The Devil You Know - The Marshal of Magic

 

The Marshal of Magic - The Devil You Know

 

 

 

 

 

"I need your help."

I tried not to jump and failed miserably. At least I didn't let out a squeal of terror. More like a little squeak. Loud enough to elicit a snort.

"Devil," I rolled my eyes.

"Demon," he corrected.

It's easy to carry on a conversation with a disembodied voice, but it can make one look crazy. I wasn't so worried about the crazy part. Long winded education and philosophical discussions with a ghost made many people stare and then look away.

This time, even Elvis stared at me like I was taking a swim in the deep end of the insanity pool.

Guess he couldn't hear the voice.

"Tomato, potato," I waved a hand back and forth in the air.

"From your perspective," the lecture started.

I headed it off at the pass.

"I'm mortal, my time is limited, yada, yada, yada. What do you want?"

"Are you okay?"

Beth, my friendly neighborhood bartender reached out and took my half empty bottle of craft beer off the top of the bar and watched me with worry in her eyes.

"Just thinking out loud," I told her.

It wasn’t' the first time I'd been caught talking to the air around me, but the look on her face said this time it was different.

I think it was the look on mine.

This particular devil was a minion of Hell, and even his voice carried the stench of sulfur and brimstone. I guess my nose was reacting to it, and my frown and squinted up eyes made me look particularly nasty.

All a reaction, of course.

"Do I need to cut you off?" she asked, tilting the bottle back and forth.

"You can speak to me with your mind, mortal," the devil advised.

I waved my hands like a baby reaching for a rattler.

"I'll keep it down," I winked.

She thought about it for a moment, then set the bottle back on the bartop with a clink and shook her head.

I'd been coming here for years, so Beth was used to the shenanigans, but that didn't mean I wanted to piss her off. She was the keeper of nectar, and I was a fan of craft brew, but if I started to impact business, she would kick me out faster than a nun blessing a sneeze.

"Good one," the devil whispered.

"What do you want?" I thought.

"Who are you talking to?" Elvis said from my shoulder.

I half turned my eyes to the empty barstool beside me. That half of the bar was barren, the patrons choosing to congregate away from the spiritually colder air that accompanied my ghost companion.

I could see him stare at the bottle of craft with longing. Back when he had been a person, my watcher for the city of Memphis, we shared a couple hundred bottles together. And he missed it.

"Hail," I muttered from the corner of my mouth, hiding my lips behind the bottle as I raised it for a sip.

"Damn," said Elvis.

"Damned," Hail answered the ghost.

The sip slid down my throat.

"What do you want," I thought repeated.

"I said, I need your help."

"With what?"

"To find someone."

"I don't do missing persons," I rolled my eyes. "Not my jurisdiction."

"It's my daughter, Marshal. Someone has kidnapped her."

Hell.

Someone kidnapped the devil's daughter.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

 

I dropped two twenty dollar bills on the bar and set the bottle on top so they wouldn't blow away and then left without a word.

Outside, the temperature was a balmy one hundred degrees with humidity so thick it was like walking through cotton candy. August in Memphis could be miserable.

The air was thick with the dead fish and mud smell of the Mississippi River clinging like a physical presence in the corridors between the buildings downtown.

The bar was a couple of streets over from the stadium, and I could hear the crowd cheer as one team or the other did something to earn it.

I pointed my boots toward the river and headed for Riverfront Park.

 

The devil had a daughter. This was the devil with a small d, not the big D. His name was Hail and he was one of those immortal, all powerful beings that turned into a legend and myth at some point in history.

Or before recorded history.

Humans had been roaming around and upright for a couple hundred thousand years, telling stories about things that go bump in the dark, and Hail was one of them. Those tales and stories twisted and changed throughout the years, passed from campfire to campfire and culture to culture. He was Hades in ancient Greece, Nergal in Sumaria way before that, and a dozen other names.

He hated Nergal.

Or he hated that I knew about it.

Nergal sounds a lot like nerd girl, and who am I to pass up a good nickname like that.

"Nerd girl has a daughter," I told Elvis.

"Not according to history," he answered from over my shoulder.

I didn't bother to glance back, but I knew his tether kept him within six feet of me. The tether was what anchored disembodied spirits to this world.

Usually it's a place.

Sometimes it's a thing.

But in one instance, one unique time and place, it was a person.

That person was the Marshal of Magic.

Lucky me.

Before you break out the champagne and poppers, think about what it would be like to have a constant companion running color commentary on every aspect of your life.

Even those private moments.

Ever beg a ghost to stay outside of the bathroom door? Modesty must have followed his mortal coil.

"Then how do we know it's really his kid?" I mused. "He's not above lying."

"Or below it either," Elvis answered.

I made it to the Riverfront under the intense August sun. Memphis had a great idea a few years ago. Turn the land next to the mighty Mississippi River as it runs through downtown into a fitness park.

There was a jogging path that stretched for two miles next to the water, fitness stations and enough open fields that enterprising personal trainers hosted fat blaster workouts right next to the sunset yoga crowd getting their inner peace on.

There was a dog park, and a boat launch and a statue memorializing a black man who saved dozens of lives in a steamboat crash one hundred years ago.

A great idea for higher and better use of space in spring, winter and fall.

But summer had other ideas.

It was too hot for almost anything from June through August, when the humidity hovered close to one hundred percent and the temperatures climbed to match it. Movement of any sort was difficult, especially during the time of day when the sun was highest in the sky.

All smart people moved for cover, or hid in air conditioned wonder.

"Damn," I muttered and wished I had worn shorts.

The denim jeans on my legs were wet with sweat.

But you can't summon a demon in shorts.

Why a demon would wear shorts I don't know.

Normally the demon is sans all forms of clothing, since that is a uniquely human concept. I wore jeans because I didn't want Hail to feel disrespected or start in on puny mortal legs.

He might not care, but if he did, it would make the summon harder.

Stupid demon feelings and their effect on magic.

I paced out a circle, scraping it into the sand volleyball court with the heel of my boot. I bent down and touched it with my finger to shoot a spark of will into the line, cutting it off from the rest of the world and creating a conduit to wherever Hail might be.

Then, I concentrated a force of will and uttered the magical incantation.

"What the Hail?"

A puff of sulphurous flame flashed in the circle brighter than a will o' the wisp and floated up in a perfect column to paint the clear blue sky with a contained gray haze.

Hail stood in the middle of the summoning and offered a slow clap.

"Asshole," I muttered and smudged the circle with the tip of my boot.

"No, really," said Hail. "That was impressive."

"Nobody does a slow clap when they're impressed," I told him.

"Really?" he raised one eyebrow in a delicate arch. "I saw it in a movie and everyone joined the fellow who started it."

He glanced around at the empty park.

"I suppose there is no audience here to appreciate your work."

He was kidding of course.

He was just damn good at it.

"I could have brought you in by the ballfield. Lots of people would have seen you there."

He glanced toward downtown.

"By the Church?"

There were almost two dozen churches in three square miles of downtown, but I knew which one he was referring to.

St. Peter's.

The Catholic Church was one of the oldest in the city, and also happened to be built on sacred Native American ground. Back when it was built, no one doing the construction cared about a bunch of Indians, or what they considered holy when they laid the foundation and cornerstone.

Idiots accidentally tapped a ley line and built a nexus.

Which turned St. Peter's into something special. A hotline for supernatural activity in the area.

