I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn’t know jack about what was happening, because this had been working out just fine for me before he showed up.
But a hard glint in Zjoon’s eyes reminded me, once again, that demons were not to be trusted.
Maybe me being here was less a part of my family gift, and more a part of being manipulated by a crossroads demon. Maybe demons had decided that now that they had one Reed sister soul, they might as well claim another.
“This crossroads is my territory and well defended.” Zjoon’s tone was deferential, but not meek. “It cannot be dissolved by you.”
“Is that so?” Bathin asked, just as evenly.
A demon staring contest wasn’t what I’d signed up for. I had a bottle of oil that could lock down this whole game. But I still needed an explanation for how to get Delaney’s soul out of Bathin’s clutches.
“Not even you can remove me from my land, Black Heart,” Zjoon spat. Her eyes were stony challenge, her lips a sneer. What had seemed beautiful about her before twisted into a parody of human features.
“What’s your play here? What game do you think you can win against the Reed sister?” Bathin crowded closer to the demon, his boots a spare inch away from the edge of the invisible circle around her.
“This is no game,” she said. “This is my job.”
“As long as you are alive,” he agreed.
Even I couldn’t mistake that threat.
The last thing I wanted to deal with was a dead demon or a war in a bathroom.
“Okay,” I said, “very impressive. Both of you. Now settle down.” I tipped the vial up and plugged the opening with my thumb.
“You”—I pointed at Bathin with the vial—“are currently a citizen of Ordinary. That comes with rules you are required to follow. One of those rules is that you will bring no harm to others.”
“No harm to those who live within Ordinary’s boundaries,” Bathin corrected me while he held Zjoon with a steady glare. “This crossroads and this creature are clearly outside of Ordinary. Isn’t that convenient?”
“You have no right to stand in my way,” Zjoon said.
Bathin smiled and pushed one foot forward, straddling the line between Ordinary and the outside world. “Try me.”
And this was the point where I had to decide to either step in and separate them, which would only be within my jurisdiction for another foot or so of ground Bathin had yet to cross, or let him go at it, get rid of her, get rid of this crossroads, and close down a soul-trading post none of us had even known about.
The good for all would be to banish the demon—well, both of them, but for sure the crossroads demon—and close the crossroads.
But I didn’t have the full information from Zjoon yet. And after months of looking for a solution to Bathin’s soul deal with Delaney, I didn’t want to lose the first real lead I’d had in weeks.
And, okay, there was a third way to look at this. Bathin and Zjoon could have planned it all out to make me do something they wanted me to do. It was a little extreme and complicated to suspect that, but underestimating a demon’s ability to use a person’s emotions, coupled with a demon’s willingness to play the long game, was disastrously foolish.
This was my decision. Stop the fight and give myself a chance to get more info out of Zjoon, or let Bathin kick her out and shut down this soul hole for good?
I knew what I should do. What would keep the citizens of Ordinary safe. I should let Bathin get rid of Zjoon, and close this shop down.
I reached over and pressed my hand on Bathin’s arm. He instantly fell still, except for his breathing, which seemed to suddenly go quick and light. All his muscles tensed, coiled, as if he were trying very hard to hold back some kind of reaction to my touch. As if he were trying very hard not to do something.
“This isn’t Ordinary,” I said. “Not where she’s standing. It’s not our job to police beyond our border.”
And yes, hearing that fall out of my mouth surprised me too. I could feel the flush rush over my face, pooling hot across my collarbones. Had I seriously just suggested that we allow a crossroads in the middle of a public bathroom where a demon tricked people out of their souls to remain open?
Bathin turned his head, his gaze heavy and sharp. “Not our job to police beyond our border?” he said. “What deal did you make with her?”
I opened my mouth, but apparently didn’t start talking fast enough. His arm snapped out of my hold so fast that I didn’t even see it move until his hand tightened around Zjoon’s throat. “What deal did you make with her?” he asked the crossroads demon.
A wheezing squeak was the only sound she made, her lips trying and failing to shape a reply.
“Bathin,” I said. “Let her go.”
He didn’t let her go; he didn’t even loosen his grip. But he did look at me. “You still have your soul, so you’re clearly not as gullible as your sister.”
“Watch it.”
He didn’t even smile. His gaze was dark, piercing, as if he could see deep inside of me and read the pages of my mind. “Your soul is your own. It is whole. In place. Lovely.” He drew his free hand upward, the fingers relaxed as they brushed the air.
Except it felt like he was brushing my soul, his touch torching a liquid thrum beneath my skin that was not painful. At all.
“That’s not going to work,” I managed without my voice cracking. “You are not welcome here, Bathin, nor are you invited in this situation. Leave and let me handle this.”
“Does that tone of voice usually work on…anyone?”
I narrowed my eyes and thought through the things I’d packed in my jacket, wondering which one would hurt him the most when I threw it at his head.
Luckily, I had my gun on me. A nice, heavy gun.
I reached for it.
“Put her down.” This time my tone was nothing but business.
Bathin chuckled, his perfect white teeth biting down on the sound. The mood rolling off him shifted again. Going from angry—protective?—to nonchalant in an instant.
