Up In Smoke Read online

  We emerged into a vast open hall, high Gothic arches soaring over our heads. The air was cold, just as it was in all of Magoth’s domain, my room excepted. I rubbed the goose bumps on my bare arms, wishing for a space heater or thick down comforter. “Which room did he say the ceremony was being held in?”

  Sally gave me a look that spoke volumes. “I’ve never been one to offer unsolicited advice, but I feel compelled by the bonds of our friendship, and the fact that I will soon be a colleague of your master, to break that rule just this once. You are about to become Magoth’s consort, recognized by all members of Abaddon as such, and bestowed with powers and responsibilities appropriate to such a lofty position. Given all that, you really should make more of an effort to listen to him when he speaks.”

  “I tried that once. It gave me a migraine.” I narrowed my eyes as I thought. “Library?”

  “Oratory,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “Figures. He loves that room. He used to act out all of his old movies in there because the acoustics are so good. I have no doubt he’ll ham it up this time, as well.”

  Sally didn’t say anything to my flip comment, but censure was heavy in the air.

  Like the rest of Magoth’s domain in Abaddon, the oratory—which reflected more the original interpretation of the word (a place where one speaks) as opposed to the religious interpretation—was built with chilly walls of black basalt, and floors of even colder marble. I hadn’t been to any other parts of Abaddon, but I assumed the cold was just one of Magoth’s personal quirks and not a reflection of the general temperature of the place many mortals thought of as Hell.

  Taking a deep breath before the double doors that led to the oratory, I lifted my head and threw open the doors, hoping against hope that none of the other demon lords had decided to come to the ceremony.

  The room was packed, standing room only.

  “Agathos daimon,” I murmured under my breath at the mass of bodies filling the room.

  “My Latin is a bit rusty, but doesn’t that mean ‘good spirit’?” Sally asked, peering over my shoulder at the crowd. “Oh! How lucky! It looks like everyone has shown up.”

  “ ‘Lucky’ isn’t quite the word I was going to—oh, gods.”

  Despite my hope that the ceremony was going to be as unobtrusive as possible, the sight of the room full of people didn’t depress me. After all, I reasoned, what did it matter if all the demon lords and their minions watched while—clad in a scanty outfit straight out of Magoth’s twisted sexual dreams—I formally agreed to be his consort? Once the ceremony was over, I’d return to the mortal world, give Magoth a lecture about behaving himself, and send him on his way before flinging myself into Gabriel’s arms.

  That was the first thought that ran through my sorely abused brain when I saw the crowd. But then I got a better look at who stood on the far side of the room, and I stopped dead in my tracks, wanting to turn around and run back to my room. “That bastard.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Magoth. He invited the dragons.”

  She pursed her lips as she gave me a critical once-over. “Didn’t he say he wanted your dragon here?”

  “Yes, but he was so damned happy about the prospect of getting access to the mortal world, he agreed to not invite the dragons for the ceremony. And just look—he not only brought in Gabriel and his two bodyguards; Drake is there with his men, and those guys in blue have to be the blue dragons. That bastard lied to me!”

  “Well, he is a demon lord. Oh, one moment—let me just spritz you with a little bit of this delicious mist. We call it Sunset Afterglow, and it has the most wonderful iridescent sparkly things in it. You’ll love it. There! You’re perfect! Or as perfect as we can make you.”

  Sally stood aside with a pleased smile. I batted away the iridescent cloud and took a deep breath. No one had noticed us at the door of the oratory, the room being filled to capacity with demon lords, demons, and other minions of Abaddon. Across from them, the dragons stood together, warily watching the rest of the audience. My happiness upon seeing Gabriel dissolved into a horrified feeling of embarrassment and shame. “Magoth really is grinding my face in it,” I muttered. “It’s not enough I agreed to be his consort so he can finally access the mortal world; oh, no, he has to bring in every dragon he could find to witness this horrible event.”

  “Carrie Fay always says that nothing is really horrible unless it eats away your face,” Sally said with sublime disregard.

  That pulled me up short.

