Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            “I won’t let her spell herself dead, Cookie Man.” Laughing, Jenks made a circle around the both of them before darting into Ivy’s old room.

            “Right,” I said, uneasy as both men stared at each other. They were too powerful now for these stupid games. Someone was going to end up in emergency.

            I flicked the switch, but the light didn’t turn on, and my nose wrinkled at the faint scent of burnt amber. Whirls of pixy-lit dust rose where Jenks hovered, and Bis’s grip on my shoulder tightened. I could smell the rain even though the window was closed.

            “We are not kids anymore,” Trent was saying from the hallway. “Don’t ever endanger her like that again. Understand?”

            “Knock it off, Kallie.” Lee hit the hated nickname hard. “Your girlfriend had it covered.”

            “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I muttered as the two of them faced off. I’d overheard a similar conversation at camp over a sensory burn and busted fence, but I think Trent had been worried about Jasmine, not me. At least, I think her name was Jasmine. Stupid memory blockers . . .

            “Hey, Rache. How about some light?” Jenks asked, and I sent a ribbon of awareness out to the ley line in the garden, pulling the living sunshine deep into me. My sock-footed feet tingled, flat on Hodin’s glyph-entrenched floor. He’s not getting his security deposit back.

            “Lenio cinis,” I whispered, gesturing toward the cluttered workbench set in the middle of the room, and a globe of light blossomed atop it. Unlike most charms, this one required me to maintain a hold on the ley line, and I shifted my shoulders, feeling the energy coming in to settle into well-used channels where I could let it flow for hours without strain. Bis’s eyes slitted, his grip on my shoulder easing as the line ran through us both.

            “Always said a demon was more handy than a jar of Vaseline.” Jenks’s wings thrummed as he darted from one corner of the room to the other. Hodin had covered the walls and ceiling with a metallic silver. Three interlacing circles took up much of the floor, one incorporating the neatly made bed, another the freestanding workbench, and a third around the illegal open-fire hearth under the window. There was no hood to funnel out the fumes, definitely not to code.

            “Nice lair,” I said as I went to the cluttered workbench. A circular, blemish-free mirror was propped against the wall, the nearby oil pencil telling me he used it like a dry-erase board. “Hey, that’s mine!” I exclaimed as I found a sock wadded up beside a used pentagram, and Bis’s tail tightened about me. I’d thought I’d lost that sock.

            “Don’t touch anything.” Trent pushed into the room, Lee fast behind him.

            He was right, and I drew my hand away, frowning at the book open to a doppelganger curse beside it. It wasn’t one of the nice ones you could buy for Halloween. This one was as illegal and dangerous as a left turn onto the expressway. Son of a troll turd. So that’s where the socks in the dryer go. Off to a demon’s doppelganger curse.

            Lee took my globe of light and raised it to the ceiling. “Hold this, will you, Trent?” He shoved the light at him. “I want a picture of these glyphs. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

            “It’s as if he lined his walls with tinfoil,” Trent whispered, his unease obvious.

            “Abundans cautela non nocet,” I said as Lee craned his neck, phone clicking. Bis rumbled at the surge of line energy through us as a lethal-magic detection spell hazed the workbench and then dissolved to nothing. The area was clean, and when Bis hopped from my shoulder to the table, I stuffed my sock into a pocket and flipped the spell book closed before Lee could see it.

            A handwritten theme book was under it. If Hodin had written down any experimental spells, that might be where they were, and I took it in hand, curious.

            “Thank you, Rachel,” Trent said, and Lee huffed in annoyance when Trent dropped to his knees and angled the light under the cot. “That is a handy charm.”

            “If you trust it,” Lee said sourly. “Any glyphs under there?” he added as Bis wrestled a leather-bound book open. It was almost as big as he was.

            “Yes, and I always trust Rachel’s charms.”

            “Mee, mee, mee, mee, mee,” Lee mocked, phone at the ready when Trent set my light on the desk and pulled the bed aside to show another, smaller pentagram under it.