The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers Read online

  Oh please. I realized we were in Vegas, but nervous energy or not, Grandma should've known we didn't have time for this. I was about to enlighten her when my demon slayer instincts jolted me again.

  I glanced around the casino. A huddle of fifty-somethings eyeballed the latest turn of a roulette wheel, while dealers wearing pink bow ties flipped crisp playing cards onto blackjack tables. Slot machine patrons, like lone rangers, manned their stations. I felt uneasy, like I should be seeing something I wasn't.

  Whatever this was, it didn't want to kill us, at least not right now. But it felt altogether wrong at the same time.

  Grandma lined her hand up with the bejeweled gypsy hand on top of a crystal ball. The slot machine clanged to life, clanking and spinning until its picture wheels rested on two moonstone rings and a black cat.

  It spit out two topaz blue cards. The hotel's key cards, I realized, as Grandma handed me one.

  "Son of a gun," I said as she shoved the other card into her back pocket. Another good thing to add to The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers—how to check into your basic magical hotel. I didn't understand how anyone could be expected to just know this sort of thing.

  "At least while we're waiting, we'll have time to work on Phil," Grandma said.

  "What do you mean? Unplug him from the she-demon?"

  Grandma nodded.

  I didn't even know we could do that.

  Well good. I reached out and gave him a comforting rub on the arm. I couldn't help worrying about him. Besides, his close ties to Serena the demon wouldn't exactly enable us to travel incognito.

  "Something's not right," Phil said, furrowing his bushy brows together. "Or is it me?"

  I was trying to decide on a nice way to put it when I noticed the absence of a certain furry companion. "Where's Pirate?"

  "He said you'd be okay with him wandering."

  "He lied," I said, annoyed with Phil (and myself) for losing track of my dog.

  I spotted Pirate down .an aisle of island-themed slots and scooped him up.

  "Hey now!" He craned his head back as I beat a hasty retreat with him. "I was only stretching my legs after the long ride over here. I mean, you did strap me into that pet carrier and you know I don't like being strapped down. My fur's smashed and I got bugs up my nose."

  "Not now." Something was wrong. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I didn't want to stick around the lobby any longer than we had to.

  "Elevator's this way," Grandma said, glancing behind us. We followed her toward the row of golden elevator doors.

  "We'll be safer once we hit the magical floor," Grandma said, corralling our odd little party into the elevator.

  I hoped she was right.

  The doors eased together, trapping us as the elevator jerked and began its slow climb.

  The presence grew stronger, even as the doors opened onto our floor. I took a deep breath and stepped out.

  A pair of beige wingback chairs flanked a glossy brown table. On top of it lay fancy-looking books that were probably glued down. Sprigs of lavender, dry and lifeless, huddled in a plain glass vase. I didn't feel magic. Only evil.

  Phil drew a lavender stem from the vase and tucked it into his jacket pocket, like he didn't have a care in the world.

  "Come on, kids." Grandma led us down a seemingly endless hallway. We passed a normal-looking couple and their three (presumably) human children, off to the pool it seemed.

  "What are they?" I asked Grandma, but she was several feet ahead of us, and making good time.

  "New Yorkers," she called back to me.

  "Oh," I said, eyeing the back of the man's shirt. Red curling script read: Famous Ray's Original Pizza.

  I hoped Grandma knew what we were doing.

  "I need to call Serena," Phil murmured, rubbing his ring finger.

  "You know she's a succubus," I reminded him gently.

  "Nobody's perfect," he said.

  "We'll fix that as soon as we hit the room," Grandma said. When she finally stopped, it wasn't in front of one of the cookie-cutter hotel doors lining the endless hallway. She opened the industrial Exit door at the end of the hallway and motioned us into the stairwell.

  I wrinkled my nose at the stale, metallic air. "You have a magical card from a slot machine that told you to go to the stairwell?" Maybe this wasn't magic.

  Let's see, Grandma was born in 1931. I started counting backwards.

  "Cut it, Lizzie," she said, digging the key card out of her back jeans pocket. "This is our entrance."

  "The wall?" I stared at the cinder block in front of us. "Are we going through?"

