“What happ—?” I start to say. Carter covers my mouth with his hand. A few heads turn and look around the room. Some of the demons at the hole start yelling until everyone joins them.
“You’re invisible, not silent,” Carter whispers in my ear.
Good to know.
We stand, unmoving, against a wall. There are about fifteen demons muttering, yelling over one another with human voices and high-pitched demonic sounds. One demon, the size of a linebacker with broad shoulders and golden-brown scales, sits at the bar. The others band together, using magic to repair the hole in the wall. Goldie chugs back his drink and sniffs the air.
“Witch,” he says.
Crap. I look at Carter, but he’s frozen. Goldie sniffs the air and walks around the room. A few of the others sniff too. This is bad.
“And power,” another says.
“I smell it, too,” the short blue demon says.
Beside me, Carter tenses. All the demons are staring right at us, like they can see us. We’re in trouble.
“Come out and play, little witch,” one of them shouts.
“You smell good,” another adds.
Carter pulls me forward by my elbow. We make it four steps before I feel his hand on me again, and my legs on the floor. Vividly. The same way it happens when my leg wakes up. The pins and needles and springs are gone. The masking spell is gone. This is beyond bad.
Goldie steps toward us. “It’s two-for-one tonight.”
Carter leans in toward me. “New plan: stay alive.”
There’s a shuffle behind me. I glance over Carter’s shoulder. Before I really make out what it is, magic sideswipes us. I’m midair and my back slams into the side of the bar and I land with a thud. Carter leaps up again and darts away from me, demons chasing him across the bar. Chaos breaks out around me. Magic zooms, sending items falling off the walls; fists are flying, bodies are flying. It’s a lot of flying and none of it is good. I can’t keep track of who is who or what they’re doing. By the time I rise to my feet, demons are scrambling inside from the streets and fighting with one another. Almost like they don’t really know what they are looking for. I dodge two in an effort to make my way back to help Carter, who has three demons attacking at once.
I’m halfway there when I see Vassago tucked into the corner of the room picking at its beard. I change my course and head in its direction, leaping over a demon on the ground to get there. We need Vassago for whatever reason, and there it is, waiting to be plucked. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do when I get there, but that’s why someone invented the fine of art of improv. Or, when that fails, stalling.
It sees me first. I expect it to run, but it doesn’t. Instead, it locks eyes with mine. A smile spreads over its face, one that the Joker would be proud of, and it sniffs the air before it steps toward me.
A demon rams into me, flattening me to the floor. The demon is over me, drool dripping from its fraying human body. It pins my arms down. I’m about to flip it off me when this light flashes through the room. The demon yells in surprise and crawls off me.
Vassago stands in the center of the room, the smile gone from its face. “They are here for me,” it says. The other demons blink, surprised, but none of them move.
“I know what you’re looking for,” Vassago says.
I shake my head and get to my feet. The demons slowly start moving around me, back to where they’d been before.
“You, and I found you,” I say.
“Not me,” it says. His voice is scratchy and thin, like the sound a record player makes when its off its track.
“Yeah, another demon with orange eyes called Azsis. Do you know him?”
Vassago shakes its head. “You’re looking for you.”
I roll my eyes. “I’ve met myself and I’m pretty awesome. I’m not the reason we’re here. He is,” I say, pointing at Carter as he rushes into the room from the other door. His eyes dart around and relief fills my chest.
Vassago turns its head left and nods. “Ahh, yes. As expected. I need a new sock.”
I turn my head in time for it to launch its leg into the air. Its foot is black from dirt and crusty, and it wiggles its weird toes in my face. It touches my nose. I gag and swat it away.
“Get your disgusting foot out of my face.”
Vassago lowers its leg and pouts. Seriously pouts. I’ve never seen a demon pout before. This whole night is full of new—and freaking strange—discoveries.
Its face changes, and it raises its eyebrows. “You are missing something important. Something that changes your life,” it says.
Goose bumps cover my arms. How the heck does this thing know that I’m missing my magic? My question is on my lips, ready to leap out of my mouth, but it speaks first.
“I have answers to questions you haven’t asked yet,” it says, leaning into my ear. “Come and I will show you.”
No, Penelope. It’s still a demon. “And let me guess, you’ll give me a magic bean, a candy house, and three chances to guess your name? No, thanks.”
Vassago leans into me. Its eyes are emerald; its breath smells like old coffee and dog food. There are bits of something in its beard. I shudder at the thought of what those bits might be.
“You don’t know what you are, Penelope Grey,” it says. I hold my breath as it talks in my face. It even knows my freaking name. How is that possible? I never told it.
“What I am?” I ask. It knows something else. It knows about my magic. What you are. That’s the same phrasing Carter used.
I can’t seem to move away from Vassago. My brain tells me to. I know I should, but it keeps drawing me closer. Maybe it’s its power. I can almost feel it, which is something that’s never happened before. It’s wild and enticing. I’m so oddly pulled to it, so distracted by it, that I barely notice that it’s too close to me. That its dirty beard is touching me. And that I’m letting it. It sniffs me, and while I know it’s odd, I don’t think twice about it. I don’t think about anything, really. Just the calming desire to be closer to its power.
“You smell good, little witch.”
There’s a crash and a scream. The air around me changes and it only takes a second for my mind to become my own again, for everything to fall into place. I see Carter holding Vassago up against the wall, his arm across the demon’s throat and salted iron knife at its temple.
“You okay, Pen?” Carter yells at me. The grungy room is quiet, still, waiting. All the demons are on their feet again looking at the three of us.
“Fine, I think,” I stutter. I move to stand at Carter’s side. “What are you doing? I was handling that!”
He laughs, but it’s more like a scoff. “He was spelling you. Didn’t you feel it? He was tapping into your essence.”
I open my mouth to protest, but change my mind. What can I say? I did feel something weird. But I don’t have any essence, so how did it do that?
“She has no essence,” Vassago hisses in a crackling almost-laugh. Carter blinks, like he’s confused, but the demon tries to wriggle out of his grasp and Carter snaps into action.
“Tell me how to find what I seek,” Carter says. His voice is rough and heavy, like nothing I’ve heard from him before. It’s sexy, in a scary-as-hell kind of way.
Vassago’s eyes grow wide and it nods curtly. Carter releases it but leaves the knife extended. The demon’s eyes turn pale, then white, and it heaves in a breath. It’s frozen, and if it wasn’t standing and hadn’t just been talking and breathing a second ago, I’d swear it was dead.
“There is one who seeks the same as you,” Vassago says, its weird eyes looking toward Carter. Then it looks at me. “And one who hides the truth from you. Only when the two meet shall the lost be found.”