  “You have to admit, she has a point,” Sally said in answer to my look of disbelief.

  “Right. This promises to be one of the most humiliating moments in my life, but the reward at the end of it is worth it a thousand times over, so let’s just get this done, shall we?”

  “When I was a corporate motivational speaker, I used to tell my clients that attitude is everything,” Sally advised as I pushed past her into the crowd of low-level demons. “If you believe you’re going to have fun, you will have fun! Unless, of course, Magoth requires you to undergo the ritual of burning flesh as part of the ceremony, in which case you’ll probably just writhe on the ground in the most intense agony you could ever imagine, but at least you’d be providing entertainment to others, so even that isn’t all bad.”

  The demons, most of which were in human form, refused to allow me through their throng until I elbowed them, poked them, or in a few cases, whapped them upside the head with my spiked necklace wrapped around my hand. Almost all of them were bigger than me, which made for slow going until I had the bright idea of shoving the larger Sally in front of me and letting her do the hard work.

  “My hair!” she squawked when I shoved her at a clump of level-five demons in dirty black leather jackets with “Satins Minyuns” scrawled in blood across their respective backs. “My dress!”

  “Just pretend they’re a bunch of Microsoft yuppies, and give them your standard motivational speech. That ought to make them cringe and cower.”

  The look she shot me confirmed my suspicion that she would fit right in with this place, but I didn’t have long to dwell on her rightness with things demonic before she managed to beat her way through the demons to the raised stone dais where Magoth stood chatting with a smallish, ordinary-looking man. Gabriel, Drake, and the rest of the dragons stood just beyond them. I tried to keep my gaze averted from Gabriel’s, rather hoping to miss his expression upon first seeing me in my nearly nonexistent ensemble, but it was asking too much of my aching heart.

  I caught the first expression of joy in his silver eyes before a form of indignation flashed in their depths as I cleared the crowd and moved toward Magoth. That was soon followed by sheer rage, but luckily, that faded and was replaced by a slight deepening of the indentations on his cheeks that marked his dimples.

  I relaxed a smidgen, relieved that I wasn’t going to have to intervene in a battle between Gabriel and Magoth, and gave the former a small smile to let him know I appreciated him seeing the humor of the situation.

  “There she is!” Magoth said, springing at me. “How delightful you look almost wearing that outfit. My lord Bael, I should like to present for your approval my consort, the sweet and deliciously nubile May, a doppelganger who has been bound to me since the moment of her creation, and one who, I am delighted to say, has served my many and varied personal needs to my utmost satisfaction.”

  I thought about telling Magoth to knock it off, that Gabriel was going to see through such obvious tactics, but the presence of the premier prince of Abaddon kept my tongue behind my teeth. Bael gave me a thorough once-over as I made a little bow, but unlike Magoth’s, his visual examination was not the least bit sexual. Power sparked off him in a palpable corona, leaving me with a sick feeling in my stomach as he seemed to strip away my facade and look deep into my soul. It was a nerve-shattering experience, but I drew comfort from the fact that Gabriel was there, and managed to keep from cowering before Bael.

  He dismissed me wi
th a gesture that indicated he was less than impressed. “Let the ceremony proceed. I have more important things to do than watch you preen.”

  Magoth didn’t like that, but as the lowest of all the demon lords, he knew better than to lip off. He simply nodded and held his hand out for me, his eyes on Gabriel as he paraded me around the perimeter of the dais. “Fellow demon lords, members of my legions, and minions of all sorts, today at long last I take a consort. Behold the sweet and succulent May Northcott, servant and doppelganger, whom I bestow with not only the pleasures to be found in my body, but all rights and honors due me. Venisti remanebis donec denuo compeltus sis, decus et tutamen, dulce et utile.”

  I kept my lips from curling in a grimace at his words. The Latin Magoth spoke was a phrase I’d seen in the Doctrine of Unending Conscious and was loosely translated as “From whence you came, you shall remain, until you are complete again, an ornament and a safeguard, a sweet and useful thing.” It was Magoth’s way of granting me the position of his consort, while reminding me that such a position was pretty much in name only. All the rights and honors he’d spoken of came to about nothing, which was fine with me. The less I had to do with the workings of Abaddon, the happier I’d be.