  Grandma rolled her eyes. "Sure, Hermione, whatever you say." She slipped her key into the maintenance closet door and shoved it open.

  Instead of vacuums, mops and jugs of industrial carpet cleaner, I saw a glittering hallway. "Oh my galoshes." I couldn't take my eyes off the carpet. It shone like a lake on a sunny day. "Can I walk on it?"

  "Unless you want to string a rope from the ceiling," Grandma said as she tromped right in. Incredible. I'd never seen anyone walk on water.

  "Come on, Lizzie. This entrance is private for a reason."

  I stepped onto the liquid floor. It felt solid under my feet, even as I stared down into crystal clear waters. Schools of flat, impossibly bright yellow fish darted among twisting black eels and large puffer fish. Spindly sea urchins clung to coral reefs ablaze with color. I dipped my fingers into the warm water. It looked and felt like a tropical lagoon, but when I lifted my fingers away, they were dry. "This is amazing."

  "Yeah, it is pretty," Grandma agreed. "You forget what it's like to see it for the first time."

  The door shut behind us, and I felt the wards close in. At last. They were the magical equivalent of covering up in a warm blanket after a long, hard day. I glanced at Phil. Too bad we still had work to do.

  Grandma led us down the porcelain white hallway.

  The brightness of the place, paired with the reflections from the water, made me wish I had my sunglasses handy. Every few feet, alcoves cut into the wall held bright burning orbs. "Are these for light?" I asked.

  Grandma laughed. "Look up, buttercup." A series of ornate chandeliers lit our way. "These balls of fire are Skeeps. A concierge service, if you will. Pluck one from the wall, ask him his name and then ask him to do your bidding. But remember, if you use one, make sure to give him very, very good instructions. You don't want these little suckers filling in the blanks."

  I'd remember that.

  "Oooh!" Pirate scrambled out of my grasp, his doggie claws scraping my arms. He splashed down onto the carpet and raced into an alcove. "Snacks!" Pirate adored vending machines.

  "Hey," he called, "Why are there crickets next to the Cheetos?"

  "For the harpies," Grandma answered.

  "Let's just find our room," I said. We had bigger things to think about—like recovering Dimitri and fixing Phil.

  "Right," Grandma said, two steps ahead of me. She shot me a look over her shoulder. "We'll take care of Phil's, er, problem." I followed her gaze to Phil practicing the wedding march behind us. Grandma shook it off. "She's got hold of him all right. Why she feels the need to marry him? Well, we'll find out soon enough."

  "What do you mean by that?" I asked, watching Phil wind two gold rings around his finger and straighten his tuxedo tie. We couldn't possibly know why a demon would want to marry my uncle. And he was in no condition to tell us.

  "I have an idea," Grandma said.

  Oh no. "Let's keep it simple, okay?" We had enough to worry about with unhooking Phil from the succubus and getting Dimitri back.

  Grandma ignored me. "What those demons don't realize is we can use their link to learn a few things."

  "But we're going to break him free, right?" I was all for knowledge, but Phil needed his brain unscrambled, the sooner the better.

  "We'll disconnect Phil as soon as we see what's got hold of him. Trust me."

  "We know what's got him—a succubus in
a wedding dress. I don't need to know anything else."

  "Yeah, okay, Einstein," Grandma stopped at our door and dug the key card out of her jeans. "I didn't survive all those years against Vald without learning a thing or two." She pointed the key at me like a warning finger. "Information is power in this world, and until we know why a sex demon wants to get all holy at the altar, we're behind the eight ball." Grandma huffed. "I don't want any surprises. Do you?"

  Pirate danced and nipped at our heels as we opened the door to a surprisingly ordinary hotel room. Frigid gusts of air roared from a unit under the window, causing the gauzy white curtains to billow and goose bumps to break out all over my skin. Whew, the place reeked of carpet cleaner. Pirate gave a big, wet doggie sneeze that landed on my foot. Lovely. I rubbed my arms against the cold and fought the urge to wrap myself in the well-used hotel comforter.

  "Serena's not here," Phil said to the empty room. Quilts in muted green and blue covered the two double beds. A hotel-issue lamp sat on an unremarkable desk.

