Demon Chained (Shadowfae Chronicles) (21 page)

His smile curled against my ear. "Remember what I told you. Fast and quiet, no questions. We won't get very far before they catch us. They're gonna grab you, so don't fight it. They can't afford to hurt you and they know that, so don't be afraid."

I swallowed, regret burning in my heart. This would be so much easier if he'd just say my name and tell me what to do. "But—"

"First the wall, then the tricks. Just a second." He pressed a burning kiss onto my temple, and before I could say anything or reach for him, he slipped away. A scuffle, a scrape like cloth on stone. I watched, fascinated. Shit. He really could climb this wall. Like a chunky shadow he moved, the only sounds his breath and the soft slide of his hands and feet.

Soon enough, he reached down to me from the top. His wet palm stuck to mine, his grip surprisingly strong around my wrist, and he hauled me off my feet.

I scrabbled for the top of the wall, scraping my hands on the rough concrete. He'd put cloth over the broken glass to protect us, and he wrapped his arm around my middle and levered me over, swift and efficient if undignified. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

He lowered me down into a tangle of fragrant jasmine vine, his fingers clamped on my wrist like velvet-gloved iron. For a moment, I hung there, feet dangling, the heady pollen sweet and rich in my nose, my body alive with the pleasure of exercise and the giddy trip of fear. The stretch felt good in my arm, my shoulder aching pleasantly. Then he let go, and I plopped to the crumbling earth, shaken but undamaged. In a second, he dropped beside me, landing with a squelch and a curse.

We'd landed in a garden bed, narrow and deep beside a crisp lawn. Tall jasmine fronds tickled my cheek, the perfume drifting fresh in a warm breeze. Wordless, he touched my shoulder, leading me into the dark.

Across the lawn, grass crunching with our steps, past silhouettes of trellised roses sprouting wicked thorns and the bare twisted branches of a frangipani. Ghostly light spilled into our path from tall second-floor windows obscured by translucent silk curtains that bloomed in the breeze and spilled out onto dusty sandstone balconies.

Tam hopped deftly onto the old lace-worked verandah, and I followed, my sandals plopping quietly on the planks. Blond sandstone walls, peeling white windowsills, the smell of stone and dusty wood. The house looked lonely, grand, creaking with age. I didn't see any of the cameras and other modern surveillance tricks Tam had described. Maybe he over-estimated this DiLuca clan's paranoia. Then again, there was so much I didn't know about this era. For all I knew, there were cameras everywhere, so tiny I couldn't see them. Or perhaps it was magic.

I took a deep breath, nerves prickling. It was time. I'd never tried this before, not this exact trick. Still, how hard could it be? It was just swapping. I'd done weirder things.

Tam squeezed my fingers lightly in the dark. "Ready?"

"Yeah." My throat crisped, making my whisper hoarse. At least he thought to ask, instead of just laying it on me. I liked that about him. Even if he did it for his own reasons.

A hard lump tightened in my chest, squashing my breaths until they were too small. Suddenly, I didn't want to do this. I liked us how we were, cautious, dangerously aware of each other, keeping a fragile distance. Respectful, awkward. Friends, even. Maybe he'd kiss me again some time. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd even do something tragically romantic, like ask me out on a date.

I liked that.

New awareness sparkled over me, invigorating. Yes. I
liked
it. It was exciting to have a choice, that things between us weren't a foregone conclusion. Stuff that normal people took for granted.

Once he started using the magic of my name, I realised, all that would be over. I'd been there before, and it always happened the same way, like some ceaseless dusty clockwork that never gave out. For a while, I'll be helpless over him, swamped in a wash of lamp-spawned infatuation, and for him the novelty of a girl who can't say no will make up for the fact that ordinarily he wouldn't look twice at me. Then, slowly, like creeping mold, I'll start to resent him.

Little things first, like a sullen teenager denied her freedom. Then bigger things will turn sour. He'll find another woman, or a boyfriend, some obsession that doesn't involve me. We'll fight, I'll cry, he'll lose patience with me, he never asked for this, why can't I just do as I'm told and leave him alone?

