Into the Tiger's Hour

Chapter Thirteen

Wet coughing sounded from the kitchen, interspersed with the occasional pause to draw breath, audible even in the living room. Neither the demon nor the death mage looked at each other, standing on either side of the occult paraphernalia that covered the living room floor.

"Did you have a security deposit?"

Jonas looked up from the bloody smears he was scrubbing off of the linoleum. "What?"

Betre pointed to the shallow grooves they'd etched into the plastic, now filled with congealed, half-melted salt burnt black. "A security deposit. Did you pay one when you leased this apartment?"

He blinked at the floor, uncomprehending, and then Jonas sat back on his heels to stare at Betre, frowning. "Really. Really. You're asking me about that now. You didn't ask before we set up for this."

A shrug was Betre's answer; he side-stepped to toe the sheet towards Jonas, the faded floral pattern obscured by crimson stains. "Include this in what you're taking down to the furnace and make sure that no one sees you do it."

"No, I thought I'd parade it through the entire building. Maybe go downstairs and run through the streets with it while yelling 'hey I summoned a demon!' How's that for a bright idea?"

The sarcasm slipped off of Betre's armor of self-satisfaction. He drew a cigarillo out of his pocket and lit it with the white taper still burning on the small coffee table set in the middle of the carefully incised sigils. "While you're at it, perhaps you should strip up the flooring and put down fresh. I'm sure there's some simple manner of using cheap tile you could manage while you're impatiently waiting for me to tell you it's time to summon Dia."

It never failed to amuse the demon that the sound of her name, a single syllable, could stop the death mage in his tracks. Or scrubbing, as the case may be. "When are we going to do it?" Jonas fidgeted, wringing the sponge he held until bloody water dripped onto his jeans. "We know I can now."

"Do you really want to summon her now? Before we've finished what we're doing? You don't even have an appropriate home to take her to." Betre gestured disdainfully at the walls. "Unless you want to bring her here to your... palace of earthly delights."

He looked around the room, jaw clenching as the wet coughing turned into retching in the other room, and shook his head. "No."

"I wouldn't recommend it. And yes, it's going to stink for quite some time. A year, at least. Brimstone doesn't often leave a room."

At that, Jonas rose to his feet and crossed the room to tug at the window, nearly glued to the sill by years of grease, grime and debris. He yanked ineffectually for a moment, looked back and grabbed the ceremonial dagger to cut at the gick that was gumming up the window's frame. "What else needs to be burned?"

"The sheet, all of the candles we've used, that container of salt..." Betre pursed his lips, looking over the jumble of items that had been involved. "The flooring, to be honest. I wouldn't leave it here with those symbols still prominently visible."

"I can't tear up the fucking floor right now, so be reasonable."

"I am being reasonable. Are you going to linger here for much longer? Now that you've demonstrated your prowess, we'll need to hurry before her soul has been gone too long."

The yellow plastic bucket hit the floor with a thud, nearly overturning, and a wave of bloody water sloshed out, dousing the makeshift altar and putting out the candles still burning on it. Jonas was across the floor, kicking a dead chicken out of his way, and at Betre's side before the demon had a chance to snap a warning about wet hands on his suit jacket.