Summoning Trouble, page 23
“You may be of my blood, but you are also of theirs.”
“I am. Despite the eons of pain, my father, the archangel Raphael, fell madly in love with one your descendants and eventually she fell in love with him, despite the curses. Then they had me,” I said, and took a breath. “I cannot imagine the hurt and anger you felt. I cannot imagine the fear and anger they felt all those years ago, but I am hoping to bring forgiveness to both sides. Will you help me, great Hecate?” Hecate just stared at me for several minutes.
“You have been injured, child, gravely so. I feel your life force ebbing and then coming back again. Do you ask this as a dying request?”
“No. I ask you this as one of your many daughters. Just as I asked this of Remiel and Zadkiel as their niece,” I said to her. “I want to heal both sides of my family, not because I think I might die, but because I think the pain has lasted long enough. For you, for them, for all of your daughters and sons through the generations. I ask this of you as the aunt of two lovely little girls who will know a life with more love if we can heal this breach.”
“If someone with my blood can find love with them, then yes, I will offer my forgiveness. And I ask them to forgive me.”
Chapter Twenty
The demon that was once Hecate the Great Witch spoke for what seemed like ages with Leviathan and Remiel. Eventually there were hugs. Then Hecate turned to face me again. She stared at me for an eternity and then she nodded at me, as if we’d had a conversation and she agreed with whatever I had said. Some demons are more eccentric than others; I don’t know if they were also eccentric during their life. In Leviathan’s case, I believe Zadkiel, though I never met him, was eccentric. It was possible that Hecate’s eccentricities existed while she was alive, and she brought them with her to the Stygian. After nodding at me, she left.
“Okay, so I really do need to get up and get on with my life. What can I do about my head?” I asked.
“Hecate just told you,” Leviathan said, and I stared at him.
“She didn’t say anything to me.” I replied. “She just nodded and then went away.” Leviathan frowned at me. Asmodeus moved his arm, loosening his grip on me. I leaned forward just a little bit, not enough to make my head move.
“I think Jerome should summon your mother,” Asmodeus said to me.
“My mom is home with a newborn.”
“She can bring the newborn; we aren’t going to devour it,” Asmodeus said stiffly. Oh shit.
“No, I know demons don’t devour babies. Babies are exhausting. I don’t know if baby demons are exhausting or if baby archanlians are exhausting, but baby angels are exhausting. I don’t want to bother her.”
“Jerome, bring Sophia and the newborn, please.” Asmodeus said. I really, really, really, really, really wanted to turn around and fucking glare at him until he exploded. He might have been able to tell what I wanted, because he tightened his back up and gave a small chuckle. He was using his arm like a seatbelt over my shoulder and down my body. It was a really effective way to immobilize me.
“Okay,” Jerome said and got up off the bench. I expected Raphael to stop him, but instead Raphael patted Jerome’s shoulder. Suddenly my mom and baby sister were in Leviathan’s palace. The baby was screaming its head off.
“Sorry, she’s colicky,” Mom said to everyone. Raphael reached for her, but Leviathan stepped in and asked Mom if she minded. Mom didn’t hesitate. Leviathan shrank himself down to man size and took my sister, Geneva.
“Soleil has been nearly beheaded.” Leviathan said to my mom. “She asked us to sew it back on with magical thread so she could get on with her day. Being her mother and in possession of hearth magic, we think you can help her more than us.” At this, my mother rushed over to me. She knelt down.
“I take it the demon behind you is preventing you from letting your head fall backward,” she said as she inspected me.
“Mom, this is the former demon king, Asmodeus.” I introduced the two.
“I appreciate you helping my daughter,” Mom said as she tugged the cloth around my neck out and peered down at the wound in my neck. “I would have no doubt about Leviathan or Lucifer helping her, but I didn’t know the former demon king would help her. Although, you may still feel an attachment to my husband. He has told me you raised him. You raised a good man.”
“Sophia, our daughter.” Raphael said gently.
