“That’s so romantic.” Trinity clasped her gauntleted hands. “Fighting crime together.”
That made us sound like superheroes, but we were antiheroes at best.
“Yes.” I gritted my teeth at Clay. “Very romantic.”
While they fell into a debate on real versus synthetic hair, I aimed for the staircase that curved up to the spacious second floor. On the landing, I paused to scan the ceiling, half expecting to find it cracked in two, but it was in good repair from this vantage. There weren’t many rooms, maybe four down each hall. I located mine and pushed in the door, braced for what Clay had described.
Minimalist furniture. Pale blueish-gray walls. Bright-white sheets. Modern bathroom.
I was still standing in the doorway, debating if toxic mold in the walls caused this hallucination, when Asa entered the room and set our suitcases on the brushed nickel racks near the closet. He glanced around, cocked an eyebrow, and pivoted to soak up my reaction as if he required confirmation as well.
“The interior doesn’t match the exterior.” I shut the door. “Why renovate the inside when the outside looks like one good storm would blow it over?”
Flames tickled the corner of my vision, and the daemon claimed Asa’s skin, sniffing and huffing the walls.
“Magic.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Smell like flowers.”
“A white witch cast a glamour in here?” I held out my palm and homed in my senses. “You’re right.”
Sure enough, there were traces of a glamour. It was old, very old, which had dulled the smell. Magic this settled into the bones of a building had been an ongoing project for a good decade or more. The owners must renew it every so often or else the illusion begins to fade. But which was real? Interior or exterior?
After Charleston, and the chain reaction that led to our rental there, I was happy to embrace paranoia.
The teens had no magical signature I could detect, so I would wait for the parents and question them.
Better safe than ridden by a boo hag. Or a Boo Brother, in this case.
“We need to talk to Colby.” A pit opened in my stomach. “There must be a reason she chose this place.”
The daemon crossed to me, planted a big kiss on my cheek, then nodded his agreement. “Bye, Rue.”
“Later…” I tripped over a fundamental aspect of every person’s identity. “I’ll see you later.”
The daemon didn’t have a name.
How hadn’t that occurred to me before now?
He was simply the daemon. The flipside of Asa’s coin. The other half of his personality.
Asa considered the daemon an extension of himself, so it made sense why he didn’t name him. The line dividing them was thin, almost transparent, which explained why no one else had either. But me? I held no doubts whatsoever that he was his own person, with his own thoughts and goals, likes and dislikes.
That he shared a body with Asa meant a name was the only recognition of self he could hope for in life.
Switching one skin for another, Asa took his turn behind the wheel. “You look troubled.”
“I just realized something.” I decided to keep that something to myself, for now. “Ready to go?”
Asa flicked a glance down himself, at his tattered shirt, and sighed at the waste. “Yes.”
For a trip across the hall, he didn’t need to look put together, though it was his preference.
We found Clay and Colby in a room identical to ours, except theirs was more grayish blue in tone.
“I’m going to sleep in the wardrobe,” Colby announced, “like a real moth.”
That stumped me for a beat, but then I remembered my question. “Why did you choose this place?”
“It’s a block from Waffle Iron.”