I get my intelligence from the Judge.

They get theirs from someone higher.

But all the same, they were locked in on what happened around Memphis. And liked to fight it.

People thought the Illuminati of fiction were bad ass holy fighters. The warrior priests of St. Peters made them look like Boy Scouts.

"They'll be here," Hail said, nervous eyes flicking around as he searched.

"Relax," I told him. "I timed it."

The eyebrow went up again. Seriously, this guy could give lessons to Spock.

"Is that why I waited so long."

"Marshal?" Elvis sighed next to my ear and made me flinch.

"Don't do that," I snapped.

"Duck."

I could have looked around for a flock. Memphis is famous for the Peabody Ducks and the river front park has quite a collection of feathered friends who stick close to the residents for the free food.

But I didn't think the ghost meant fowl.

I dropped to the ground and listened to a lazy bee zip past my ear.

It was followed by two more, that impacted the ground where I landed and rolled away.

I popped a shield between us and the wall of cliff's holding downtown so I could buy time to assess.

Bullets pinged off the shield and plowed into the field.

"Your timing, as always, is impeccable," said Hail.

I stood up off the ground and didn't bother dusting off the fine layer of grit and grass that covered my jeans. The extra sweat was making it stick like a ghillie suit.

A second round of bullets impacted against the invisible wall of magic willpower, this time from two directions.

I could see two figures on the cliffs, on either side of an abandoned building that once housed a riverfront restaurant. The dilapidated remains of a wooden deck still clung to the exterior, the faded paint of an advertisement on the brick wall edging toward becoming a local landmark.

"There and there," I pointed them out to Hail.

"And there," he pointed back. "And there."

Know it all.

There were two more shooters coming in from opposite directions, angling to set up a crossfire behind the shield.

I backed up, and Hail followed, moving in close as we edged closer to the river.

"Those aren't priests," he pointed out.

"Anyone else expecting you?" I kept the shield steady, but couldn't expand it to cover three sides.

Whoever they were, the ammo had armor piercing tips, which meant I needed to concentrate on the shield so they wouldn't go through.

They were prepared for a magic man.

And they knew the devil was coming.

"I don't have to ask permission to travel," he quipped.

I thought it was good he could quip. Especially since we were about to die.

"They're herding us into the water," I told him.

"These are expensive shoes."

"The water is going to negate my magic."

There are a few rules when it comes to magic and water is one of them. Running water negates the effect of magic. It can't cancel it out, since water doesn't impact will power. But it can dampen it, disperse it.

Both Elvis and the Judge tried to explain it to me on a molecular level, using four dollar words to describe how the shape of an air molecule and a water molecule differ, which has an effect on all magic.

My snoring told them the lesson was well taken.

Hail glanced at the water and sniffed in the most disdainful way possible.

"I really don't want to get wet."

The attackers switched from single shot to three round bursts and continued to pour it into the shield. Sweat drizzled off my brow, and not just from the heat. My arm was starting to shake from the effort.

I've got a lot of willpower and a lot of experience as a Battle Mage. They don't pick Marshal's from just any geek off the street.

But even I have limits, and even though I was sure the shield wouldn't slip, one stutter or shake could alter the trajectory of a bullet and ricochet it toward us.

"Drop the shield when I say three," Hail told me.

He lifted his arm and shook loose the cuff of his pinpoint cotton shirt.

"One," he said.

One of the shooters made the angle of the shield and rounded the edge. He popped three rounds in the ground in front of me, recentered his aim and grinned.

The shield shifted on reflex, and bullets from the other shooters chewed toward us.

"Three!" I screamed and unleashed a force wave of will toward the guy aiming at me.
He dropped to the ground before it reached him. The other fell like a puppet with its strings cut and the two shadowy figures from either side of the building disappeared too.

My force wave lifted up a miniature tsunami of wind and carried the dust and grass cuttings all the way to the cliff.

"I said when I say three," Hail adjusted his cuffs.

I turned and glared.

"Are they dead?"

"I stopped their hearts."

"Damn it," I muttered.

"Five dead bodies are going to be hard to explain," Elvis said.

"You want to tell me what the hell is going on?" I snapped.

"It's like I told you," he started to say.

"Five?!" I turned to Elvis.

The fifth shooter sent a bullet through Hail's heart and he plopped over backwards into the river.

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter

 

I dropped, twisted and spun around to shoot a spell toward the direction of the bullet. Magic can be as fast as thought, but it still takes time to locate and aim.

I watched a brick on the corner of the dilapidated building disengrate and shower the deck like a hailstorm of grit, mortar and stone. It smashed through the deck and sent the wood crashing to the ground.

I could see a body tumble with it, twisting and turning in the two story drop to the abandoned lot that fronted Riverside Drive.

Sirens wailed from the direction of downtown.

"The authorities are on the way," Elvis announced.

"Thank you Captain obvious," I muttered and ran along the riverbank looking for the body of the devil floating in the water.

The mouth of the Wolf River connected with the Mississippi a hundred yards north of where we were, Mud Island separating the two bodies of water. It diverted the faster current of the big muddy river away from the shore on the Tennessee side of the river, but not by much.

I could see the blue cotton shirt Hail wore bobbing in the water, twisting and turning in the current.

There was no blood, but it could just be hidden by the brown silt in the turbulent liquid. Or maybe there was no blood in the demon at all.

I made a mental note to ask Elvis and slipped off the shore into the current.

His body was too far away to just grab it, so I had to swim. The river was warm, thick and sludgy. My wet jeans and hiking boots tugged me toward the bottom, but when I grew up, there were no swimsuits. There were pants or skinny dipping if you didn't want your clothes to get wet.

The all boys boarding school I grew up in was strict, so I had to learn to swim in pants and a shirt.

Which made swimming to Hail a chore, but a familiar one. I grabbed his body with one hand, and a large slab of driftwood with the other.

Then I kicked back toward shore as Elvis sputtered just over the water beside me.

He wasn't even wet.

Demon's are heavy.

I don't know if it's a quantum mass thing, since they are from another plane of existence, or if Hail had put on a few pounds.

I made a second note to make fun of him about it as I dragged his soaked body out of the water and hoisted him over my shoulders.

Water sluiced off of us as I shambled through the park.

I tried to call up a veil, but it was weak. The magic couldn't interact with the water on our skin.

The best I could hope for is it would disguise us long enough for me to make it across Riverside drive and hide in an alley while we figured out the next step.

Hail groaned.

"Be still," I grunted as I waited to dodge a car.

He groaned again.

"And shut up."

"You try being shot," he mumbled and gasped as I ran across the road.

The shadow of the building knocked the air temperature down to something tolerable. It was still hot, muggy and humid, but the blazing sun disappeared behind the building and it was ten degrees cooler.

I dropped Hail next to the brick wall and he moved a finger up to the hole in his chest.

"Silver rounds," he said as he probed the wound. "Did they think I was a werewolf?"

"I hope we don't run into any of those," I said as I watched him work the slug out of the hole.

"There haven't been werewolf sightings around here in at least a decade," Elvis said.

"Don't jinx it," I told him.

"I'm just telling you."

"Yeah and as soon as the words leave your mouth, we'll have a flock of werewolves howling up and down Beale Street."

"Pack."

"Whatever."

"If you're going to call it by the name, use the right name," said the ghost. "It makes you sound less intelligent if you don't."