“Well, well,” he said as his hand loosened and he leaned incrementally away from the demon. He did not release his hold, not yet. “I never thought I’d see the day when Myra by-the-book Reed shows mercy for demon kind. Isn’t that remarkable?”
“It isn’t remarkable,” I said. “It’s practical. We have no problems with demons who are outside of Ordinary because anything outside of Ordinary isn’t our problem.”
“Is that so?”
It was.
But it wasn’t.
We’d engaged in a battle with an ancient vampire who was outside of Ordinary. We got letters and other communication from gods outside of Ordinary; we were more than willing to help the non-supernatural towns around us with any kind of police support they might need.
We weren’t a closed-off, obscure little town that no one had heard of. We were one of the busy tourist destinations in Oregon, and to remain as such, we had a lot of contact with the world outside our boundaries.
So, strike that. It was not at all true that we ignored the outside world.
Bathin knew I was lying, knew that he had caught me at it. And he liked having the moral upper ground, the jerk.
“All right,” I said, “let’s handle this from another angle. You, Bathin, are a citizen of Ordinary. You worked very hard to make sure that you could live here, stay here.”
He narrowed one eye, not liking where I was going with this.
And I hadn’t even gotten started yet.
“If you step outside of Ordinary to deal with Zjoon, to commit murder, then I will assume you are revoking your claim to citizenship, along with your claim to Delaney’s soul.”
“That’s not how it works.”
I pointed at the badge on my hip. “Who you going to go crying to?”
The air went heavy and hot. Humidity popped high enough that the skylights clicked and settled in their frames from the heat change.
Huh. So an angry Bathin wa
s a hot Bathin. Good to know.
“No matter where I am in this world, or any other plane of existence,” he said, “I will still own your sister’s soul.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
He knew I was trying to find a way to free her, had known it since the beginning. It was some kind of game to him. He enjoyed watching me spin my wheels while I tried to track down his secrets.
I liked the idea of finally rattling that smug confidence.
I reached into my pocket, not the same one that held the vials and spell supply, but the hip pocket of my jeans. His eyelids dropped just a fraction, and he wet his lips.
I tried to ignore how dry my mouth went at the sight of that. Tried to ignore how much even that shift in his expression looked like lust, felt like desire.
Demons manipulate. Demons are never what they seem. Demons are chaos. My job is order.
I withdrew a slim packet, just a fold of stiff cloth with one thing pressed between its layers.
“Is that a ticket?” he asked. “To the movies? A play? I’d be delighted to go on a date with you, Myra Reed. How very romantic. And so near Valentine’s Day.”
I opened the cloth and carefully lifted free the dried flower.
Bathin’s nostrils flared, and his jaw tightened. “Angelica.”
I calmly pulled a lighter out of my other pocket, flicked and held the flame under the brittle flower.
“Myra,” he warned.
Zjoon squirmed in his grasp, suddenly more afraid of the flame and flower than the demon who was stalled in the middle of choking the life out of her.
I raised an eyebrow.
“You shouldn’t play with things you don’t understand,” he said.
“Like this?” I asked innocently. The flower had caught the flame, and the scent of anise and cayenne, along with burning angelica, filled the thick, hot air.
Bathin shook his head, but there was a small smile playing on the edges of his lips.
“Darkbane,” he said. “Aren’t you clever?”
The flame was almost at my fingers. I threw the flower at him.
He raised his free hand at the same moment that he released Zjoon.
One smooth parry of his palm, a pivot on the balls of his feet, and the air in the room moved. Like, really moved.
It was as if the air had suddenly turned into a river, a breeze, a wind, all flowing with his movements, and guiding the ashes of the flower, like a burning stick on a burning stream straight at Zjoon’s face.
She snarled and swore, raising her clipboard up to guard her head. The ember and ash flower hit the clipboard.
It was like a lightning bolt breaking a storm.
A hard, cold shot of air sliced through the room, radiating ice so quickly that I heard the skylights crack. I took a step back, hand on my gun, though a gun wasn’t going to do much in the middle of a demon banishment.
The cold spread fast, too fast. Ice slicked down the walls, devoured the stalls, and sped across the floor, clicking like a thousand claws scrabbling, like a thousand pincers snapping. Toward us. Toward me.
Ice swallowed the edge of the crossroads. Zjoon made a sound like a soft groan and exploded into a column of smoke, wafting with the scent of scorched dirt.
That ice was coming too fast. I wasn’t a demon, so it might not do anything at all to me.
Or it might. The spell wasn’t really clear about the strength. Nor did it say anything about ice being a side effect.
Well, hell.
The door was too far away, and the floor leading to it was covered in ice. I stood in an ever-shrinking circle of clear concrete. In about three heartbeats, either my boots were going to be covered in supernatural ice, or I was going to find out if the spell would turn me into smoke too.
Strong arms wrapped around me. A wide, strong body pressed against me.
For a second, just one strangely silent and clear moment, everything stopped.
I looked up into his eyes and saw…fondness? Something far too soft to discover behind a demon’s bright gaze. He smiled, but it was slow, too slow for the fraction of a second I knew we both shared.
