Singing with the devil a.., p.1
Singing with the Devil--A Demon Romance, page 1
Also available from Cassandra Rose Clarke
The Mad Scientist’s Daughter
The Beholden
Star’s End
Our Lady of the Ice
Magic of Blood and Sea
Magic of Wind and Mist
Forget This Ever Happened
Content Warning
Singing with the Devil contains depictions of violence, blood and self-cutting.
Singing with the Devil
Cassandra Rose Clarke
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Pack of Lies by Charlie Adhara
Chapter One
“Helena,” came Karen’s tight voice through the phone’s speaker. “Your sister is here to see you.”
Helena paused her typing and looked down at the phone. “What?”
“Your sister.” Karen sounded bored. “She says her name is—” Karen’s voice was swallowed up by mumbly static. “Juniper.”
Helena frowned. Why the hell was Juniper showing up at Helena’s work? Usually she just banged on the door of the apartment at ten o’clock at night, if Helena was lucky, or four in the morning if she wasn’t. Either way she was usually wearing bloodstains and carrying a six-pack of Lone Star.
“Tell her to go downstairs and wait in the lobby,” Helena said. It would afford them some measure of privacy.
Karen hung up. Helena leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. Then she checked her cell phone. Not a single call or warning text. But that was typical of Juniper.
Helena locked her computer and stepped out of her cubicle. The office was quiet save for the clicking of keys, the rustle of paper. She made her way to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. Her heart hammered hard inside her chest. Of all her family, Juniper was the one she still spoke to. Their parents had given up on Helena years ago.
The elevator dinged, whispered open. Helena took a deep breath and stepped out into the building’s big, airy lobby.
Her sister stood out immediately. She was leaning up against the far wall, leather pants gleaming in the sunlight that poured in through the front glass doors. Leather pants. Jesus Christ.
Helena strode forward, her pumps clicking neatly against the tile. Juniper was, of course, wearing black combat boots. Her tank top was so tight Helena could see the lines of her ab muscles. She was wearing sunglasses inside, like usual, and her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her silver Lineage crucifix glittered in the lobby lights.
“Hey, bitch,” she said cheerily. “Nice blazer.”
Helena rolled her eyes. Side by side, they didn’t much look like sisters. Where Juniper was slim and lean, Helena was thick and curvy, any muscles she built in her days training plumping her hips and thighs even further. She never bothered dyeing her hair, which, like her sister’s, was naturally a shade halfway between brown and blond that didn’t look like much of a color in particular.
And yeah, she had to dress like a professional for her job as an accountant. It wasn’t like she could roll into her accounting job in a battle vest and a Mayhem T-shirt.
“I’m working,” Helena said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got a job.” Juniper wiggled her eyebrows behind her sunglasses.
“Congratulations.”
“I think it’ll be one you’re interested in.”
Helena paused. Juniper hadn’t tried to pull her back into the family business in ages. She felt a spark of excitement that she quickly pressed down. “What is this really about?” she said. “I’m not kidding, I’ve got stacks of paperwork—”
“I’m not kidding, either.” Juniper jumped away from the wall and hooked her arm in Helena’s and pulled her toward the exit. “Look, you want Mom to talk to you again?”
Helena frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. This will get her to pick up the phone. Serious.”
Helena didn’t reply. She didn’t particularly want to talk about her parents with Juniper.
“Also, I’m just—” Juniper stopped, pulled her arm away, pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, crescented by dark half-moons. Helena felt a jolt of fear. This wasn’t totally about their parents, she realized. What was going on?
“I need your help,” Juniper said blandly.
Helena stared at her. Across the lobby, the elevator dinged, and a trio of women stepped out, their laughter echoing around the room.
“Bullshit,” Helena said.
“I’m serious.” Juniper lowered her voice. “Look, let’s go out to my car. Let me explain. It’s not—” Her eyes darted over to the women, who had congregated near the abstract sculpture in the lobby’s corner. “It’s not magic-related, okay? It has to do with music.”
Helena blinked. Music was always the one thing she could do, the one thing no one else in her family had the knack for. She didn’t have the head for magic, with all its chaos. But she could pluck a melody out on a piano or a riff on a guitar after hearing it once.
“Are you making fun of me?” she finally said.
“No!” Juniper threw up her hands. “You know I think that YouTube thing is cool.”
Helena blushed. “Now I know you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m really not. I’m fucking serious, Helena.”
And just for a second, Helena saw it. Her sister kept her badass facade up well, but there was a pleading quality to her expression that struck Helena cold. She might not be cut out for the family business, but she understood that it was important, and even after everything, she still respected her parents for the work that they did.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “You get fifteen minutes.”