"I know it's a pack," I grit my teeth. "I don't care. I'll call a flock a flock, a gaggle, or even a google if I feel like it. It makes the alpha's get pissed and when they're pissed, they can't think straight."

"Just don't call them a murder," Hail pushed himself up the wall and studied his clothes in mournful anguish.

One shoe was gone, presumably in the river. The shirt was stained and stank of fish, and the wet pants were shapeless, drooping from a leather belt tight to his waist.

"I'd blame them for murder," I said. "If they were around. Which they aren't. They won't be, because the ghost did not curse us."

I glanced around to make sure no would be lycanthropes lurked in the shadows of the building, even though it was daylight and a new moon, not full. Werewolves were sneaky suckers and it never hurt to practice a little paranoia.

Hail plucked at the hole in his shirt over his healed chest.

"Guess I missed the fifth one."

"He's over there," I pointed and glanced around the edge of the building.

Three police cruisers converged on the two bodies down in the park, but no one had investigated the deck yet, nor discovered the other two men bracketing the building.

The bells of St. Peter began to toll.

"They know I'm here," said Hail.

"Then let's get moving."

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

Hail hummed while we hurried down the sidewalk. Two men running tend to draw attention, especially when the police were just a few blocks away, sirens blaring. So we walked fast.

He hummed "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and part of it made me want to smile.

The other part wanted to plant a fist in his chin and blast him across the river with a well placed magical focus.

We had gone down to Georgia when we first met and tangled with some of his demon brethren in a tussle that destroyed a small town. It had not been one of my more pleasant trips.

The dilapidated building was boarded up, but that didn't stop the local homeless from squatting in it. I extended my senses as we approached and felt eight bodies inside. Which might mean witnesses.

"I count eight people behind the walls," I said.

"Could be more shooters?" Hail answered.

Damn. I hadn't thought of that.

Go through Memphis enough, especially the downtown area, and your first thought is panhandlers and beggars. They don't carpet the street so much as make their presence known through aggressive asking.

No doesn't deter them in their quest for pocket change and bumming cigarettes.

They take a toddler's approach to begging. Just keep asking until you give in.

But I should have been more on alert.

The oppressive heat and mugginess was weighing on me, and the damp clothes clung to my skin. The jeans were starting to chafe in sensitive places.

I blinked.

"Hell."

"Yes?" Hail turned his eyes from the building to me.

"We're under assault," I slurred and tried to pull up a counter spell.

"We were," Hail agreed. "And now we're getting the shooter."

I didn't have time to explain.

Someone didn't want us to get to the body. Someone magical. They were blanketing us with a cover spell, the likes of which dulled the senses, and lulled the body into a lethargic state.

Trust me when I say no bueno.

It was coming from the building. I could feel that. Feel the direction and the intent.

But I couldn't place the magic.

It didn't give off the sense of being dark. Or even particularly bad. It just felt comfortable, soft.

A cool blanket on a hot lazy day.

Sitting down in the shade, the wind off the water, it would be easy and better to just grab a little snooze.

I felt my footsteps stumble, scuff along the concrete sidewalk.

Hail looked back with heavy lidded eyes.

"Know what can ensorcell a demon?" Elvis whispered in my ear.

"BBQ?" I muttered. "Good blues?"

It was harder to walk, and then I wasn't walking. One shoulder rested against the wall, head lolling into the gritty brick exterior.

I'd felt this before.

Back in the Demon War, what you know as WW II, the woods of Ardennes was the last offensive by the demons. They started by shelling mortal troops with gas cannisters to mask the magical fog that rolled across the landscape. It filtered through the trees and settled on the men fighting with one purpose.

Lay down.

Surrender.

I was with a small expeditionary force on the border with Luxemburg when it happened. The spell felt just like this one.

Here's the thing with magic.

Since magic is an execution of will, no two spells will have the same signature. The holistic crowd call it an aura, and they're not too far off the mark. A spell will have a flavor of the personality of the maker.

Which means if you recognize a spell, you have seen it before.

"Crap," I muttered as my brain slogged through trying to find the counter measure. I knew the answer. I'd done it before.

But it was slippery and elusive, just out of reach like the lyrics to a song I used to know.

Hail flopped forward onto his knees and glanced over his shoulder at me.

"Demon magic," he grumbled. "It's one of my own."

Did he mean his own spell? Or one of his own people?

Elvis hovered in front of me.

"Counter it," he said.

At least I think that's what he said. It looked like he said count it, but I've never been good at lip reading.

"You know it!" he slid down the wall with me, sinking into the concrete at my feet.

Elvis was right.

I did know it.

I could stop it.

If I got a nap though, it would be easier. The whole thing would take less than a second, once a siesta was over.

I closed my eyes.

And heard the Judge.

The scene in Full Metal Jacket where the DI screams at the numbnut privates to do exactly what he tells them to do was lifted from the Judge's training method.

More accurately, it was a sanitized and toddler friendly version compared to how he trained the Battle Mages who became the Marshals of Magic.

Our job was to hunt, find and sometimes execute the most powerful practitioners the world has ever known, who just happened to slip over to the dark side.

We were effective, if understaffed and stretched to the limit.

The Judge countered our small numbers by making us extremely well trained.

And his training method was harsh.

"You fight until you fall. And when you fall, you keep fighting."

I cleaned it up a little bit, since there were a lot more F-words in what he told us.

The thing about magic being willpower is that will is easy to train. It just takes practice.

Practice that had been drilled into me. Sleep deprived, starving, cold, wet, hot, you name any number of conditions and combinations, the Judge made sure the Marshals suffered through it.

And came out ahead, if not on top.

Magic that could put down a demon was mucho mojo. Magic that could send Hail into oblivion had to be more so.

Something the Judge taught us flickered through my mind.

Ready. Fire. Aim.

I sent out a pulse of will in a wide circle, expanding it away from the two of us. It bounced off the brick wall of the building and surged like a second wave, rebounding again until it found an opening.

The foundation shook as if in an earthquake.

Whoever or whatever was in the building slinging magic or way lost control for a moment, a slip in their concentration.

It was like taking a breath of sweet air after being underwater.

My sense rushed back in so quick, it shook me. The sounds of the sirens, the crackle of the bricks settling, the scream of someone inside the building.

A scream of rage and anger.

Magic is created by willpower but fueled by emotion.

Whatever was inside was pissed and gearing up for another round.

I figured it would be aimed at me.

I popped a shield over Hail as he sat up and shook his head. Then the anger came. I could feel it bounce off the shield, rolling along the street. Bits of brick and masonry shook loose from the building and bounced on the ground around us.

The shield held.

Hail glared at me.

"What did I do?" I shrugged.

"Not. You."

He spun up and held out a hand toward the building. He clenched his fingers into a fist and yanked back toward the center of his stomach.

The structure collapsed.

It wasn't a haphazard fall. It was like one of those implosions they televise, where the controlled demolition makes the building fall down in a heap of smoke, dust and blasted memories.

This wasn't like that.

It was like rearranging the shape of the once three story structure that had withstood the ravages of flood, history, tornado and the progression of modern man for over one hundred years in less than a second.

In a blink, the building was no longer than, replaced by a stacked mound of bricks that crushed everything and everyone inside.

Hell, Hail's got power.

You don't live since the beginning of forever without learning a few things.

