A Tale of Two Demon Slayers (17 page)

That was tougher than he thought. I hesitated before touching the thick iron bands that supported the bottom of the chest and wrapped around the lid.

Now or never.

I touched each of the fingers on my right hand to each of the five switch-star adornments on the box. They warmed under my fingers and I fought the urge to leave Zebediah—and the box—out here on the lawn.

Instead, I pulled the lid back. A wisp of smoke seeped from the box. It snaked across the ground below. The tips of the grass crackled and browned. The lavender velvet at the bottom looked empty. I knew it wasn’t.

Heart hammering, I reached down for the bar.

“Without fear,” Rachmort reminded me.

Right. And snakes don’t bite. Fire won’t burn. And imps bake cookies.

I did my best to tamp down my dread. “I’m not afraid,” I said, not convincing anybody.

“May I?” Rachmort asked. He ran a ringed hand lovingly over the box before sliding the invisible bar out of its holder. I watched as he placed it in his other hand, palm up.

Bit by bit, a cloudy glass bar took shape.

“Holy Moses,” I gasped. “How did you do that?”

“I decided to do it,” he said simply. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Now?” Part of me was still waiting for yet another horrible vision.

“Take it,” he said, sliding it into my hands.

It felt smooth and cool. “Amazing,” I said, shaking slightly and watching the cloudy glass shift. “How can I hold it now, without the visions?”

“This is a tool,” he said. “Nothing more. I can only guess that when you first held it, you projected your fears onto the bar. As a consequence, it showed you what you should most fear.”

I didn’t understand. My vision had seemed so real. “So what I saw wasn’t true?”

“No,” he said, “it was true. And you should strengthen yourself against it. But your, er, method is only one way to use the bar.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you ask it to show you a triumph, Lizzie?”

That seemed kind of beside the point.

Wasn’t I supposed to be looking for things that were wrong? Not that I wanted any more visions.

Darned it if there wasn’t something downright persuasive in his wind-chapped cheeks.

“Okay,” I said, holding the bar tight in both hands. I closed my eyes and focused on what it felt like to win a battle.

“Clear your mind,” I heard him say.

“Yes.” I let my body go and focused on using the bar like the tool it was. It felt heavier than it had been. Heat pooled in my hand and raced up my arm. I gripped the bar tighter, and a door opened in my mind.

The grass shifted as Rachmort planted himself next to me. “Let it in,” he urged.

I swam through a murky current, the vision just out of reach. I concentrated hard on my defenses, willing each of them to drop until I saw myself. Only it wasn’t me. It was a shadowy copy. I could feel the malice and the hate dripping from it. It flung a volley of switch stars directly at my chest.

The cold sting of impact swept the breath right out of me.

My eyes flew open. “Make it stop!”

Rachmort gripped my shoulders, “What did you see?”

“Me. Only it wasn’t me, but it tried to kill me!”

He pulled back. “Interesting,” he said, tugging at his chin.

“Is that all you can say? I was almost gutted by a blast of switch stars.” I was gutted. I felt the impact.

“Are you sure you focused on a great triumph?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said with more force than I meant. I couldn’t help it. I felt tricked, betrayed. “Why does this flipping bar think I have to die?”

Rachmort didn’t answer. He simply looked at me, stroking his chin.

Lovely.

I glanced down at the bar. It was invisible again. One step forward, two steps back. “Why can’t I see it?”

Rachmort seemed deep in thought. “You see it as invisible,” he said. “You saw it that way from the start and choose to see it that way now.”

Part of me doubted it. So far, I hadn’t gotten to choose much about my new life.

“Try,” Rachmort said. “You’re more in control of your destiny than you imagine.”

I found that hard to believe. If I were in control of things, I’d have been lounging on the beach with Dimitri with no imps, biker witches or trouble in sight.

I focused on Zebediah, his intense expression almost willing me to succeed. Okay. I could do this. I focused the bar, asking it to show itself. To my surprise, it appeared solid in my hand. “Amazing.”

“Yes,” he mused, “I suppose it is. The world is a shocking place, more so if you are a new demon slayer. I can’t tell you what to think of the bar or of your vision. That is for you to decide. But you will find that no matter how situations seem to unfold in strange and unpredictable ways, you have more control than you imagine. Whether it is with a pack of rampaging imps or a boyfriend,” he said with a wink, “the same rules apply.”

He made it seem so simple, and yet…I turned the bar over in my hands. “How do I look at things in new ways if I don’t even know I’m looking at them wrong?”

