On Pins and Needles: Sierra Fox, Book 3 Read online

“Saul?”

  “He’s her demonic friend,” Sally said with a little irritation in her voice.

  “You know he helps me out whenever I need him.”

  Sally nodded. “Yes, people tend to do that when you save their lives.”

  I had no idea what was going on here, but had to admit I’d wondered why Lavie was involved with anything demonic, myself.

  “He doesn’t owe me anything.”

  “Lavie, let’s not get off track. Sierra’s not here to hear our squabbles about the demonic and whether one should become friends with what they hunt.” Sally flashed a half-smile my way.

  “Aunty doesn’t like anything demonic, even though she knows that many of them are willing to risk their own lives to help humans.” Lavie rolled her eyes. “It must be like that for you too, right? I’m sure not every ghost you cross paths with is malevolent.”

  “No, not all of them.” Actually, only a small percentage was but they were enough to keep me in business.

  “See?”

  “Anyway,” Sally said, “do you grasp what you’re up against, Sierra?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, I do.” I glanced at the cup waiting for me, suddenly craving something soothing and warm. Whenever I thought about the Obscurus, my body chilled to the bone. I knew these bastards needed me alive long enough to complete their pathetic ambitions, but along the way the members I’d faced hadn’t hesitated to inflict pain.

  I rubbed my clavicle at the reminder. The black stain from the horrid shape-shifting dog might have faded after I killed him, but the memory hadn’t. It stuck around to haunt me almost as much as having his blood on my hands.

  No need to concentrate on what I did to him right now. It’s me or them.

  I’d simply decided to choose me.

  Lavie beat me to the tea by pouring a generous amount of milk and sugar into her own cup. She then grabbed a cookie and gnawed on it. “Aunty, why did you encrypt that particular file?”

  “I didn’t encrypt it.” Sally sighed. “But it’s the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of this demonic sect.”

  I leaned forward and dropped two heaping teaspoons of sugar into my cup, followed up by enough milk to lighten the dark tea. I preferred coffee but didn’t want to offend Sally. “Is that what they really are, an overzealous cult?” I asked.

  “Sect, cult, group, faction, circle, book club…it doesn’t matter what you call them, at the end of the day they’re the same thing—a bunch of ambitious and greedy magic users who toyed with darkness, and conjured up one of the worst demons in history. As you probably read, the Nazis were rumored to have conjured Legion. Led by Hitler, the demon got very close to real power in our world.” She sighed, took another sip from her cup and settled it onto her lap. “From what Lavie has told me, so far a ghost/witch hybrid and a shape-shifter have threatened your life, which as you probably read isn’t what the demon requires. The demon wants to inhabit as much of this world as it can, and this is something Legion can most certainly do after its given proper passage.”

  A shiver raced down my spine. According to the information on the USB drive, Legion was a group of demons who made an appearance in the Christian Bible. The New Testament contained a story about Jesus healing a man in Gadarenes who was possessed by this demonic entity. The story went deeper than that, but at the end of the day the message was the same: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

  This was the demon the Obscurus not only worshipped, but were all influenced by. Each member seemed to have a different degree within, but I knew it was just a matter of time before they were entirely consumed. Of course, that couldn’t happen until I came into my full powers so they could strip them away from me. I hated to think how they would do such a thing, but knew it was their strategy. However, by having already defeated two points of their pentagram, what did it mean for their ritual?

  I swallowed a sip of tea. “So this Legion wants to, what? Take over the world?”

  Sally shook her head. “Ah, if only it were that easy. Demons are strange creatures—some have their own humanoid bodies, others glamour themselves to appear human, while some can only appear to us in dreams, but still cause material things to happen.”

  “Sort of like Freddy Krueger,” Lavie chimed in. “Remember how he could kill people in their dreams and they really died? Well, demons can do that kind of thing too. A succubus or an incubus can invade someone’s dreams and give them ultimate pleasure, but it comes with a price. If you’re a woman, it usually ends in a surprise pregnancy. If you’re a man it equates to losing a little more of your soul with each encounter.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “Yeah, it is, but there are also exceptions.” Lavie sat forward. “Like, remember when there was a tear in the fibers and I spotted a succubus passing herself off as a prostitute?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, she was able to physically filter through by taking over some poor man’s body and converting him into something else.”

  I winced. “Is that what’s happened to Jonathan?”

  “No,” Sally answered. “There are many breeds of demons that don’t have corporeal bodies and therefore love to filter into our world so they can possess humans and take a body to do as they please.”

  “What does Legion want with Jonathan?” He might be a jerk and I wanted nothing to do with him, but I couldn’t forget that he’d once been a man. And there was still the mystery of had he looked for this, or was he dragged into it? Trying to reconcile the nice guy I’d first met while removing a poltergeist from his bookstore with the malicious asshole he’d become didn’t add up. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe everything about our meeting had been orchestrated.

  “Jonathan was probably Legion’s closest point of contact to you. By taking over his body the demon could get close enough to verify if you were the one they needed to complete Legion’s arrival into our world,” Sally answered with a grim look.

