Helena pulled her rental car up to the Runaway Jack. During the day, it looked abandoned. The neon signs were switched off, the windows blackened, the siding scuffed and streaked with mud. Aside from hers, the only car parked on the street beside it was a beat-up old pickup truck.
Helena killed the engine and stepped out into the hot afternoon. The neighborhood rustled around her, kicking up a stir of damp wind. An airplane whined overhead. Helena took a deep breath and walked up to the front entrance.
The door was unlocked. Helena swung it wide, letting in a big arc of yellow sunlight that illuminated the swirls of dust kicked up by the door’s motion. Inside everything was dark and cool and quiet. The stage was empty; no one tended the bar. Helena stepped inside and let the door slam shut behind her.
“Hello?” she called out. “Ian?”
Light fanned across the floor, and Ian poked his head out of the little room where he had vetted her.
“You’re back.” He stepped out onto the floor, crossed his arms over his chest. He looked imposing in the sallow light spilling out of his office. “You came here by your lonesome again? Where the hell’s Aleksi?”
“I need your help,” Helena said. “Please.”
Something like worry flickered across Ian’s face. “Why? What happened?”
Helena took another deep breath, glanced around the room.
“The place is empty,” Ian said. “You can say whatever you need to say.”
Helena looked at him, hulking and imposing. “I need to find Aleksi.”
“You lost him?” Ian raised an eyebrow. “So soon after your reunion?”
Helena clenched her jaw; the last thing she wanted was to try to explain her complicated feelings about Aleksi to a blood mage bar owner. “I had to leave,” she finally said. “My sister came to save me.”
Ian laughed. “Did you want to be saved? Should have told her to fuck off.”
Helena sighed in frustration. “It’s not that easy. Look, I had to leave, and I found some things out, and now I need to get back to Aleksi to warn him. But when I went to Corina’s place, they were gone. It looked—” She stopped. Ian was striding toward her with a stern expression.
“Keep going.” He stopped a few paces away. “And if you want me to help you, you’ve got to tell me everything.” Ian stared intensely at Helena. It reminded her a little of Aleksi, like he’d seen more of the world than she could imagine.
“My sister struck a deal with Gavin,” Helena said in a rush. “She was supposed to capture Aleksi when she rescued me, but it didn’t—didn’t work out. Now Gavin’s convinced her to bring my parents in, plus two more Lineage agents, and all five are supposed to help him get Aleksi, but they have Lineage blood, and apparently Lineage blood—”
“Stop,” Ian said, more gently than Helena would have expected. “I’ve been around enough blood mages to know what Lineage blood can do. I see exactly where this is going.”
“He’s going to sacrifice them! They’re probably on their way to him right now!” She couldn’t stop herself; all the fear tumbled out of her. “And then he’s going to summon Aleksi and then he’s going to sacrifice Aleksi and pull Satan through and everything will—”
“What did you say?” Ian leaned in close, his eyes flashing. “Did you say Satan?”
Helena wiped at the hot tears burning in her eyes. “I mean the Black Emperor.”
“I know who you mean. You said Gavin wants to pull through the Black Emperor?”
Helena nodded.
“And he’s got your family? How many people? Two?”
“Three,” Helena whispered.
“Fuck!” Ian’s shout made Helena jump. “Fuck. Those two assholes didn’t say anything about the goddamned Black Emperor.”
“I don’t know where Aleksi is,” Helena said in a small voice. “I want to warn him, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ian said. “With that much Lineage blood, Gavin will be able to summon Aleksi from anywhere in the world. And then you combine it with Aleksi’s blood—” He shook his head. “That fucking idiot. That fucking fool.”
“Aleksi?” Helena whispered. “He didn’t—”
“No, Gavin!” Ian whirled away from her and slammed up behind the bar. He yanked out a bottle and poured two shots. “Get over here. We need to figure out what the fuck you’re going to do.”
