1 Deviously Done The thing no one tells you about summoning demons is, sometimes you have to think outside the box. I should know; I've been calling them up into my circles since I was a kid. My mother even encouraged it, as a slightly safer alternative to a way riskier burgeoning fascination with elder gods. (PSA, if you don't want your daughter developing an interest in the gnarlier chthonic entities before she can even ride a bike, maybe don't read her Lovecraft at bedtime. Seems obvious enough, right?) The books go on about how summonings are supposed to be these disciplined, rule-bound affairs-and most of the time, they are, if you know what's good for you. The truth is, if you take sensible precautions, it's not nearly as dangerous as people think. And such a rush, too; the daemonfolk are interesting as the hells, pun intended. Sometimes they're inclined to share juicy secrets or ancient spells, the kind you won't find in even the oldest, dustiest grimoires. Other times they're so gorgeous it breaks your heart, or so horrifying that even a quick glimpse caught before you banish them is enough to leave you panting, heart battering against your ribs, blood boiling through your veins while your whole skin rolls with chills. Shit, even when you play it safe, there's nothing quite like a demon summoning to make you feel alive. Of course, there's always the odd time that even a pro like me fucks it up just a wee bit. As usual, I'd cast my summoning circle in the warrens of the basement beneath The Bitters, in a chilly, cavernous room that had started out as Elena's third wine cellar-because who gets by with just one these days; certainly not my mother-and now doubled as my demonic lair. No windows, musty air that smelled like centuries-old stone and aged bordeaux, witchlight sconces flinging trembling shadows on the walls; the perfect ambiance for such a conjuring. The summoning spell was already whipping through me like a tempest, my protective amulets glowing hot against my chest. Everything felt like it should, all systems go. But as soon as Malachus began to coalesce, I felt a twinge of wrongness in my gut, an unsettling, instinctive awareness that something was off. According to my research, Malachus was supposed to manifest as a brawny reptilian dude, macho and mindless to the max. The type of mostly harmless demon whose bark was way worse than his bite. I hadn't summoned in a while, so tonight was meant to be just a practice flex, easing myself back into the swing of things after a little break. But the silhouette gathering in my circle was unmistakably femme-presenting, on her knees and with her back to me, with the kind of ridiculous waist-to-hip ratio that would've put Cardi B to shame. A swoop of hair, black and glossy as moonlit water, curled around an even darker set of wings folded neatly against her back. I could see the wings' outline fill with a faint scrawl like one of my own sketches, a vague suggestion of feathers, before they sprang into a three-dimensional profusion of lush black down. And the scent that engulfed the cellar wasn't just the usual rank whiff of sulfur and brimstone, but something sweeter, more elegant and piercing. Jasmine, maybe, with a subtle patchouli twist. The kind of compelling perfume that made you want to follow someone around, drooling until they told you what they wore. When she turned to look over her shoulder at me, with massive eyes the color of molten gold, my mouth went dry as dust. I couldn't be positive, having never seen one before-they weren't exactly a dime a dozen-but for my money, this sure looked like one of the former seraphim. A fucking fallen angel, landed in my basement. "Oh, Hecate's chilly tits," I whispered to myself, my heart plummeting even as a rising thrill swelled inside my stomach. "This is so very deeply fucked." From what I'd read, the fallen were temperamental, ultra-wily, and very powerful-exactly the kind of unpredictable daemonfolk I do not fuck with as a general rule. But here she was anyway, which meant shit was about to get extremely outside the box. She whipped around to face me in a single blurring motion, still on her knees, dainty little hands folded primly on her lap. Her fingers were tipped with vicious black talons, knuckles dusted with iridescent scales. She cocked her head, examining me with a sly intensity, the tip of a pink forked tongue peeking between her full lips. Then she smiled at me, wide and feral, a flash of onyx teeth capped with fanged canines and incisors. Let me tell you, there's something viscerally unnerving about black teeth, especially ones as sharp as hers. I had a mounting suspicion that, unlike the real Malachus-wherever in the hells he was-this chick's