  Magoth stopped in front of Bael and waited for my response. I knew what I was supposed to say—the standard form of the consort’s agreement was also in Latin, society in Abaddon preferring to cling to the old ways—but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words that would praise Magoth above all others.

  “Duae tabulae rasae in quibus nihil scriptum est,” I improvised.

  Magoth’s jaw dropped just a smidgen.

  “I saw that at the studio back when you were making movies,” I whispered, my gaze flickering over to Gabriel.

  His dimples flared briefly to life, telling me he spoke Latin. “Two minds, not one single thought” had been used in a Stan Laurel movie, the set of which I’d visited many decades before. As an acknowledgment of my newfound status, it was less than polite, but it suited the situation.

  “Hic et nunc,” Bael said, putting his official seal of approval on the ceremony. “I will leave you to enjoy your new consort.”

  Magoth bowed low to Bael as he shimmered in the air, then disappeared, turning back to me with a wicked glint in his eyes.

  “Thank god that’s over,” I said, yanking my hand from his, fully intending to run to Gabriel.

  “I agree—it was a tedious ceremony, but alas, one has to observe the formalities. Still, it was worth it to have access to your precious mortal world. I assume you are desirous of leaving? Excellent. As am I.”

  Before I could take two steps from him, Magoth grabbed my wrist, rent the fabric of space, and jerked me through after him as he plunged into the mortal world for the first time in almost ninety years.

  “Don’t! Wait! Gabrieeeee—” The words spiraled into a scream as I was hauled after him, my last view that of Gabriel leaping toward me.

  I hit the pavement hard enough to stun me for a few seconds. My hands and knees stung as I pushed myself off the ground, shaking my head to clear it before glaring at Magoth. “A little warning would have been nice. What on earth are you doing?”

  Magoth stood with his hands on his hips, his head tipped back, his eyes closed as he sucked in deep breaths. “Can’t you smell it?”

  I eyed the nearby trash can as I got to my feet. We were in some sort of an alley, assumedly in Paris if the garbage that littered the ground was anything to go by. “I’d have to be dead to not smell it. The garbage collectors are probably on strike again.”

  “No, foolish consort. The humanity. Can’t you smell the humanity? All that delicious fear and anger and hatred floating in delightful layers upon the air—oh, it takes me back; it truly does. How I have missed the mortal world. Well! There’s no time to waste in conversation with you. I have deeds to accomplish and tasks to undertake. I bid you adieu, sweet May.”

  Magoth turned and started down the alley toward a busy street.

  “That’s it? You’re leaving? No thank-you for agreeing to be your consort? No explanation of where you’re going?”

  “Miss me already, darling?” He heaved a faux sigh. “Much as I would like to introduce you to the pleasures that only I can give you, unfortunately that must wait until I have taken care of more pressing business.”

  I limped over to him, angry, but aware that I couldn’t let that get the better of me. Magoth in the mortal world might effectively have little power, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t end up back in Abaddon with him before such time as Gabriel and I managed to break my bond to him. I picked my words carefully. “You know full well I am not interested in the least in a carnal relationship with you. But you have been away from the mortal world for almost a century, and I thought you might want to consult me now and again if you find something that confuses you.”

  The look he gave me would have been comical if it had its origins in anyone but Magoth. “Sweet May, you are not in the least subtle. I would suggest that you cease trying to be, and simply say what it is you wish to say.” He held up a hand as I was about to protest. “Do not insult either of us by pretending you do not wish to keep tabs on me.”

  My lips tightened in a thin line for a moment before I answered, “Fine. But you can’t be surprised that I’m worried about you running around the mortal world.”

  He shrugged and flicked a minute bit of lint off his arm. “Your dragon no doubt informed you that accessing this world via you strips me of most of my power. You may tell him from me that he is correct . . . and that despite the situation, I will have no difficulty in escaping any surveillance he attempts to use upon me.”