“Yes, dear, I am looking. I don’t want her head to fall off either.” Mom replied. “Although if any supernatural could survive such a thing, it would be Soleil. Not that I want to test it.” I love my mom. She has a wicked and warped sense of humor; she can be both flippant and serious at the same time. “Leviathan, are you good holding Geneva?”
“Absolutely, you moved away from sun-themed names,” Leviathan replied. Leviathan dream walks in my mom’s dreams as well as mine, which is why they seem on such good terms, I imagine. Although with my mom, who knows, she might have seances to chat about the weather or pass along all the family details to him just so he’s kept in the loop. That did in fact sound like something my mom would do.
“Well, we discussed a few of them, like Kalinda. However, two suns are probably enough. Soleil hates her name. We honestly didn’t think about her name being Sun Burns until the first time she came home and told us.” My mom said this last with a chuckle. “Unfortunately, by then we’d already named Helia. I’m not sure she likes her name either, she’s just not as vocal as Soleil about it.”
“I like Geneva, it’s a good name,” Leviathan said. “I am hopeful that once you reattach Soleil’s head, we can plan a family luncheon or something.”
“We should do that,” Mom said. “I think we should do it here, though. Your house is much bigger than ours, you would all be able to at least stand up. We would bring the food, of course. Asmodeus and Lucifer could join us, too. Asmodeus, would you please hold Soleil’s head very still after untying the scarf from her throat? You know, when Raphael and I were first married, he spoke of you often.” Asmodeus untied the scarf and then he put his hand on my forehead. “Yes, I can fix this.” Mom said. I wanted to say something in protest like what the fuck are you going to fix this with? But it was my mom, so I didn’t. Now, I could have said that to my father, but never my mother. “I can tell by your face; you’re swearing at me in your head,” Mom said, and I tried to take the expression off of it.
“It’s just.” I started and then stopped. “I can feel it tear a little more skin sometimes, so I just don’t know how you’re going to fix it.”
“With magic thread, of course,” Mom replied. Whatever my expression had been, I was sure it was different now, possibly contorted with rage and disbelief. Mom held nothing in her hand. No regular thread. No magic thread, and honestly, the comment about magic thread earlier had been a sarcastic, glib comment. ”It will probably hurt a little.“ Mom said, and I felt a sharp but tolerable pain in the skin around my neck.
“Oh, does baby Geneva like Uncle Levi,” I heard Leviathan coo and then I heard Geneva laugh. Geneva was born in January, she’s old enough to laugh, but she never has. Not for me, not for Jerome, not for my parents, not for Helia and her daughters.
“Did she just laugh?” Raphael asked. I heard movement, but all I could see was the top of my mother’s head.
“Of course, she laughed, she knows she’s safe with Uncle Levi. Don’t you, Geneva. You are just the cutest thing. Oh yes, let’s rub your tummy some more and see if we can get you past the colic a little bit. Would you like that?” There are times in my life when I feel like I have stepped into the Twilight Zone or maybe some other weird alternate universe. This was one of those moments. Despite the lack of having anything in her hands when she came up to me, it felt like my mom really was sewing my neck back together and my dead, now demonic, uncle was cooing at my baby sister and making her laugh. If this worked, I was going to need to go back with a strange, rusty key to try and heal the fractured soul of my cousin. I had definitely stepped into a bizarre alternate reality. I had tucked the key into the pocket of my jeans. It still felt like a rusty metal skeleton key to a very large door. I didn’t get the feeling there was any magic in it, but if Uriel thought it would help his son, I’d try it.
“Do I want to know how you nearly lost your head?” Mom asked, having made good progress from the place she’d started on the right side of my neck. She was now getting close to the spot where I’d felt the blade curve upwards.
“It’s my fault,” Uriel said. “I am so sorry, Sophia.”
“Ah,” my mom said with a tone. “Uriel, it’s okay to help your kids. We help ours all the time. We give both girls an allowance to help cover their monthly expenses because having kids of their own is expensive, especially a boy who is growing like a weed. But assisting them and spoiling them are very different things. When you just give your kids everything, they lose respect for you, not just as a parent but an authority figure. Then, they begin to lose respect for all authority and next thing you know they are cutting people’s throats.” I hadn’t made the same leap there that my mom made, but perhaps she wasn’t wrong. “That is the reason for grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren, those are the kids you can spoil to some degree.”
