Carnival of Souls

interrupted.

Aya stepped away from the boy, who seemed utterly calm about this very surreal conversation. She looked at Mallory. “Please don’t shoot me with the gun you’re clutching. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“The gun…”

“We can smell the metal,” the boy said.

“Witches? Adam never said—”

“Daimons, child. That”—Evelyn waved toward the boy—“is my daughter’s daimon. It can smell the metal of your gun.”

“Belias,” Aya said firmly. “His name is Belias.”

Silently, Mallory looked from Evelyn to Aya to Belias. The witch — her aunt, although the woman had never evinced the slightest familial affection — who was to help her father protect her was introducing her to a half- daimon and a daimon. The entire situation seemed suspect. She hadn’t been raised by a witch without learning how they thought. “Why are you really introducing us, Evelyn?”

The witch smiled approvingly. “Because I thought my daughter might be able to help you. She was raised as one of them in order to be deployed as my weapon when the time is right.”

The daimon who stood beside Evelyn tensed. “Do you have any idea what they would’ve done to her if they found out?”

Evelyn’s already cold gaze turned to Belias. “They butchered my parents, my baby brother, and almost every friend I had. They drained their energy and tossed them like refuse in the street.” She hissed a word in the witches’ language, and Belias was flung backward and slammed into a tree in the yard. “I know precisely what daimons can do to witches.”

Belias was already on his feet and advancing. He’d withdrawn several throwing knives from somewhere on him, and the first of them was in the air. “If you knew, you shouldn’t have abandoned her there.”

Evelyn didn’t even move, but Belias’ knife turned and flew back at him. He plucked it from the air, and in what appeared to be the same instant, sent two more knives hurtling toward Evelyn. With another word in the language that Mallory did not speak, Evelyn held Belias immobile as surely as if the air had become solid around him. While Evelyn cast her spell, one of the knives made contact with her, grazing her arm.

“Enough.” Aya stepped between the daimon and the witch.

Mallory couldn’t move. Knowing that witches were deadly was different from actually seeing it in person. Aside from that brief situation with Kaleb, Adam had never been anything like this in front of her — but Mallory had also never seen anyone move as quickly as Belias just had. The reality of a conflict between a witch and a daimon seemed somehow larger than she could fathom.

Aya lifted her hand as if to strike Evelyn, but moved no further. “Don’t test me, Mother.”

The older witch snorted, and then she looked at Mallory as if her daughter wasn’t poised to strike her. “You can come to the office in an hour. If Adam’s in our world, I’ll know where he is. If not, he’s over there.”

Mallory knew her aunt was cold, but this was ridiculous. “Tell me what he took. I’ll give it back to them, and… you can talk to them, right? There has to be—”

“Come in an hour.” Evelyn turned sharply on her heel and walked away, leaving Mallory with a witch-daimon and a daimon.

Mallory looked at the daimon, who once more stood beside Aya. He didn’t act like he wanted to destroy Aya, but rather like he wanted to protect her. She was half-daimon though, so maybe that was the difference. Daimons had devoured witches for centuries. Evelyn, like many witches Mallory had met, saw all daimons as dangerous, and Mallory herself had no evidence to the contrary — aside from Kaleb, although he wasn’t particularly lacking in dangerousness.

“I’m completely bound to her will,” the daimon, Belias, said. “I cannot hurt you without Aya’s consent, and she is your family. You are safe with us.” He paused and glanced in the direction that Evelyn had gone. “Probably safer than with her.”

Mallory allowed herself to smile at him, but didn’t admit aloud that she agreed.

Aya glanced at Belias before saying, “My mother won’t tell me who fathered me, but I was raised in The City. I knew only that witches were horrid things that had to be kept in control, that they were to be feared.”

“I’ve heard the same about daimons,” Mallory hedged.

“No one is automatically good or bad because of their species.” Aya shook her head. “Although my mother makes a great case for witches being unlikable. Hopefully, you’ve known witches who were otherwise.”

Mallory fought against a sudden wave of sorrow. “My father. He’s good and kind.” She thought about the way Adam had treated Kaleb and added quietly, “Mostly.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment. Aya and Belias seemed perfectly calm, as if Evelyn hadn’t just been flinging Belias aside and he hadn’t been trying to cut her. It reminded Mallory of the calm she could reach when she was training. The difference, for her at least, was that she hadn’t ever had to test that calm in true conflict. No one had ever tried to kill her, and the thought of it happening pretty much eliminated any calm she felt.

“If they took him, you’ll need a guide in The City,” Aya pointed out.

Mallory hesitated. The distrust she had for Evelyn was a result of Evelyn herself, not her species. The reality was that Mallory needed answers and allies. Her only truly trusted ally, her father, was missing, and if her suspicions were right, he was in danger. She felt an innate trust of Kaleb, but he was one daimon — and she didn’t want to mention him just yet.

“I guess we have an hour to kill before we go see Evelyn,” Mallory offered in as even a voice as she could muster.

CHAPTER 32

KALEB HALF EXPECTED MALLORY to shoot him when he returned. He wondered if Adam might turn up; he even considered the possibility that Mallory would be gone. What he didn’t expect was to see a daimon sitting in Mallory’s living room — especially a daimon who was supposed to be dead.

“Belias? What are you doing here?” Kaleb paused and scanned the room.

“Waiting.”

The trickle of fear Kaleb felt was tempered by the lack of threat he read in Belias’ posture. The ruling-caste daimon sat casually in the living room, seemingly transfixed by the television. He flicked through channels rapidly, and Kaleb recognized the same sense of awe that he’d felt when he’d first seen a television.

Tentatively, Kaleb started, “I thought you were…” His words faded. “You lost your match to Aya.”

“That would make me dead, wouldn’t it? It should mean that Aya killed me, right?” Belias finished. “No. She sent me here instead, imprisoned me in a witch’s circle.”

“Oh.” Kaleb stared at him. There was nothing he could think to say. He didn’t want to ask Belias if he knew that Aya was a witch too — or if he knew that she was bound to Kaleb or that Marchosias wanted to breed her. None of that seemed helpful to mention.

Aya walked in. “I see you’ve met my familiar.”

“Your—” Kaleb looked from Belias to Aya. In that moment, he feared that she was more of a threat despite their bargain. She was a witch here in his wife’s home. Perhaps she was here because of a threat to Mallory. He couldn’t process the tangle of threats beyond realizing that this was even worse than the way he felt when he saw danger to Zevi. He looked around the room. Nothing seemed out of order, but Aya was a powerful witch. Kaleb sincerely doubted that Mallory would’ve stood much chance against her. She might have been raised by a witch, but that didn’t change what she was. Worse still, she didn’t know what she was.

“Mallory?” he called.

The thought of fighting both Aya and Belias was about as appealing as fighting Marchosias — or Adam. He’d do it if he had to, but he was really hoping that Aya was here as an asset, not a hindrance. We have a bargain. It’s fine. It was Aya’s magic that had bound them though. His twinge of fear blossomed.