Page 85 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

She grabbed her flashlight as soon as she got a hand free and shone it around the room, lingering on the corners like a kid who’d just had a bad dream. The place was empty, thank God, although the emptiness itself rapidly became spooky.

Hazel left the flashlight on when she set it down, giving herself what visibility she could, then slipped off her backpack and prepared: candles, cloth, water, knife, runes. The tiles clicked against the floor, barely muffled by the silk.

Thurisazin the east: giants, thorns, trouble from men.Raidonearest her.Tiwazin the south: Tyr, the steadfast god, who sacrificed his hand to hold a wolf while others chained it.Nauthiznearby, for need and constraint. In the southeast,Uruz, the ox, which generally meant a guy. Hazel took them all in, swept them up, and set the rest of her supplies out accordingly.

Just before she lit the first candle, she placed a small iron jar at her feet.

Hazel had no names to call when she let in the ethereal. She didn’t know for certain if any of Clarence’s victims still lingered in the basement. The hands she’d seen during the séance had suggested it, but suggestion wasn’t proof, and the place had changed considerably since then. She had no trench to dig, no libations to spill. Any spirits that lingered in Chapman’s basement wouldn’t need a lure.

As she lowered the knife and stepped back, the cracks in the cinder-block walls began to fill up with blood. The smell of it, old and rotten, blended with the basement’s overall scent as rivulets started running down onto the floor. Larger dark spots appeared on the upper walls and rapidly solidified, becoming gruesome parodies of the trophy heads Clarence had kept in his room. The young man’s head on one of them dropped its jaw down improbably far to show the stump where his tongue had been.

Hazel took a deep, slow breath through her mouth. “No,” she said, “it’s not a nice place.”

A slight echo gave her words back to her:nice place.

“Let any spirit trapped here present themselves before me if they wish freedom,” she went on. “For those who don’t offer violence, I’ll do what I can. For those who do—”

A shrieking, tearing sound interrupted her. She knew better than to turn away from the candles, but peripheral vision showed her that the wall to the east had started rippling. Hazel swallowed hard. She’d come prepared. She thought she knew what she was doing.

Now she was going to find out.

Bony hands tore open the wall, shoving through the cinder blocks with so little sound or effort that they might have been paper. Hazel picked up the iron jar, holding it with both hands, as Chapman forced his way into the room.

* * *

“You’re frightened, bondsman,” said Perthrux. It let go of Maxwell’s hair only to grab his shoulders, claws piercing robes and skin as it dragged him up onto his feet. The uncanny light of its lair twisted through its dead eyes, now just a bit above Maxwell’s face, and a scent like curdled milk wafted out of its mouth. It smiled like a wound. “I can smell you. I can hear your heart racing. What scares you?”

Chapman’s hands closing around Hazel’s neck, bits of his dead skin sloughing off as she chokes and struggles. Chapman sneaking up behind her, knife raised high. Chapman’s teeth closing on—

He tried to shake the images away. It didn’t really work, but he cleared enough space in his mind to let him respond sensibly. “What shouldn’t, my lord? You’re an intimidating presence even when you’re not angry.”

Perthrux chuckled. Long experience kept Maxwell from gagging at both the smell and the sound.

“And,” Maxwell went on, “it’s not exactly a comfort to know that Chapman’s trying to discredit me.”

“You’ve earned yourself a rival, yes. How flattering for me,” said the demon. It lifted its hands from Maxwell’s shoulders, and he fought back a cry of relief. “But it doesn’t further my goals, does it?”

“No, my lord. I can try to settle matters—”

“Don’t bother.” Perthrux stalked back over to its throne and settled its spindly, spongy form against the almost-basalt. “It would make little difference.”

Such a statement could mean disinterest or doom. Maxwell decided his best response was a dutiful nod.

Perthrux kept watching him, still with a little smile on its first mouth. “A clever strategy, getting close to the mortal. What have you found?”

“She works with runes and sigils,” said Maxwell, quickly sorting through facts to find the most harmless. “Fairly talented, from what I can tell, fairly decent materials. Might be some of the protection. There are runes that help with prophecy and forewarning, I think, which could have let her avoid your creature.”

“Go on. She’s bright. She’ll know a little of her fate by now. How will she plan to avoid it?”

“She’s been looking through old grimoires, trying to find one that describes you. I thinkshethinks she can learn your true name that way.” Perthrux laughed. Maxwell’s lungs started feeling only one size too small rather than three.

Headless torso tilted back, arms dangling almost bonelessly down the sides of the throne, the demon inspected him. “Chapman wasveryconvincing,” it said, sounding bored.

There went his lungs again. “He would have been trained to sound that way,” Maxwell replied carefully, knowing that pits surrounded him on each side and that the path was very narrow. “And maybe he believed his source.”

“Maybe. As I said, your strategy is clever. You may have won us an opportunity.” Perthrux raised one of its wet red hands, long fingers extended. It frowned for a moment in concentration before a small, clear bottle appeared in its cupped palm. “Come. Take your weapon.”

Practice carried Maxwell forward as he stared at the bottle. The glimmering red liquid inside moved of its own accord, tendrils reaching up and falling back down. “What is it?”