The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(64)

She wondered what it was whispering to Piper.

Neeve looked at the demon. It looked back. It was beginning to look more at home here among the forest, which was probably a bad sign for the trees. In a low voice, she said, “I do not see how you expect to sell this demon. This is an exercise in arrogance. You cannot control it.”

The lowered voice was pointless, as the demon was right there, but Neeve couldn’t help herself.

“It is favouring me,” Piper said. “That’s what it said.”

“Yes, but in the end, the demon has its own agenda. You are a tool.”

The demon’s thoughts whispered through the trees; the trees quivered. A bird cried out, but it was a sound in reverse. A few feet away from Neeve, a mouth had opened in the ground and it was slowly opening and closing in a hungry, neglected way. It was not possible, but the demon didn’t care about possible. The forest now lived by nightmare rules.

Piper seemed unfussed. “And you are a downer. Demon, make me a house. House cave. Whatever you can do fast around here. As long as I can have a bath, I’m on board. Let it be thus, or whatever.”

It was thus, or whatever, according to the word of Piper.

The demon’s magic was unlike anything Neeve had ever used before. It was negative, a magical debit card; a psychic proof of energy was neither created nor destroyed. If they wanted to make a building, the demon would have to unmake part of the forest. And it was not an easy process to watch. If it had been a simple deletion, Neeve might not have had such a hard time with it. But it was a corruption. Vines grew and grew and grew, flowering and budding with ceaseless growth until they strangled themselves and rotted. Delicate thorn trees grew razors and spines that twisted and curled until they cut the branch growing them. Birds began to vomit their guts, which became snakes, which ate the birds and then devoured themselves in thrashing agony.

The worst were the big trees. They were holy – Neeve knew they were holy – and they resisted change for longer than anything else living in the forest. First they bled black sap. Then, slowly, their leaves shrivelled. The branches fell against each other, collapsing in black muck. Bark sloughed in peeling slabs like ruined skin. The trees began to moan. It was not a sound a human could produce. It was not a voice. It was a tonal version of the sound a branch makes groaning in the wind. It was a song of a tree falling in a storm.

It was against everything Neeve stood for.

She made herself watch it, though. She owed it to this old holy forest to watch it die. She wondered if she had been brought to this forest to save it.

Everything was a nightmare.

Piper’s new home filled a massive deep cleft in the rocks, suspended and secured by means magical. The structure was a strange marriage of both Piper’s desires and the stuccoed-wasp-nest sensibility of the demon. In the very centre of the main room was a deep, tear-shaped bathing pool.

As in any good compromise, both parties were vaguely displeased, but said nothing about it. Piper sneered prettily but merely said, “Great. Time to check in with my father.”

“Instead of possession, you could scry in the bathtub to communicate with your father,” Neeve suggested quickly. What she didn’t say was that she felt scrying would use far less energy than possession. It might not save a tree, but it might preserve it for a little longer.

The demon twitched its antennae towards Neeve. It knew what she was doing. A second later, Piper looked over appraisingly; the demon had clearly tattled directly into her head. Neeve waited for a retort, but Piper merely ran her edges around the edge of the bathing pool in a thoughtful way. She said, “They’ll be more moved to love if they see my face, anyway. Demon, connect my father on that thing. Let it be thus, or whatever.”

It was thus, or whatever.

Laumonier was in a public men’s room. He stood in front of the mirror, and also in front of the door to the men’s room to make sure no one came in.

Piper squinted into the pool. “Are you at Legal Sea Foods? I can’t believe it. I hate everything.”

“Yes, we wanted oysters,” Laumonier said, his voice emanating from the demon instead of the pool. His eyes were narrowed, trying to get a better view of wherever his daughter was. “Are you in a wasp’s nest?”

“It’s a shrine,” Piper said.

“To what?”

“Me. Oh, I’m glad you asked it like that. You set up my punch line perfectly. Look, I’ll make this quick, since I’m dying for a bath. What have you done on your end?”

“We have set up a look-see for your item,” Laumonier said, stepping out of one of the stalls. “We have timed it to happen the day after a Congressional fund-raiser at a boys’ school there, in order to allow out-of-town guests to blend in. What is it we’re selling?”

Piper described the demon. The demon took flight and circled the pool, and from Laumonier’s expression, Neeve could tell that the demon was also describing the demon to them. They were clearly impressed by the twisting of their thoughts.

“Good find,” Laumonier said. “Let’s be in touch.”

They vanished from the scrying pool.

“Bath time,” Piper said triumphantly. She did not tell Neeve to give her privacy, but Neeve did anyway. She needed to get out. She needed to be alone. She needed to find calm, so that she could see things truthfully.

She wasn’t sure she would ever be calm again.