Page 75 of Demon's Bluff

I thought of my dwindling cash, then motioned for our server to bring me another orange juice. “Both of you, stop it. Newt, I told you, she’s not my familiar. She’s here to learn stuff.”

“And get a stasis charm,” Elyse grumbled.

The demon arched her thin eyebrows. “I enjoy dealing with people who are foolish enough to treat me as an equal. I will tell you what you want to know, and then I will take Elyse, since you won’t give her.”

“Try it…” Elyse said, glowering.

“It’s for her own good,” Newt continued. “She needs her reset button pushed. A few hundred years to reassess where she sits in the world order. We can call it a loan. I’ll return her when she knows something. You are not going to survive whatever it is you are running from without a mirror to see yourself: what you are, what you were, what you will be.”

“For the third time, Elyse is not an option. I have a book—”

“Which is already mine.” Newt chuckled, eyeing me over her glasses as I’d seen Al do hundreds of times. “How about this? I will give you a hint, and if you can figure out what it is, the mirror is yours.”

My pulse leapt. I couldn’t lose, and so I nodded.

“Good.” Newt smiled, chilling me. “It will cost you nevertheless.”

“Ah, Rachel?” Elyse murmured as Newt leaned over the table and breathed on it. An eerie, icy mist coated the cheap Formica and rolled onto the floor, where it warmed and dissipated. Using a single finger, the demon drew a finger-squeaking circle on the table.

“The Atlanteans were said to have existed but for an instant of time before even the elves,” she said as she scribed a neat pentagram within the circle. “A failed trial of glory, of wisdom.” Glyphs of memory went at the points, one by one. “They might have been demons, or what demons came from. We don’t know, as it was long before my time. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. All that they knew was lost, though it existed. All that they were is gone, though it once was as obvious as the writing on this table.”

Silent, she watched her work fade in the heat of the room.

“Transient.” Newt touched her chin with the back of her finger in satisfaction. “A fleeting clarity vanished as if it never existed. And yet…” She leaned forward and breathed again, bringing the pentagram back to light for an even shorter moment. “Exist it did.”

Elyse frowned, her smooth brow furrowed. “Atlanteans were transient. Okay.”

But Newt wasn’t talking about a people. She was talking about the mirror. The mirror was named after the people. The mirror itself was transient. Something that comes and goes.Like the moon? The tide? A comet? A puddle of dark water?

Newt eyed me, making me feel not stupid but untutored, and where once it would have left me angry, it now only made me glad that there was more to learn.Thank you, Al.

“If you can find the mirror, you can have it,” Newt said.

Find it?I glanced at the pristine table. “How do you find something that is there and isn’t?” I said, and Newt smirked.

“That’s not my problem,” she said. “Now. As we agreed. Your familiar?”

The demon reached across me for Elyse.

“Stop!” My grip on the ley lines sharpened, but I didn’t pull anything off them. So far, Newt was being passive, and I didn’t want to change that. Sure enough, Newt felt the connection and drew away. “Elyse, maybe you should wait outside.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, looking young as she shirked away. “Soon as I’m out of your sight, she snags me.” Brow furrowed, she stared at Newt. “There are laws.”

“There are no laws but that might makes right.” Newt sipped her Bloody Mary. Hers probably had vodka in it.

Not to mention the man who would pen them, sponsor them, and lobby for them would, at the moment, like to see me dead.

Newt sighed as if tired. “Tulpas that haven’t been made, laws that don’t exist, age that hasn’t happened. You’re from the future. Boring. And there are laws?” Newt drummed her nails once on the table, right where she’d scribed the pentagram, invisible once again. “Human laws. Witch laws. I follow demon law. And only when it makes the game more fun.”

“Is this a challenge, Newt? Is this fun?” I said, letting a faint glow of nothing drip from my fingernails and puddle against the table. The Turn take it. She had given me a riddle.Time? Does time come and go?

Newt took a sip of her drink. “It could be.”

I shook my head, channeling my inner Al. He could manipulate Newt into anything. “It might be a mistake,” I said, letting a hint of warning lighten my voice.

“Perhaps.” Newt eased back and watched the server approach. “This is too easy. But I did give you the mirror. There will be an accounting.”

“The deal was the mirror for a girls’ night out. And we are out.” But the server stood before us, and I daren’t say anything more at the moment.

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