“Oh, charming. So you tempt me with the promise of food and then threaten my poor demon ass. Typical.” Its face turned crafty. “Isn’t that what your sister has always said about you?” The whine changed into Gwen’s voice. “‘You are such a bully, Vicky. Don’t you care about anything besides fighting?’”
“Gwen never—” Well, okay, she did say that once, when we were teenagers arguing over something stupid. I knew she didn’t mean it, but the memory sometimes stung, even now. In fact—
“Hey!” I said. “Cut that out. Your meal is over, done, finished—no second course, no dessert. I command you to be silent unless you’re answering my questions.”
The Eidolon pouted, drawing its wiry eyebrows together in a scowl, but it didn’t reply. I’d conjured the demon, and it was bound to obey me until I released it from its material form.
Okay. Now we could get down to business.
“Why have personal demons been disappearing from Boston?”
“Because we’re afraid.” The whine was back. “We’d rather stay safe at home in the demon plane, unless some bully forces us to come forth.” The demon glared at me. “Or unless hunger drives us—poor, weak spirits that we’ve become—out into the Ordinary in search of food.” The Ordinary is what demons call the human world.
“Will you stop with the food already?”
“No. That was a question, by the way, so I’ll elaborate. Every creature needs to eat. You blame us because our feeding habits happen to torment humans. But do you ever stop to consider your own eating habits? Do you? Of course, you don’t. That frozen chicken Parmesan you microwaved for dinner yesterday—did you ever stop to think that the hunk of chicken in it was once a living creature? That it started off life as a cute, fuzzy, yellow baby chick going peep peep peep?”
An image of a fluffy chick hopped into my mind, peeping adorably. Pain shot through my gut as the Eidolon used its second mouth, located in its belly, to chew on my feelings. “Stop it!” I forced my thoughts away from baby chicks. “This isn’t about what I ate for dinner. Now tell me, what are the demons afraid of?”
“Peep peep peep.”
Time to fight dirty. I rummaged around for a happy memory, something that made me feel good. I’d dived so deep into guilt that it took a minute, but then I had it. On a recent walk through the New Combat Zone, the block between Deadtown and human-controlled Boston, I’d noticed some daffodils and tulips blooming in a half-barrel planter. In that gray, gritty neighborhood, someone had cared enough about beauty to create a miniature garden.
“Owww!” the Eidolon wailed. “Quit it—that pinches!”
I smiled. Yellow and red and white. The flowers were so pretty, like a promise of hope…
“All right. Jeez, there’s no need to torture me. I’ll tell you what we’re afraid of.” I let the flowers fade from my mind, and the Eidolon huffed an overly dramatic sigh. “There’s a wizard. He looks like a demi-demon I used to know, but he has no shadow demon.”
Pryce wasn’t a wizard, but his father, Myrddin, had been. At his resuscitation, Pryce had absorbed Myrddin’s life force, along with much of his knowledge. “Is this wizard named Pryce?”
The maggotlike demon made a gesture I interpreted as a shrug. “I have no knowledge of Ordinary names. His shadow demon was Cysgod.” It squinted at me accusingly. “You killed Cysgod.”
“Damn right, I did.” Getting rid of Pryce’s shadow demon had put an end to his plans to throw open the gates of Hell. Or so I’d thought. “Why are you afraid of this wizard?”
“I’m not afraid of him when I can stay at home all snug in the demon plane. He has no shadow demon; he can’t enter there. It’s only when someone lures me into the Ordinary that I’m in danger.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” I started to picture spring flowers again.
“The wizard is grabbing demons,” the Eidolon said in a hurry.
“I’ve seen that. Why?”
“How should I know? All I know is I want to stay far, far away from him. He has this…this big kettle thing. A cauldron—that’s what you call it. He collects demons in a sack and then imprisons them inside the cauldron. There must be thousands crammed into that thing.” The demon glanced around the bedroom, real fear widening its eyes. “I’d rather you eviscerate me with one of your hidden bronze daggers than let him do that to me. I’ve heard about the cauldron. They say you can hear the demons who are trapped in it screaming. Screaming for miles around.” The Eidolon shifted on my chest and narrowed its eyes. Its belly-mouth licked its lips. “That’s what you’re planning to do, isn’t it? Force me to answer your questions and then kill me with one of those daggers. I’m not surprised. Mrs. Kinicki wouldn’t be surprised, either. She never gave you a Satisfactory on your report card for ‘plays well with others,’ did she?”
