Chapter 6 Bought

#ELDON

"No one" Hesper said, for the second time, in the tone of someone who wished the answer were more interesting than it was. "I've asked around every coven that still speaks to me. Nobody's lost a witch with that kind of range. Nobody's training one either"

I stood at the window of the safehouse, watching rain streak the glass. My phone pressed to my ear like it might bring something new if I held it there long enough.

"She wove twelve illusions at once. Full sensory copies. Independent movement. No seam between them” I told him, relieving the show. 

"I heard you the first time”

"And nobody's heard of her"

"I didn't say that" Hesper's voice horned, the closest she ever came to defensive. "I said nobody's claiming her. There's a difference, King Eldon and you know it"

She was right and that was the part that itched. A witch that strong should have belonged to someone. A coven, a bloodline, a rumor at the very least. Instead she'd been sitting behind a counter selling crystals to humans and the Lore agreed, collectively to forget she existed.

"Keep asking" I said and ended the call before Hesper could remind me again, that she wasn't my errand runner.

I set the phone down and let the silence take the room. Two days since I watched her fold an alley into a dozen versions of herself and laugh whike she did it.

Two days of telling myself I had better things to occupy my attention than an occult shop owner with an inconvenient amount of power and an even more inconvenient laugh with the reddest hair. 

The message came in an hour later. One of Kael's scouts, tracking Skye Demon movement through the human realm, reports unusual activity three blocks from the shop. A transaction. Possibly weapons or information. 

I traced in expecting either. I did not expect to see the Archer, Ryson. The occult’s so-called boyfriend. 

The alley reeked of demon blood already. Somold and bitter under the rain though nothing had been spilled yet. 

Four of Veyrath's men stood in a loose half circle, horns uncovered. Half their faces slicked violet in the way his favorites always were, marked by whatever he did to the ones who pleased him. 

Ryson stood in front of them with his hands shoved in his pockets, doing his best impression of a man in control of the conversation.

At his feet, slumped against the wall was a woman with red hair plastered to her face by rain.

I almost didn't recognize her. Unconscious changes a person more than sleep does. 

It strips away everything that makes them recognizable, the tilt of the head, all the small motion that had made her impossible to look away from in her own shop two nights ago.

Then the streetlight caught her face at the right angle and I knew her.

Something in my chest went very still and cold at the same time. I filed it away and kept walking.

"–she's more trouble than she's worth honestly," Ryson was saying, "but Veyrath wants her breathing, so you'll want to be careful moving her–"

"How much?”

Four heads turned toward me at once. Ryson took a beat longer, distracted enough by the interruption that he didn't immediately register what had just walked into the alley. 

When he did, his eyes swept over me and found nothing alarming. Ordinary coat with face. No horns showing, no reason for a bounty hunter mid-transaction to think twice about a stranger who wandered into the wrong alley at the wrong time.

"This isn't your business, friend" one of the demons said, the words scraping out of a throat that wasn't built quite right for human speech.

"I'm making it my business” I nodded toward Maeve without looking away from Ryson. "How much did Veyrath offer you for her?"

Ryson hesitated and I watched him do the math anyway. Same way men like him always did. A stranger asking the price wasn't a stranger who intended to walk away without paying it.

"Forty thousand. Why? You buying?"

"Double it”

Something flickered across his face. Relief, if I had to name it. That relief of a man who'z been hoping for a way out of a bad decision without having to admit it was one. 

He didn't ask who I was. He didn't ask why a stranger in an ordinary coat was carrying that kind of money or why he wanted a half-conscious witch badly enough to pay twice a demon lord's price for her.

He just said yes. I paid him. He didn't count it, just shoved the bills into his jacket like he couldn't stand to look at them for longer than necessary. He turned to go without a single glance back at the woman he'd sold.

The demons noticed the money changed hands and started to reposition. The way animals do when a meal is about to be taken from them. 

I let my horns come through then, let the temperature in the alley drop the way it always did when I stopped pretending to be anything other than what I was.

It didn't take long. It never does against Veyrath's lesser men. Three of them barely got a hand up before I ended it. The fourth tried to run which was almost admirable and almost fast enough.

When it was over I turned back to find her watching me. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused, fighting to track me through whatever Ryson had put in her system. 

But she was watching and somewhere behind the fog I could see her doing the same thing I'd have done in her positio. To piece  the scene together, working out exactly what had happened and in what order.

Ryson taking the money before checking whether she survive the transaction that just took place in front of her. I crouched down in front of her. She flinched. 

"You're safe" I said, which was not entirely true yet but close enough for now.

A witch safe with a demon? Never happened in the history. 

Her mouth moved but no sound came out. Whatever she'd meant to say dissolved somewhere between her mind and her throat and her eyes slid shut before she could try again.

I picked her up. She weighed almost nothing which struck me as wrong. For someone who'd leveled an alley full of trained hunters two nights before with nothing but a smile and twelve versions of herself. 

I looked down at her face, slack now. Rain still clinging to her lashes and thought about the twelve women I watched laughing in the dark and wondered which one of them, if any, I was currently carrying.

Then I traced us both out of the alley because whatever she was, she wasn't safe here.