met mine with an odd intensity. Being female, I could hold and wield more line energy than him—but not with my aura compromised. And he’d know that.
“So”—I eyed my nearby mirror, wondering if I should call Al—“how long have you been, ah, out of circulation?”
“Long enough that nothing is familiar.” His eyes followed mine to my mirror, then narrowed in threat. “I’m leaving. If you tell them about me, I will kill you.”
“Yeah, like we haven’t heard that before,” Jenks taunted.
“Hey, wait!” I exclaimed, but Hodin was gone in a silver swirl of unfocused magic. Bis’s tail tightened to maintain his balance, and I put a hand to him. He never woke up.
“He took your cookie,” Jenks said, and my lips parted when I realized Jenks was right. At least he hadn’t taken my mirror, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t have done him any good. I didn’t think he was in the collective. “Who was that guy?” Jenks added as he took off, my earring swinging as he angled to the honey pot that Nina left out for him. She thought drunk pixies were a hoot.
“I have no idea.” I scuffed a break in the salt circle, and frowning, I tucked my new mirror in my purse beside my splat gun. My ceremonial knife went in beside them. I didn’t like that Hodin had been spying on me for a self-confessed three weeks and all I’d noticed was a crow outside my church. My nose wrinkled at the lingering scent of charred evergreen, evidence of his demon magic. What has he been doing to smell like burnt amber?
“Jenks, you with me? I’m going to Junior’s before going out to the park,” I said, and the pixy swore and slammed the lid to the honey back down. “I need to talk to Dali. Now.”
CHAPTER
6
“Coffee up!” a bored, cultured, and familiar voice called into the sound of grunge music and light chatter as I walked into Junior’s. It was Dali, dressed in a green apron as he worked behind the counter, gracefully moving the middle-aged bulk he favored. A few patrons sat at the window tables, and a short line stretched before the cold shelves and again at the pickup window. It wasn’t busy, but there was a rise of excited voices and the click of cameras as I walked in with Jenks on my shoulder. Swell. That didn’t take long.
That Dali had chosen to work as a barista in downtown Cincinnati was only weird on the surface. He’d owned his own restaurant in the ever-after and was probably taking the time to learn not only what the population wanted, but how to work within the system before opening his own place. I’d talked to Mark about it last month, but the kid said he was good for business, and he felt better having a demon behind the counter when he could have a handful of them in front of it at any given moment. I’d made Mark promise to never buy a curse, but the temptation had to be there. Seeing me, the older demon brightened.
“Rachel. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,” he said as he poured juice into a cup under the ice grinder.
“You’re on my way to my next appointment,” I said, not wanting to bring up Trent.
Dali frowned, and a ripple of something coated me, making me shudder as he looked at me over his wire-rimmed, purely for-show glasses. “Your aura is too thin to be out of your spelling studio unaccompanied,” he said, his low voice audible even as he hit the button to crush the ice. Clearly a sound-dampening spell was in use. Point two for Mark to employ the demon.
“She’s not unaccompanied. She’s got me,” Jenks said, and the demon’s eyebrows rose.
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said as I settled into the back of the line. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to tell him about Hodin. Fish for information, yes—tell him a demon stuck in a hole for the last two thousand years had dropped from my ceiling . . . maybe.
Dali slid the iced fruit drink across the counter to the waiting patron before leaning to look to the back of the store. “Mark, I’m going on break!” he called, and the guy waiting in front of me grumbled. “He’ll have your drink up shortly,” Dali said, smiling to show his thick, blocky teeth, and the man went ashen.
“Rache, you want anything?” Jenks