  “I still don’t know what that means.” In TV shows, books, and movies, monsters always wanted to take over the world, but somehow this didn’t seem to be the same thing.

  “Sierra,” Lavie said, taking my hand. “By possessing him, Legion was able to taste you in an intimate way it couldn’t do with the others.”

  I chose not to add that I’d also slept with Mace years ago, so he could have done the same thing. But that would mean this demonic entity had been close to me in one form or another for years, which was fucked up.

  “It’s why he was able to magically develop healing powers,” Sally added, and sadness returned to her eyes.

  I had a feeling that even though Lavie was trying to protect her aunt from what had really happened to Samson, she already knew.

  Just take a deep breath and relax. “Okay, so Jonathan confirmed who I am. Then why did the others try to kill me?”

  “Simple,” Sally said. “Legion has been conjured by the six of them and has touched their very souls, but is not powerful enough to control their every move yet. Even Jonathan will have moments when he seems more like himself.”

  I nodded, because she was right.

  “Those six idiots are supposed to be Legion’s mediums into this world. By exerting considerable control, it will be able to send others out through them and into the world.” Sally looked down at her cup. “And to answer your previous question… No, Legion doesn’t want to rule the world or take it over—it just wants to inhabit this patch to cause chaos, destruction, and mischief.”

  “Great.” So Legion wasn’t a fictional cliché who wanted to rule humanity—this demon just wanted to play around with us. I can’t let this happen. “So, that’s what’s in the encrypted document?”

  Sally shook her head. “That file contains the actual ritual used to conjure Legion into this patch, as well as the one that will allow it to send its demonic entities through.”

  The small bell above the door chimed.

  “Why do I need to read about this?”

  “Actually
, you need to figure out the password and then decipher it.”

  There was no way I could do that. “So you don’t have the password?”

  Sally shook her head. She stood and headed for the young woman examining the bowls filled with crystals on the front counter. “Hello, dear. How can I help you today?”

  “Yeah, hi, I’m looking for my birth stone.”

  “Sure,” Sally said with a beaming smile. “When were you born?”

  “I’m a Sagittarius.”

  “That’s great, but when were you born? I need the date and year…”

  “I know it all sounds like hocus-pocus, but she knows what she’s talking about,” Lavie whispered near my ear. “Everything I know I learned from her.”

  I turned to look at her. It seemed like we had that in common—we’d both been raised by someone other than our parents. Though I really wanted to know her story, I couldn’t bring myself to pry. Instead, I stuck with what I was here for. “Do you think you can help me figure out the password?”

  Lavie half-shrugged a shoulder. “I can try, but it would just be a stab in the dark. Did you try guessing?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t even think of that. I thought maybe it would infect my laptop with a virus or something worse.” I chuckled, but it came out dry and sounded more like a cackle. I raised the tea cup to my lips and swallowed the contents.

  This whole situation made me uncomfortable. The Grye women didn’t know why this group was targeting me, but Professor Spooker, now a wraith I’d met while trapped in the ghostly patch, told me a few hidden truths about my bloodline. I knew exactly why they wanted me, and it wasn’t because I was special. No, the different incarnations of the Obscurus had long ago set their sights on spook catchers because we could wander between worlds. Until the other night, when I’d been jotting all the relevant details into my grimoire, I hadn’t put it all together.

  Being a spook catcher, I could enter a ghost’s zone. As the granddaughter of a witch, I could learn to use magic to my advantage. And as the descendant of the strongest Catcher familial line, and because my grandmother had taken precautions to help empower me, I served as a tool, able to open and close pathways. It also allowed me to drag the demonic into a dark patch that I could control and astral project into. Not all catchers could do this, but my line had gotten stronger with each generation.

  This makes me the perfect, blended target.

  The bell chimed again, drawing me away from my thoughts.

  I turned in time to see the young woman walk out the door with a brown paper bag in her hands. She smiled at whomever was holding the door open for her, and then a familiar witch stepped inside in all his black-suited glory. I placed the cup on the coffee table and stood.

  “Oren, did you follow me here?” I asked, only half-joking. He liked to keep an eye on me and had good intentions, as most biological grandfathers did. But unlike most grandkids, I hadn’t even known about Oren McKee’s existence until a few months ago. And he also happened to be a very powerful witch who hunted evil witches in his spare time. “Because if you did, I could’ve used your help a little earlier when someone tried to run me over.”

  He released the door and turned to face me. The grin on his very charming face vanished. “I didn’t expect to find you here, Sierra.” For once, his black, dressy clothing fit the season. “But what happened?” He stepped closer.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m okay—just got a little shaken, that’s all.”

  He opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by Sally. She approached him, took both of his hands into hers much like she’d done to mine, before leaning over to give him a kiss on each cheek. “Oren, it’s been too long. You have to visit more often, especially now.” She glanced my way before looking back at him.

  “You know each other?” This was a surprise.

  Oren squeezed Sally’s hands and nodded. “Of course we do. Actually, Sally knew your grandmother too.”

  My eyes widened and I couldn’t help but wonder when my life would stop dropping random surprises. I was starting to feel like my existence was just one long pretense after another. Sometimes I wondered if I needed a manual. “You did?”

