"Go ahead and make yourself at home," I said as I locked the door. "There's beer in the fridge. And wine, if you like that. I've got to take a shower."
He nodded. "I should speak of Vardimal," he said. "To familiarize you with—"
"Later," I told him. My shoulder twinged. "Hey."
He turned back to me.
"What did he do to me?" I lifted the sword a little, pointing at my left shoulder with the hilt. "Huh?"
"The Prince of Hell has granted you a familiar, Necromance," Japhrimel said formally, clasping his hands behind his back. He looked a little like a priest in his long black high-collared coat. I wondered where he hid the guns. I'd never heard of a demon with guns before. I should have studied harder, I suppose. But how the hell was I supposed to know that a demon would show up at my front door? I'm a bloody Necromance, not a Magi!
"A fam—" My brain started to work again. "Oh, no. I'm not a Magi. I don't want—"
"Too late," he informed me. "Go take your shower, I'll keep watch."
"Keep watch? Nobody knows I'm working for—" I put my back against the door. How did I get into this? I wondered—not for the last time, I might add.
"Your entry into Hell may have been remarked," the demon said. "I'll make coffee."
I shook my head and brushed past him, heading for the stairs. "Gods above and below," I muttered, "what did I do to deserve this?"
"You have a reputation for being honorable," the demon supplied helpfully. "And your talents as a Necromance are well-known."
I waved a hand over my shoulder at him. "Fine, fine. Just try not to set anything on fire, okay? Be careful with my house."
"As my Mistress wishes," he said. It would have been hard for him to sound more ironic.
I climbed the stairs, my legs aching. Even my teeth hurt. An hour into this job and I'm already wishing I was on vacation. I had to laugh, trailing my fingers along the painted wall. My sword seemed far heavier than it should be. Halfway up the stairs, under the altar niche, was a stash of three water bottles, and I snagged one. I fumbled in my bag for a salt tablet, took it. Dried sweatsalt crackled on my skin. I probably smelled like I'd been stuck in an oven. It was a miracle I hadn't been hit with heatstroke.
I drained the water bottle, dropped my sword on my bed, put my bag inside the bathroom door, and started stripping down. I paused halfway to turn the shower on, and examined my left shoulder in the mirror.
Pressed into the skin was a sigil I'd never seen before, not one of the Nine Canons I knew. I was no demonologist, so I didn't know what it meant, exactly. But when I touched it—the glyph shifting uneasily, ropy scar like a burn twisting under my fingertips—I hissed in a sharp breath, closing my eyes against a wave of heat.
I saw my kitchen as if through a sheet of wavering glass, the familiar objects twisted and shimmering with unearthly light. He was looking at my stove—
I found myself on my knees, gasping. I've read about this, I thought, oddly comforted. I've read about seeing through a familiar's eyes. Breathe, Danny. Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Been doing it all your life. Just breathe. The tiled floor bit into my knees, my forehead rested against the edge of my bathtub. Steam filled the air. Gods, I thought. So that's what they're talking about when they say… oh, man. Heavy shit, dude. Can't take the scene; gotta bail.
I'd just been given a demon familiar. Magi everywhere would be salivating—it was the high pursuit of every Magi, to achieve a working relationship with one of the denizens of Hell. I'd never done much in that arena—I had more than enough work to keep me busy inside my own specialty. But occult practitioners are a curious bunch—some of us like to fiddle around with everything when time permits. And a lot of the standard Magi training techniques were shared with other occult disciplines—Shamans, Journeymen, Witches, Ceremonials, Skinlin… and Necromances. After all, Magi had been the ones pursuing occult disciplines since before the Awakening and the Parapsychic Act. So I'd been given something most Magi worked for years to achieve—and I didn't want it. It only complicated an already fucked-up situation.
The steam shifted, blowing this way and that. I looked up to see the water running in the shower. I was wasting hot water.
That got me moving. I stripped off the rest of my clothes with trembling fingers and stepped into the shower, loosing my hair with a sigh. I've been dyeing my hair black for years, to fit in with Necromance codes, but sometimes I wondered if I should streak it with some purple or something. Or cut the damn mess off. When I was young and in the Hall, every girl's hair was trimmed boy-short except for the sexwitches. I suppose growing it out when I reached the Academy was another way of proving I was no longer required to follow any rules other than the professional ones. Purple streaks would look nice on me.