demonic bite might be a lot worse than her bark. A bloom of pure dread unfurled inside my chest, shooting down into my fingertips and toes like a falling star. Alas, the thrill-chasing part of my brain that often took the wheel at times like this downright relished it. So this wasn't going to be a lesson-learned type of moment, then, I noted to myself. No big surprise there; I'd never been much good at those. "Ill tidings!" the demon said cheerfully, in a cross between a velvety purr and some gigantic gong struck directly between my ears. Gritting my teeth, I narrowly resisted clutching my head. When it comes to demons, a show of weakness is just about the worst thing you can do. "Whom do you serve?" The rote of her greeting defused the tension just a hair. Demons always start with the ill tidings bit; it's what passes for good manners with them, part of some governing daemonfolk etiquette they can't subvert. I drew myself up, putting on an imperious expression modeled after my mother's and doing my level best to avoid looking as rattled as I felt. When dealing with slippery entities from the netherworlds, throwing up a badass witch front tends to be at least half the battle. "I serve my goddess, my ancestors, and above all, myself," I replied, the traditional response of an Avramov summoner. I don't know what the Blackmoores, Thorns, or Harlows say-in the highly unlikely event that a witch from one of Thistle Grove's other magical families has ever had cause to banter with a demon-but I'd bet my ass on some cheesy noise about serving the ultimate good, light conquering darkness or whatever, cue a stirring orchestral overture. Avramovs don't buy into any of that oversimplified, good-versus-evil binary shit. Like the ultimate pragmatists we are, we've always staked our claim firmly in the gray. The problem was, now came the part where I was meant to bind this entity by her true name. Which was going to be a neat trick, considering I almost definitely didn't have the real Malachus in hand. "And you, Malachus Azaranthinael, appear at my will and behest," I finished, crossing my fingers behind my back. Hey, worth a shot; maybe the lore was just supremely off base on how Malachus was supposed to look. "Which means you must obey . . . and be gone at once!" "A fine sentiment," the demon crooned, with another of those awful, spine-tingling smiles. In a streak of movement, she was on her feet, naked and stupidly gorgeous, a curtain of black silk hair draped over thick curves and long, smooth limbs. Her skin glowed like a paper lantern, as if lit from within. Too bad we'd started off on such a wrong foot; she probably had some killer beauty tips. "If I were, in fact, Malachus Azaranthinael." "If you are not, why, then, do you appear in his stead?" I demanded, trying to enforce one final shred of protocol before this already wayward train went careening completely off the rails. Demons weren't supposed to be capable of bending the rules like this; when you summon one by their true name, what you call is meant to be what you get. "Because, as it happens, there is no Malachus," she said, still grinning like the void, honest-to-goddess little flames dancing in her golden eyes. Sounds like something right out of a corny cartoon, but it sure as fuck didn't feel clichZ when the abyss was staring you dead in the face. Chills crawled under my skin, crept into my knees-the type of nerve-jangling bullshit I lived for, the reason I went all in on such reckless antics as this in the first place. "There is, and ever was, only me . . . and the lies of Malachus I tell to entice dim little deathspeakers like you into calling me up unbound." I tried not to take being called dim too personally, and failed-to be fair, she had a point. The books do tell you that daemonfolk lie easier than they breathe. By the sound of it, this one had invented a harmless-seeming demon as bait, embedded his name into the lore for gullible assholes like me to find, and then tied his summoning to herself, like one of those fugly deepwater anglerfish that dangle an alluring light for their unsuspecting prey. All of which meant that once she appeared in answer to a Malachus summons, she'd be yanked earthside without any bindings in place. Damn, I thought, with a grudging pulse of admiration, well-played. Demons were tricksters down to their brittle black bones, and this one had gotten me good, fair and square. "Deviously done," I said, with a little dip of the head, making one last gamble. You'd be surprised how vain some of these tricky fuckers are, and how hard they fall for a little well-placed pandering. "And when they ask me into whose clever trap I stumbled, what fearsome name shall I say?" She rolled her