visitors’ room, smelled like being trapped to the Wolf side. I hated to think of Cormac being trapped, and he looked terrible in orange.
I brought a file folder with me and, along with Ben, grinned at Cormac through the glass.
“You found something,” he said.
“I did,” I said.
“Which means, I assume, that the demon problem is all fixed and everything’s okay.”
“Would I be smiling if it weren’t?” I said.
“Sorry,” Ben said. “We forgot to tell you. The genie is bottled and everything’s okay.”
Cormac pointed. “See, I know when the problems are solved even when you don’t tell me, because you just stop talking about them. And did you say genie?”
“Can I tell you about your executions now?” I said quickly, opening the folder. He leaned forward, interested. “If you take in the twenty or so years before and after 1900, there were about half a dozen women executed. There was only one woman executed in 1900.”
“What was her name?” Cormac said.
“Amelia Parker. Her story’s a little different.” I even managed to dig up a few scraps of information here and there, a footnote in an old history book, a couple of hundred-year-old newspaper articles copied off microfiche. I talked like I was delivering a lecture. “Lady Amelia Parker. British, born 1877, the daughter of a minor nobleman. By all accounts, she was a bit of a firebrand. Traveled the world by herself, which just wasn’t done in those days. She was a self-taught archeologist, linguist, folklorist. She collected knowledge, everything from local folk cures to lost languages. She has her own page in a book about Victorian women adventurers.”
Something lit Cormac’s eyes, some recognition, familiarity. He knew something. I stopped myself from calling him on it and demanding that he tell me, because I wasn’t finished with Amelia’s story yet.
“She came to Colorado to follow an interest in Native American culture and lore but was convicted of murdering a young woman in Manitou Springs. The newspaper report was pretty sensationalist, even for 1900. Said something about blood sacrifice. There were patterns on the floor, candles, incense, the works. Like something out of Faust. The newspaper’s words, not mine. She was convicted of murder and hanged. Right here, in fact. Or at least, in this area, at the prison that was standing here at the time.”
Cormac leaned forward. “The victim. How did she die? Did it say what happened to her?”
“Her throat was cut.”
He chewed his lip and stared off into space.
“What is it?” He didn’t say anything, and I pressed. “You know something. This all makes sense to you. Why? How?”
Finally, he shook his head. “I’m not sure. May be nothing. But she’s got a name. It’s not all in my head.”
“What isn’t?”
He looked at me, square on. “She didn’t kill that girl. She was trying to find out who did. What did.”
I blinked. “What do you mean what?”
“Never mind,” he said, leaning back and looking away. “I’ll tell you when I know more.”
“Why is she important?” I said. “She’s been dead for over a hundred years.”
His smile quirked. “And you really think that’s the end of it? You’ve been telling ghost stories for years. Are you going to sit here now and tell me it isn’t possible?”
For once, I kept my mouth shut.
Ben leaned forward and smirked. “She just doesn’t like the idea that someone else is having adventures without her.”
“I’ll have you know I’m looking forward to a good long adventure-free streak from here out,” I said.
They chuckled. No, actually, they were doubled over and turning red in the face with laughter. At me.
“A month,” Cormac said finally, wheezing. “I bet you don’t go a month without getting into trouble.”
“How are we defining trouble?” I whined, irate. “Are we talking life-or-death trouble or pissing-off-the-boss trouble? Hey, stop laughing at me!”
Which only made them laugh harder, of course. I growled.
Ben straightened and got serious. “I’m not taking that bet.” Cormac shrugged as if to say, oh, well.
I closed the folder. “I could try to mail this to you, but I’m not sure it would get past the censors.”
“Just hang on to it for me,” he said.
“Right,” I said.
We had a whole box of stuff waiting for when he got out. A whole world waiting.
A couple of months later, Paradox PI broadcast an entire episode on the Band of Tiamat and its aftermath. Peter dug up all kinds of dirt on the Band of Tiamat and their King of Beasts cover operation, including evidence that the group had been quietly murdering werewolves for almost a decade. They did a class job on the episode, bringing in experts with opinions on all sides of the debate. What could have been an exploitative show featuring fire and mayhem ended up being a fairly reasoned documentary on spells, djinn, and what happens when magic goes awry. Which wasn’t to say they didn’t air plenty of footage of flaming chaos.
Some skeptics still claimed that we’d staged the whole thing. I didn’t care, because the djinn was gone and Denver was safe. And we got in a big old plug for The Midnight Hour.
I also forwarded all the data to my contacts at the NIH’s Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. Let those guys see if they could figure it out. Did a being made of fire even have biology?
We had a party at the refurbished and open-for-business New Moon when the episode broadcast. Rented a couple of big-screen TVs, served up lots of beer and pizza. Even my parents and Cheryl and her family came. I kind of wished they hadn’t, since I’d have to suffer my mother’s appalled expression when she realized what was really going on during those weeks. Maybe I could convince her that we’d staged the whole thing and hadn’t really been in danger. Enough skeptics out there were already claiming it.
A bunch of people from KNOB were there, as well as a good chunk of my pack. The Paradox PI team—Gary, Jules, and Tina—also came back for the party. The place was filled.
Shaun had plenty of staff on hand, but I still found myself carrying pitchers of beer and bouncing from table to table trying to be social with everyone at the same time. I was getting flustered playing hostess for so many people. So many disparate parts of my life had come together. Part of me wanted to ru
n, but I clamped down on that side of my psyche.
Another part of me felt a thrill at being in charge, being on top of it all, being at the center. Rick had said that—being at the center of the pattern. Bringing people together. I felt pride in what was happening here, and that was new. I liked it.
Ben grabbed my hand when I happened to drift close enough to our table in the corner. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I was flustered, and he’d noticed, which made the world a little sunnier. Squeezing his hand, I sank into the chair next to him. “I’ve decided it’s my job to make sure everyone has a good time.”
He chuckled. “How’s that working out for you?”
“I think it’s really good that we hired Shaun to run the place,” I said.
“Hey, Kitty,” Gary called. He, Tina, and Jules were sitting at a table halfway across the room. It pleased me that I now had a few more people I could hit up for information the next time something bizarre happened. Cormac was right. There would probably be a next time, and sooner than I liked.
Ben and I squeezed hands again, and I flitted off to be social with them.
“You guys okay? Need any more drinks? Any more food?” I asked.
“Maybe you should take a break for a minute.” Gary pulled an empty chair out from the table and nodded at it, encouraging me to sit.
“Of course, it’s nice to be worrying about not enough beer instead of demonic death,” I said, sitting with a sigh.
Gary had turned away to pull a manila folder out of an attaché case. He handed it to me. All three of them looked expectant.
“What’s this?” I said.
“We finally got a translation of the Arabic from the last séance. That’s the transcript. Thought you might be interested.” The video feed of us capturing the djinn had cut out, but one of the microphones inside the house had recorded the creature’s last ravings.
Of course I was interested. I started reading, and it was what I expected: curses, threats, some of them pretty creative. My favorite was the one that went, “You pathetic creatures of flesh and dirt, animals of crude matter.” And so on.