We watched a sliver of smoke shift out of the rubble and head upriver against the wind.
I raised a hand to send magic after it.

"Don't," said Hail. "It won't help."

I lowered my arm and stared at him as he stood glaring at the pile of rock.

"One of mine," he grumbled.

"Think this has something to do with your daughter?" I asked.

His shoulders sagged.

Just because he could move a ton of magic, didn't mean it wouldn't cost him. He was exhausted.

And probably hurting after being shot. Just maybe, he was mentally broken. He still hadn't talked about his daughter or what was going on, but we'd been attacked twice since I called him to this realm in thirty minutes.

Something was rotten and we weren't in Denmark.

I looked at the pile of debris where the building once was, and the cops beyond. They were moving our way, running for their patrol cars to blare their way up to us.

The body of the shooter was buried. We weren't going to find any clues with him. The other two had to be under there as well.

"Come on," I grabbed Hail by the arm and yanked him across the street.

We weren't going to find any answers there.

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

We went back to the bar. Stink and all.

The first time I met Hail was in a bar, and I bought the man a drink just to swap stories and pass the time.

What I thought was a man.

Turned out I was wrong.

Wasn't the first time and damn sure wouldn't be the last. I've got a habit of making mistakes and try as I might, they don't seem to stop.

Hail pulled me into a train wreck then and I helped him out.
He saved my life and I saved his, and though we were square in the eyes of the Fae folk, there was still a bond.

Beth was behind the bar and took a big sniff when I plopped back on the barstool. She wrinkled her nose and it made her look like a cute furry animal.

"You stink," she advised as she put a sweating bottle of raspberry wheat on the scarred bar top in front of me and a second for him.

"Went for a swim to try and cool off."

She nodded, but didn't look convinced.

"Time to change your pool water," she said and strutted back to the other end of the bar to wipe, clean, buff and cut, all the things bartenders do to keep drinks running smooth.

"Cracking set of tits," said Hail as he leered in appreciation.

"Hands off," I warned him and took a long sip of crisp beer.

"Hands are right here," he placed them on the bar. "Eyes though."

I clinked the neck of my bottle against his.

"Eyes up here," I told him. "We need to make a plan."

Hail sighed and dragged his eyes off the lovely form of the bartender to the bottle in front of him.

"Berries," he grumbled. "We never made beer from fruit. It's an abomination."

But he drank it anyway.

The first sip was slow, tentative, letting the flavor wash into his tongue. Then he closed his eyes and drained it in seven gulps. He thunked the bottle back on the coaster and licked his lips.

"Hated it?"

"Fucking disgusting," he agreed. "Can I get another?"

He raised his voice and waved over a second round even though I wasn't done with number one. Beth swooped in to clear the empty and dropped two new ones on the bar in front of us, before moving to a new tending bar related task at the opposite end of where she was.

"Plan," I said, using my voice to pull Hail's eyes back to mine.

When that didn't work, I used my hand.

"Plan," he agreed. "Find out who has my daughter and kill them. Dead. Then kill them again."

I held up a finger.

"Point of order," I said. "You have a daughter?"

He nodded.

"And you didn't mention this last time?"

He shrugged.

"Proud parents talk about their children," I chided.

"Like you?"

He took a look at my face and flinched. I'm not saying I'm tough enough to make the devil wince, but given the right moment and motivation, it's there.

"Jesus," he whispered. "You ever direct that look to the mortals?"

I didn't move, just glared.

"They'd be shitting themselves ragged," he said.

He took a slow sip off the bottle and set it down beside mine.

"I'm sorry, alright. I shouldn't have brought her up."

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and that was when I noticed the bar. Not the slab of polished oak we were resting against, but the establishment itself. It was quiet, as quiet as a funeral and cold.

I looked around at the frozen patrons.

They huddled like statues, afraid to move, afraid to even drink lest they draw attention to themselves. One woman in the back had her glass halfway to her lips and held it there, eyes locked on where we sat.

"What did you do?" I asked out of the corner of my mouth.

"Wasn't me," Hail shrugged and sipped his beer again. "That's all you Marshal."

I relaxed my shoulders and reached for the beer.

As the bottle lifted to my mouth, I could hear the slow crawl of conversation start up again, a low muted buzz as people sensed a threat that passed by. Still, I saw hands go up, making that check mark with one finger in Beth's direction to tell her it was time for them to leave.

She hustled about ringing people up.

"Shitting ragged, huh?" I said to Hail. "Sounds painful."

"Might feel better than you looked," he said. "I was almost afraid myself."

"Is that why you flinched?"

He swallowed his beer.

"I didn't flinch," he said in defense.

"Elvis, what do the judges say?"

"Judges say flinch," the ghost whispered.

"There you have it."

Hail snorted.

"He's biased."

"Ghosts can't lie," I said.

Then I steered us back to the conversation.

"Let's talk about your daughter," I said.

He stared into my eyes for a moment. The devil taking my measure I imagine, though it wouldn't be the first time.

Then he finished off the beer and signaled for a third while I dove into number two.

After Beth delivered, so did he.

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

“It was on a vacation,” Hail said. “There was a woman.”

“A mortal?”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Is there any other kind?”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Sure,” said Hail. “Gods did it all the time.”

“Rumor has it, that was a virgin birth,” I told him.

“Gods,” he corrected. “Not God.”

He whispered something under his breath after that, a name that couldn’t be pronounced by human tongue. Just the sound of it made my ears ring. He said it like a sigh.

“Zues liked to sow his seed all the time,” he pointed out.

“I thought he was a myth,” I said offhanded. But I knew enough by then to realized every myth was based on something real.

And sometimes what was real liked it that way.

“Hundreds of semi-divine off spring populate the world,” said Hail. “It doesn’t happen so often as much. More risks now.”

I mulled it over in my head, trying to calculate the risks. Trying to determine what they might be. I shivered at what the imagination conjured.

“Her name was Cecelia,” he said. “I wrote a song about her.”

“Was it about her breaking your heart?”

He snorted.

“It was. I sold it to a pop group a few decades ago. You’ve heard it.”

“The devil in rock and roll music.”

“Pop,” he corrected. “Not rock. And yes, I’m into all the music.”

“What happened to Cecelia?”

He sighed, drained the rest of his raspberry wheat and spun the bottle around until Beth replaced it with another when he nodded.

“The same thing that happens to all mortals who truck with the Gods.”

“F, not T,” I said.

He gave off a sad sigh again.

“She died in childbirth.”

“Sorry.”

He held up the bottle to clink the glass of the necks and we sipped to the memory of a woman I never knew.

“And the girl?”

“Raised an orphan,” he shrugged. “There were grandparents and an aunt. I didn’t ask for her family tree.”

Not the best way to be raised, but this from a guy who spent an entire childhood in a monastic orphanage.

I would have given anything for grandparents.

Maybe that’s the price of magic. One gets a gift of creation, a tap into one of the essential elements that formed the universe and the sacrifice is solitude.

“Decades?” I tried to steer the conversation back on track.

“I sent cards,” said Hail. “Money. She wanted for nothing.”

“Did she know you?”

“Know me as this? No. But I visited in the guise of a kind stranger. I was the volleyball coach her sophomore year in high school.”

“What happened?”

“They fired me. My teaching methods were a bit outdated for modern society.”

“Did they win though?”

He grinned.

“They won.”

“Now?”

“I don’t know how they are doing now, Marshal.”