Because after a while, they resent me, too. Once they get over the excitement of my magic tricks, I've got nothing. I'm like an eternal child, helpless, always home, always needing looking after. Everyone wants a magical bauble-fetcher. Not everyone wants to be a parent.

Least of all this one.

But none of that would happen with him, would it? He was giving my lamp back to me. We were over, he and I. There was no
we
.

Grease squirmed in my stomach at the thought. I wanted to trust him. Fact was, I didn't. Not at all. Nothing he did made sense.

I swallowed, ready to take it back, to tell him to forget it, we'd find another way to get my lamp back.

But too late. He'd already spoken the words, and champagne magic bubbled in my blood. I tried to talk, but tingles swept my limbs like sweet fire, and I dissolved.

***

One moment she's there, the next she's not, and this weird anxiety quickens my pulse, like I'm afraid she won't come back. If this doesn't work, if she can't do this, I'm all out of ideas, and I don't fancy the consequences.

But the smoke that's her twirls and shivers like a ghost, and slowly a silhouette thickens and deepens in Jewel-space. Limbs, body, head, the shapes of clothing and hair and fingers.

My stinging lips twitch. Christ. Is that really what I look like?

She's done me sweaty in the heat, like I am right now, my shirt sticking to my body and my hair all artfully dirty. I look pretty cool, in a grungy wash-me kind of way. I'm still built, too, if I may say so myself, though I haven't worked at it since I died. If I didn't know I was me, I'd call me kinda hot. I'm kinda spooky, too, that dusky look to my skin and some crazy, smitten glint in my eyes. I remind me of Gavain, weird and alien and not quite right. Bring it on, baby. Hell, I'd hit on me, if I didn't know I was dead and insane.

She looks down at herself, her facsimile of my hair tumbling over what used to be her succulent little chest, and gasps, a cheeky grin lighting her version of my face. She spreads her hands, showing the same bruised fingers and slashed palm, the dark shadow of death creeping up inside my forearm.

Leathery unease slides in my guts like a reptile. This is weird. I don't want to look down at myself, at what she said she needs to do to look like me. But those evil rubber bands are back, and they jerk my eyeballs downwards.

Yeah. It's working. She's stolen my image, and I'm fading. She's me, and I'm Casper the fucking ghost.

I lift my spectral hands to watch. I can see through them as if they're dusty glass, right through to the dim wooden floor, and they sparkle like fairy glitter and dissolve. The rest of me's doing the same thing. Filtering out of sight. Dissipating, like I'm made of smoke.

I crunch my fists closed, and I still feel the sting where my nails pierce my palms, moisture still squelches where the skin's worn through. I breathe, and my wet lungs inflate. I shift, and my foot scrapes a line in the dust. I'm still here. I just can't see me. No one can.

In-fucking-visible. Un-fucking-believable.

She glances up from checking herself out, or checking me out—whatever—and her Tam-brown eyes dart left and right, squinting in the dark. "Tam? You still there?" Her voice is mine, stolen. Already I miss her crystal laugh.

"Yeah." My voice—the real one—falters. It's hard to talk above a whisper, like she really has stolen me. And it's weird, talking and moving when I'm not here. I didn't realize how much of myself I can see, all the time even when I'm not looking. Always a glimpse of my own nose, my hair on my shoulders, my hands as I move them, my body and feet as I walk. But now there's nothing, yet I can still make sound, still feel the air on my skin and the pull of my muscles as I move. Freaky.

Warmth shines on my heart, too much like admiration for me to pretend it's amazement or wonder. She's lost, alone, shoved through a fifty-year time warp to some place she doesn't understand, dragged on some weird burglary by a reanimated freak who won't screw her, and she's still kicking magic-trick ass with a grin and a fuck-you-all. Helpless? Far from it. She's a marvel, this sexy smoke girl of mine.

But she won't be mine much longer.

For some reason, that idea spikes my brain, stinging like a snake's evil fangs. I mean, sure, she's smart and powerful and gorgeous. Some guys would call me crazy to give her up.