“Fab. I love you, bitch.” And like that, the facade was back. “Come on, out to my car. I can do this in fifteen.”
Helena followed Juniper into the parking garage attached to the building. The familiar fire-engine red of Juniper’s car shone from a prime parking location by the doors that she had presumably magicked her way into.
“You better not have sent the backlash onto anyone at Woods & Yarrow,” Helena said as she climbed into the passenger seat.
“I didn’t do anything!” Juniper said innocently. “The spot just happened to be available.”
Helena wasn’t in the mood to push it. She settled down into the bucket seat while Juniper fumbled around with the car’s auxiliary cord.
“So what’s going on?” Helena said. “I’m assuming you’ve got the car charmed so we can talk about this safely, right?”
“Yeah, of course.” Juniper jammed the aux cord into her phone. “I want you to listen to something.”
“You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”
Juniper didn’t answer, just tapped her phone screen.
Music poured out of the car’s speakers: violent, churning, wild. The distorted wails of an electric guitar wove together with a bombastic synth line, drums banging out a steady rapid-fire rhythm in the background. And the vocals started—a piercing, inhuman shriek.
“You like black metal now?” Helena said.
Juniper paused the music. “So you’ve heard this before?”
“I’ve heard music like it before. What band is this?”
“Listen to this next song. Tell me what you hear.”
Helena sighed. “If you just found out what black metal is,” she said, “I promise you it’s not connected to the actual Satan. The stuff in the ‘90s was a bunch of edgy dumbass—”
“Just listen,” Juniper said, and tapped her phone.
A man’s voice screamed a tangle of incomprehensible words. Then the music started—more melodic this time, the guitars shimmering in and out of each other. Helena’s annoyance with her sister receded. The band was good. Dense and atmospheric.
Helena closed her eyes, the way she did when was listening to something for her review channel. In her head, she could see the notes appearing on their ledger lines, marching in neat rows. This was what she loved about metal. It sounded chaotic, like magic transformed into a sound. But there were always the notes, the time signatures. There was always an underlying logic that shaped the chaos.
“Who is this?” Helena looked at Juniper. “Seriously, I’d love to make a vid—”
Out of the speaker, something twinged, shattering the invisible order.
A note that shouldn’t exist.
Helena froze, her mouth open.
“You heard something,” Juniper said. Not a question.
Helena tilted her head, listening. This time, not as reviewer, not as a
Yes, there it was again—an unfathomable note. A tone that sparked inside Helena’s brain, her synapses frantically trying to comprehend it. Another, higher-pitched—no, lower-pitched. No—
It was impossible to tell.
Helena leaned forward, pressing her ear against the speaker. An entire melody of those notes—she was sure of it. She couldn’t quite pick it out; her human brain simply couldn’t register it. But it could register the wrongness of those notes, even as they blended in with the upper melody.
The hairs on her arm stood on end. A heat swelled in her belly. The copper taste of blood filled her mouth.
And then it was gone. The music was back to just being music.
She looked up at Juniper. “What was that?”
“I knew it!” Juniper said, yanking out the auxiliary cord. “I fucking knew it. Dad wouldn’t listen, but I knew I felt something—”
“Junie,” Helena said. “What is that? What band made that music?” Her throat felt scratchy; her eyes watered. Infernal magic always did that to her, sent her allergies into overdrive. She was so much more sensitive than the rest of her family. Another reason among many why she wasn’t cut out for the business.
“They call themselves Black Moon.”
Helena frowned. She didn’t think she’d heard that name before.
Juniper turned her phone around so Helena could see the cover on the screen. Typical black-and-white artwork, an elaborate sigil folding in on itself against a black background.
“Is that sigil significant?” Helena asked.
“It’s nonsense.” Juniper dropped the phone into the cup holder. “Look, you know things have been—busy lately. Even you must have felt it.”
A chill gripped Helena’s spine. “Not really.”
“Well, that’s why you need to fucking pay attention, isn’t it?”
Helena glowered. “I’ve got my own life,” she said. “I’m not going to sit and watch the news trying to figure out if any of the reports are actually about demons.”
“I just meant—I thought you might have run into some wayward Infernal magic. I know how it makes you sick.”
Helena bristled. Like she needed reminding. “Well, I haven’t.”
“Fine.” Juniper took a deep breath. “Anyway, yes, there’s been an increase in successful summonings over the last few years. Gradual, you know.” She went quiet for a long time. “We think there might be a leak.”
For the first eighteen years of her life, Helena had been taught to fear a leak. No one in the Muir family would dare use the word in the mundane sense—there were no leaky faucets in the Muir household, only watery faucets. Helena dreaded a bleed-over when she had her period during training, not a leak. Even leeks, the food, were called “big green onions.”