“Me?” Helena laughed in shock. “You can’t at least help me?”
Ian knocked back his drink and then drank the one he’d poured for Helena. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “My situation is—it’s complicated.”
Helena walked up to the darkened bar. Ian poured her a triple shot of whiskey. “Drink up.”
“No,” she said. “We don’t have time to sit around getting drunk. My family is walking right into Gavin’s trap and I have no idea what I’m going to do.” Helena shoved the glass of whiskey back at Ian. “Do you understand? My family is about to be slaughtered. My—”
Ian gave her a quirked smile.
“My—my boyfriend,” she said, feeling absurd, “is about to be slaughtered. And then the entire fucking world is going to end. So no, I’m not going to have a fucking glass of whiskey. You are going to tell me what you know and then we—” she glared at him “—are going to figure out a way to stop all of this.”
Ian looked down at the glass of whiskey. Then he drank it in one long gulp.
Helena screeched in frustration.
“Sit down,” Ian said. “You are going to have to stop all of this because I can’t leave this fucking bar.”
“I’m sure you can afford to close down for one night,” Helena snapped.
“That’s not what I meant.” Ian pushed his fingers through his hair. “I mean I’m trapped. Bound here.” He banged his foot against the floor. “In this building.”
Helena stared at him. “What?” she whispered, panic rising up in her throat, washing away the indignation. “Why?”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “And as you pointed out, we don’t have the fucking time.” He leaned over the bar, pressing his face close to hers. The antiseptic scent of alcohol wafted between them, and when he spoke, she felt his hot breath on her cheek. “I’m in hiding. From the Lineage. And if you aren’t careful, you’re going to be in the same fucking boat. So we’ve got to be strategic.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Aleksi told me, when I saw him.” Ian’s eyes gleamed. “He said you could do Infernal magic.”
Helena let out a sharp breath. “Just because he taught me.”
“But he never bothered to teach Dom?” Ian shook his head. “He taught you because you’re capable of it.”
“I don’t under—”
“Why is Lineage blood such a powerful summoning tool?” Ian pressed forward over the bar, his fingers splayed across the counter.
“We don’t have time for this,” Helena said. “If you can’t help me, I need to find someone who can.”
Ian slapped the counter. “I can help you find Gavin and your family. I know how to track Lineage lines. But I’m trying to explain to you why so you know what you’re walking into.”
“So tell me!” Helena shouted.
Ian took a deep breath, squared his big shoulders. He looked Helena dead in her eye.
“Gavin isn’t trying to pull the Black Emperor through into our universe because he wants to obliterate everything,” Ian said. “He wants to do it because two thousand years ago a human magician stole a fragment of the Black Emperor—”
“I know this story,” Helena said impatiently. “It’s where the Children of Adrasteia get their name from.”
Ian laughed. “Yes, the Adrasteia. The demon’s name. But do you know the human’s?”
“Does it matter?” Helena snapped.
Ian’s eyes burrowed into hers. “You don’t.”
“Will you fucking spill it—”
“Ibrahem.”
Helena’s breath lodged in her throat. It took her a long moment to find her voice. “The founder of the Lineage?”
“The one and only.”
Helena laughed, disbelieving. “Why are you doing this?” she sputtered. “Why won’t you just help me?”
“I’m trying,” Ian said. “Aleksi wouldn’t have known this, and he wouldn’t have cared. But I’m telling you, from one Lineage heretic to another—”
Helena frowned at the word heretic.
“All Lineage magic can trace its root to a fragment of the Black Emperor that King Ibrahem smuggled across the boundaries.”
“What are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m saying that Gavin wants to do the same thing. He wants that immense kind of power.” Ian reached across the bar, tucked his hand under Helena’s chin, and lifted her gaze to his, forcing her to look in his eye. “And I’m telling you that you are uniquely qualified to stop him because you can wield a demon’s magic in human form. Every now and then, a Lineage child is born who can.”