“I meant the girl.”

“College.”

I drained the last of my beer and waved Beth off when she asked about another without speaking to me. It was in the way her eyes flicked from the bottle to mine and back again.

She asked it best when she said nothing at all.

“Where was college?”

Hail gave me a look like I was stupid.

“Here.”

I took a deep breath.

“You sent your daughter to college in Memphis.”

“Technically, she had a full ride scholarship.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose trying to fight off the beginning of a headache.

“Here?”

Hail shook his head and snorted out a mirthless laugh.

“I thought she would be safe. Your proximity to the city.”

“I’m not here much.”

“Enough,” he finished another bottle and followed my lead on being done.

“Who knew?”

Ideally, he would have a list of three suspects we could narrow down, grab a clue and finish it off by finding her before the sun went down.

And while I was wishing, I wanted a pony.

Five shooters in an ambush just when I summoned the devil after he called me and an ancient demon magic trying to mask it all. It made my head hurt even more.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said.

Hail slipped off the stool and started walking toward the door.

“You have no idea.”

I pulled a couple of twenties out of my pocket and dropped them on the bar, gave Beth a quick wave and followed him out into the sun.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

“The devil had a one night stand and now we’re rescuing her,” Elvis muttered from my shoulder.

“Ever heard of something like this before?”

I wished I could talk to Elvis with just my thoughts, but we hadn’t progressed that far yet. I had to rely on the old voicebox to communicate to my ghost tag-a-long, which meant much of what we said did not stay private.

Correction. Much of what I said.

There were few people who could “hear” Elvis.

Hail wasn’t one of them.

He thought I was speaking to him.

“Something like what?”

“Kidnapping the devil’s daughter?”

Might as well get an answer from both.

Hail shook his head at the same time Elvis answered.

“Nope.”

It could get confusing quick. I’m glad I joked about ADD because keeping track of two conversations wasn’t easy.

“It’s not a smart person to take on a demon in my weight class,” said Hail.

He meant an Elder, one of the first. Technically, they didn’t think about themselves that way, he had told me once.

They considered themselves THEM and everything that happened after NOT THEM. A real black and white way to look at the evolution of man from however we started through nomadic wanderers all the way up to what we were now.

I wouldn’t quite call us advanced.

They mirrored our nature at least. Or perhaps we mirrored theirs.

Points where our world touched on the demon realm may have allowed their emotions to mix with ours or influence us. I don’t think it was vice versa.

That made me feel good about man’s inherent nature, up to a point.

But we adopted the violent mix of emotions, anger, pettiness, and more. Line up the seven deadly sins and you could trace their origin pre-mankind to demons. Same thing with the Ten Commandments, given out to try and control the beastlier side of man’s nature.

What made it worse were the levels of demons.

Hail was a heavyweight.

It went all the way down to featherweight and even lower. Gremlins for example were impish nature demons prone to destruction.

Someone dumb enough to steal from an Elder demon and lay down some heavy magic had a very high opinion of themselves.

Or major mojo to back it up.

“What did she study?”

I tried a different track.

“How the hell would I know that?” Hail snapped as we marched along the sidewalk, taking advantage of the shade offered by the buildings on this side.

I noticed he walked us in the direction of the college campus but didn’t point it out.

“You’re her dad,” I took a guess. “Isn’t that what parents do?”

He glared at me for a moment and scowled hard enough to give himself a headache.

“I fathered the child,” he told me. “I provided money. But I was not involved.”

“Then why take her?” I asked. “Who knew she was your kid?”

He stopped in a slant of burning sunlight that cut between two buildings like glowing fire. I could feel my skin start to sizzle and ignored it by the look on his face.

Hail looked dumbfounded.

“No one,” he said and turned to face me. “No one knew.”

I shook my head and grabbed his sleeve to pull him into the shadow of the building two feet away. My cooking brain would have sent out a cry of relief, but it would have sounded gargled in all the sweat dripping off my forehead.

“It has to be about you,” I said. “Ambush, remember. Half an hour ago.”

He waved it off like it didn’t mean anything and resumed walking toward campus.

 

Rhodes College is in the middle of Memphis, what the city founders referred to as Mid-Town. Okay, they weren't exactly the founders, but city designers and planners from the mid-fifties when the city by the river expanded toward the east.

I've been to a dozen towns with neighborhoods referred to as Mid-Town, though by the time I made it, or now, the middle of town shifted dozens of miles away.

It made me wonder if there was a fear of building up.

Skyscrapers in the middle of the country might be tornado magnets, or it might be a holdover from a hundred years ago, when settlers and pioneers crossed over into points west of the Appalachian mountains and marvelled at the wide open spaces.

You can still feel that today if you pass Oklahoma and Dallas heading toward the Pacific. Vast swathes of nothing but open ground where it seems like the only thing between you and the end of the world at the Artic Circle are three strands of barbed wire fence and  a herd of longhorns.

It changes again when you cross the Rockies and start sliding toward the Ocean. More skyscrapers pop up, despite increased earthquake and volcanoe activity along the rim of the US.

In the middle though, skyscrapers exist, but are rare. A couple hundred feet up and folks start looking to expand out instead of skyward.

Rhodes College was a scattered collection of stone buildings blended with more modern construction just north of the zoo.

It wasn't far from downtown, just three or so miles, but I led Hail to my old Ford Truck all the same. Walking in this heat might only take forty five minutes, but we wouldn't be much more than puddles when we arrived.

I wouldn't be at least.

Hail was used to the heat. He never got out of the kitchen.

My truck was parked in a lot, both windows rolled down. It looked like a classic antique, which I suppose it was since it was the first thing I bought when I returned to the states after the Demon War.

It had see wear, tear and a couple of magical attacks and kept on going. There were two truck camps in the South, clearly divided on which of the two great American automakers sent a better product off the assembly line. I didn't care, so long as the truck started, and got me from point A to B, but I never had to fix or repair daily.

"Trusting," Hail said indicating the windows.

"Try for the radio," I told him.

He reached for the opening and drew back his hand with a grunt as a spark of electricity danced on the tips of his fingers.

"Nice ward."

"It works," I waved a hand and washed it away.

We climbed in the bench seat cab and Hail snorted a derisive laugh.

"Who would want that damn radio anyway?"

It was original to the truck, as was everything else. I'm not a sucker for maintenance, but it was garage kept and had regular appointments with a shade tree mechanic who loved it more than I did.

I cranked the rumbling engine and dropped it in gear. We rolled over to Parkway and headed toward campus.

I tried to hide the grin with one hand.

"What's so funny?" Hail stared at the road.

"You had to be there," I said.

I didn't use the radio. Ever. It was more fun to listen to Elvis surf as he was tugged along the tether behind me.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

I parked the truck under a sign that told us we had a two hour limit. I didn’t think we’d need that long.

Hail stepped out and stared at the dormitory building across the street. Some of the more modern structures were new dorms, but this one was modified from one of the oldest buildings on campus.

The square block stone looked utilitarian and solid, bathed in hot sunlight. The side facing the street had rows of old windows that looked out over the roadway, but we could see a quad on the far side of the building, manicured gardens basting.

“Do you know which room was hers?”

Hail nodded and didn’t speak. I couldn’t tell if the devil had tears in his eyes or a lump in his throat, or both, but he was acting more solemn than usual.

“Tell me about this place,” I said over my shoulder.

