Chapter 1
The red door in front of me had a warning sign on it, but I picked the lock anyway. Soft pulses of anxious energy crawled along my arms as my fingers worked, exciting the hairs all the way up the nape of my neck. I wanted to look over my shoulder for signs I’d been spotted, but instead I kept focused on what I was doing.
Pretty sure there’d have been spells flying at me by now if I’d tripped a silent alarm I didn’t know about.
I was crouching by the door to a Demonologist’s inner sanctum, the place where he kept his most prized possessions. To get here, I’d had to slip past his magical defenses as well as his mundane security system. Neither of them had been up to the challenge of keeping me out, but there were few security systems I’d encountered that could. That was why I’d been given this job, and not someone else.
A knot grew inside of my stomach, tightening as the seconds passed. I wasn’t afraid of getting caught and having to slide out of this place on the back of a whisper. I also wasn’t afraid of having to fight my way out, if it came down to it. I was starting to feel something like fear, though. Not toward the door, but toward what it was guarding.
I glanced up at the warning sign again.
“Abandon all hope all ye who enter here,” I said under my breath, reading the red lettering slapped on the door. Those were the words written on the doorway to Hell, if you believed the story. Super original, right? And yet, I couldn’t help but feel a little unnerved.
Shaking my head, I kept picking at the lock with my tools until it finally clicked open. That was the thing about mages. Most of them were so up their own asses they thought they could put a couple of spells up to protect their treasures and that’d keep the whole world out. But spells could be tricked, and once the spells had been bypassed, the rest was a walk in the park.
Careful not to make a sound, I pushed the door open, but it had other plans. It croaked like a chorus of toads; a constant snapping sound that set my nerves alight. A cold breath of rancid air flowed out through the slowly opening gap, assaulting my nostrils and making them sting. It was Sulphur, a smell like rotting eggs left out on a hot day. But it was also more than that. It was another warning that, beyond this red door, lay the Demonic.
Taking one last breath of fresh air, I slid past the red door and into the Demonologist’s inner sanctum; a place most mages wouldn’t dare to tread for fear of what could be lurking inside.
I fumbled around near the door with my fingers, searching for a light switch, but I couldn’t find one. There were no windows in here, no natural light; only a thick, almost unnatural darkness. Now that I was through the room’s protective spells, I figured I could probably use some of my own magic without worrying about setting off alarms.
I flicked my wrist, and a soft ball of silvery light rolled into the palm of my hand. It floated up at my command and moved deeper into the sanctum, its luminescence bouncing off of the shiniest surfaces it touched. I heard something move, a sound like a chair scraping across the floor, and my nerves started to sing again.
The sound rooted me to the spot. Was there someone else in here with me? I scanned the darkness, watching for signs of movement, but the next few anxiety ridden seconds passed silently. Then I remembered.
“Right…” I said to myself, “I’m in a room full of Demon… stuff.”
I definitely wasn’t alone, but whatever company I had probably wasn’t human. It also probably wasn’t a threat so long as I didn’t touch anything. Easy. Just don’t touch anything, Izzy. Play it cool, be calm, and everything will be fine. I shrugged the anxiety away, took a step off to the right, and immediately bumped into a glass cabinet. It was only by some miracle that I’d managed to grab it on both sides and hold it in place, but that was close.
I suddenly found myself staring at the creepiest, most screwed up looking doll I’d ever seen in my life. It was mostly burned, its little dress charred black, its face almost ruined. But its eyes… it was like they were staring right at me. Superimposed onto the glass panel between me and the doll was my face, stark wide and terrified; my ragged breathing fogging the image up.
“Holy shit,” I said, “Holy shit, holy shit…”
All the blood had drained from my already pale face, but my heart was pounding all the same. Wild strands of blue hair fell around my eyes and cheeks like they’d been yanked out of the ponytail I’d very carefully tied my hair into before entering the house. As the light from the orb moved behind me, it was like the doll’s strange, amber eyes had replaced my misty grey ones.
Gingerly I pulled the cabinet back into position until it was resting again. So much for don’t touch anything. Good going.
With the cabinet back in its place, I took another deep breath and got back to searching the room for what I’d come here to find.