huge eyes, rosebud mouth pursed in exasperated disdain, like, Nice try, witch, but maybe get up earlier in the morning next time you try to put one over on me, eh? "My true name is only mine to know, but you may call me . . ." she said, appearing in a shivery instant at the circle's very edge, one fine-boned foot poised as if to step over it. "Davara Circlebreaker." A tad on the nose? Perhaps. Ominous as fuck? No doubt. In the spirit of optimistic experimentation, I raised my hands and flung a banishment charm at her, murmuring under my breath-followed by another, and another, a barrage of them. She stayed staunchly corporeal, her inky smile only growing, her smooth form betraying not even the faintest flicker. "Oooh, Yaga's Baneful Banishment, how quaint!" she squealed, widening her eyes. "I have not seen that one in centuries!" She pressed against the boundary, the air around her rippling like a heat mirage. The cellar trembled with the sheer force of her assault, little shock waves radiating out from the circle as her will flung itself against the barrier of mine, testing its give. My cluster of protective amulets had now turned searing against my chest, but even my fail-safe runes were badly outclassed. They weren't going to keep me from getting soul-eaten by something of her caliber, not if she managed to break free. I stumbled, barely keeping my feet, my heart pumping double time as uncut adrenaline crashed through my veins. If the demon got through me, she'd run roughshod all over Thistle Grove before someone else-probably my own mother, double fuck-managed to lock her down and banish her. Then I'd never live down the mortification of not having managed to handle my own demonic business, not to mention whatever punishment the tribunal saw fit to impose on me. That is, if I even lived long enough to worry about such things. "Not today, bitch," I muttered under my breath, mind whirling as I thought on my feet, every nerve ending alight and crackling like a fuse. "I am not the one for this." I arranged my fingers into a different kind of conjuring, clouds of vaporous black seeping from my fingertips and gathering around my hands. You never really got used to the feel of ectoplasm, not even after years of handling it, the sticky cold of it clinging like a noxious second skin. But my magic itself felt wild and slick inside me, a quicksilver torrent racing up my spine and roiling in my head-the very best feeling in all the world. Then came a headlong rush of haunts, harkening to my call. The demon blinked in sudden confusion as the whole jostling host of shades that called The Bitters home began materializing around her one by one. Given that my ancestral demesne was over three centuries old, and impressively haunted at that, there were a lot of them. A mosh pit's worth of hazy gray-scale forms, tattered and nearly translucent, trailing smudgy limbs and writhing hair as they pressed in against one another. At first, they emanated only bemused annoyance, having been rudely yanked away from whatever ghostly business they'd been minding before I called on them. Then they noticed Davara Circlebreaker, still poised at the edge of my circle, a tiny wrinkle of concern now marring her smooth brow. Their irritable rumbling abruptly changed pitch into a disgruntled hum-which escalated very, very quickly into the kind of bloodcurdling wail you could really only describe as eldritch. The thing about summoning circles is, they're a one-way barrier, meant to keep things in rather than out-and the thing about ghosts of the restless dead is, they're territorial by nature, hostile to interlopers in their domain. I'd guessed that a trespasser like Davara, one that belonged in this realm even less than they did, would read as the ultimate provocation. And despite the huge power differential between a first-tier demon and a bunch of unruly revenants, I was banking on strength in numbers, the way a furious swarm of ants can bring down an elephant. As the throng of shades bum-rushed Davara, a roar of pain and rage thundering from the center of the circle once they'd closed in on her, I could see that I'd been right on both counts. Then the shriek cut off abruptly in a massive flare of scarlet light as the demon finally called it quits on this entire earthside outing. Apparently the prospect of munching on a witch's soul and wreaking some small-town havoc wasn't worth the trouble of getting nipped to (un)death by a rabid spectral horde. "Woooooo!" I cheered, yanking down a victorious fist as the light faded away, bright afterbursts still popping in my field of vision. "And that is how it's done, motherfuckers!" Excerpted from From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