Probably the same guys who'd have let her prostitute herself for their pleasure and screwed her cute little brains out without a second thought.

Guys who've never spent the longest four hours of their lives in hell.

Well, they don't know shit. Me, I can't wait to be rid of her.

I swallow, and reach out to touch her shoulder. My fingers jerk at the unseen sensation. Whoa. That's some spooky shit. "Yeah, I'm still here. You're amazing, you know that?"

She wrinkles her nose, a feminine Jewel-gesture that looks weird on my face. "And you're
heavy
. How the hell do you move so quietly with all this meat?"

So many naughty places I could go with that. "Being this gorgeous ain't easy. Come on."

I glance back as I steal away, wondering how she'll come along if she can't see me. But she stretches her neck awkwardly—yep, there's a nasty pop in there, be gentle—and follows me.

Of course, she won't get the pop. She's not really in my body. She's just a shape made of smoke, right? Hell, let's hope so. If that gut-cramp, spew-bloody-goo thing happens while she's in there, she'll freak out. And she'll sure as hell never kiss me on the mouth again.

Like the chances of that were anywhere in this dimension.

I sidle along the verandah drenched in sultry shadow, feeling for air currents, sniffing for tainted air from inside. With luck, Delilah's cocky goons have left something open for us in the heat. In the garden, water trickles, a fountain bubbling over concreted river stones from the mouth of a whitewashed stone cod, upended and gulping like it's on an invisible hook. Grotesque. Ange Valenti's probably got one just like it at his place. Gangster décor, ever-subtle.

Timber creaks under my ghostly step, a more well-used part of the verandah. French doors glint, dust-free, the brass handle tarnished smooth. My instincts crinkle gooseflesh on my arms, and a shiver fingers my neck. People go in and out this way. So might we.

I stop, and Jewel walks into me, clamping her fingers on my elbow just for a second to catch herself. "Sorry," she mumbles.

"It's okay." It feels nicer than it should, that fleeting touch. Somehow, she still feels like her, all soft and smooth and rounded shapes. I fumble for my jeans pocket—no point in looking down—and dig out the special phone I bullied Tran into lending me. It doesn't look much, just a little color-screen number a few models old, but it's this little piece of kit that's kept Tran alive through years of snarking the wrong people and totaling getaway cars and stinking like a week-old fish. He invented it, and every thief who's anyone wants one.

Now, the Tran-phone's invisible like me. How does Jewel's tricky shit work, I wonder? If I let go, if I dropped this phone on the ground, could I see it then? What if I spit or ooze or bleed on the floor? Will that be visible?

Questions I maybe should have asked
before
we stood in the dark on DiLuca's verandah with a gaggle of trolls twenty feet away behind the wall.

But there's neither time nor safety to ask now. Lucky for me, this kit's designed to work in the dark.

I hold the phone up somewhere in front of my face and thumb the button for the camera. The plastic vibrates silently in my palm, and I pan it left to right in front of the French doors like I'm taking an invisible video.

Nothing. The door's not alarmed. I don't really know how this thing works—I've never been that great at the fairyspell geekdom stuff, and Tran's jealous as hell of his tech—but I'd expect an alert if there was any EMF or fairy warding here. I toggle the volume switch, increasing the range. A slight upsurge, the vibration zinging faster, smearing sweat and dirt on my palm. Something radiating inside, probably active motion sensors. Not a lot I can do about those without one of Tran's laptops and about four hours in the switch box. I peer through the shining window, looking for the hardware, but I can't see anything. If it's well enough hidden, they won't expect me to see it.

So if we trip the sensors, it won't look ballsy and challenging. It'll just look unprepared.

Sweet. We've just found our way in.

She should do this, in case they're watching already. I slip the Tran-phone away and beckon to her, before I remember she can't see me. I touch her elbow instead, and whisper, "Open the door."

She swallows—damn, I really hope she's just smoke—wipes her hand on my jeans and turns the doorknob.

Squeak.

Click.