“You and Raphael gave Soleil a house when she graduated from exorcism training,” Uriel said.
“But it wasn’t a big house or an expensive house. It was a reward; we didn’t think Soleil would ever finish anything related to magical training. We had to keep her in angel school all the way up through high school. She deserved some kind of overt gesture. You know what she’s like,” Mom said. “After that house, even though we knew she was making barely enough to keep her above the poverty level as an exorcist, she refused to take anything from us. She used the house as an excuse to not take anything from us. She was constantly telling us whenever we tried to give her something ‘uh, you bought me a house, I’m good for the rest of my life on gifts,’” Mom said.
“But she wanted for nothing as a child,” Uriel said.
“That is also true, within reason. When she needed clothes or food, she got those. Those are necessities. But when the Nintendo came out and she immediately wanted one, yes, we could have bought it, we had $200, the moment she said she wanted it we could have gotten her one, but we didn’t. We made her wait and wait for it. There were plenty of evenings when she came home and complained ‘well Dahlia and everyone else in school has a Nintendo.’ But Sophia and I remained steadfast, she could have a Nintendo when she had saved up for half of it or when she brought home better reports from school, because even then she wasn’t applying herself and teachers kept telling us ‘We know she’s smart and more than capable of doing the magic we ask of her, she just won’t. She tells us she’ll never need to do that kind of magic and when we try to give her examples where she might need the kind of magic we are teaching, she has a reason why that would never happen to her.’ So, she got the Nintendo after she had saved up half the money for it and at $2 a week for allowance, it took a long time for her to get that $100 she needed.”
“You only gave her $2 a week for allowance?” Uriel asked.
“Well, she could earn up to $10, but...” Sophia shrugged. “She could earn a dollar per chore and $2 per good report home from school about her magic homework. Of course, she was six years old, so there were only a few chores she was actually good at that I didn’t have to do over once she did them, so she helped with dishes and kept her room clean, earning her $2 a week.” Mom finished. I could feel her working near my ear now.
“Why wouldn’t you just do your magic homework and earn more?” Leviathan asked.
“Because I was a stubborn, obstinate, brat.”
“At least you admit it.” Mom smiled at me.
“I don’t get that. You knew you had powers as an infant, why not just do the homework? I mean you were still in diapers the first time you showed up in my courtyard. That was quite the adventure, by the way,” Leviathan said, smiling at me and then at Geneva.
“Because I knew I was going to grow up to be an exorcist, why did I need to know how to tie my shoes using magic? I had fingers,” I said. “I know it sounds stupid now, but as a kid it made perfect sense, at least to me.”
“All done,” Mom said. “Asmodeus slowly let go of her head, please, and let’s see what happens. But be ready to grab it just in case. I haven’t done anything like this since the Crusades in the late 1400s when Raphael came home carrying his arm.” Asmodeus began to release my head and I could feel the stitches pulling together tighter. I very gently moved my head a little and didn’t feel it pulling on the skin or the stitches, which I could feel.
“How did you do that?” I asked mom.
“Magical thread.” Mom shrugged. “As a hearth witch, I am capable of helping my family with nearly anything, even sewing body parts back on. I admit this is the first time I’ve sewn a head back on, but arms and legs I have experience with.”
“By family, she literally means family, any of your dad’s relatives or any of her relatives—she can assist them all. But if it had been Magda who lost her head, we would have needed a different solution,” Gabriel said.
“Not necessarily,” Mom replied. “I feel the pull of people considered family. I think she and Remiel were a couple long enough that my magic considers her family.
“That’s interesting,” Raphael said. “Are you ready to go back and try to finish this?” he asked me, holding out a hand.
“Hecate slowed time for you, that’s what the nod was about. So, while you were here, only a few minutes will have passed in your plane,” Leviathan said. “I mean, time doesn’t work the same in the two places anyway, but slowing your time helped more.”
