The Troll-Demon War Read online

  “You’re still neutral, right?” Lars said finally as he strode across the shop, stalking toward Nik.

  “I am,” Nik said proudly. It had been one of the promises he’d had to make to the angel who’d helped him transfer his consciousness. As long as he remained neutral and sold goods to all sides, he was assured almost eternal life.

  He was fairly certain that only his mind had been moved from one body to the other. His soul had probably stayed behind. That was the only reason he could think of for the hollow feeling he sometimes got. However, that lack of moral conscience also helped him remain truly neutral, even when his heart may have directed his hand to help the humans now and again.

  “You sure?” Lars inquired. “I heard you turned in an account book you’d found.”

  Nik nodded. Many of his demon customers had had the same question. It hadn’t been great for business. However, despite his lack of soul he knew that he’d done the right thing. Keeping an accounting book that a demon had used for tracking the souls he’d acquired would have tainted Nik. Plus, it had shown how the court had been corrupted by demons—yet another entity that was supposed to stay neutral.

  “I couldn’t have contained the book,” Nik explained. “The evil magic would have leaked.”

  Lars nodded, satisfied with that explanation, as most of the demons were. Of course, their magic was too strong for someone like Nik.

  “You wouldn’t have seen that meddlesome troll recently, have you?” Lars inquired. He leaned across the counter. “Christine?”

  Was he doing that to bring his head lower to Nik’s? Probably not. He was probably thinking that by coming closer he could intimidate Nik.

  Youngster certainly had a lot to learn.

  Nik deliberately gave a carefree laugh.

  Interesting. Lars’ entire body shuddered at that.

  “Don’t know the meaning of the word neutral, do you?” Nik countered. “That means selling goods to all the races. It also means not reporting on the movements of any individuals.”

  For a moment, it felt to Nik as though an ant crawled across the back of his neck. He banished the sensation easily.

  “Now, try to influence me again in order to get your way is one of the quickest ways to get yourself barred from here,” Nik growled.

  It was curious, however, that the demon’s work had been that strong. Frequently, the sensation of someone trying to influence him was so slight he didn’t notice.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” Lars said, leaning back up, spreading his hands out as if he was the most innocent being alive. “But you can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Yes, I can,” Nik said coldly. “What do you want.”

  Lars reeled off a list of ingredients.

  Nik gave a low whistle. “Don’t have all of those in stock,” he said after thinking for a moment. “It will take a couple weeks to get the hog’s breath.”

  Lars looked put out, but he merely nodded and said, “Fine. Let me know when they all come in.”

  He was about to sweep out of the shop, make some grand exit, but Nik put the kibosh on that. He reached across the counter and laid a single finger on Lars’ arm, holding him in place.

  Nik was surprised at how normal the demon’s human flesh felt, not burning up with the fires of Hell or freezing with ice either. Not that Nik made a habit of touching anyone. He’d learned the trick of focusing a customer’s attention when it was necessary.

  “Payment first,” Nik said as he lifted his finger.

  Lars’ eyes narrowed. “Half,” he said.

  Nik shrugged. “There’s no demand for three-fourths of the list you just gave me. I can’t get the item in and then have you change your mind. No one else I could sell it to. Full payment, for everything, up front.”

  Lars gave Nik a cool smile and settled into a serious bargaining mode.

  What little joy Nik felt came from times like these. These modern youngsters were far too used to being ripped off with fixed prices.

  However, Nik didn’t allow the bargaining to go on as long as he normally would have.

  He needed Lars out of there before Christine arrived.

  Even he might not be able to prevent the war that would erupt between them.

  Nik looked up and nodded at Christine when she finally entered the shop. He wasn’t sure why she was so late that day—though he was certain that she’d tell him, probably in excruciating detail, so unlike a troll. She’d picked up many human habits as she’d been raised by them.

  Would she ever outgrow them? Possibly. If she lived that long.

  But Nik couldn’t think about that.

  He kept his attention on the brownie who was currently trying to bargain him down on the price of a pack of strong steel awls, used to puncture leather. Seemed that a recent brawl between the young man he was serving and the young man’s wife had caused her to throw his into the hearth.

  Nik practiced patience as the young brownie fretted over the cost. Nik pointed out to him, again, that these were an investment in not just his future, but his family’s future.

  Besides, how thrilled would his wife be with a new pair of custom, handmade shoes?

  After getting a much better price than he’d expected, Nik joined Christine in the back room of the shop. A thick, purple velvet curtain separated the two rooms, enchanted, of course, to keep the noise and smells of the two rooms apart.

  Tall metal shelves filled the walls back here, industrial racks Nik had bought for a song. They were neutral, being human made. It would take an actual spell for them to pick up any magical residue. (The wooden shelves that Nik had made had the same quality.) Boxes lined the shelves, all duly numbered and accounted for. They’d come from an estate he’d acquired forty years ago.

  He’d never admitted to Christine that he had three—no, four—warehouses stacked to the gills with boxes, though he knew she suspected as much. He couldn’t help it. He really liked buying full estates, just so he would have the right thing when a customer came along.

