The table would be between them, and Al took a slow breath and eased himself down. “Will you?” he amended, and the demon they kept balanced between lucidity and insanity laughed.
“For the right price.” Her gaze went to the book still in his grip. “Certainly not for a badly copied version of a book already gracing my shelf. Perhaps you could kill Minias for me?” She batted her eyes at him coyly. “He has been dosing me with forget potions again.” Her affected smile vanished. “Otherwise I would not be six years old and hiding in cupboards.”
“Oh, Newt,” Al crooned. “Killing Minias won’t change anything. Maintaining your ignorance is the only thing keeping us alive. You will be allowed to recover your entire memory when there’s a threat worthy of your talents. No sooner. It was your idea, love.”
She bobbed her foot, brow furrowed in annoyance. “Perhaps. But killing him will make me feel better.”
“I’m sure it will,” he cajoled. “Still, he agreed to the job, and no one else wants it.” Al hesitated. “Are you sure you didn’t trap him in your oubliette? Should we check?”
“If he was in my oubliette, I wouldn’t have been in a cupboard,” she muttered, fully aware that she was missing parts of her mind. It was dangerous but necessary, and Al gently touched his ruined book in true regret.
“Can you repair it?”
A heavy sigh shifted Newt’s shoulders. “Obviously. But I’m not so out of it as to push a book into the past to fix damage I did not inflict.” Her thin eyebrows rose. “Especially if it is notmybook anymore.”
“Ah. I should be more clear.” Al touched the ruined cover. “I am here to bargain for a spell to correct the one who dropped my…Or is it possiblyyourbook in the tub?”
Newt sat up, suddenly interested. “You’ll return it? For a spell?” Her gaze fixed on the book as if it might hold a piece of her memory—which, in hindsight, was a possibility. Settling back, she tried to find a nonchalant expression—but he had seen, and a quiver of success shifted through him.
“It would be pleasant to have something under my pillow that Minias doesn’t know about,” Newt said, eyes still on the book. “He keeps me from my library. Afraid I might…remember.” She beamed to show her teeth. “What do you propose, Gally?”
She was fully herself, and Al put his elbows on his knees. This version of her was safe. Well, safer—as long as she wasn’t pissed at what she still forgot. It was only when she didn’t know her mind that she was a danger. Unfortunately, it was getting harder to bring her back. But since she was the only female demon left alive, they pandered to her even as they held her memories hostage, excavating them when needed and burying them when they didn’t lest she kill them as she had her sisters.
It hadn’t always been such, and Al shoved the guilt down deep. They all did what they needed to do to survive. He wasn’t sure why anymore.
“I have a wizard in reality who needs correction,” Al said, and Newt nodded, conversant with his skill of luring in and training new familiars for others to use. “My library is taking the brunt ofthe damage. This last affront would have me abandon him, but he has something I need, and until I have his soul and can force the issue, bargaining for breadcrumbs is the only way to get it. I’m willing to give you this.” Al’s fingers tingled when he touched the damaged book, satisfied when Newt grimaced, the demon clearly wanting it. “In exchange for your help in spelling this.” He set the badly copied book down beside it, wincing at the obvious inferiority of it. Nicholas Gregory Sparagmos, though, wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “I need a whip with which to teach him respect of my books, and you, Newt, are beyond any doubt the most adept at modifying an existing spell to a new outcome.”
The flattery fell flat because it was so obviously true. He had once loaned Ceri to her in the hopes that the familiar would return having picked up a few techniques. Instead, Ceri had come home all but comatose, unable to even manage his morning tea. The only good from the experience was that the mere mention of Newt’s name brought the uppity woman to a terrified obedience that could last for weeks.
Newt pulled the book closer, her expression puckering as she sent a visible thread of energy through it to feel the unseen damage. “I’d have to fix it before I could use it again,” she said softly, her focus blurred as if imagining it. “Ley lines do not run smoothly through water-damaged pages.”
She was holding it. A thrill of success traced through him, and he hid his smile. “Damaged goods, but something, as you say, you can fix. At least with you, it will be whole again. With me, it will languish.”
“Not enough.”
Al’s lips parted as Newt dropped the book on the table with a disparaging thump. “Not enough?” he echoed.
The demon arched her eyebrows as if in rebuke for him tryingto scam her. “The cost to repair the damage is threefold the damage to me. Oh, I will take the book, but I am tired of Minias’s plots. I want a new familiar as well. Ceri will do. You’ve taught her almost everything you know.”
His gaze went to the jump-in-out circle he had arrived in. “Minias…”
“Is stealing from me.” Newt pulled her knees to her chin, a flash of fear crossing her before she hid it behind a mask of confidence. “You all know it. You all look the other way because to do otherwise might mean you would have to take his place. A memory here, a recollection there. He writes it down, then makes me forget again. You think I was hiding in a cabinet because he was trying to escape me?” Newt scoffed. “I make myself helpless because it’s the only way I can keep what I have left. I want him gone before he writes down and erases enough of me such that I am utterly consumed.”
“Newt, be reasonable…”
“I want Ceri.” Newt stared at him with her black eyes, unmoved. “She at least steals with the intent to escape.” A smile quirked her lips. “We had such fun the last time.”
“Absolutely not.” Al pushed deeper into the cushions, frustrated but unable to walk away. “She is my Magna Carta, and you returned her all but comatose. I won’t do that to her again.”
Newt batted her black eyes coyly at him. “Are you not here to find a whip with which to groom another?” she asked, a gentle hand on the book.
“You had her for a week, Newt. No.”
“I need someone with enough skill to stir the spells to regain my memory.” Newt pouted. “Minias won’t do it. You clearly have no more use for her if you are grooming another.”
A sigh slipped from him. Newt thought it was the wizard he wanted, but his real goal was Rachel Mariana Morgan. There was a secret in her he needed to work out, something on the tip of his tongue he couldn’t quite taste. But she was wary and smart. The only way to get to her was through the mistakes that Nicholas Gregory Sparagmos made. Al would never gain her without more information. It was his books, or Ceri.
Besides, the wizard needed to be taught a lesson. It was his fault Al had to go to Newt with his hat in his hand. He would have his revenge for his lost book and a new familiar both.