“It is the struggle of a lifetime, one we must always mind. The biggest danger is when we think we know all there is to know.”

“Great. So you’re still learning too.”

“Always,” he said. “Now come with me.” He walked me to the oak tree near the path I’d taken that morning. “I plan to learn a great deal from you as well.”

I didn’t know if he was just trying to make me feel good or if he really could learn from a demon slayer like me.

“There is a saying. When the old oak stops growing, you know it’s dead.”

I lifted my eyes to the crooked tree, with its thick trunk and maze of twisted braches.

“Now why don’t you climb it?”

“Excuse me?”

“It seems you are to be tested soon, and there is much for you to learn. We will start with one of your more basic skills, levitation.”

“But Ant Eater said we’d use the pergola,” I said, not quite sure why I was protesting the location when what really bothered me was the idea of a leap off of a tall object. The last time I’d tried to levitate, I’d been forced to jump off a tall ladder onto a bed of rusty nails.

Rachmort barked out a laugh. “The pergola, Lizzie? You’d crack your head open on the porch.”

Yes, that possibility had occurred to me too.

“You’re much better off landing in the grass,” he said, kicking away some of the acorns and sticks from under the tree.

I could see his point. “You expect me to crash, don’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“What about your expert training?”

He winked. “That can’t begin until you climb the tree.”

I flumped onto the ground for the second time that day, pain shooting up my hips and shoulders and no closer to levitation than Pirate was to keeping his pet dragon.

Rachmort’s face appeared above me. “That was an improvement.” The man seemed genuinely excited.

“How so?” I asked, digging an acorn out of the small of my back.

“You didn’t hesitate as much before you jumped. Quite admirable after the way you landed on that Frozen Underwear spell the last time.”

I really wished the biker witches would clean up after themselves. “I thought I’d cleared out everything from under the tree,” I said, digging a curved, razor-sharp badger tooth out from under my thigh. Praise be to thick leather pants. “The Red Skulls better stop leaving me gifts.” I tossed the inch-and-a-half monstrosity into the woods behind me. “I don’t care if they’re good luck.”

“You must block out these distractions,” he said, as if he’d never met the Red Skulls and their particular brand of magic.

Rachmort hunkered on the balls of his feet above me. “Levitation is about looking to the outside. That is a demon slayer truth, no? Lose the fear of what will happen next. Will I land on my back? Will I land on my head? Just what is under the tree?”

Actually, I thought those were all fair questions.

Rachmort didn’t let up for a second. “Focus on the forces around you that will lift you up,” he urged. “Trust them.”

“Sure,” I said, wishing I believed it.

“You must have the courage to fail,” he insisted.

Yes, well I certainly had that.

“Now come,” he said, helping me stand. “We will try once more.”

My sore fingers protested as once again I dug them against the rough bark of the oak tree and began the climb of doom. I didn’t see how repeatedly landing on my back was going to teach me anything, any more than I understood why I couldn’t seem to land on my feet on a ten-foot drop. It’s as if the universe wanted me in as much pain as possible.

When I’d climbed onto the heavy branch overlooking the (hopefully cleared) levitation area, I took a deep breath. Yes, the sun-dappled grass looked soft from here. Without a doubt, I knew it wasn’t. But that was beside the point. I wasn’t supposed to be landing.

I needed to float.

And as desperately as I wanted to have that happen, a little voice in the back of my head said,
Ha
.

I’d had a hard time believing in what I couldn’t see before I came into the magical world. Now? Well, I was about to flop onto my back again.

Rachmort stood below, hands in the pockets of his striped slacks. He gave me his full attention, as if the climb itself meant something.

I should believe. He sure did.

I stood for a moment as a warm breeze rustled the
leaves around me. It’s not as if I hadn’t seen plenty that surprised me in the last two months. Between enchanted hotel rooms, grumpy fairies and biker witches hurling Lose Your Key spells at obnoxious drunks at the bar, I’d had my fair share of weirdness.

In fact, I could hear the Red Skulls working on the wards. Hammering, shouts and occasional explosions sounded from the front lawn.

“Look to the outside, Lizzie.” Rachmort stood with his hands on his hips, the double-decker gold spectacles on his head glinting in the afternoon sun. “Don’t overthink it.”

Easy for him to say. The only thing he had to worry about was not getting crushed by my falling body.

My back, my hips, pretty much everything ached from the last two impacts.

