Page 31 of Demon with Benefits
“Meet my new dog,” Iris announced to the group as she crossed into the circle, holding him up. Everyone proceeded to fuss over Faust, much to Suyin’s consternation, and it was a good ten minutes before they managed to get settled again.
“Okay, everyone, please calm down. Take your seats. This is a coven, not a dog show.” For once, Suyin looked flustered, and Iris inwardly smiled. It took a lot to ruffle her friend’s feathers, and it was always a little fun when she managed it.
Iris liked to think of Suyin as a cross between a goth queen and a biker ballerina. Of Chinese descent, Suyin’s skin was light olive, and her black hair was thick and luxurious, dead straight and falling to her mid-back. She had a short fringe cut above her brows, and she wore so much dark makeup that her eyes almost disappeared. Despite her fierce demeanor, she was petite and graceful, but god help any man who reminded her of that.
In summer, she rode a Harley. In winter, she drove a rusty old Civic. And in every season, she wore black and combat boots. In Iris’s humble opinion, she was hot as hell.
“What are we practicing today, oh wise leader?” Iris asked as everyone finally settled down. She scratched Faust’s ears, trying to get him to sit calmly on her lap the way he did on Raum’s.
Of course he squirmed relentlessly and tried to eat her fingers. What was that damn demon’s secret?
“I had a dream last night,” Suyin said.
Everyone perked up. Witches loved dreams.
“I saw a crow flying over the face of the sun. At first, his wings appeared wild and beautiful, and they seemed to cradle its face lovingly. But as I watched, the crow grew and grew, until suddenly, his form covered it completely, and the day turned to night.”
Someone gasped. Everyone else was silent. Except Lily, who made the smallest snort and then tried to cover it with a cough.
“A feather fell from his wing and became a quill, and I raced to chase it, but it flew on a gust of wind beyond my reach. Everywhere the quill blew, it left behind lines of ink in an illegible script. My head was down as I followed, chasing the feather through the city blocks, trying to decipher the writing, until I stopped suddenly. When I looked up, it was into a pair of bloodshot eyes in a pale, dead face. Then, a scorpion suddenly appeared and stung me with its tail, and I woke up.”
Someone else gasped. Lily fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, her lips pressed firmly together.
“What does it mean?” one of the practitioners asked. They all looked to Suyin like she was some dark goddess they worshipped, and frankly, Iris didn’t blame them. Suyin was intensely charismatic and a little bit frightening.
“I believe it to be a sign that some kind of supernatural event is looming over our city. I believe there is darkness approaching, and we need to be prepared to face it.”
Lily looked up and said, “Um, sorry, but how does a dream about a bird mean that?”
Iris inwardly groaned.Just keep your mouth shut, Lil.Everyone was turning disapproving looks on her sister now.
“It’s not the actual images of the dream that are important,” Suyin replied, “but the feelings I got from them. Surely you’ve had similar intuitive understandings before?”
Lily fell silent because, yeah, she had.
Except then she spoke again. “It’s just, I don’t see what good it does telling a doom-and-gloom story like this just to make people scared.”
A few tongues clucked, and someone grumbled something about Lily “lacking perception,” but Suyin didn’t seem bothered. In fact, her eyes brightened like she enjoyed having the pot stirred a little. “I didn’t bring it up just to scare everyone. I brought it up because this month, I want to focus on sigils for detecting demonic presences.”
Iris swallowed and choked on it.
“W-what do you mean?” Lily asked, her voice tiny all of a sudden.
“I gathered a list of sigils I think might be within our coven’s scope of ability, each of them with the purpose of detecting traces of demonic energy, whether on people, animals, or inanimate objects. The dream told me there were dark forces present in our city, and I want to get a sense of the magnitude. I’d like to start today by putting up trace wards around the coven’s perimeter.”
Lily and Iris exchanged glances. Oh, Iris could just imagine how much demonic energy they had clinging to them. She was, in fact, holding a hellhound in her arms at that moment.
How the hell were they going to get out of this? Because there was no way they could stand here and participate in the creation of these sigils, only to watch them light up like a beacon when they were activated.
Worse, what would happen if the sigils were activated and proved effective? Was the coven going to end up knocking on Belial’s door? Iris did not want to imagine how that would go down. Witches could trap, bind, and banish weaker demonic forces, but not a goddamn King of Hell.
Suyin was passing out printed photocopies of the sigil she wanted to try, and Iris knew she had to do something. As quickly as she could, she whipped her phone out of her pocket and opened her texts. Without stopping to question her motives, she fired off a text message to Meph saying,It’s Iris. Call me right now.
Lily had insisted on saving all the demons’ numbers in Iris’s phone months ago in case of emergency. At the time, Iris had not been pleased, and her thumb had hovered over the delete button on Meph’s name more times than she could count, but she was glad she hadn’t erased it now.
Why text Meph? Why not anyone else in the entire world? She told herself it was because he would be the least likely to ignore her message. She would have texted Lily, but she knew her twin well enough to know her phone would be on silent. And Iris wasn’t going to risk whispering it at her either.
She refused to consider her motives beyond that. All she needed was her ringtone to go off, that was it.
