Page 24 of Demon's Bluff

Ivy froze, and my eyes flicked up to her. As one, we shook our fists, ending with her going for paper, and me rock.Damn it back to the Turn.

“No, you won’t,” I said, and Jenks predictably bristled. “It’s too cold.” He rose up, wings rasping, and I tapped a line to make my hair float. “Jenks, it’s November. Don’t make me say that someone should be here to guard the church!” I shouted, and he backed down, his furtive gaze going to the top of the hall and Getty’s bright singing in the kitchen. He must have made up with her already.

“Good. We will wait until after sunset and Bis is awake.” Ivy settled deeper with a slice of pizza. “He’s gotten good at recognizance.”

Al cleared his throat. “And when they discover your book missing? What then?”

“I will laugh in their face and remind them she changed the deal, not me.” But I knew that wouldn’t stick. Not with the coven. Not if I snuck in and took it.

Thick fingers slow, Al set the magazine down and reached for that tiny vest pocket again. “Or you can take both and they will never know you have either of them,” he suggested.

“I only need a photo of Kisten’s curse,” I said, and Ivy went still.

Jenks snickered. “You saying you’re going to help Rachel? For nothing?”

“Oh, not nothing.” Al grinned a not-nice smile. “I will help her theftremain unnoticed for a time, but in return I want the book thatMadam Coven Leadertempted you with. The one in elven script that contains, as you say,Kisten’s curse.”

I bristled. “Why? So you can keep me from doing it?”

Al glanced at Ivy. “No. I have a suspicion that Newt wrote it, elven script withstanding. I want the entire book, not simply the curse.” He waved his hand. “Besides, a photo won’t do. There’s likely hidden text.”

I frowned. He was right. A picture would help, but Newt often put a key component under lemon juice, so to speak. “If I steal it, it’s my book,” I said, and he took a breath to protest. “I will, however, let you hold it in trust for me if you help me twist the curse to raise Kisten’s ghost.”

Ivy swallowed hard, listening to Jenks whisper something in her ear. Her hands clenched with a white-knuckled strength, and Al studied her carefully before making a slow, deliberate nod.

“Done.” Al scooted forward, his fingers dipping into that little pocket to set the flat, round stone with a hole in its center on the table with a loud click. Jenks went to investigate, and I leaned in, interested, when his dust brought a faint scratching of runes into bright relief. My reach for it hesitated, then became surer when Al flamboyantly gestured to have at it.

I picked it up. More runes were on the other side. I could feel it connecting to the ley lines through me, and I wondered what it did. It had a hole. Maybe I could see magical threats through it. “What does it do?”

Al’s gaze slid to Ivy and Jenks, the two of them as quiet and unobtrusive as he had been, now that the shoe was on the other foot. “Mmmm,” he hedged, clearly uncomfortable talking magic around them. “It overlays the image of one object or person onto another.”

“A doppelganger charm?” Jenks scoffed. “Rache knows how to do that.”

Al’s lip twitched and he took the stone from me. “It isnota doppelganger charm,” he said haughtily. “It is a transposition glamour. Like most glamours, it can be seen through with a deliberate scrutiny. It’s limited. You cannot disguise a cat as a teacup. But making one cat look like another, or turning a children’s book into a demon tome?” He gauged the stone’s weight in his hand. “That, it can do. And fast.”

“You’re saying I could overlay the image of another book onto the one with Kisten’s curse? She won’t know I took it.”

“Until she opens up the false one,” Al said. “The stone makes a connection between the curse and your visual cortex, enabling you to perform the transposition glamour as many times as you want as quickly as you can speak it. Right now the stone is sensitized to Newt, but I can link it to you.” He hesitated expectantly. “I’m curious. What do you propose to leave in its stead?”

A slow sigh sifted through me. I wouldn’t be stealing only my book back from the coven but also one of theirs. The book he wanted. A rude chuckle escaped me as I glanced at Ivy. “I think I know just the thing.”

Chapter

6

“You want to twist avisual-cortex curse where?” I dropped the book I wanted to leave at Elyse’s onto the small slate table in the sanctuary with a dullthwap. It was the vampire dating guide, and I thought it the perfect thumb in your face for when Elyse figured out I’d gotten my book and left a dud in its place.

“The pool table.” Al stood before it, his feet spaced wide as he dramatically pondered the table set in the corner of the sanctuary. My cue sat propped against a window frame, a cube of chalk on the sill. I didn’t play often, and not at all since Lee had cracked it. It was Kisten’s table, and it reminded me of him. It was also why I kept paying to get it fixed.

“Is this a problem?” Al drawled, elegant voice mocking.

“It’s cracked. The slate table on the porch is pretty big. It won’t take me maybe a half hour to get a fire going out there. Warm it up. Or we could bring the table in here.”

The demon spun, but the fast movement lacked his usual pizzazz without his customary long frock-coat tails. “It will take a good day for the stone to warm up and lose the moisture from being outside. No.” Al gestured at the pool table. “This is perfect. Crack and all.”

Peeved, I scuffed closer. I’d used the table to spell on before. The slate was from an ancient lake and it made for a very nice surface. That Al wanted to rip the felt off made me glad that Ivy had gone to borrow a carfor the evening. Apart from her memories and an urn of ashes, the table was all she had left of Kisten.

Al stared at the green felt as if it was an insult. “Your choice of a replacement book leaves much to be desired,” he intoned, and I quashed a flash of annoyance.

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