Helena stumbled away, her chest tight.
You were always so susceptible.
“I’m the same way,” Ian said. “Most of us, I think, leave the way you did—we can’t work typical Lineage magic, so we give up. And some of us—”
He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and slammed it onto the bar. Glass and alcohol exploded in the shadows and Helena jumped back, yelping in surprise. Ian sliced the edge of his finger with the jagged edge of the bottle, pressed his bloody hand onto the bar and began to draw, the swirling, elaborate lines of Infernal runes that Helena had always found so beautiful.
Of course you found them beautiful—you could understand them.
“Some of us learn the truth.” His voice distorted; his eyes glowed with a black light. Blood runes streaked across the bar. “We harness that power. Gavin Vargo wants what we have.” He swept the remaining whiskey and glass off the counter and dribbled his blood in an elaborate swirl. “And he’s willing to destroy two worlds to get it.”
Ian flicked his hand with a flourish, flinging a few hot drops of blood across Helena’s face. They sparked like static electricity and she felt a surge of power, a bolt of protection. A low grumble rose out of Ian’s throat. It distorted, then became the syllables of Infernal that Helena had always learned no human could speak.
But he was speaking it.
And moreover, she was understanding it.
“I cast out the lines of my lineage,” Ian intoned, the guttural syllables melting into a distorted, sonorous English. “Show me the working of the Muir line on this night! Show me where to find my brethren!”
Then his hands shot out across the bar and grabbed hard onto Helena’s wrists, his fingers squeezing down into her bones. She yelped and tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong. He pulled her forward, the bar’s edge digging hard into her stomach. His eyes were all black, glassy and cold like a shark’s. “Help me,” he spat through gritted teeth. “You said your family might already be with Gavin. If we find them, they’ll lead us to him.”
“H-how?”
His grip tightened. “You know what to say.”
Helena shook her head, terror pulsing up through her chest. She never should have come here. She would have been better off driving back to Houston, walking back into work next week like nothing had ever happened. She was a fool for thinking she could have ever been more than ordinary—
And then she felt it. A tickle in the back of her throat. A thrum of power. A crackle of magic.
The Infernal tumbled out of her mouth, the sounds spiky and sharp and unnatural, a knife scraping the flesh of her tongue. But she was speaking them, hearing their strange syllables in her own voice and understanding them inside her head.
“Show me the working of the Muir line on this night,” she rasped. “Show me where to find my brethren.”
Ian nodded, his face split in a maniacal grin. Helena grabbed onto his forearms, squeezing as tightly as she could. The magic rose up inside of her as they chanted, their words swelling until the room darkened and brightened at once, and she was able to see the lines of power snaking through Ian’s body, coursing up his arms and into her own.
“Show me the working of the Muir line on this night!” they both screamed, their voices coalescing into one, amplified by their shared magic. “Show me where to find my brethren!”
The air vibrated, and in the dark parts of her mind Helena saw Juniper, standing in front of a bathroom mirror, smudging on eyeliner.
“I see her!” Helena shouted, in English. She was so startled she tried to pull away from Ian, but he held fast.
“Hold her there,” he said—in English? In Infernal? Helena couldn’t tell. “Don’t let her slip out. You’ve almost got this.”
His gaze hooked onto hers: the glow had seeped out of them, but Helena could feel it burning up her own retinas. He opened his mouth. “Show me—”
She slid into the chant. “—the working of the Muir line on this night. Show me where to find my brethren.”
In her head Juniper was sitting in the backseat of a Lineage operative van, sandwiched between two strangers. Helena felt the blast of the air-conditioning and the hum of the Gregorian chants Dad always played on his way to missions. “My sister!” she shrieked in Infernal. “Show me where to find my sister!”
And then she was no longer standing inside the Runaway Jack, but drifting through the balmy night, above a tidy neighborhood drenched in starlight. There was a house at the end of the road, and when she saw it Helena knew everything: how to get there, what would happen if she didn’t.
