The Witch with No Name

Dali leaned forward over Trent’s desk, a thick finger pointing at me. “Failure to uphold any contract here isn’t my fault. I held to the undead curse as well as can be expected.” Lip curled back to show his teeth, he glared at Trent. “You and your species are to blame for the vampires’ soul destruction, not me.”

Soul destruction? I wondered, then pounced on that because it seemed to distress Dali the most. “You promised the first undead that his soul would be waiting, didn’t you? That promise falls to all who followed him. And now you can’t fulfill it.”

“This is not my fault!” Dali shouted, and the fish behind him dashed into hiding.

“You oversaw the curse,” Newt said sourly.

“This is intolerable,” Trent said, beginning to pace. “An entire population of living, breathing people trapped in the ever-after to die?”

Dali laughed, the bitter sound chilling. “Funny. That’s what you had intended for us.”

Trent spun, his anger slipping from his iron-clad control. “It was your idea first.”

Al tugged his suit coat straight. “Because you made slaves of us and warped our children so far from us they were as imbeciles.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed, not wanting to be counted as an idiot from birth. No, I could prove that all on my own.

“Boys and girls,” Newt soothed, her pleasant expression faltering when she noticed a bruise in the shape of a handprint on her arm. “We, ah, have all suffered, and though we clearly cannot forget, can we at least strive to forgive each other such that we can . . . survive?”

Trent turned his back on us, frustrated. “There’s nothing to move forward to,” he said as he looked at his hands to estimate their shaking. “No magic to move forward with. They didn’t listen to me, and now we all suffer.”

My stomach hurt, but my ribs hurt more, and all I wanted to do was lie down and not move. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If there was anything that could be done . . .”

“There is, love.”

Dali’s head snapped up at Newt’s soft croon. The demon’s hard, unforgiving expression pulsed through me with a surge of adrenaline.

“Newt,” Al growled as he stood before Trent’s seldom-used wet bar, his shoulders hunched and tense. “Shut the hell up.”

Trent came forward a step. “There aren’t enough mystics looking to her,” he said, but Dali’s vehemence as he thumped a meaty fist on the table brought him up short.

“No!” the older demon shouted. “I’ll not have it! I’d sooner see us dead than be saved with . . . elf magic!”

Newt’s foot bobbed and her cheeks flushed. “Dead is exactly what we will be. Are you blind or simply that stubborn? Demons can do magic through the Goddess. They just don’t like to admit it. They think it sullies them.”

“It does!” Dali cried. “They’re animals!”

Newt simpered. “Aren’t we all, old man. Rachel?”

She extended a slender hand to me, pale and unmarked. I could have sworn that her knuckles had been bruised, and I shied from taking it. Smiling, she turned her reach into a flamboyant gesture. “She’s modest. The girl can do it.”

“No!” Dali exclaimed. “By the two worlds colliding, if I could go back in time, I’d kill her the first time she set foot in my office!”

Al rubbed his forehead before picking up two shot glasses full of an amber something he’d just poured from Trent’s bar. “I know the feeling,” he said, setting one of them on Trent’s desk and giving it a clink before sipping his.

“Then you’d both be dead three times over already,” Newt said brightly. “You, Dali, are not yet ready to slip from this life, and for all your pissing and moaning, neither are you, Gally. Not like this—whimpering and sniveling, taken out by an elf’s plotting. Rachel can do elven magic. I don’t care if you don’t like it. So can you, so can you all, if you would take that holier-than-thou noose off your necks!”

“Ah, Newt?” I hazarded, but Dali had stood, his face red and frustrated as the already insecure demon came to grips with the fact that he was helpless before a world that wanted to see him dead.

“No more!” the demon bellowed, and Newt stood, robe unfurling.

“You will!” Newt shouted back, and I pressed deeper into the couch. “I have watched your cowardice and unfounded prejudice stain our existence long enough! We share a source of magic with the elves. No wonder they best us time and again when we ignore the source of our strength and take it in the dribs and drabs that exist in tiny pockets.”

“Enough!” Dali shouted, and Newt strode forward to put her face inches from his.

“You will listen!” she exclaimed, her black eyes flashing and a haze of blue rimming her hands.

Dali’s eyes flicked to them and she abruptly backed off, shoulders hunched and eyes down. Al cleared his throat. “This just got a lot more interesting,” he said, and Dali’s confidence came rushing back. “Newt, where are you getting your magic, love?”

Newt grimaced. I gave Trent a shrug, breathing easier when Dali finally found someone else to be mad at.