Mrs. Kinicki was my second-grade teacher. Her nephew, Timmy, thought he was a tough guy and tried to beat me up on the playground, so I fought back. I didn’t pick those fights. My social skills were perfectly satisfactory. I’d deserved that S, damn it. Okay, so maybe I did go a little too far that one time when Timmy ended up in the emergency room. Fifteen stitches is kind of a lot. I still felt bad about that…
I shook my head, blinking. “I told you to stop that.”
“What? I was just answering your question. I’m supposed to sit here and spout off answers, knowing you plan to murder me in cold sludge?” The demon’s face contorted in indignation.
I ignored its question. “Where’s Pryce keeping this cauldron? In the demon plane?”
“I told you. He can’t enter the demon plane, not without his shadow demon. Without Cysgod, he’s as weak as any human. The cauldron is not in the demon plane. It’s in the Ordinary, but it’s hidden. The guy’s a wizard; he’s using magic to cloak it.”
“Where in the Ordinary—do you know?”
“If I tell you, will you spare me?”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll wrap you up in a pretty pink bow and hand you over to Pryce myself.”
“Pink is not my color. Of course, you wouldn’t notice that. It’s not like a single thought for anyone else ever crosses your mind. When’s the last time you bothered to pick up a phone and call your mother?” The demon uttered a sigh that sounded a lot like Mom. “‘I wish Vicky would call. I wish she were a good daughter, like Gwen,’” it said in her voice.
“Overkill. My mother wouldn’t compare Gwen and me like that.” Although that was exactly what I’d imagined her doing. Of course, the Eidolon had eavesdropped on my thoughts.
“How do you know what she says all alone, late at night? Just because you’ve never heard her say the words—”
“You know, the other day I saw the cutest puppy.”
“No! Not a puppy!”
“Big brown eyes. Floppy ears. And—”
“Stop! Puppies give me indigestion.” The demon let out a huge, sulfurous burp to prove it.
I turned my head away. “Then knock it off with the guilt trips.”
“I can’t help it.” I’d tangled with more than a few Eidolons, but never had I met such a whiny demon. “What do you expect, anyway? I’m a guilt-demon—I’m only doing what comes naturally.”
“Just answer my question,” I said through gritted teeth. “Do you know where Pryce is hiding the cauldron?”
“Humans call the place the Devil’s Coffin.”
I’d never heard of it. “Where’s that?”
“No clue. All I know is it’s a gateway between your world and the realm of the dead. Not a place I’d hang out—demons aren’t exactly welcome in the Darklands.”
That was true. In Cerddorion mythology, demons and departed souls don’t mix. The dead pass through Annwn, the Darklands, on their way to wherever they were going. Demons live in their own realm, Uffern. According to legend, although Uffern and the Darklands share a border, an impassable range of steep, rocky mountains protected by sentries prevents demons from crossing into the realm of the dead.
“Why would Pryce want to smuggle a cauldron full of demons into the Darklands?”
“You keep asking me questions I can’t answer. I’m not exactly hoping to play confidant to some crazy wizard who’d snatch me and stuff me into that thing. But I can tell you this: The cauldron is nearly full. In Uffern, the word is that after the full of the moon, we’ll be safe. Whatever this wizard, this Pryce is planning, everyone believes it will happen then.”
“What’s so special about the full moon?”
“That’s when a mortal wizard can open the door.”
“Okay.” Pryce. Cauldron of demons. Devil’s Coffin. Full moon. I had the dots, even if I didn’t know yet how they connected. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“Yeah, this: I’ve given you good information, and I don’t deserve to die. Just release me and I’ll be on my way.”
“Sorry.” I slid my hand under my pillow, feeling for the dagger there. “You, demon. Me, demon exterminator. It’s what I do.”
“And feeding on guilt is what I do. So how come I’m all wrong and you’re okay? What kind of ethics is that?”
“My kind.” My fingers curled around the dagger’s grip.
“I didn’t attack you. You conjured me.” The Eidolon talked faster. “I answered all your questions. Let me go back to the demon plane. If you don’t call me out again, I’ll stay there.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I could be useful to you!” The whine rose to a frightened squeal. “I’ll ask around. Maybe I can find out more about the wizard’s plans.” The demon’s eyes opened wide, pleading, as its voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t kill me. Please don’t.”