Lords of Mirror and Shadow (A Pact with Demons, Vol. 3): A Pact with Demons, #3

By Michael R.E. Adams

A crisis of conscience haunts Almon Campbell. He abandoned innocents. Left them to evil.

 

Now, the paranormal detective must evolve into something more. An avenger.

 

Almon faces his most dangerous mystery. A puzzle of magic and demons. New, more cunning enemies wage a battle of wits. With souls on the line.

 

Cozy mysteries in a paranormal world. A Pact with Demons investigates uncanny tales with heart and danger. In a world where cats talk. And darkness lurks everywhere. Why do lost hearts sell their souls to demons?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enchanted Cipher
• Release date: Mar 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201568474

Michael R.E. Adams

MICHAEL R.E. ADAMS pens myths both natural and speculative. He invokes the lyricism of poetry and the suspense of genre fiction to create verse and prose in literary and SFF worlds. Portraying underrepresented groups, he seeks to expand the world’s imagination of who we can all be. He tells tales that all people can relate to, stories about the desire and fear of connecting to others and exploring our own hearts. (www.MichaelREAdams.com)

Book preview

13

WHEN FOUND IN SPIRIT GARDENS

How did we learn people’s last names? Before social media. Or when someone doesn’t put their last name on their profiles. Why do we not know someone’s last name and yet still feel we know them? We ask for a name to feel closer, but we only need their first name. They may offer their last name. They usually didn’t. I’ll never remember how I came to find out that Huxley’s full name was Huxley Buford Buchanan.

He was waiting for me after school. I stepped off campus, pondering a plot, an idea I had about a demon, and I looked up to glance a human being with white hair. I looked down again, my mind processed who I might’ve seen, which caused my head to shoot up. Huxley. I felt awkward. In a good way.

When I was younger I went to summer recreation. I became what I thought was friends with a lanky boy named Jerry. I don’t think I ever knew his last name. We both hated summer rec equally. We got along with playing musical chairs, working the lights for a production of Veggies are Good, and doing laps in the chilly lake because we could complain about it with each other. Then summer rec was over. I saw him in the halls at school, and he walked by me like we’d never known each other. I learned then that sometimes you’re just friends with someone to get through things. And once you were through it, you went back to your real friends. I didn’t have real friends to go back to. So that meant going back to being myself. I wasn’t sure if you could’ve been yourself and been with people at the same time. Especially as I walked home with Huxley. But I was happy I wasn’t just a friend for a moment. We had met in the woods when he was ready for his life to be over. For some reason, he came to understand himself a little better. He found enough space to live another day. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. People would’ve said he needed help. If something happened, they’d blame me. I didn’t do anything. But if I pressed him, he would’ve pulled away. That might have freed me from blame, but not from feeling guilty. Did I have to turn my back on someone I liked because he wouldn’t do what the world told me I had to make him do? I had heard stories. People cutting loved ones off in the name of love. People indulging weakness in the name of sympathy. You could push someone away and hurt them. You could keep them close and help them. You could push someone away and they learn how to fly. You could keep them close and smother them. Maybe he needed someone to firmly and compassionately tell him he had problems to deal with. Maybe he needed me to provide a space for him to be. Just be. That’s what I wanted. Space. That’s what Lowen Shoby had wanted before I pushed him to talk about his problems with his parents. He left, and I never talked to him again. I didn’t want that with Huxley. But that was selfish. But maybe being selfish was best for us.

I said hi. He waved with a smile. We walked home in silence. I wasn’t sure where we were going. He could’ve been walking me home. I could’ve been walking him home. We could’ve been returning to Beacon Woods where we had met. We could’ve been going to hang out on Main Street. I’d never done that before. Gone with a friend to buy books. I wondered if he liked books. To have someone help carry books home. To have someone share new books I hadn’t discovered. The possibilities were beginning to excite me. He smiled at me. I hadn’t realized it. But I had been smiling first. I must’ve alarmed him, and he was trying to react the best he could. I took out my phone and texted him.

Where are we going? I wrote and sent. His phone buzzed. He had already taken his own phone out of his pocket. He read the message and laughed silently.

I have no idea, he replied.

Do you like books?

I like comics.

I felt disappointed. I asked which ones. He said something about a robot boy running from the corporation that manufactured him to live a normal life. Another one about a guy alien with tentacles and a girl alien with horns running for their lives with their child which had tentacles and horns. There were others. I pretended to read his messages and nodded like these stories weren’t silly. I’d rather read the actual histories of oppressed people, like the past of my race, than read comically and sentimentally gussied up versions where my ancestors were recast as aliens. But at least in that moment I understood the point of stories. They helped those who couldn’t think about reality too seriously still learn something about what the past taught us. Judging by the results of society, I didn’t think it worked too well. But everyone was trying their best. I supposed.

