Rex rubbed against my leg on his way to the window, but his leap to the low sill halted comically fast as the bell overhead gave a soft bong and the screenless opening was suddenly full of a large crow, his feathers unusually shiny in the late sun.
“Hey, Hodin,” I said as the cat made a back-arched hiss. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
“Caw!” he barked aggressively, wings extended, and Rex retreated to hide amid the boxes, watching with evil-cat eyes as Hodin hopped into the room, dissolved into a mist, and solidified into a peeved-looking, scholarly demon.
A flicker of guilt washed through his red, goat-slitted eyes as they came back from Bis, but it vanished when he saw my prepped splat balls, his eyebrows going high to make me feel as if I was finger-painting horsies in a 400-level sculpture class. “Come on in,” I said, seeing as he was already here, and he took another step, making the bells on his black robe chime. I hadn’t seen this particular spelling robe before, it being rather plain compared to his usual embroidered finery. His dark hair was bound up under a matching flat-topped hat, and pointy-toed shoes rather than his customary slippers poked from under his hem. Though more casual than his traditional spelling robes, it was still more formal than his leather and untamed hair, meaning he was either trying to impress me or he wanted to help. I was betting the latter.
“I’m here to offer assistance,” he said, and I met his eyes through the dresser’s mirror, exhaling in impatience.
“Hodin, I thought I was clear on this. You are not my teacher,” I said, my gaze flicking to the stack of books that Al had given me—no, stolen for me.
“A friend can give advice,” he offered, his lips pulled back in a weird sort of smile.
“You aren’t my friend, either,” I muttered, as I made a mental note to take the books to Junior’s if I survived tonight. I could give Dali a piece of my mind, too, for sending me into the lion’s den like that. God save me from demons.
Hodin shifted and the bells on his sash chimed. “Is that so?”
“That is so.” He was behind me, and I didn’t like it as I decanted a portion of the primed sleepy-time potion into the syringe. “I invited you to listen in on the city-powers meeting because it’s always smart to have a demon other than me knowing what’s going on. I’m trying hard not to be mad at you, because it’s not your fault that the rest of the demons are acting like spoiled, entitled children who got their feelings hurt, but so help me, if you try to step into Al’s shoes, you will find out the hard way how I bankrupted him in two years.”
“Really.”
His flat utterance turned me around. “Really,” I said, looking him up and down. “I’ll continue to stand beside you because I said I would and because I believe in what you’re doing, but I won’t take instruction from you. If you don’t have any intel—which I will accept—then you need to leave before Al finds out you’re here and throws me back into Alcatraz.”
“Mmmm.”
The single utterance hung in the bird-laced silence, and I went back to injecting the last splat ball. That made forty-nine. Maybe it was overkill, but they’d last for a year.
“You should make that witch Stephanie do that for you,” he said as he leaned to look.
“She has work, and besides, she’s not my familiar.” I exhaled, jaw clenching. The pearls I’d taken from Nash hung from a corner of the mirror, faintly clicking as the old dresser shifted. I hadn’t known what to do with them, but cleaning them had seemed appropriate, and the long strand circled Hodin’s reflection. He was apparently in no hurry to leave, staring up at Bis as if in guilt.
“Hodin, I don’t want your help. Not because Dali said so, but because Al is right. If I can’t do this on my own, then I won’t be able to handle what follows on my own, and I’m tired of needing help, okay?” Maybe I was being dramatic, but I didn’t like the idea that he might be trying to take Al’s place—even if Al might have left it for good.
Hodin seemed to hesitate, and then, as if having decided something, he drew a small but elaborate cricket cage from the ether. “Then perhaps you will accept something to practice your immobilization curse on,” he said as he set it on the dresser and slid it to me with a loud, attention-getting scrape.
I drew back, even as my gaze lingered on it, captured by its singular beauty and function. “I know how to do an immobilization curse. I used it on Pike this afternoon.”
He bobbed his head, his attention on the moving insects. “Then practicing it can’t be construed as me teaching you anything. As it is, you’re only proficient enough to down one at a time. A curse is faster than a vampire, but not two.” He grinned, the unusual expression looking odd on his typically serious face. “Practice will amend that.”
Practice will amend that, I mocked in my head, thinking he sounded like Al. “It’s beautiful. Is it spelled to keep them in there?” I asked as I tapped the cage and a cricket began to sing, spurring the others to join him. There were high turrets and delicate scrolling, heavy on the Asian influence with the black gold wire twined about itself to make a snug, elaborate enclosure for a handful of black crickets crawling up the sides and top, all chirping merrily.
“Ah, yes, it is, actually.” Suddenly unsure, he clasped his hands. “The two on the top, there. Try it. Unless you feel it is beyond you,” he goaded, and I felt myself warm.
Technically he wasn’t teaching me anything, so I focused on the two crickets and tightened my grip on the nearest ley line. “Stabils,” I said, feeling the energy ball up in my palms before I flicked it at them. My magic coated both crickets, but only one froze, dropping to the floor of the cage with a sad thump to leave the other calmly cleaning its antennae. “Huh,” I muttered as I broke the curse and it shook itself upright, chirping like a startled bird.
Hodin gestured for me to try again, and I focused harder on two much closer crickets, narrowing my attention until they were my entire world. “Stabils,” I said again, sending the energy at them, but as before, only one went still and fell over. Crap on toast, this is embarrassing. “Are you sure multiple applications are possible with this curse?” I asked.
The bells on Hodin’s sash rang as he shifted closer, and Rex’s eyes widened to a predatory black. “You’re like a child babbling sounds that will become words. Again,” Hodin said, but if it was meant to be encouraging, it wasn’t.
Maybe if I use two hands, I thought as I broke the curse and the cricket began to hop frantically as if trying to escape. “Stabils,” I whispered, gesturing with both hands, and nothing happened. It hadn’t worked at all. Not a two-fisted curse, then.
Hodin took a breath and, frustrated, I looked up with an annoyed “Stop!”