Hail shook his head and took off across the street instead.

That’s okay.

My question wasn’t for him anyway.

“Founded in 1848,” Elvis said as he bounced along behind me. “No known magical activity or affiliations. I can’t recall any major wizards from the institution, but there might be some minor talents that went through here.”

“Would she have talent?”

“The daughter of an Elder demon? Sure. How much would depend on her mother.”

Another question for Hail to answer.

It made me realize how close he was playing this to the vest, and why he was holding on to so many details.

Did he truly not know?

Was he as in the dark as he claimed to be?

Part of my job was to know people in my territory who worked with magic. I didn’t need to be best friends with them or anything, just keep a passing knowledge of what’s going on and who was doing it.

I was the Marshal of the East, responsible for the territory that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. But my counterpart across the rio got himself killed and left me his hat, boots and spurs.

If he had a six gun, I would have taken that too.

I covered ocean to ocean and border to border in North America while we waited on a replacement to be selected. We being the eleven other Marshals who worked other parts of the world. Two per continent, all covering the bad guys working bad juju.

It made sense that I could overlook a half demon child trying to decide on a college major in a town I barely got to call home anymore.

Or maybe that was me making an excuse.

I found other new witches blossoming with power, new wizards coming into their own. I knew their names, where they were at least, if not their faces.

Why was it a halfling would go unnoticed?

I shook my head.

There was a fog of confusion, but this time, it had nothing to do with a spell. Oh there was enough magic afoot to make me think about breaking out into full Battle Mage mode and wreaking havoc like Rambo on crack.

Part of it was rage.

Someone was hiding her from me. Or had hidden her from me.

And that made me wonder why?

I glared at the back of Hail’s head. Was he behind it? He claimed to be uninvolved but let me tell you something about demons.

They lied.

All the time. Like water flowing downhill, a lie was just as easy to pass their lips as any word of truth.

An Elder demon would have no trouble spinning tales to a mortal.

My human nature wanted to trust him. We had worked together before. I’d even saved his life, or what passed for life when you’re immortal.

I didn’t like to think he would repay that debt with a varnished truth or secrets.

Hail turned the corner and froze.

I almost bumped into the back of him.

“Shit,” he muttered.

I wondered why the administration would put a brick wall in the middle of a sidewalk.

Then it hit me.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

It wasn’t me screaming as I sailed twelve feet off the ground for the hundred yards across the manicured quad.

I blame Elvis for that.

He shut up when we landed though. The hard ground came up fast and pounded against my back, scraping away a few layers of skin and mixing dirt in with the blood as I slid and rolled.

I watched Hail twist and turn through the sky over me, going even further.

He had the temerity to land on his feet and drop to one knee, hand on the ground in a classic super hero fighting pose.

Bastard.

I leaned up and blinked at the wall.

“Camo-beast,” I slurred with a raw throat, trying to shake the cobwebs out of my head.

“Chamelo-beast, technically,” Elvis corrected.

His voice sounded the same. Maybe it wasn’t him screaming.

“Nobody likes a know it all,” I shoved up off the ground.

“Everyone must love you then.”

Whatever it was, it adopted the color of the building behind it. No big deal since it was one story tall and at least that wide. I couldn’t make out a face, or features, except a gaping maw of a black hole that might have been a mouth.

It opened, and I expected a roar, but no sound came out.

I grunted, aimed and fired.

An invisible sphere of force punched a hole through it’s chest the size of a basketball.

I followed up with two more where I thought the thing’s head might be.

It teetered.

It tottered.

It crashed forward into the gardens crushing purple and pink flowers in a miniature vortex of wind and soil. Then it popped with an exaggerate slurp and covered everything with goo.

Hail stood next to me and brushed off his slacks. They weren’t even dirty at the knee that touched the ground.

“You don’t see that every day,” he said in wonder.

“No,” I agreed. “In fact, you don’t see that never. Not on this campus. Not in the entire history of it.”

I turned on him.

“Do you want to tell me why a guardian Chamelo-beast was in front of your daughter’s dorm?”

“Do you think I had something to do with that?” he waved a hand toward the dripping goo remnants.

“Demon is and demon does,” I growled.

He crunched his eyebrows together.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re keeping secrets from me Hail. I don’t like it.”

He raised both hands and took a step back.

“I’ve told you all that’s pertinent to helping me, Marshal. I assure you.”

“Yeah? Then what was that?”

“That was…unexpected.”

He turned and stalked toward the door the demon had been guarding.

“Can you believe this?” I hurried after him.

“I’ve seen a lot,” Elvis bobbed in my wake. “But no, I don’t believe him.”

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

A small part of my brain felt a little guilty strolling into a girl's dormitory. I mean, I was almost a hundred years old, but I grew up in a time when men just didn't do that. Women's spaces were safe spaces and boys weren't allowed.

A grin tickled the corner of my cheek. I wasn't in a He-Man Women Haters Club, but the monastery orphanage where I spent my formative years kept the sexes clearly divided.

Rhodes wasn't hung up on things like gender issues, it seemed. Even in the South.

The dorm was co-ed, or super progressive. We passed by a tall kid wearing a towel around his waist and shower shoes on his feet. He watched the handsome devil with interest, eyes hardly stopping on me in acknowledgement.

I opened up the senses to check our surroundings. A wall demon blocking the front door meant something was going on inside. I wasn't sure what it had to do with the devil's daughter, but maybe there was more magic around that could be traced.

There was.

Hail led us up a wide starecase that curled into a broad hallway, rooms on both side. There was a fog, a mistical magic haze that blanketed the hall. It all seemed to eminate from the crack in the bottom of one of the doors.

"See that?"

"How could I not?" I answered. "Any chance that could be steam from the kid's shower?"

"What do you think?"

He stopped in front of the door and held out a hand. Demons don't have magic the way humans use it. For us, it's like a tool. For them, it's just like breathing.

Angels, Demons, creatures of Fae. They all had it, all a part of who they were.

I had a theory that they operated on a different quantum level than our reality, but so far, the science hadn't caught up to it yet.

Wizards can manipulate physics with will power, training, thought and ritual.

Demons just do it.

Guess they got that from Nike. Or maybe the ad exec traded his soul to them to get it.

Wisps of smoke tingled off the end of his long fingers and curled toward the ceiling. The haze drifting from under the door twirled and coalesced toward his palm and continued up.

The hardest part of any operation is planning. It's tough to make a plan if you don't know what's about to happen. Too much like a map to nowhere, or a map to anywhere.

If anywhere isn't where you need to be, the map is worthless.

That's why so many strategists recommend multiple plans. Plan A. Plan B. All the way down to Plan Z.

The thing about all that planning is how easy it is for it to go off the rails.

Take checking out a girl's dorm to solve the mystery of her disappearance for example.

Sounds simple enough.

Drive through town.

Walk to her door.

Knock.

Except there was a giant demon blocking the sidewalk to her dorm. A guardian or an ambush.

Inside, it wasn't a girl's dorm. It was co-ed. Which meant different types of life energy.

And at the door, we couldn't knock.

Powerful magic was leaking under the bottom of the frame and there were wards across the threshold that made what was happening inside impossible to sense.

Too many factors that made me want to make a plan for Happy Hour. Someplace cold and quiet.

And with less factors that made me run through plans B through Z too fast.