“Yeah, let’s not discuss time,” I said, and gave my head a tentative shake. With each movement my head felt more secure, and I could feel the muscles growing back together. “So that is some seriously cool magic, we’ll have to discuss it, because I need to learn how it works. Jerome isn’t much different than I in the getting injured department.’
“Levi, I hate to take Geneva away from you. This is the quietest she’s been since she was born, and you both look so happy at the moment,” Sophia said to Leviathan as she walked toward him and Geneva.
“With help, I’m available to babysit,” Leviathan said, and I tried not to let my eyes pop out of my head. I couldn’t imagine my baby sister being babysat by my demonic uncle, even if mom was correct and they both looked so happy. “You two have produced another archangel, but this time, she’s more like you, Sophia, than any of the angelic relatives. Her hearth magic is going to be incredibly strong. If Soleil can keep from losing her head until Geneva’s an adult, Geneva will even be able to reattach it from a distance.”
“I will keep the offer to babysit in mind,” Sophia said, and then she turned and smiled at me. “If Soleil can figure out how to use imps as a messaging system for the AESPCA, she may be able to work out a way for me to send Geneva to you for babysitting.”
“Okay, I know technically Leviathan isn’t dangerous to us, but that’s not true of most demons,” I said. “While I agree they should have some time together, I would worry about Belial or Beelzebub marching on Leviathan’s palace to take Geneva if they found out he was babysitting.”
“Hm, that is probably true. Maybe we just need to build a super large nursery and Leviathan can babysit at our house.”
“Great,” I muttered. There were hugs all around and my mother insisted Asmodeus hold Geneva for at least a few minutes, because you know he’d been holding one of her daughters already, he might as well hold the younger, cuter one. Geneva didn’t cry when Asmodeus held her, either, but she did return to crying when Mom took her back from the demon king. “Are you sure she doesn’t have Stygian magic?” I asked Leviathan.
“I’m sure, but you feel safe with us, and I suspect she is picking up on that. As I said, her hearth magic is very strong,” Leviathan answered. Well, what the fuck. Stygian interlude over, I opened a portal and we all returned to Earth where my sister and Kabal were still dealing with a possessed Janet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kabal had a large chunk of flesh gone from his arm, and Janet had blood around her mouth. Helia was keeping her at bay with her magic; I hadn’t realized happiness kept wendigos away but apparently it does. I checked my phone; four minutes had passed since I’d gone after the magaru. As I watched, the minute rolled over to the next number. Okay, we were back, and time was moving again. Woo fucking hoo! I still had the absurdly large key in my pocket and still didn’t feel any magic coming from it. I had serious doubts about Uriel’s key theory.
“Soleil, can you do something?” Helia asked me.
“Yes, wendigos aren’t that much different than demons,” I said, and pushed the spell of exorcism toward Janet. It hit her square on and the wendigo was ripped from her body and left just standing next to her. This is the awkward side of wendigos. Since they have physical bodies on Earth, they have to go find them once they are forced out of their host. This wendigo turned and ran into the barn.
“We should check the barn,” Kabal said. I agreed. Did my crazy cousin capture a wendigo and keep it locked in the barn? Wendigos had been left on Earth because they couldn’t survive in the Stygian. There weren’t many of them, five or six total in the entire world; most of them lived in heavily forested areas where it was cold most of the time. This meant Missouri was not part of their native range. Our summers were too hot for them and lasted way too long, although they never felt like they lasted long enough, in my opinion. I hadn’t just been named after the sun—I loved it. I enjoyed being outdoors when it was warm, and the sun was shining brightly.
I remembered getting the Nintendo. I had loved it during the winter, but once it started to warm up in the spring, I forgot about it for eight months out of the year in favor of playing outside. Helia and I had never discussed it, but she had always been willing to head outdoors to play with me when the sun was out, so I suspected my sister felt the same way I did. Even when she got old enough to play Nintendo, we spent most of the day outside when it was warm, even though lots of our friends played video games for hours on end all year round.
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