  I dumped my travel bag onto the bed nearest the window and reset the thermostat from an inhuman fifty-eight degrees to a livable seventy-five. The afternoon sun hung low behind the towers of New York New York. It was just dark enough to see the light pouring from the top of the Luxor pyramid.

  Phil worried me. He wandered the room, running his hand along the low TV stand, peering into the ice bucket, attempting to straighten the picture of the iris that I didn't have the heart to tell him was probably bolted to the wall. He seemed utterly lost, his forehead crinkling between bushy eyebrows. Finally, he said, "I can't stay here."

  "We'll call down and get you your own room in a minute," Grandma said, tossing her backpack onto the bed closest to the door.

  He reddened. "Oh, no. I have to find Serena."

  "Right," Grandma said, watching me.

  "Someone left us a present!" Pirate jammed his nose into the snack basket next to the television.

  I dug through my bag and put on an extra shirt. "Is Phil going to be okay?" He was going downhill fast. At least I hoped my uncle didn't routinely sprinkle dust from his pockets while calling for she-demons.

  "Don't worry," Grandma said. "He can booty call her until he loses his mind for good. Which he might unless we fix him. But either way, there's no way a succubus can get up here. Too many wards."

  "What if she has friends?" I said, thinking about the creepiness downstairs.

  "Yeah, let's fix this," Grandma said, rifling through her pack and pulling out a pair of fat crimson candles.

  She raked one of the candles against Phil's fingernails, like a cat on a scratching post. My poor uncle merely mumbled as he watched the wax curl from under his nails and fall to the aqua carpet. Whatever hold Serena had on him was affecting his brain. I didn't know how long a person could hold on in those kinds of conditions, but I didn't want to find out.

  Grandma spared a glance at Phil, before focusing once again on her task. "Watch and learn," she said to me. "I'm going to open the pathway before we cut him loose." Her voice dropped. "Then you can use that demon slayer mojo of yours to see what's gone wrong in this city." She eyed me from my uncomfortable leather pants to the Don't Mess with Texas T-shirt I'd tossed over my lavender bustier. "Look. Don't touch. We only want information."

  I nodded, tucking my hair behind my ears. It's not like I could take on every succubus in Vegas.

  Grandma dumped the clawed-up candles on the bed and unscrewed the top of the silver eagle ring on her middle finger.

  Not possum tongue again. "Is this for Phil's ceremony?" I asked.

  A girl could hope.

  Grandma dug put a finger full of rust-colored pulp. Maybe she was going to lend her stinky power to the man who had saved my life. And, I realized to my dismay, the man currently enlisting my dog as a ring bearer.

  "Hold still," she said, her breath tickling my bangs. She aimed the musky sweet goo for my forehead, hitting me square above the left eye. It felt sticky, wet and it smelled like roadkill. "You need all the help you can get."

  "Thanks," I said, my learner's permit burning a hole in my pocket.

  "I have to go," Phil said, breathing heavily as he leaned both hands on the windowsill. "She needs me. I need her. I need…" He trailed off, confused.

  "Don't worry, bro. We're gonna fix it." Grandma tossed a packet of dental floss at my head. Oral-B Superfloss, mint, to be exact. "Give me two long strips, Lizzie."

  I knew better than to ask.

  Glad to be focused on Phil, instead of worrying about Dimitri, I unwound the floss until it curled at my feet.

  "Now where's my Scope? Blasted travel size sinks right to the bottom," she said, digging past her spare jeans. "I hate to be a candy-ass, but sometimes I miss staying in one spot. Back in the day, we blessed a wood cabin in the garden behind the coven house. Ant Eater planted mint, motherwort, sage all around. They're the pit bulls of protective herbs, smell nice too." She whistled through her teeth. "Good times."

  Before the coven was betrayed. Before my mom shirked her duty and the witches were forced to run, go biker. I'd never realized Grandma missed her old home. She played the part of the road warrior so well.

  I handed the lengths of floss to Grandma. She nodded, stuffing the candles under her arm. She jerked her head toward the bathroom and, past the travel Scope bottle in her mouth, said, "Thwiss way."

