Free Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz Page A

reading books like this, but she liked them. Like the table, they were comforting. It was amazing what the power of somebody else’s happy ending could do for her, even when the somebody else wasn’t real.
    Today, though, she wasn’t in the mood. Even reading seemed exhausting. She slid the book aside.
    â€œHow about you?” she asked her demon. “Any suggestions? Any way through this mess?”
    An image appeared in her mind—a woman, maybe, but she didn’t even really absorb it before groaning. More of the pantomime, the guessing game. “Seriously, can you just talk to me? Write a letter? Anything? Please?”
    The image in her mind changed to that of an emaciated man clad in rags, his wrists locked in heavy manacles in front of him. He held them up, face creased in pathetic apology.
    â€œYou have to be kidding me. Why?”
    The vision vanished, returning to that of the room around her. She thought that was all the answer she wasgoing to get, that the demon had gone off to sulk yet again, and then another image flashed before her.
    A man tied to stakes buried in dusty earth. Another man stood above him, leering, heaved a maul over his head, and swung it down into the man’s knee. Flesh tore, and bone exploded, and Karyn was suddenly glad she didn’t get sound as well as vision. Then that image was gone, and a woman was being locked inside some tiny rat-infested dungeon. The man holding the key was the same as the man with the hammer.
    Lastly, as if she hadn’t gotten the point, a young man chained down in some inquisitor’s chamber. Flames raged in a brazier, and sweat flowed in slick rivulets down his face. Two cloaked and hooded figures held his head and opened his mouth while another man approached with pincers. The pincers forced their way past his lips and teeth, seizing his tongue.
    The man with the pincers was the man with the hammer was the man with the key—and Karyn recognized him. Hector. Or, actually, Belial.
    â€œOkay, I get it, stop,” she said, before the pincers could finish their work.
    A stern-faced woman replaced the torture scene. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her arms crossed, her eyebrows raised in an angry question. Karyn wasn’t quite sure what that was supposed to mean, but she guessed it was something along the lines of “Any more questions?” Or perhaps, “Satisfied?”
    It could be a lie,
she thought. The demon in her head hadn’t ever displayed an outright lie to her, that she knew of, but she also knew it wasn’t above supplying an image that could be interpreted in misleading ways. On the other hand, one of the few things she knew about it was that it hated Belial with a frightening intensity. That was consistent with Belial having silenced it somehow.
    And now, if I had any doubt, I’m
certain
I’m in the middle of some kind of damn demon feud. Ugh.
    She went to the box that held the few incidentals sheand Anna had brought to the loft and pulled out a pack of Bicycle playing cards. She cut the deck and looked at the card. Four of clubs. She wondered why the demon could convey numbers and text from the world to her but it couldn’t write its own. The difference between reflecting a painting in a mirror and painting your own, maybe, or perhaps some vagary of demon rules she’d never understand. It was a pain in the ass in any case.
    She dealt a hand of solitaire. A lousy game, but it would pass the time.
    A few minutes before ten, her phone buzzed. The number was blocked. Karyn picked up anyway.
    â€œBelial,” a woman said, and a moment later Karyn recognized her as Elliot.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWhat do you know about it? What’s going on?”
    This didn’t seem like idle curiosity to Karyn. Although Elliot was fiercely curious, probably more so than was good for her, the shock on her face when Anna had dropped the name had been too genuine, too deep to be