I'd been mousy blonde at the Hall. Dyeing your hair to fit in with the antiquated dress codes rubbed me the wrong way, but part of being an accredited Necromance was presenting a united front to the world. We were all supposed to look similar, to be instantly recognizable, dark-haired and pale with emeralds on our cheeks and accreditation tats if possible, carrying our swords like Shamans carried their staves.
Once I retire I'll let it grow out blonde, maybe, I thought, and then the shock of unreality hit me again. I slumped against the tiled wall, my teeth chattering.
I traced a glyph for Strength on the tiles with a trembling finger. It flushed red for a moment—I was dangerously close to shock. And if I went into shock, what would the demon do?
I finished washing up and got out, dried off, and padded into my bedroom, carrying my bag. I was dressed in a few minutes, moving automatically, sticking my feet back into my favorite pair of boots. The mark on my shoulder wasn't hurting now—it just ached a little, a flare of Power staining through my shielding and marking me like a demon to Sight. Black diamond spangles whirled through the trademark glitters of a Necromance's aura, and I could see the mark on my shoulder, a spot of pulsing darkness.
Great. This will make work so much easier, I thought, and sighed. I needed food. My stomach was rumbling, probably because I'd puked everything out in a back-street alley. I yawned, scratched under my wet hair, and scooped up my sword, dumping my salt-crusted clothes in the hamper.
Then I paced over to my file cabinet, passing my hand over the locked drawer. The locks—both electronic and magickal—clicked open, and I dug until I found what I needed. I didn't give myself any time to think about it.
The red file. I held it in a trembling hand for a moment and then slammed the drawer shut. Scooped up my bag from the bed and stood for a moment, my knees shaking slightly, my head down, gasping like a racehorse run too hard.
When I could breathe properly again, I stamped down the stairs, pausing halfway to touch the Anubis statue set in the little shrine tucked in the niche. I'd need to light a candle to him if I survived this.
I found the demon in my kitchen, contemplating my coffeemaker with a look of abstract horror. It was the closest to a human expression he seemed capable of, with his straight saturnine face. "What?" I asked.
"You drink freeze-dried?"he asked, as if he just found out I'd been sacrificing babies to Yahweh.
"I'm not exactly rich, Mr. Creepy," I informed him. "Why don't you just materialize some Kona fresh-ground if you're such a snob?"
"Would you like me to, Mistress?" There was the faintest suggestion of a sneer in his voice. He was still wearing the long black coat. I took a closer look at him. Long nose, winged cheekbones, strong chin… he wasn't spectacular like Lucifer, or horrific like the thing in the hall. I shivered reflexively. He looked normal, and that was even more terrifying, once you really thought about it.
"Just call me Danny," I mumbled, and stamped over to the freezer, pulling it open. I yanked the canister out. "Here's the real coffee. I only get this out for friends, so be grateful."
"You would call me a friend?" He sounded amazed now. It was a lot less like talking to a robot. I was grateful for that.
"Not really," I said. "But I do appreciate you holding me up out of my own puke. I understand you're just doing what Lucifer tells you and something tells me you don't like me much, so we'll have to come to some kind of agreement." I tossed the canister at him, and he plucked it out of the air with one swift movement. "You're pretty good," I admitted. "I'd hate to have to spar with you."
He inclined his head slightly, his ink-black hair falling back from his forehead. "My thanks for the compliment. I'll make coffee."
"Good. I'm going to go think about this," I said, turning my back on him. He looked like a piece of baroque furniture in my sleek, high-tech kitchen. I almost wanted to wait to see if he could figure out the coffeemaker, but I wasn't that curious. Besides, demons have been fooling with technology for hundreds of years. They're good at it. Unfortunately for humans, demons don't like sharing their technology, which is rumored to be spotless and perfect. It occurred to me now that the demons probably were doing now what the Nichtvren had done before the Parapsychic Act—using proxies to control certain biotech or straight-tech corporations. Cloned blood had been a Nichtvren-funded advance; lots of immortal bloodsuckers had grown very rich by being the stockholders and silent partners in several businesses. I guess when you're faced with eternity, you kind of have to start playing with money to assure yourself a safe nest.
I carried the file into the living room and collapsed on the couch. My entire body shook, waves of tremors from my crown to my soles. I balanced the file on my stomach, flung my arm over my eyes, and breathed out, my lips slackening. Training took over, brainwaves shifting. I dropped quickly into trance, finding the place inside myself that no genemap or scan would ever show, and was gone almost immediately.