Her face paled and the other witch, the one he didn’t have a name for, covered her mouth with her hand as if she was stopping herself from saying something.
“You are mistaken, little demon,” Saphora growled. “There have been no demons in this house for quite some time.”
Crescious gritted his sharp teeth at the “little demon” remark. This witch was no lord of the underworld. She was not an upper-level demon or demi-lord. She was a measly human. One day her body would rot in the ground, and her soul would burn in hell. “This little demon can deliver you to Osiris on a silver platter, little girl,” he bit out, his voice deepening into a growl. And to him, she was a little girl. She was but a child to his centuries upon centuries of existence. His knowledge and experience were so far beyond hers she couldn’t begin to comprehend it.
“You are going to tell me what I want to know, and you are going to do it quickly, or I will burn this house to the ground with every witch in it,” Crescious said.
Saphora’s eyes remained on him, though the other witch glanced back and forth between him and her high priestess as though waiting for some kind of cue. Saphora seemed to come to a decision, resigning herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get away unscathed from this situation. “To what spell are you referring, demon?” she asked.
“The one that keeps the lord of the underworld from accessing certain places within his domain,” Crescious explained.
“That’s a tricky one to get around,” she said with a smirk.
“But you know how,” Crescious said and it wasn’t a question.
“I do,” she agreed. Saphora walked over to a cabinet with two doors and a lock on the front. She pulled a key out of her robe’s pocket and unlocked the doors, opening them just wide enough to reach in and grab something. When her hand came out, Crescious saw that she had a book, much like the one in Dolion’s chambers.
She re-locked the cabinet, walked over to a small podium, and placed the book upon it. Saphora flipped through the pages, completely ignoring him and the other witch. Her eyes rapidly scanned each page, and her lips grew tighter across her face. Crescious, and his curious nature, wanted to know what was in those pages. He wished he could devour the knowledge in them and learn to harness the power the witches possessed.
They were obviously more powerful than Osiris, which meant that, perhaps, he could free himself from Osiris’s control. He leaned toward the book, practically salivating at the idea of having such power. Then the book suddenly snapped closed, and the swirling thoughts disappeared. Crescious shook his head as if needing to clear it from a fog. His stomach clenched as he realized the ideas he’d been having.
Horror rose up inside of him. He’d been thinking he could become so powerful that he could get away from his lord. Was he insane? He nodded. Probably. But not enough that he would betray Osiris. Why had he envisioned those things?
“The book is very powerful,” Saphora said as if she could read the thoughts in his mind simply by looking at his face. “It takes a very strong person to resist the power it offers. Power gained by using the spells within its pages.”
“You speak as if it is sentient,” Crescious said.
“The blood of many witches is contained within the pages of that book, so, in some ways, it is. Their power lives on through it and in the spells it contains.”
“Did you find the spell I want?”
“I did.” She paused as she stepped around the podium and looked down her nose at him. “But I have a price. Nothing in this world is free.”
Crescious snorted. Why was he not surprised? It was what he would have done if someone had come to him asking for a favor. Never give something for nothing. It was practically the demon golden rule.
“And that is?”
“Your name,” she said, with a small smile that made him think of a slippery serpent.
He shuddered. Having a demon’s name gave a person power over the demon. It meant that they could be summoned by the one who held the name. There was no way he could allow her that. Osiris would never stand for it. Crescious might be a peon, but he was the lord of the underworld’s peon, not some filthy human’s.