It’s a day of ascendance, he wrote. Apparently, the date could’ve been reduced into a rising sequence of numbers. And apparently, this meant today was a good day to do something magical. I felt even more disappointed. Not at him. I still liked him. I just felt a general sense of disappointment. I wasn’t sure with what. I kinda felt we wouldn’t be friends for long. Even though I still wanted to be friends. He talked about this ascendance like it made things possible that weren’t otherwise possible. Maybe that included this moment. Us walking together. Like he knew today was some magical day because the date had aligned so he decided to do something impossible, which was come and meet me. Tomorrow, the idea of us walking together would return to being impossible. It was only possible today.

His beliefs didn’t make sense. But most beliefs don’t. At this point, my own life experiences had challenged every belief I had and I couldn’t settle on much to believe anymore. It felt like a good thing, though. It forced me to believe in the only thing I could. Myself. I was me. I knew that much. Dates were conventions. Numbers were conventions. That I knew as well. Spirit wouldn’t organize itself around Man’s made up system of tracking his perception of time. The system wasn’t even that precise. It counted down to one moment Man deemed all-important, then counted back up again. BC. AD. The forces that lived long before this system wouldn’t have cared about this notion of time. They had their own way of perceiving the unfolding of events through space. And their space was not like our space. Their minds were not like our minds. So their time was different than our time. I had met a snake demon who experienced human decades as several settings of the sun. Man created myths, tracked them in his own time, his own history, then decided to project them into the stars, connecting suns so far away through the threads of constellations, and then thought the stories and stars organized every dimension. Such a desperate arrogance. To think your ideas ruled the universe. To need to believe your ideas ruled the universe or else you’d feel so small that you’d disappear in the void of creation.

What would you do if I weren’t here? asked Huxley.

I was going home to plot how to break into my school and investigate a rumor about a demon. Then I was going to have a talk with a fox. A clever robed demon fox. I remained silent.

Demon stuff? he asked. He had been looking at me so intently. I felt a certain glow of validation. Like I liked being interesting to him. Being with people. Needing attention. Needing people to listen to you. Relationships were such a petty phenomenon. We were walking so slow. Just strolling down the street was enough when you were with someone. But alone, I would’ve been much closer to home, much closer to getting the answers I wanted from my fox. I told him. About the fox. About the rumor of a demon at my school. If I wanted to hang out with him and talk to my fox, I supposed taking him to meet my fox accomplished both quite well. Two birds with one stone and all that.

Shouldn’t we help people? he asked. If we have demons shouldn’t we do something good?

The correct answer was yes. It was correct based on the assumption that good people were high and mighty, and were the kind of people we all should’ve aspired to be. Good people helped people. We needed to be good people to feel like we deserved good things. Love. Happiness. Riches. Whatever. We helped people. We were good people. Then we got to complain life wasn’t fair when it all went to crud. I was sure my inquiries would’ve helped people. And I had a particular group of people in mind. But I felt called to my objective for more self-interested reasons. I had questions because there were things I wanted to know. And I wanted to know them because I wanted to know them. But yes, by fulfilling my purpose, by being me, people were often helped. I’d liked to have thought. In the end, they seemed better off. As long as I did what I had to and moved on.

I gave him the mostly correct and partly untruthful answer: Of course. That’s all pretty obvious.

Okay, he wrote. I feel bad for not helping those people.

I figured as much. We had found a garden of statues, people petrified at the most frightening moment of their lives. He was so lost in his own suffering, he hadn’t thought much about them before. Now, he lived. He thought about them. Thought about how he had done nothing. He felt selfish. He felt guilty for not being one of them. He hadn’t made a wish with the witch. She didn’t turn him into a statue. They wanted to live. He had wanted to die. But he walked with me, and they were trapped forever with their own fears.

He quickened his pace. I should’ve been happy. I wasn’t. I didn’t like being rushed. I had always walked at my own pace and arrived at places in my own time in my own way. I hadn’t just wanted to get home quickly. I had wanted to be the person who wanted to hurry home. Now, I was the person who wanted to stroll down the street with a friend being forced to be a person who rushed home as if lives depended on it.

We got to my house, and I sat with my spirit board on the floor in my room. Huxley sat in my desk chair. I thought the name of my fox. Vulquaki. He emerged from my shadow. He walked to the other side of our board and sat.

‘What may I do for you today, Master?’ asked the fox. He squinted with repressed fury. He slowly turned his