Hail had his hand about an inch off the door, a scowl on his face harsh enough to let me know it didn't feel good.

If a demon magical heavyweight couldn't push past a ward, what did I think little old me could do?

"You dudes alright?"

We both turned our heads to regard the kid in the towel. It must have looked funny. Or scary.

"Are you looking for Haven?"

I snorted.

"You named your kid Haven?"

"So?"

"So? Sounds a lot like Heaven."

"Your point?"

I shook my head.

"No point. I think a head doctor would have a field day with it."

He smirked.

"I think a head doctor would have a lot of fun with me."

I don't think he meant to, but the tone of his voice made me shiver. Made towel boy shiver too. He gripped the cloth tighter around his waist.

"I don't think she's here, dude," he cleared his throat. "You're her dad?"

Hail nodded.

Towel boy reached forward and rapped three beats against the wooden door with his bony knuckles.

"I haven't seen her in a couple of days," he informed us as he knocked again. "I don't think she's here."

He grabbed the handle and twisted.

It was unlocked.

"That's weird," he said. "We tell all the residents to keep their doors locked if they're not in the room."

The door silently opened in.

"Haven?" Hail called over the threshold.

The room was empty.

And it was a mess.

Not to mortal eyes. All Towel boy saw was a well kept room, twin sized beds on each brick wall, a long shared desk between them, covered with books, a coffee pot and microwave.

"See?" said Towel Boy.

I did see.

So did Hail.

There was chaos in the enclosed space. Different sigils and runes were painted on the wall in invisible ink, the floor was covered with so many symbols of magic and holding that it was difficult to make out the parquet flooring.

"You can wait in the lobby, if you want," the kid in the towel pulled the door closed. "I can't let you stay in there."

Hail nodded and we turned toward the stairs.

"Thank you for your assistance," Hail said.

"Demon!" screeched a frail looking squarecrow in goth clothes at the top of the stairwell.

She held out a hand and sent a wall of power up the hall.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

We were too exposed.

The wards on the unlocked door meant we couldn't duck into the room.

And a mortal non-magic user was standing in front of me, witness to what was about to happen.

The squarecrow with stringy blond hair had broken one of the laws and it was my job to stop her and bring her in front of the Judge.

No magic in front of the non-magical. It was like the law of gravity to our world.

NMU's had numbers on their side. And pitchforks and fire and a very healthy fear of things they did not understand. A thousand years of the Church working to remove magic from the history of the world, hiding it, hunting it down to squash it and making sure it was firmly in the realm of make believe meant people didn't react well when they learned magic was real.

And some people could do it.

Towel Boy spun around to see who screamed.

The edge of the power she sent our way caught his towel and whipped it away in a flurry of flapping edges.

Guess I'd have to come up with another name. No Towel Boy might work.

The goth girl howled again and raised both hands beside her head, getting ready to add more power to the next thrust.

That told me she was a new user.

Anyone with experience doesn't have to add the dramatics to the casting.

Take Hail.

He didn't say a word.

Didn't bat an eye despite the gale force wind that howled down the hallway. Didn't even seem to care that No Towel Boy was dangling in the wind right beside him.

He just raised an eyebrow.

Goth girl froze halfway through the pitch and made a gagging sound.

She wasn't gagging.

She was choking.

"Hail," I warned him and stalked down the corridor toward the girl.

"What the hell dude?" No Towel Boy scuttled in the other direction to retrieve his towel and moniker.

I had to hand it to the kid. He didn't seem that embarrassed.

By the time I reached her, Hail had stopped doing whatever it was he was doing. There were red marks around her throat like a noose had rubbed the skin raw, but no rope. All with his mind.

Funny he didn't go for her wrists, or knock her against a wall.

Straight for the kill shot.

I filed it away for something we needed to talk about.

Then I did go for her wrists. Invisible manacles yanked her hands down to her waist and locked them to her sides.

She gurgled up a protest but I twirled a finger and lifted her closer to my face.

"Not a word," I growled.

I didn't really need to use the finger, but I wanted her to see it. Wanted her to know I knew a thing or two about the forces she was playing with.

Towel Boy stomped down the hall, covered again.

"Damn it Melinda," he grumbled. "These guys are looking for Haven. You seen her?"

Her green eyes flicked to mine and she shook her head.

"Yeah? Well they were going to wait downstairs, but since you're here, maybe they can wait for her in your room?"

Her eyes flitted from my face to Hail's, to the boy in the towel and back again.

"Invite us in," I said and reached down to brush back the side of my leather bomber jacket.

She saw the silver star clipped to the belt and gurggled again.

"Marshal?" she choked out.

"We just have a few questions," I told her.

I didn't mean for it to look like a perp walk as I escorted her to the dorm room.

But it did.

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I'll invite you in," she said at the entrance to her dorm room. I let one hand free so she could work the doorknob. "But not the demon."

"He's with me," I said.

She glanced over my shoulder.

"He's the devil," she hissed under her breath.

"The devil I know."

I tapped the silver star again with the tip of my fingernail. The ringing sound echoed through the corridor, much louder than should be normal.

Melinda lunged for her room as the door opened.

It was a good plan.

If she could get over the threshold without inviting us, we would be stuck out in the hall while she was safe inside.

I mean, we could go in, but our magic would be stripped at the door.

Correction.

My magic would be stripped. I wasn't sure exactly what would happen to Hail's. I think he had to obey the same rules and laws of magic mine followed.

I'd never tested it though.

Maybe he just stayed in the hallway because he didn't want me to feel bad.

Melinda froze, one foot in the room, one in the hallway.

I could see the muscles in her arm straining as she fought against an invisible force that held her in place.  The other arm was still stuck to the side of her body.

"That you?"

Hail shrugged.

"Nice work."

He bowed his head in acknowledgement.

"Doesn't get us in the room," he said.

"Doesn't keep us out either.

The air around him shifted and Melinda began to ease back into the hallway. The tips of her sneakers squeaked on the industrial linoleum on the floor.

Hail moved her against the wall.

"Let's try this again," he said.

Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

"Great," I told him. "You made a little girl cry."

"If I let him in," she said through gritted teeth. "He can come back anytime he likes."

"I've made a lot of girls cry," Hail said with a sad wistful note to his voice.

"Tears of regret versus tears of fear," I told him. "This kid is terrified of you."

He nodded.

"She should be."

I blinked.

He was right.

I mean, the kid was a young magic user in Memphis. Probably didn't have too much power to worry about attracting the wrong kind of attention. Sure, she'd have to avoid vampires, which were drawn to magic, and stay on the level so she didn't get sideways of me.

But for the most part, she could go through life and things would just be a little bit easier for her. Life, love, marriage, job.

All the things that happened to normal people would line up for her, because that's just how magic worked most of the time.

Not everyone had the kind of power that the devil would respect.

I did.

I had the kind of power a lot of people and non-people respected. It came with the badge and a lot of scars. I freaking earned it.

It just never crossed my mind to think she should be scared of Hail though. He was with me.

A bunch of things clicked into place and I wanted to bounce my palm off my forehead. Sure she was scared.

I was in the company of the devil and magic users only saw the Marshal when he was there to haul them in.

"What did you do?" I asked and drilled her with the stink eye.

Stink eye is an art form.

Part scowl, part squint, mix in a snarling frown and don't blink.

Cops across the world work to perfect it.

Criminals around the globe learn to keep still under it. Squirming could be construed as a sign of guilt.

