For a Few Demons More(8)

Minias lost the last of his anger. I felt as if we were witnessing a common but seldom-seen event, and I hoped he would hold to his promise that they wouldn’t take us when they were ready to leave. “Then let’s go,” he soothed, and I wondered how much of this was caretaker and how much was simply caring. Could demons care about each other?

“Maybe you’ll remember when we get back,” he said, turning Newt as if he were going to lead her away. “If you forget something, you should go to where you first thought it, and it will be waiting for you.”

Newt refused to step with him, and our eyes met when Minias moved out of the way. “It’s not at home,” she said, her brow furrowed to show a deep inner pain and, under that, a seething power held in check by the demon whose grip had slid from her staff to her hand. “It’s here, not there. Whatever it is, it’s here. Or it was here. I…I know it.” Anger slipped over her brow, born from frustration. “You don’t want me to remember,” she accused.

“I don’t want you to remember?” he asked harshly, his hand falling from her and extending in demand. “Give them to me. Now.”

My gaze flicked between them. He had gone from lover to jailer in a pulse.

“I’m missing my cache of yew,” he said. “I didn’t make you forget. Give them to me.”

Newt’s lips pressed together, and spots of color appeared on her cheeks. It was starting to make sense. Yew was highly toxic and used almost exclusively in communing with the dead and for making forget charms. Illegal forget charms. I had found a yew in the back of the graveyard by an abandoned mausoleum, and though I didn’t commune with the dead, I had left it, hoping that plausible deniability would keep my butt out of court if anyone found it there. Growing yew wasn’t illegal, but growing it in a graveyard, where the potency was enhanced, was.

“I made them,” Newt snapped. “They’re mine! I made them myself!”

She turned to leave, and he reached out and spun her back. I could see Minias’s face now. He had a strong jaw, clenched with emotion. His red demon eyes were so dark they almost hid the characteristic goat-slitted appearance, and his nose was strongly Roman. Anger was heavy on him, balancing Newt’s own temper perfectly.

Emotions cascaded over them both in a rapid, fluid torrent. It was as if a five-minute argument were passing in three seconds, her face changing, his responding, causing a shift of her mood that was reflected in his body language. He carefully manipulated her, this demon who had removed the sanctity of the church without a second thought, who had turned a triple blood-circle to her will—something that I had been told was impossible but of which Ceri had known Newt was fully capable. I didn’t know whom to be more frightened of—Newt, who could plague the world, or Minias, who controlled her.

“Please,” he asked when her face shifted to chagrin and her black eyes dropped.

Hesitating briefly, she reached into the pocket of her expansive sleeve and handed him a fistful of vials.

“How many did you invoke when you remembered?” he asked, the vials clattering.

Newt’s eyes went to the floor, beaten, but the sly look to her demeanor told me she wasn’t sorry about it. “I don’t recall.”

He jiggled them in his hand before pocketing them, clearly seeing her unrepentant mood. “There are four missing.”

She looked at him, real tears showing. “It hurts,” she said, scaring the crap out of me. Newt had inflicted her own memory loss? What had she remembered that she didn’t want to?

Ceri was standing beside me, almost forgotten, and she slumped, telling me that it was almost done. I wondered how often she had seen this played out.

His mood easing, Minias pulled Newt close, the purple of his robe curving around her. Newt folded her arms against herself and let him hold her, her eyes shut and her head tucked under his chin. They looked elegant and self-possessed standing in their strongly colored robes and proud stances. I wondered how I could ever have doubted Newt’s gender. It was so clear now, and I spared a thought that perhaps she had subtly shifted her appearance. Seeing them together made a shudder ripple over me. Minias was the only thing holding Newt to her sanity. I didn’t think he was just her familiar. I don’t think he had ever been just anything.

“You shouldn’t take them,” he whispered, his breath brushing her forehead. His voice was captivating, moving up and down like music.

“It hurts,” she said, her own voice muffled.

“I know.” His demonic eyes locked with mine, and I shivered. “That’s why I don’t like it when you go out without me,” he said, looking at me but talking to her. “You don’t need them.” Breaking our eye contact, Minias turned her face to his, his hand cupping her strong jawline.