When Helena left home and went to college, hearing the word leak tossed about so casually by friends and classmates had sent her slinking off to the bathroom to calm her breathing.
And here, now, was her sister using the verboten word. Using it in its truest sense.
A leak.
A leak between dimensions.
“How can you not be sure about something like that?” Helena said, her voice tight.
Juniper looked down at her lap. Her facade was slipping again. “Mom and Dad and I—we’ve been through all the old texts. We’ve read the augurs, all the hardcore ones too—entrails, bones. We stopped short of exhuming a human corpse, thank God.”
Helena grimaced. Her mother was almost certainly behind that idea.
“And?” she said.
“And...there’s nothing.” Juniper threw her hands up. “Not a whisper. But there’s definitely something going on. So we kept looking.” She nodded at the phone. “That’s how I found this. The music, I mean. I did a research spell, just throwing a net out there, you know, see if I could find something. And this triggered it.” She paused.
“Infernal music doesn’t equal a—a rift,” Helena said. “Remember that order Dad had me study? The one that was obsessed with creating demonic melodies. I don’t remember the name.” Helena looked at her sister imploringly. “They were summoning demons or something—”
“That was the Order of the Malum Musica,” Juniper said. “They never successfully created Infernal magic. Just approximated the melodies.” She looked over at Helena. “I’m surprised you don’t remember that.”
At some point she’d pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead, and her eyes gleamed with that fiery Muir intensity. Helena’d grown up with it towering over her, trying its damnedest to whip her into shape.
“It was fifteen years ago,” Helena snapped.
“Whatever. I know you felt magic in that music. Infernal magic.”
Helena went quiet. On the dash, the clock clicked over to 2:37—she’d been down here for exactly fifteen minutes. She knew she should get out of the car and go back up to her office and keep looking over those P&L reports. The threat of leaks, of the Infernal dimension finally bleeding over into their world, of demons and deities and worse flooding through the dimensional tear in a cataclysmic collision—it wasn’t her world anymore. She’d walked away from it eleven years ago, after one failed spell too many.
Leave the world-saving to her sister. To her parents. She would just be in the way.
Except she had felt the shiver of Infernal magic in that music. And her sister had come to her. Her expression had held that quiet desperation she tried so hard to lock away. And if there was a chance for Helena to salve the wound between her and their parents, maybe it would be worth it.
“You said you needed my help,” Helena said quietly.
“You’re the musical genius,” Juniper said. “I mean, the way you talk about this shit on your channel—”
Helena’s cheeks flushed with heat. “Are you still watching it?”
“Sis, come on.” Juniper laughed. “I’ve got that shit on my notifications. Besides, I think it’s great. Super funny.”
Helena’s blush deepened. She’d managed to keep Helena of Trondheim secret for three months before Juniper lured it out of her during one of her ten p.m. visits. An old boyfriend used to call her that even though she’d never been to Norway, but she liked the way it sounded, so she slapped the title on her channel. It was mostly album reviews. She’d walk around the hiking trail by her apartment and talk about death metal, and for some reason, people were into it.
It was inevitable, though. Juniper liked knowing what Helena was up to. Probably reporting back to their parents and the rest of the Lineage.
“Listen,” Juniper said. “I want to look into this band, this Black Moon. They’re coming into town for a tour. Show’s in three days.”
Helena’s heart thudded. “You want me to go.”
“Seeing them in person could go a long way to figuring out what’s going on,” Juniper said. “The Infernal magic woven into the music will be even stronger live.”
“Which means it’ll be more dangerous.” Helena looked out the car’s window, into the parking garage. Eleven years ago, she had gone on a job like this one. They thought they were just reconnoitering a new cult. Instead, Helena had faced a demon—a lesser demon, but still, an actual demon, in this dimension. And the protection spells she had woven so meticulously beforehand had utterly failed. Because magic doesn’t need meticulousness. Magic needs chaos.
Helena had almost died that night. She still had the scars from the demon’s taloned grip ringing her heart. Walking away completely had not been enough to heal them.
“I’ll be there,” Juniper said. “I’ll weave the protective magic. Please, Hellie.”
There it was, the pleading again.
Helena nodded numbly.
* * *
That night Helena poured herself a big glass of wine and sat down on her sofa with her computer in her lap. If she was going to do this, if she was going to creep back into her family’s world, she was going to start with a slightly intoxicated research session.
As it turned out, finding information about Black Moon wasn’t difficult. They were on Bandcamp.
They had two full-lengths out, plus an EP. All self-released, from what Helena could tell. She picked a track at random from their most recent album, Dagon’s Harvest, and let it play in the background while she looked through the fan comments. Great unknown gem, read one. Interesting USBM project, said another. It was all so ordinary.