Melinda squirmed.

The fear tears were real, and not just for the demon on my shoulder watching her with a little stink eye of his own.

Melinda had done something, and now the Law was here.

Capital L.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This time she did invite us in. Hail stood by the door, keeping his distance. I paced.

"You do this?"

Melinda slumped in the chair beside her bed, one leg tucked up so she could rest her chin against her knee. She looked small, and vulnerable, and if the runes were any indicator, it was all an act.

She shrugged.

"Most of them."

"Who did the rest?"

"People?"

Every answer was sullen. That's okay, I get that. I don't deal with teenagers so much so I wasn't used to it. By the time I'm called in, whoever it is has gone full warlock or sorcerer with a mix of megalomania thrown in.

Or they were the Sidhe, which was worse.

"Magic people," she added with a sneer.

Okay, maybe not worse than a bratty teenage witch, but it was close.

I wanted to sit on the bed and get on her level. Lock her eyes with mine and work a little hypnotic magical suggestion into the conversation.

But I didn't feel right sitting on a girl's bed in a girl's dorm. Sometimes I hated my upbringing.

It reared it's conservative head at the most inopportune times.

"You want to tell me a few names?"

She glanced at Hail from under thick mascara coated eyelashes.

"No."

"Do they know where Haven is?"

"No."

"Do you?"

Her eyes flicked over to Hail, then me and back toward the tips of her shoes.

"No."

"She's lying," said Hail.

I raised an eyebrow.

"It's sort of my thing."

I shoved some scruples aside along with a pillow and sat on the edge of the bed across from the young girl. Scarecrow as an apt description. She was all elbows and knees, thin skin stretched taut over tiny bones.

Her face was drawn and tired under a thick layer of make up. Black clothes covered a lot of her, the white toes of the black sneakers the only splash of color on her body. There were a lot of necklaces with pendants around her neck.

I could see a cross, a pentacle, an amethyst and more. One for every religion, I get.

A lot of college age magic kids go through that sort of growing phase. It made them feel world wise.

I had to skip that part.

When I was her age, I was ass deep in a Troll incursion during the Sidhe War.

"We're looking for Haven," I said to the girl. "This is her dad and he's worried about her."

"Father," Melinda corrected. "Her dad is a guy named Brian."

"You checked out Brian?" I asked over my shoulder.

"He's a good man," Hail said. "As far as I can tell good from bad."

"Alright, I'm not up on the whole step-dad daddy issues scenario. If it's not important, let's skip it.

"It wasn't him," said Hail. "But I am interested in what you're doing with this."

He pointed to a closet door that opened up at an unspoken command. A surge of power leaked out on the floor, like the hum of an electric transformer. It filled the air and made the hair on my neck stand up.

I called up a shield spell, held it ready.

The symbol was that powerful.

What it represented was worse.

"Uh-oh," said Elvis.

Melinda gulped and pulled her other knee up, hiding her head in her arms as she tried to disappear in a tiny ball of a person.

"I didn't do that," she whispered.

Hail looked at me.

"We're in trouble."

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Great. Wasn't the first time I'd been in trouble and didn't have a clue as to what was happening.

"That's why I get paid the big bucks," I said with a confidence I didn't feel.

"Marshal?"

"Yeah?"

"He's right."

"Okay."

"No, I mean we've got this symbol in the histories. No one has touched it in a long time because most of the records in the rest of the world were destroyed."

I stared at the sigil on the closet door. It looked like the symbol for Anarchy with a Roman numeral tossed in, plus a couple of lightning bolts.

It was drawn with a paint brush, which ruined the whole graffiti aspect of it, but the lines were crisp and tight. That kind of precision would be needed to channel some power.

Even as I studied the marking, wisps of smoke curled off and drifted toward the door.

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know," all three answered at the same time.

"That helps."

I took a few steps to the right to see if the angle would change my perspective. No flash of insight gave me a clue.

"Harold did it?"

"Who is Harold?" Hail and I asked at the same time.

"Jinx," said the devil. "You owe me a Coke."

I waved him off with an impatient gesture that some cultures considered rude.

"Harold?" I prompted Melinda.

She picked at a spot on her arm, fingernails tracing little red scratches into the thin white skin.

"Harold is her boyfriend," she said in a sullen voice.

I raised an eyebrow at Hail.

"I didn't know," he shrugged at my unasked question.

"If Harold did that," Elvis said. "We might be in trouble."

That was okay. Trouble I could handle. Especially if I had some sort of idea where it came from. What bothered me was I had a Watcher and an Elder Demon who didn't know what the symbol represented.

Which meant it was either new, or a combination of symbols, and if that was the case, we didn't know what kind of power it would unleash. Or what it was supposed to do.

There were Sappers in the war, men who had the unpleasant job of sweeping for bombs. These men walked into minefields, sweeping the ground with metal detectors.

They would listen for the beep that indicated a mine buried in the soil, then dig it up and disarm it. Sometimes the detector would miss the mine and a Sapper would hear a distinctive clink when they stepped on it.

If they heard it, they had to freeze and either wait for help to dig up the bomb or try it themselves. The killed in action rate among sappers was the highest in the army.

Some people called them brave. Most thought they were stupid.

I felt like that as I stared at the symbol. Like a sapper standing on a land mine.

"Where is Harold?" I asked, distracted. I let my eyes lock onto the symbol, let the edges go soft and fuzzy as I tried to discern what it meant.

I could hear and feel the small girl shrug even though she didn't say anything.

"I can mind meld her," said Hail.

He held out a hand ready to grab her skull in his palm.

"Wait," I told him.

We would do that, but only as a last resort.

A meld was a sort of mind magic. People have five senses, and the brain takes in thousands of bits of information each second. The brain is trained to process and store it all, but we're only aware of less than five percent of what's happening at any given moment.

Think about it.

I was standing in the room, feet on the floor. I could feel the pressure on the soles of my boots, the way the laces snugged the leather against my skin. I had to balance in those boots while looking at a wall, my eyes seeing the symbol and all the other background magic going on around it, plus the real life stuff that littered the beds, the walls, the shelves.

I could smell the fear from the girl, Hail's sulpher sweet scent, my own smell of leather and Kevlar mesh tee shirt. The taste of mint on my tongue, a holdover from the earlier beer.

I could hear the girl breathing, nothing from Hail, nothing from Elvis, and the murmur of voices in the hallway, plus a television set turned to a sitcom and the faint drumbeat of a rock song.

That's just what I was processing. There were a thousand other things happening that my brain just discarded as unnecessary at the moment.

A mind meld can read all the other things the brain takes in. If Melinda had overheard Harold and Haven discussing a location or plans, he could pull it from her mind.

For him, it would be like reading a book of pictures.

For her, it would feel like a violation.

Mind magic is tricky like that. The brain does not like it when other people monkey around in there.

I wanted Hail to hold off and save it as a last resort so we wouldn't put the poor girl through it.

I half turned my head in the fuzzy vision state and saw the separation. A line as wide as a hair bisected the symbol, cutting the sigil into two entities.

"There," I pointed. "It's two pieces."

"Ah," Hail smirked. "Clever."

"And advanced," said Elvis. "This is very powerful magic."

I nodded.

"Harold's got skill," I said. "And he's innovative. You know what that means."

"Trouble."

I shook my head.

"Why is it always trouble?"

 

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