That smile hooked at my heart and tugged, gently, like a hand reaching out in the darkness, drawing me into the light, into the dance with a sway, a rhythm that settled the chaos in my heart, settled the silence into soft music, the thud, thud, thud of my pulse.
I couldn’t look away from him. Didn’t want to be anywhere else but here, in his arms, in his hands, in the calm of this first pause. Both of us poised for the first step, the first movement of this dance, this song.
His gaze asked a question. I didn’t know the answer, wouldn’t face the answer, even though everything in me chanted: yes.
He inhaled and…
…light: too bright, bone gray, blinding…
…rain: falling softly on my face, pattering against the sidewalk around us…
…wind: buffering and cold, stirring his hair, stirring mine, wrapping us in sea salt and the scent of green…
I exhaled, a little shakily. We were outside. It was quite a bit cooler here than inside that overheated sauna of a restroom.
Bathin’s arms around me were warm, one low across my back, his hand almost, but not quite, touching my hip. His other hand rested on my shoulder, his long fingers pressed gently on the side of my face.
He had pulled me close, or maybe I’d done that myself. My thighs lined up with his, but there was enough of a height difference, even though I was in boots that gave me an inch or two, that my head only came to his chest.
I could feel the heat of him, could hear the steady, raging rhythm of his heartbeat.
He shifted his hand just enough that he could drag his thumb across my lower lip.
I trembled at his touch. And in that moment, I couldn’t think of him as a demon, made of illusions and fire and lies. He was something more, something—no, someone—kind. Calm. Safe.
“All right, Bathin,” Jean snapped. “Step away from my sister. Now.” She paused for a second. “Or kiss her, if that’s what she asked you to do.”
I pushed out of his embrace and instantly missed his warmth as the wind nearly sucked the breath out of me.
Bathin squared off so he was facing both me and Jean, who was now standing next to me, her hand on my arm, possessive and firm.
“You two want to tell me what happened in that bathroom before the fire department gets here?” Jean asked.
“Fire department?” I glanced over at the concrete building. Sure enough, smoke was wafting out of it. “Huh.”
It wasn’t like concrete was going to burn to the ground in the middle of a rain shower. There wasn’t enough flammable material in the whole structure to roast a marshmallow.
“You called the fire department?” I didn’t know why I was stuck on that. Probably because the rest of my brain was filled with Bathin…
…his touch, so gentle. His eyes, so kind, wanting…
Illusion. Demon.
I clung to that fact, to that logic, and pushed away all the other chaotic thoughts. There was no room in me for confusion. I was calm, no matter the chaos. I was order. That gave me control.
And that was all I needed.
“There’s no actual fire in the building,” I said.
Bathin’s eyebrows rose and he made a little humph sound.
“You have something to say?” I asked.
He crossed his arms over his chest, straining the material of the Henley and showing the hard muscles of his arms and chest.
Those arms.
“Cayenne?” he asked.
It took me a second. He was talking about the angelica flower spell. “Yes?”
“And anise?”
Annoying. “Would you like me to write the spell down for you?” I asked sweetly.
A grin flashed across his face. “No, I think I know exactly how you made that spell. And really, Myra, you should have consulted an expert.”
“I don’t need
your opinion.”
“Next time,” he went on like I hadn’t been talking, “I suggest you use a little less anise. Unless you intended to burn down the entire building?”
“The bathroom is not burning down.”
A whump of air sucked all the heat out of the wind for a second. Then even more smoke, now greasy and black, poured out of the building.
“Holy crap,” Jean said. “What the heck happened in there?”
“Demons,” I said.
“Plural?” she asked.
“There was a crossroads demon in there, waiting to make a deal.”
“Tell me you didn’t make a deal.” She sounded worried. I tore my gaze away from the burning—well, technically only smoking a little bit—bathroom and gave her my attention.
Her expression was a mix of things: worry, amusement, maybe annoyance.
Jean was always full of emotions, living life with both hands reaching, and mouth wide open.
“I did not make a deal.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth, either. I’d threatened Zjoon and told her I’d close the crossroads down if she didn’t bring me the banishment spell. Since Bathin had trampled into the place like a bull elephant through a peanut field, I hadn’t had the chance to close the crossroads.
If she came through with the goods, then I had, basically, closed a deal.
But at least my soul was not the currency.
And since the building was possibly going up in flames, maybe the crossroads was a goner anyway. Another dead end in my investigation.
I pressed both hands to my hips. It wasn’t the first time one of the leads I’d followed dried up.
I’d find a way to get rid of Bathin. Crossroads demon spell or no crossroads demon spell.
“Did you know about the crossroads?” Jean asked Bathin.
He shrugged. So: yes.
“Why did you come here?” I asked him. “Was it about that letter? Because that wasn’t funny.”
The sound of sirens finally reached us. This viewpoint wasn’t that far from the fire station. They’d be here any second.
“What letter?” Bathin and Jean said at the same time.
Both of them looked confused. And yes, Bathin might be faking it, but I had the feeling he wasn’t. And if he didn’t know about it, I wasn’t going to tell him.