  “You can try,” was all I said as I followed him out to the street. He stood looking up and down the road, rubbing his hands with pleasure, his black eyes positively dancing with happiness.

  “Magoth—” I said, but before I could complete the warning I intended on giving, I realized just where it was we were. I spun around to gaze in growing horror at the large cream-stone building behind us. “Dear gods—that’s Suffrage House.”

  “Yes,” he said absently, whipping out a pair of designer sunglasses and positioning them carefully on his face. “I thought it too much of an irony to miss that my first steps into this world should be undertaken from the headquarters of the Otherworld. You do not approve?” He shrugged again. “Adieu, my adorable one. I have no doubt we shall meet again, but until then, think of me often.”

  A taxi pulled up as Magoth was speaking, depositing a man on the sidewalk. I didn’t pay him much attention as he paid the driver, but just as I was going to unburden myself to Magoth of a few choice thoughts, the man glanced our way, did a double take, and froze for a few seconds on the steps leading up to the building.

  I may not win a Nobel Prize for overall intelligence, but I did have a few wits about me. Although my first instinct was to assume the man was simply reacting to my unusual outfit, it didn’t take me a second to realize his interest was focused on me rather than the few shreds of clothing strapped to my body. I turned to bolt, but Magoth was in my way, causing me to lose a few precious seconds.

  “Change your mind about the threesome?” he asked as I slammed into him.

  “Mei Ling!”

  I ducked under the arm Magoth was reaching toward me, hoping I could get far enough away from the man to slip into the shadow world, but my hope was in vain. Before Magoth had the chance to utter an indignant squawk at the elbow I shoved in his belly in order to get him to move aside, the man leaped on me, throwing me to the ground.

  “Mei Ling! You dare show your face here? Dr. Kostich will be very happy to see you. Guards! Guards! I have the thief Mei Ling! I have captured the thief!” the man bellowed as he hauled me to my feet, one arm twisted behind me, the other wrapped around my neck.

  Chapter Four

  “You could help me,” I snarled to Magoth as my captor, most likely a thief taker, dragged me toward the front doors of th
e building.

  Magoth raised one ebony eyebrow in a perfect gesture of disbelief. “And ruin the fun you’ll have escaping this latest predicament? I wouldn’t think of depriving you of that enjoyment, sweet May.”

  I grabbed the hand that had a death grip on my throat, and threw myself to the side, trying to pull the man off balance, but he must have had martial arts training, for he stayed solidly on his own feet as he dragged me step by painful step closer to the entrance of Suffrage House. “I’m going to remember this, Magoth.”

  “The memory of our parting will stay forever green in my mind, as well,” he said, deliberately misinterpreting me. “You may wish to watch out,” he added to my attacker. “She bites.”

  I was just in the process of twisting my head to try and get a grip on the man’s arm, but paused to glare at Magoth, who simply blew me a kiss and sauntered off down the sidewalk.

  “You’re only making things harder on yourself,” the man grunted as he heaved me up two steps. I bucked as best I could, and tried to twist away from him. I even shadowed for a second, hoping that my apparent disappearance would throw him off guard, but he must have been alerted to the fact that I was a doppelganger. “If you keep this up, we will be forced to subdue you to unconsciousness,” he warned.

  “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” I growled as I suddenly switched tactics and spun around in his hold, simultaneously bringing my knee up into his groin and smashing my fist into his nose.

  He gurgled in pain and reacted with an instinct of self-preservation, clutching both his crotch and his face, leaving me free for a fraction of a second.

  I flung myself to the side, racing down three steps, and had just hurdled a low cement barrier wall when something slammed into my back and sent me crashing to the ground a second time.

  “This is really getting old,” I muttered to myself as my new unknown assailant jerked both arms behind my back.

  “I’ve got her,” a woman’s voice bellowed behind my head. I struggled to get up, but this woman, like the thief taker, knew how to keep me from getting any leverage. “Run inside and fetch the watch.”