The mastiff gave a lurch in Oscar’s direction, and I tensed to head him off, but Duke did no more than pad over to sniff the downed man, hackles still bristled along his striped shoulders. I could see Oscar’s eyes, wide with fright as that massive muzzle brushed against his throat in passing. Duke settled for a firm snarl, then made the rounds of the room. Zane also got a growl of disapproval, which didn’t surprise me. Dogs and the soulless just don’t get along. I yanked Oscar’s sleeve up, but found his arm bare. No surprise, but I had to be sure. I’d been fooled before.
“Okay, I get why he’s edgy around Zane, but Oscar’s down. What’s bugging Duke there?” No one really answered me, but I was used to talking to myself. I looked down at Oscar, who seemed to have lost all his fire, tears leaking silently from the corners of his eyes. Taking mood swings to a bit of an extreme, wasn’t he? “I wonder… Cole, keep an eye on Oscar please.”
Above the bar hung one of those bar mirrors. You know, the ones with the gold tracing around the edges, and some beer logo from the seventies at the top. It was bigger than I was used to, but it would do what I needed.
“Cameron!”
He appeared at the head of the stairs, more sliding down them than walking. “Hmm?”
“Can you make a mirror?”
“A what?”
“A mirror.” I showed him the one in question. “A mirror that lets you see across, see if anything’s lurking.”
He settled on the bottom step, resting his bandaged head against the railing. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”
Dammit. This was going to get irritating. “Look. My wife does this, with these symbols here.” I grabbed a napkin off the bar and started scribbling down everything I could remember. Man, I hoped I had everything right. Might be a spell to turn someone into a rabbit instead.
Cam looked over my scrawls, and shook his head. “I’m not familiar with this work. It looks… is this pagan?” I groaned and smacked my head against the wall. “If you know the sigils, why don’t you just do it?”
“Because I don’t have any magic. Anything I need, my wife does.”
There was no mistaking the look of horror that crossed his face before he caught himself. “I… you…” He blinked at me for long, shocked moments, and I just let him. “How are you still alive??”
“I’m just that fucking good. Now answer my question. Can you do it?”
It took him another few moments of staring at me like I’d grown a second head, but finally, he gathered himself enough to address the subject at hand. “What is the mirror supposed to do? Maybe I can adapt it somehow.”
“Okay… I need to be able to see across the veil. Then you break the mirror, and whatever’s caught in it is yanked to the physical side where we can deal with it.”
The possibly ex-priest thought for long moment, then nodded. “I. .. think I can come up with something like that. But why are we doing this again?”
“Because I think something got inside before you set up the wards. Maybe has been inside this whole time.”
It took Cam a good hour to come up with something for the mirror trick. Occasionally, he’d ask me a question that I didn’t have the answer to anyway, but for the most part he sat with his head bowed, lips moving silently as he… prayed, or whatever. I just checked on him from time to time, making sure he hadn’t lapsed into unconsciousness instead.
In the meantime, we got Zane settled with his father. I don’t think the old man had any more fight in him anyway. I kept Duke near the pair, hoping the dog’s presence would ward off what I feared had gotten through. The boy looked bad. Really bad, considering that his wounds were relatively minor. There were fresh bruises blossoming every moment, it seemed, but that didn’t account for the gray tinge to his face. He was scared, he was in shock, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it. There was only so much Will could do with a first aid kit and torn up sheets.
“Is he gonna be all right?” I asked quietly, hoping that the Quinns wouldn’t hear.
Will’s grim face behind his round glasses said it all. There wasn’t a shred of humor left in him anywhere. He was a goofball of the first order, except when it came to doing his job. Then he was the most efficient, organized paramedic I’d ever seen. (Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of them.) “I remember how tore up you were, man. If that poison doesn’t kill him, the shock from an amputation would. I need things we just don’t have here.”
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. What else could I do? “Mira would say to have faith.”
“Yeah, but in what?”
My eyes went to Cam, hovering over the mirror we’d painstakingly detached from the wall. “Right now, I’d say him.”
“But, dude? Who is he?”
Damn good question. And as soon as this little magic trick was done, I was going to find out the answer.
The air in the house was almost choking on the smell of cloves. That’s how I knew whatever Cam was doing was working. Funny how no one else ever seemed to notice that smell.
“So… how’s it going?” I kept a safe distance back, just at the edge of where my skin started prickling. Never good to startle the magic man.
“I… think I have something that will work.” Cam displayed some neat and orderly symbols scratched into the back of the mirror that looked nothing like what Mira normally used.
“That’s magic?”
“No, that’s prayer. Written in shorthand.” We traded skeptical looks at each other.
“Will it work?”
“Only one way to find out.”
With some effort, we got the mirror propped upright and one by one we paraded in front of it. Even Duke got his turn on the runway.
The mirror showed nothing, except that my little brother was starting to put on weight.
“It’s all those doughnuts, little brother.” He flipped me off.
“So, what are we supposed to be seeing?” Marty looked at himself in the mirror, Duke at his heel.
“Hopefully, nothing. So, either this thing’s not working, or we’re not infested yet.”
“It’s working!”
“Infested with what?!” Cameron was offended. The rest of the guys were just worried.
I motioned for Marty to help me move the cumbersome thing until we could frame the two Quinns in its reflective surface. I heard a small blasphemy from Cameron’s lips, and a worse one from Will’s. My own stomach twisted in a painful knot. “Infested with those.”
I called them Scrap demons. They were the parasites of the demon world, giant poisonous fleas if you will. In singles and pairs, they could feed off a person, subtly sucking their will to live, nudging them toward depression, paranoia, or worse. And I had never seen so many in one place.
A veritable horde of the little bastards clung to the Quinns. Their black forms, like greasy mops, scuttled over young Zane, their spindly insectile legs exploring every inch of his body. One of them plucked at his hair with a three-toed “hand,” bringing it to what I presumed was its face to sniff. Hard to tell when they didn’t actually have any eyes.
“Wh-what the fuck are those things?” Oscar had found the courage to speak again. Wide-eyed and pale, he watched one of the creatures clamber up on his reflection’s shoulder. To his credit, he didn’t try to bat it off. Wouldn’t have worked anyway.
“Those are Scrap demons. Nasty little buggers, but easily squishable.” I tried to get a head count on the grubby little swarm. There were at least seven on Zane that seemed permanently attached. Another dozen or so skittered between the two, not caring if they crawled over each other, their twiggy legs catching in the oily coils of fur on their fellows. Those would be the ones to watch, the ones that would latch on to one of us just as easily.
“They don’t look like much. Are they dangerous?” Will bent down to poke at the mirror, and I grabbed his hand to stop him. I didn’t know if he could disrupt Cam’s magic, but I wasn’t willing to risk it until we were