  Nik trusted that his magical sense would lead him to the exact box containing the exact right item that a customer needed. However, when the boxes were already inventoried, his magical sense took a lot less time.

  It wasn’t that Nik needed the money. He didn’t eat. He rarely slept, though he did occasionally “shut down,” as he liked to think of it, became unaware of his surroundings for a period of time, at least once a month. But only when he was completely alone. He woke up instantly when a customer came through the portal.

  The shop was expensive to run, between all the ingredients needed for the various spells, as well as the bribes he paid to various gatekeepers to keep access to the shop open for all.

  Nik just liked having so much gold stashed away, a metal that all the races valued. He knew that it wouldn’t make up for the soul he’d lost. It still assuaged the hollowness sometimes.

  “What do you think?” Nik asked as he came in the backroom where Christine was waiting.

  Christine carefully lifted another large box down from the top shelf. “I think,” she said, pausing as she blew a layer of dust from the box, “that you’ve been holding these for quite some time.” She sneezed suddenly and shook her head.

  “Maybe,” Nik said. He liked to play coy with Christine, making her guess the actual age of the estate based on the contents. She was getting much better at it.

  Since Christine had been raised as a human, she lacked the general cultural knowledge about the kith and kin and the other races that she would have picked up normally, just absorbed as part of her growing up.

  When they’d started out, Nik had put strong magical protection around all the boxes he brought into the store so that Christine wouldn’t open one without him in the room. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but that he needed to make sure that he could contain any magical booby traps that she might accidently set off.

  Not that Christine’s tough troll body couldn’t absorb an awful lot of magical as well as physic
al damage.

  Over the years Christine had figured out how to avoid being blown up, even when Nik wasn’t there to supervise. Before, asking her to come and talk with him when she ran across something unusual would have meant that she stopped at almost every item. Now, she had enough magical training to be able to detect something before it reached out and bit her.

  “So, you have forty-one boxes,” Christine commented, carefully filling out the spreadsheet she’d developed for keeping track of inventory. “It’s going to take me a couple weekends to go through each one,” she warned before she opened the first box.

  “I figured that,” Nik said. “Take all the time you want.”

  He’d be sure to call Lars back to the shop on a day when Christine wasn’t coming.

  Christine opened the first box and pulled out what looked like a cheap human lamp. The base of the lamp had been made out of porcelain in the form of a hula dancer, complete with a grass skirt and coconut-shell covered breasts. However, it had been enchanted, as Christine discovered when she pressed the button that turned the lamp on.

  The girl started dancing slowly, swaying her hips from side to side. A golden light emanated from the bamboo lampshade. Soft Hawaiian music filled the background.

  Christine snorted and put the lamp down. “This have a name besides ‘tacky demon shit’?”

  Nik grinned. “What, don’t you think your brother would love such a lamp?”

  “Maybe,” Christine said. “I’ll have to see if you still have it when his birthday rolls around.” She paused then turned to Nik. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Nik said, surprised that she hadn’t just come out and demanded an answer as soon as she’d walked in. Trolls didn’t tend to be patient, and Christine’s human upbringing hadn’t affected that much.

  “You remember five years ago when I brought my dad here? And you removed that spike of influence from him that had originally infected Dennis?” Christine said.

  Nik nodded solemnly. He’d been so glad that Christine had brought her father to him as quickly as she had. Not many other magicians would have been capable of removing that demon spike. It had twined its way through the lungs of the man’s body. If she had waited just another week, Nik may not have been able to remove it without damage.

  “Is there any chance that some sliver of it remained?” Christine asked. “Now, I didn’t see it,” she continued quickly, “but Dennis swears that Dad is acting funny. Funnier than usual. And he’s become more forgetful, too.”

  “No, none of it remained,” Nik said. “I removed all of it. And I gave your dad, I guess what you’d call a booster shot too, something to inoculate him from demon influence. It isn’t foolproof. He could still be influenced. But you have protections set up at your parents’ house, right?”

  Christine nodded. “And amulets for them to wear. When they remember to wear them.” She rolled her eyes. “I just can’t convince them that the threat’s real. It’s been five years. It’s like they don’t remember.”

  “They don’t,” Nik said softly. “You’re the only one who’s fought a demon. More than once. You won’t ever forget almost losing your life. They didn’t fight. They weren’t physically hurt by a demon. They’re human. Their memories are supposed to wear thin after a while.” Nik had always considered that a design flaw. It was part of the reason why he’d switched bodies.

  Christine sighed and nodded. “I supposed you’re right. Dennis remembers. But he was also attacked, once. And infected. He always wears the bracelet I created for him and never takes it off. He was dating a woman once who didn’t like it. Took it as a sign to break up with her.”

  “That’s smart,” Nik said. He had tried to teach the young man some of the basics of magic, but nothing had stuck. He was mundane. Nothing magical about him.

  Human magic tended to run in families. However, besides Tina, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the Tuckerman family who had magic. Christine had made an effort to reconnect with all her human relatives on her dad’s side at least once over the past five years, but they were all mundane, at least as far as she could tell.

