The Demon and the City - By Liz Williams Page 0,122

balconies of the Opera House. One of them laughed, and it sounded like dry leaves in a winter wind.

"What are you? Where am I?" Pin breathed, but no sound emerged. One of the circle reached out toward the lamp on the table and slipped her sharp fingers into the flame. When she withdrew them, Pin saw that they burned. She blew the flame toward him and instinctively he drew away. The fire streamed through the air and dispersed him. Then he was pulled down toward the circle, settling unsteadily into something that was hot and steaming and smelled of old blood. It was another body. Slowly, jerkily, Pin raised his hand. It was covered in a loose velvet sleeve. It had long, polished black claws.

"Ohhh," everyone said, in a collective sigh. "It's working." From somewhere inside the house, a clock began to strike the hour. Silently, Pin counted. It went on and on, and then at the stroke of thirteen, it stopped. Sunlight poured through the open window, but it felt like midnight. The demons looked at Pin and grinned.

They wanted him to answer questions. They asked him about people he had never heard of, places he had never visited, and Pin was utterly unable to help them.

"I don't know," he kept saying, mouthing the words with difficulty from his strange new throat.

"Tell us," they hissed. "Tell us about your city. What is happening there now?" Pin had no idea. He knew about his own small world of the Opera, and the fragments that fell into his uninterested ears at the occasional party, but apart from this he had very little knowledge of the city at large. Around him, the demon's body stretched and gasped. Pin was more interested in exploring the being that he currently possessed, but the others were looking at him with expectation. He racked his memory for details.

"It's been very hot," he said, whistling through the demon's teeth.

One of the circle got to his feet with an indignant fluttering of robes.

"What good is this? We haven't gone to all this trouble for a weather report. Send it back to wherever it came from."

"But it's only the second one we've ever reached," someone pleaded. The demon waved a dismissive hand.

"What good is it to go to all the trouble of holding a séance, to violate natural laws and face the fury of the kuei—if they ever find out, which lands forbid they ever will—only to summon up a being with all the wisdom of that—that tabletop! The first one could not take it and this one is an idiot. The whole thing's been a waste of time."

"Yes," Pin breathed. "All a terrible mistake! Send me back." He might plunge like a stone straight back to where he came from, but even the disquieting confines of the demon lounge were preferable to Hell itself, although he had to admit that it looked ordinary enough, apart from its inhabitants. The room was plain; the walls made of a substance that looked like waxed paper. Sunlight streamed over the windowsills, yet the demons cast no shadow. They were still watching him; their pointed faces anticipatory.

"Poor little spirit," one of them said. "Let's keep it for a bit. It might become more amusing."

Pin felt the stirrings of protest in the mind that he occupied. The demon who had spoken earlier snapped, "Do you have any idea of the risk we're running? This isn't a game! We have to find out what's happening on the mortal plane, to find out why the kuei are there; we have to seize our opportunity! If this thing knows nothing, then we must summon one who does . . . Send it back."

He plunged a taloned hand into the depths of the brazier, sending up a shower of bitter sparks. The eyes of his kindred glowed meteor-bright, and once again an unnatural chanting began. Pin felt himself squeezed and constricted and forced along the demon's fiery veins, racing down its twisted neural pathways. He battered behind its eyes, and it wailed and cried aloud in something that sounded remarkably like pain. The voice was female, he realized. He felt her head fall forward like a broken toy.

"It's not working!" the demon lord hissed. "Harder, harder!"

The diabolical mantras began again, and Pin was forced from one part of the demon's mind to another, but he could not break free. At last there was a terrible pause. A little, frightened voice said, "The kuei . . . I