  She dumped the candles into the bathroom counter and spit the Scope bottle into the sink while I turned on the light. "No," she flicked the lights back off. "We have to do this in total darkness, so you might as well get used to it." She glanced at the door. "It's the best way I know to see what the hell is after him. And us."

  Phil peered inside the bathroom, confused.

  "Oh good," Grandma said, filching his white bowtie. "Focus object," she said, twirling it around her finger.

  "Maybe we'd better get rid of Serena and be done with it." I wasn't a big gambler. Sure, I wanted to learn about what I'd have to face in the supernatural world, but not if it endangered Phil. As far as I was concerned, we needed to free him and get him out of here.

  "Patience," Grandma said, easing Phil into the other room before she closed the door on him. She placed the candles on either side of the sink, with the bowtie in the middle. Then she lined the strips of dental floss above the mirror and broke open the Scope. "Mint," she said, sniffing the bottle. "It may not look as pretty as fresh herbs, but it'll work."

  "The floss too?"

  "This is road warrior magic. We have to use what we've got," Grandma sprinkled the Scope all over the sink, adding a liberal dose around the base of each of the candles. "Mint on the altar is good for protection. It'll help draw the magic too."

  I studied the plain hotel sink. So this was our altar.

  Grandma tossed me the Oral-B packet. "Why don't you floss up the place while I go find some matches?"

  I wrapped the mirror in dental floss. I wound it in long strips over the top third of the hanging glass, letting some dangle like Christmas garland to get more coverage. Then I set to work, draping the sides until I'd used all two hundred yards of the stringy green trim.

  Pirate clickety-clacked across the tile floor. "Say, that looks pretty, Lizzie! I always said you knew how to decorate."

  "Out," Grandma ordered, sliding past him.

  "Don't worry. I won't make a peep," Pirate said.

  "I'm sorry, baby dog," I said, nudging him out the door. Whatever we were doing in the near-dark with the mint and the candles had to do with Phil's unholy connection to Serena. Once Grandma found out what she could, we'd cut the demon off cold. I wasn't sure how it would go down, but I'd rather not have Pirate anywhere near.

  "Hold tight, Phil," Grandma called before she closed us into the pitch-black bathroom.

  Chapter Seven

  I couldn't see a thing. "You forgot to light the candles," I said, hearing my voice take on a slight echoey tone.

  "I'm getting to that, Lizzie," Grandma said. "You fo
llow my lead, okay?"

  I nodded, as if she could see it in the dark. For all I knew, she could. Grandma might not be the smoothest person around, but she could do things I'd never dreamed about until I met her.

  She struck a match and held it in front of her. Our reflections shone like apparitions in the mirror.

  "In this looking glass," she intoned, shadows falling into curves of her face, "I see more than there is to be seen."

  She dipped the match to light the thick red candle on the right. "I call to the spirits who guide us." The wick caught fire and Grandma blew out her match. I could almost taste the sulfur. She glanced at me and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

  "I call to the spirits of vision," she said, lighting the second candle from the first.

  Her hands warm and strong on my shoulders, Grandma positioned me next to her. Her breath tickled my ear. "Now chant after me. Three times."

  I nodded, watching my reflection in the light of the two candles.

  "Bloody Mary," Grandma said solemnly.

  Oh she had to be kidding. I remembered playing that as a kid. But as I watched her clenched jaw and determined stance in the mirror, I knew this wasn't a joke.

  "Bloody Mary," I said, as solemn as she had.

  I almost didn't want to know. I watched my nose wrinkle as we said it together.

  "Bloody Mary."

  The temperature of the room plummeted.

  Holy hoo doo. I about fell over sideways when a scarlet liquid streaked down the mirror—from the other side. I couldn't have touched it if I wanted to, which I absolutely did not want to. I clenched my hands, my nails digging into my palms as I stared at my reflection through the murky red glaze.

  Grandma slapped her sweaty hand around my chilled, shaking one. "Now for the money shot," she said.

  "Bloody Mary," we repeated together.

  My pulse pounded. The liquid on the mirror beaded and shifted like droplets of mercury until a narrow face appeared. Foul liquid streamed from the wide-set eyes and bubbled from the ugly gash in her neck. I held my breath, repulsed yet terrified to look away. Bloody Mary stared right back at us.