  Sally nodded and smiled. “She was a very special woman, and you seem to have inherited every one of her best traits.”

  Damn, how could I be angry with her after saying something like that?

  My grandmother was one of the most positive role models I’d had growing up, and her death hadn’t ended her influence. So when I was in my teens and her spirit mysteriously stopped appearing, I was devastated. Now I knew exactly why she was gone—and why the ghost of the man I’d grown up thinking was my grandfather had also been taken. The shadow ghosts—also known as shadow monsters or shadows—had them. Mace made sure of that.

  Once Grandma moved onto the afterlife, I would receive the full extent of my powers. Mace and his freaky Obscurus friends wanted to control the exact time this happened.

  “You’re here to pick up the Hands of Glory, aren’t you?” Lavie jumped off the couch and made her way towards the back of the store. She pushed the beaded curtain aside, disappeared into the back, and returned only seconds later with two cardboard gift boxes. “Here they are, especially prepared. I followed every one of your instructions.”

  Oren took them and smiled. “Excellent! I’ll be putting mine to good use.” He glanced my way before heading towards the cash register.

  Lavie stood on the other side of the service counter, where they continued with their transaction.

  “So, do you think you’ll be able to decipher the code?” Sally asked, sidling up beside me.

  “I thought I just needed to work out the password.” Something I’d hoped Sally and Lavie would be able to help me with. But nothing ever turned out to be easy. There were complications with just about everything in my life.

  “Figuring out the password won’t be the hardest bit—try something obvious,” she said. “They might think they’re clever in their manipulations and plans, but they’re pretty stupid. Deciphering the dialect will be a lot harder, though I know just the person who might be able to help you with that.” She dipped her chin, clearly pointing at Oren.

  “Oren can help me?” I asked. “What dialect is it?”

  “It’s an old witch script—I’m pretty sure he knows it.”

  “You’re pretty sure I know what?” Oren stepped up beside us. “Sorry, ladies, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” We were practically whispering, so there was no way anyone could have overheard a single word unless they were intentionally listening. “Is it true? Can you help me read an ancient witch script I’ve got on a file?”

  “Sure.” He cocked a white eyebrow. “What is this file about?”

  “It’s about the Obscurus,” Sally answered, lowering her voice.

  “Now, there’s a bunch of idiots right there!”

  “You know about them?” Why was I surprised? Oren seemed to know everything about everyone, and was usually a step ahead. Still, having this conversation made me feel a little awkward because I hadn’t opened up about any of this yet. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep this situation a secret, just that I didn’t want to talk to him about the Obscurus until I had some cold, hard facts.

  “I already know they’re after you, Sierra.” A smile quirked the edges of his mouth, and he shook his head. “I really wish you’d learn to confide in me without all the secrecy.”

  “I wasn’t being secretive,” I said with a derisive snort.

  “Yes you were.” He rubbed his bristly chin. “Did you figure it out after the Slevani brothers or Mauricio?”

  “Somewhere in between,” I lied. I’d figured it out after reading the information on the USB drive. That’s when everything Travis, Jonathan, and Mauricio said—or didn’t say—clicked into place.

  Oren sighed, whipping his long white braid behind his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. An
d yes, I could probably help you.” He exchanged a quick glance with both Sally and Lavie, which made me wonder if they had something to do with him knowing rather than his sixth sense.

  Any more questions would have to wait. Right now, visiting Lavie felt like a step in the right direction.

  “Are you busy right now?” I asked him.

  “Actually, I’ve got something to take care of…but could come over tonight.”

  I shook my head. “I’m busy tonight.” A sudden surge of excitement flowed through me because Papan and I were having a date night. He’d texted me just before I arrived here, saying: Can’t wait to see you tonight. I’m almost done, and you’re not going to avoid me anymore.

  The meaning was obvious, and I couldn’t wait.

  Oren smiled. “Okay, how about tomorrow morning?”

  “That’s perfect. Can you come over early, before I head out to the office?”

  “I’ll be there at six,” he answered.

  “Make it eight.” It was Saturday.

  “Eight it is.”

  “Great, thanks.” I turned away from Oren and his packages to concentrate on Lavie and Sally, who both watched the exchange with matching smiles. “Do you mind if I have another cup of tea?”

  “Of course not, dear.” Sally headed back to the coffee table. “Will you be staying, Oren?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Like I said, I’ve got some business to attend to but I’ll certainly take a rain-check.”

  “You know you’re always welcome here,” she said with a smile.

  I looked between them, wondering if they knew each other way back when supernatural hunters worked together. Oren had mentioned it once or twice, but I didn’t ask too many questions because I knew my grandmother had been romantically involved with him at the time. Their love affair was easier to bear nowadays. I’d come to terms with their connection and the fact my grandmother, Pepita, had been the holder of many secrets.

  Sally leaned over my cup and her smile faded.

  “Aunty, what’s wrong?” Lavie asked as she rushed to her side.

  Sally fell onto the couch, her fingers wrapped tightly around my cup. She was still looking inside it with a grim look. “The leaves never lie.”