Karen’s face had gone white. “The whole house will burn, we’ve got to get the kids out of here—”
“Try salt water, lots of it. All of you,” the Warlock said.
We did as he suggested, and after a couple of false starts we were able to summon enough ocean water to douse the unholy fire.
The guest room lay in utter ruins; what had not burned was a sodden, stinking mess. Nobody said anything for a long time.
“Well.” The Warlock broke the silence. “I wish Ginger was here to see this.”
“Why?” Mother Karen asked.
“Because I think this illustrates exactly why ancient tribes came to fear the female freak-on.”
chapter
three
Youthful Indiscretions
I stood in the backyard wearing what I’d already come to think of as the Itchy Plaid Wool Skirt of Abject Shame. An olive-drab sleeping roll and a pillow were tucked under my good arm. My left hand burned nakedly in the night air. The ectoplasmic emission had ripped open the seams on my glove, and at the moment Mother Karen and the Warlock were too busy with the guest room to fix it.
“Are they able to repair the damage to the house?” Pal stilted toward me on his rangy legs.
I nodded and tossed the sleeping bag and pillow onto the picnic table. “But it looks like I’m bunking with you tonight, out here where I’m less of a fire hazard.”
He blinked at me. “But surely you and Cooper have enough self-control to avoid further carnal—”
“Wet dreams.”
“Ah. Yes. Those.”
“And probably any old nightmare would do it, too.” I cleared my throat. “The others thought that you should stay up to watch me and wake me up if it looks like I’m having a bad dream. I mean, if you’re up for that. I … I guess you’re not really my familiar anymore, are you? So you’re free to do what you want, but we’d all really appreciate it if you kept me from burning anything else down.”
“Of course. I don’t mind, and keeping Mother Karen’s home safe certainly seems like a worthy cause.”
I bit my lip. “What’s going to happen to you now? It seems like maybe I’m not in as much trouble as I thought, but I don’t know what kind of pull Riviera Jordan has with your jailers.”
Pal scratched his shaggy thorax thoughtfully with one of his middle legs. “Honestly, I have no idea what will happen. I managed to break the binding spells my overseers placed on me, so I suppose the next logical thing for them would be to pursue me directly and take me back into custody. But so far there’s been no sign they’ve implemented that plan. Even if I am exonerated for my actions over the past week, I still have several decades left on my sentence.”
“So what did you do to get into trouble in the first place?”
Pal’s face was still unreadable, but his voice sounded pained. “I was very young, and had an unfortunate interest in diabology, and some nefarious individuals discovered my interest and naïveté, and, well …”
I was dying to know what trouble Pal could’ve gotten into. “Well, what?”
“One thing led to another, and they convinced me to help them bring a manifestation of the ancient god you may know as Abraxas into the largest city of my home planet.”
In the wake of all the chaos, my memory wasn’t what it should have been. “Abraxas … I hate to sound dumb, but I can only remember that’s the name of an old Santana album Cooper’s got in his vinyl collection.”
Pal blinked at me. “The entity is also known as Abrasax. Does the title ‘Demon of the Great Year’ help you?”
My brain pinged on some of my Egyptian studies. “Head of a rooster, snakes for legs, carries a whip and shield?”
“That’s one described manifestation, yes. Abraxas has many recorded forms.”
“But it’s not really a demon, right? I mean, that’s just mundane confusion over the whole demon-versus-devil-versus-god situation, right?”
“Indeed. Abraxas is no mere demon,” Pal replied.
Demons are basically just supernatural servants. Gods, devils, and powerful Talents can create them, sometimes by accident, but usually intentionally. They’re often created from pieces of broken souls, although some golem demons don’t have any soul elements at all (and consequently have all the personality of your average vacuum cleaner). As a group, demons are neither good nor evil, unlike devils, which are typically selfish schemers at best and sadists of the nastiest nature at worst. Devils poke and prod mortals into action and feed off the resulting psychic energies;