All the air sucked out of the world, and Helena wasn’t flying, she was falling, falling straight through the damp asphalt, into a shroud of darkness, and then—
The back of her head slammed into something hard and cold. Pain shuddered up her spine; her vision blinked black and white.
She was staring at an elaborate tangle of exposed AC ducts.
The Runaway Jack.
Helena sat up with a gasp, her heart racing. Ian was braced against the bar, drinking down the last of the whiskey.
“Fuck, I haven’t done that in a long time,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Helena scrambled to her feet. The vision was disappearing into gray mist. A house. The way to it, as if she’d been there a million times before.
“I need a piece of paper!” she shouted. She leaned over the bar, feeling around the register for a receipt, a menu, anything.
“Here.” He handed her a green guest check booklet, a ballpoint pen without a cap. “Write it fast.”
Helena scribbled across the booklet, digging the pen deep into the paper. I-10 to Read Blvd, left on Dwyer. None of it made sense to her. When she finished, she looped it all up in a sigil like the ones Aleksi had tattooed across his body. Energy prickled up her arm, into her chest.
She dropped the pen and stumbled backward.
“Not bad for your first time.” Ian was looking down at the notepad. “It looks like you actually got something intelligible.”
“I saw a neighborhood,” Helena said weakly. “It looked—ordinary. But there was one house—” The images were slipping away. She went up to the bar and grabbed the closest bottle in reach and poured its contents into a waiting shot glass. She swallowed the shot without tasting it.
“What was that?” she whispered, peering up at Ian. “What we just did.”
Ian’s expression was grim in the darkness. “Something very few people can do,” he said. “Just people like us. Me and you.”
“Lineage-Infernal magic,” Helena said weakly. “I was speaking—”
“I know.” Ian poured another shot from the bottle for both of them. It was gin, Helena saw on the label. “And I was impressed. The first time I did that, it fucked me up real bad.” He swallowed his shot.
Helena took a deep breath. Stared down at the shot of gin he’d left for her. Her head ached, her eyes watered. It was almost like her old Infernal allergies, but—different. Now it was the lack of Infernal magic that brought it on. And she wondered what those allergies had really signified. She wondered if it hadn’t been allergies at all. If it had been her own Infernal magic seeping up to the surface.
She swallowed the gin. This time, she tasted it, like gasoline and rosemary.
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
Ian laughed. “No shit.”
Helena looked down at the booklet, her handwriting scrawling out those unfamiliar directions. “I have to go here,” she said flatly. “I have to stop it.”
“Can’t say I’m jealous.”
Helena looked up at him. His arms were crossed over his chest, his expression dark and serious.
“Although—” He looked past her. “I wish I could help you. I never thought I’d—” His gaze flicked back to her. He laughed. “Never thought I’d meet someone else like me.”
“What would happen if you left the bar?” Helena’s fingers curled around the directions.
“I would incinerate the second I stepped off the property,” he said. “I’m bound here. I can’t help you any further.”
Helena trembled. She ripped off the guest check with her directions and held it, her hands shaking. She kept seeing Juniper, putting on her makeup, pricking her finger. Were those things that were happening just now? Or things that had already happened?
Dread stabbed at her chest. Her stomach churned; she shouldn’t have drunk that alcohol.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispered.
Ian stared at her. “You handle Infernal magic better than I ever did when I was first starting out,” he said. “Almost like you’ve been practicing.”
“What?” Helena shook her head. “This is the first time I’m even hearing about all this.”
Ian shrugged. “Maybe you were practicing without realizing it. This magic, it manifests in different ways. I had a friend access it through dancing.”
The Project, Helena thought breathlessly. Was it even possible?
“Look, what I’m saying is, get Aleksi free, and the two of you will be unstoppable.”
Helena tried to nod but she was too frozen with fear.
“You have to go,” Ian said quietly.
And so she did.