The tree branch dug into the soles of my feet. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. Not while standing ten feet up. Instead, I looked to the blue sky. My stomach knotted. I couldn’t put this off forever.

Trust it. Trust yourself.

Believe it
, I told myself as I jumped.

I dropped like a hot pan full of trouble. A second before the ground rushed up to smack me in the head, I was swooped up by a dive-bombing griffin with a pink dress tied to her back paw.

“Diana!” I grasped the coarse fur at her back and struggled to ride astride the wild flying griffin.

Ever confident in my grip, she surged higher, breaking out above the trees. Now this was the way to fly. The wind streaked against my face; my stomach lurched with each bob and dip. I was on the amusement-park ride of
my life, but even more, I was immensely grateful not to be on my back again, staring up at the old oak tree.

After a gratuitous lap around the gardens (did I mention Diana likes to have fun?) we landed next to Rachmort, who didn’t seem to be disturbed at all by the griffin’s rescue.

Instead, he stood regarding his watch fob with great interest. “Morticharius keeps Twittering from Limbo. I think he’s bored,” he said, flipping the bronze instrument closed and returning it the pocket of his waistcoat.

Diana opened her beak and gave a piercing call, like an eagle.

“Hup, hup.” He held his hands up. “No need to apologize. In fact, I believe you are exactly what our Lizzie needs. Feel free to join us. Although no snacking on the tree nymphs.”

Diana let out a half bleat, half choke.

Rachmort tilted his head. “Yes, well you’d be surprised at what some griffins eat. Certain people too. Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “let’s get back to work, shall we?”

“Of course,” I said, wishing I had a ladder.

Think of it as exercise.
Some people paid money to climb rock walls. This tree was free. Well, save for the cuts and scrapes on my hands.

Worry about it later.
Or not. I had plenty of bigger things to worry about.

A few painful minutes later, I stood on the high branch again, contemplating my fate. Only, this time Diana stretched like a large cat below. She drew out one large back paw, then the other, before she straightened and looked at me expectantly.

She was like a large hairy cushion. Suddenly, jumping didn’t seem like a big risk after all.

I blew out a quick breath, thought about floating and stepped off.

It took me a second to realize Diana wasn’t coming to my rescue. Instead, I was floating to the ground, as though the air itself had thickened enough for me to glide gently to the earth.

“Look at this!” I exclaimed, shocked at the density of the air under my feet. It was solid and yet I could move through it. I just had to tell it what to do.

“Over there,” I said, trying to direct it and realizing I had to use my feet, as if it were some sort of spongy walking surface. Floating surface was more like it.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule. I was levitating!

And I didn’t even screw up the landing. Instead, I touched my toes to the ground, then the balls of my feet, all the way down to my heels. I stood in front of a beaming Zebediah Rachmort triumphant, invigorated and more than a little winded. I think I’d forgotten to breathe for a few minutes there.

“Look at me!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, yes!” he said, clapping his hands on my shoulders, as proud as I was. “You didn’t worry about falling and you did it!”

“Well sure.” I looked over at Diana, who had unfurled her massive wings and let out a squawk of triumph.

It was a lot easier to levitate when I had a griffin around to break the fall.

Rachmort stared at me until he had my full attention. “What you needed was the courage to fail.” His steely gaze bored into me like he was trying to force the
knowledge into my head. “Embrace your fears. Only then can you move beyond them and find something new.”

He had me levitate for another hour. It was the most fun I’d had since…Well, I didn’t want to think about Dimitri when he was so far away, but let’s just say most of my spine-tingling memories had to do with him.

I was feeling utterly triumphant as I levitated down on one foot and did a small pirouette. My parents hadn’t sent me to twelve years of ballet class for nothing. “Do I get extra points for style?” I asked, giving a bow.

“There are no grades here,” he reminded me.

Darn. I’d always liked report-card day.

“Now,” he said, as if the best was yet to come, “you will walk and think.”

“Walk?” I’d just learned to levitate.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “And you will ponder that, among other things.”

It didn’t make sense. “I thought you were supposed to be teaching me.”

“I am showing you how to create what you need for yourself,” he said, in a classy version of Grandma’s “learn by experience” philosophy.

Well, I was tired of learning by trial and error. “I need real classroom, or at least under-the-tree, experience. You need to tell me what to do.”

“I just did,” he said, “and you levitated.” He walked me toward the front of the house, where the biker witches had set out giant tarps to make sun-dried snakeskins. Heaven knows how they’d found so many.