The Demonologist—Becket Redwood—was a collector of old items. One table was covered in chalices, some that sparkled like new, others that looked hundreds of years old and were probably thousands of times more expensive than the new looking ones. On another table sat a radio that looked older than my mother would’ve been now, if she were still alive. That was to say nothing of the books lying around.
Most of them were so old, the writing on their leather covers and spines had faded.
They begged me to open them, to touch them, to learn the secrets they held inside. It wasn’t like they were speaking to me; more like they were drawing me toward them. I could feel it, this pull where my head met my spine. It was as if invisible fingers caressed my skin, urging me to tilt toward the books, inching me ever closer to them.
I shook loose their hold on me and returned to my mission. I’d come here to find a key. I heard a click, and then a slow, snapping sound of an old cabinet croaking open; the same sound the door had made. With a lump of dread wedged in my throat I thought back to the creepy doll. I imagined the glass case door opening by itself, and the burned doll sliding out with a knife in its hand.
When my muscles relaxed enough that I could move again, I bid the ball of light to shoot over to the doll. It hadn’t left its spot, and its glass case hadn’t started to open. What had opened was a wooden cabinet hanging on a nearby wall. I moved the light over, guiding it with my hand, and there I found what I’d come looking for.
The old, brown cabinet was filled with keys, maybe fifty of them, each hanging off hooks set into the back. Behind the keys, a design had been etched into the wood; a series of sharp symbols I recognized as magical, but ancient. Mages used runes and symbols all the time; on their clothes, in their magic, on things, places, and even people.
It was like a language, the language of magic. But just like you could tell the difference between modern English and Shakespearean English, I could tell the writing on the back of that cabinet was old. How old, I didn’t know. It was clear enough, though, that the symbols were a warning. Whoever had drawn them into the cabinet had wanted to keep mages from touching its contents.
I scanned the keys hanging on the hooks for the one I needed until I found it. They were all old keys, most of them obnoxiously large, or twisted and rusted with age. Many of the copper keys had oxidized and turned green, while others looked like they’d been hit with hammers until they almost didn’t look like keys anymore.
The one I needed was a simple brass key, dull and clunky but still holding its shape, its handle a four-leafed clover. It sat at the heart of the cabinet, one of the only keys that wasn’t completely messed up. I couldn’t just take it, though. The warning was clear, even if it was about five hundred years old.
Good thing I’d come prepared.
A friend of mine had given me a spell to use, something that would let me touch the key without pissing off the dark magic aura this thing was wearing like a robe. I mean, not only had the cabinet shown me where it was, it had opened for me, and it had placed the key I needed front and center. This thing wanted me to stick my hand inside it. It was goading me, and the last thing I wanted to do was to invite a bunch of Demonic crap into my life.
I produced a little test tube from my pocket and opened the cap. Despite the darkness, the powder sitting inside of it glittered and glimmered with soft, amber light. My magic, I could conjure in an instant. It was a thing as easy as breathing. Unfortunately, I’m an Elemancer. My realm is fire, and storms, and lightning.
Your typical, vengeful, Greek God kind of stuff.
None of that was going to help me when presented with a puzzle that required a little Demonology to solve. Enter my friend, the only purveyor of black-market spells on the whole East Coast—that I knew of. She had the ability to siphon off another mage’s magic and turn it into a powder, or a liquid, that just any old mage could use in a pinch.
I knew I’d need something like this tonight, so I’d bought one. The right tool for the right job.
I stared at the powder as it poured into my hand, and then I blew into it, sending it forward in a puff of amber dust and glimmering light. The cabinet suddenly started to wobble and shake, bouncing on its supports like it was… well, possessed.
It jerked and rocked, smacking against the wall and making all kinds of noise, until the key loosened from its hook and fell. I caught it before it hit the floor, and then started breathing a little more easily.
Phew.
It was a good thing the owner of the house I’d broken into wasn’t home. He’d have heard that kind of a ruckus for sure. I stuffed the key into my jacket pocket and went to turn around, but my sixth sense tingled, and instead of turning, I wrapped my fingers around the dagger I kept strapped to my waist.
“Izzy Warden,” came a raspy voice from the door to the inner sanctum. “Long time no see.”
I shut my eyes, and sighed. “Dammit. Not you assholes.”