  Tina had to have come from somewhere. Nik wondered if it was from one of Christine’s British relatives whom she’d never met, as her mum had been raised in the UK.

  “Do you know of any healer who could help my dad? And his memory?” Christine asked as she turned back to the box. “If, you know, there’s actually anything wrong?”

  “No,” Nik said. “It doesn’t work that way.” Magical healing could be used on a mundane human who’d been hurt, particularly if they’d been physically damaged by something magical. But it didn’t work great. Nik had a theory that magic needed magic to call to itself, so that any magical healing could go further than skin deep.

  “Okay,” Christine said, nodding. She pulled out the next item. It was about a foot long and half that wide. Each end had a hinged piece of wood, about three inches square, that folded down.

  Christine held the piece up, joy in her voice. “An antique book holder!” she exclaimed. Then she frowned. “There’s a trace of magic in it.”

  She put the book holder on the ground then unfolded the two ends.

  A faint illusion of a collection of books sprang up, filling the holder from one end to the other.

  Nik peered over Christine’s shoulder. The titles were all written in one of the more obscure demon languages.

  “What, was this so that the demon could impress whoever he’d brought home for the evening?” Christine asked.

  “Maybe,” Nik said slowly. He paused, then pointed to a box that was on the middle shelf, with two other boxes on top of it. “Can you fetch that one, please?”

  Christine walked over to the shelf and easily lifted down the boxes on top of the box Nik wanted.

  Nik just shook his head. He forgot just how strong Christine was. Of course, Nik could have performed the same task with magic. And his wooden joints were well supported. But he still would have had problems, not just because of his size but because those particular boxes had been heavy.

  Even Christine wasn’t strong enough to hold both boxes up with a single hand. She fetched the box Nik had felt was right, putting the others back on the shelf. Before she opened it, she added the number of the box into her inventory.

  This was why Nik needed Christine. He would have just opened the box, and then gotten hopelessly mixed up in the inventory of items, placing the things he found in one box into the other and vice versa.

  It was odd for a troll to be so precise. Nik had always figured it was because of the changeling spell that had tied Christine’s entire personality to Tina’s, so that Christine developed the same tastes and habits as the human.

  Books filled the box Christine had lifted down. Nik didn’t have to see her face to know how her eyes had just lit up.

  “Match them up,” Nik instructed.

  He knew that Christine couldn’t read the titles. She’d learned Trollish because that was her native language, and had picked up some words in the common demon form, as well as a few of the other languages. It had frustrated her to no end that while she adored books and reading, languages didn’t come easily to her.

  It took Christine a while to find the right books that went on the small book holder. There had been thirteen in all. When she finished and slid the last book into place, all of the physical books vanished, as Nik had been expecting.

  “Wow,” Christine said, obviously not expecting that. “What just happened?”

  “Fold down the ends, then open them again,” Nik instructed.

  Christine did as she’d been instructed. The physical books reappeared.

  “It’s a way of protecting magical texts,” Nik said. “With the right incantation, the book holder will empty again.”

  “Cool,” Christine said. “I didn’t think demons were into writing down magical incantations. Can I look at one?”

  “Sure.”

  Christine lifted one of
the texts and opened it. The pages were full of drawings as well as texts. She looked through a few pages then glanced up at Nik. “It isn’t spells, is it?”

  “It isn’t. It’s a brag shelf.” He looked over her shoulder. “These books detail the battles, real as well as made-up, that this demon’s ancestors or family fought over the centuries. So it’s a kind of family history.”

  “Huh,” Christine said as she put the book back. “How do you want it inventoried? With the books, or without?”

  They came up with a cross-referencing system and Christine moved onto the next item while Nik went out to wait on the next customer.

  He hadn’t admitted to Christine just how rare that book holder and collection was. Demons tended to exaggerate their successes while minimizing or denying their failures.

  Yet, the book he’d glanced at detailed not only this demon’s wins, but his losses as well.

  It would give the right opponent to the demons a leg up, giving them some valuable information for how to beat this type of demon.

  Nik would have to think long and hard about who should be notified about these books.

  Because while he was strictly neutral and sold ingredients to all the races, that didn’t mean he didn’t sometimes favor the humans.

  Chapter Four

  Tina sighed as she put her wand down on the floor beside her. It was long and wooden, kind of like those wands from the popular movies. However, hers really worked.

  Most of the time.

  Tina fought down a spike of panic. She was not losing her magic. She was just having a bad morning. She was not going to count having a similar bad day last week—she’d just been tired that afternoon. Or the week before, after that blowup with her roommate.

  She couldn’t lose her magic on top of losing her Destiny and everything else.

  After taking a few deep breaths and rolling her shoulders, Tina was able to force herself to relax. She pulled her pretty pink T-shirt down and spread her fingers wide across her jean-covered thighs. Though her mentors had always disapproved, Tina frequently did magic barefoot. She’d let her blonde hair grow out this past year, and held it back in a cute pony tail.