He ignored the witches turning the snakeskins with tongs, not to mention Heather-the-Hard-Hat Creely. The
engineering witch was rigging up some sort of assembly line.

Rachmort cleared his throat. “Think of your preschool class, Lizzie. Did they learn better when you merely told them things or when you showed them and let them also make their own discoveries?”

Oh lordy. “Exactly what am I supposed to discover in the woods?”

He practically clapped his hands together in glee. “I don’t know!”

How fun—for him.

The tangled path lay in front of me, the trees rising tall on either side. “Fine, but I really think we should be doing something.”

“Oh yes—doing, running, leaping into the fray. Not unlike the Charge of the Light Brigade. I warned them about that too. Never confuse action with understanding,” he said.

Action was all I knew, I realized, as I started off through the cypress forest alone. From the minute Grandma had shown up at my front door with a bag full of Smuckers-jar magic and a demon on her tail, I’d been on the run. I hadn’t had the luxury to lounge around and wax philosophic, let alone understand anything.

Now that I did have the time, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it or how to find the answers I needed.

The banging of the witches soon gave way to the sounds of the forest.

I fiddled with the gold cord Rachmort had tied around my wrist. As if I was supposed to learn something from that.

My hand wandered down to my switch stars and I found myself counting them. Five. I always had five.

The loose earth and rocks crunched under my boots as I walked. I tried not to think of the biker witches tearing apart the front lawn or what Pirate and Flappy might be doing to the remains of my wardrobe. Instead, I focused on the swaying of the trees, the birds darting from branch to branch.

Before I knew it, I was almost at the ruins without having had any deep thoughts at all.

I looked up at the sky, which was a gorgeously deceptive shade of blue. As creepy as the swirling green sky had been, I almost wished it were back. Then I’d at least have a stark reminder of the evil that stalked me.

How could I be of any use to Dimitri when I had my own problems to solve? He needed to protect his family, rebuild his home. So far, I’d kept him from doing both of those things. If I knew anything about the Red Skulls, I’d be willing to bet their brand of magic had knocked the rebuilding effort back a few paces.

I only hoped the Dominos clan would see past his relationship with me and give us the help we needed. And as much as Amara could grate on me, I was glad she could go with him. If life were at all fair, he’d be with another griffin like her, someone who could help him rebuild.

Now I felt like throwing something.

In the name of target practice, I set my sights on a thick spruce with peeling bark and a knot about six feet off the ground. I aimed and fired, slicing the knot in half.

Nice.

I waited for the switch star to dislodge itself from the
wood and come hurtling back to me. If only everything in life acted like switch stars.

Humming to myself, I selected another target—this time, a skinnier tree about twenty feet deep into the woods. It would take a bit more skill, not to mention finesse, to aim through the crowded forest. I zeroed in on my target and let loose.

The switch star shot through the trees and into oblivion.

Hell’s bells.

I wanted to work on that shot again. Only my switch star didn’t come back right away. I held out my hand, waiting.

They always came back.

Unease settled over me as I peered into the small forest. I wasn’t getting any demon slayer clanging in my head, but something was definitely wrong. I pulled out another star and headed into the woods.

I tramped through the underbrush until I came to the spot where the star should have hit. The tree remained unmolested, which I knew already. But where could the star have gone?

Focusing, I tried to call it back to me, like when I’d aimed it in the battle with the imps. Nothing.

I searched every tree, shrub and anthill for the next twenty yards and came up with nothing, nada, zip.

Wiping my drippy forehead with an equally sweaty arm, I contemplated my options. There was no way I could lose a switch star. It wasn’t done.

For one thing, even stepping on a dormant switch star could really hurt someone—human or animal. I didn’t want anyone slicing a foot or a hoof or a paw.

Then there was the fact that I truly did need all five stars. I’d never met any other demon slayers, but I was willing to bet nobody else charged into battle with weapons missing.

It was almost like someone had taken my switch star. But nobody else could touch it. Well, except for another demon slayer, or a handler like Dimitri.

Geez. What was I going to tell Dimitri?

Sorry about your estate and your life. Oh by the way, can you run to Wal-Mart and get me another switch star?

I dropped onto a half-rotted log. It had to be here, but it wasn’t. “As if there’s another demon slayer just walking around in the woods,” I said to the pine tree in front of me.

Ignoring the gnats buzzing around my face, I tried to think of some deep thoughts so I at least had something to show for my afternoon. When that didn’t work, I headed back to find Rachmort.