Evil Tentacle Beasts From Under the Sea (working title)
an excerpt

Chapter 7: Sweet Alice

Nik had known it right away. But he dared not speak, not yet. He could
see that Ash was deceived. It was because she saw so clearly, through
all glamor and illusion, that she was also blind.

But Nik knew. He couldn't have said how. It was instinct, or intuition,
based on centuries of experience. Ash shared much of that experience, yet
she still understood it through a human filter. People saw what they
expected to see. Nik expected deception. And he saw it. In her walk, in
her smile, in her every graceful gesture. He heard it in her voice.

He didn't know Sweet Alice.

But he knew this woman, standing there in the snow, was a demon.

She wore the form perfectly. Of course. Demons projected themselves into
the world's time in mortal shape, physically indistinguishable from what
they copied. They afflicted the world because they loved it. Most were
content to wait in hell for mortal souls to come to them. A few wouldn't
wait. They loved the world too much. They loved the frail mortal life and
longed to share it directly. They could not help but devour it.

Nik followed Ash. The demon couldn't have copied Sweet Alice without
having met her at least once. It was a hope. His hand slipped under his coat,
finding the pocket with the sprig of rowan secreted inside. His fingers
brushed against the leaves. A cold cloak of clarity settled over him.
He sensed the spells of entanglement laid around the tree fall away from
him.

When he sat in the parlor, he recognized Ob Vettir as the object of the
demon's love. So.

The tea was poisoned. How could he not know? He was an adept of Haoma.
He only pretended to drink. The liquid went into the pocket hidden inside
his mouth. When they were looking at Ash, he spat it out again.

No point in dragging this out. He staggered dramatically to Ash.
Uttered the words to provoke the demon into revealing herself.

Yes. Even Ash must realize what she faced, now.

To Nik's dismay, his partner was too far gone to react. The troll took them
both. The crow panicked, fled. But the demon's needle outflew the crow.
Nik cried out silently.

Nik swung, coatless, upside down, on the hook, while the troll sharpened
his knives. Nik still held the sprig of rowan in his right hand. Ash,
the fool, had lost hers. Nik fed power and knowledge into the rowan. He
was no sorcerer, but in truth, chronomancy was not that different.
Sorcery used the thickness of time around the world's now to accomplish
its wonders. Nik's chronomancy was simply more direct in its manipulations.
The rowan sprig was sympathetic. Spells of clarity were already spun around
it. Nik amplified their magnitude. Translated it into his own substance.

So when the rowan touched Ash's bare skin, it released her from the demon's
/persuasions/.

"Ob Vettir. She isn't Sweet Alice."

Nik heard her voice from a great distance. He fought to hold the clarity
of rowan on himself. He reached for his dagger. Remembered it was gone.
He groped for Avigail's kitchen knife instead. They hadn't bothered to search
him, thinking him incapacitated by poison. The knife sliced easily through
the rope.

"She's a demon." Ash held the troll's attention. Her voice was thin,
constricted by the effects of the poison, but her words were clear.
"She isn't your fey queen. She's a demon from deep hell."

Nik dropped lightly to the floor, landing on his feet in a crouch. The bespelled troll didn't notice.
He swept up his coat from where it lay on a chair, then found the other
part of himself. The crow was still alive, because he was still alive.
But dying, perhaps. And the crow's death would infect the elf. Nik
swore, silently. He put the crow into the third pocket of his coat,
where time ran slowest. He took a thread from his coat, plucked it
free and sent the other end back, splicing it to the point when they
had stepped out of the rootway.

"The poison. It make you madwoman," said Ob Vettir. "She already tell me."

"She's afraid I'll tell you the truth. The poison only paralyzes. My
mind is clear. She doesn't want you to know, that's all. She wants you
to kill me to silence me. But killing me won't change what she is. She
is a demon!"

I was never here, Nik thought. He took as much of himself as he dared and
stepped onto the thread. The crow breathed easier. The greater part of the
burden of its injury shifted away. Ob Vettir would not remember. The demon
might, but only when reminded.

"She is my wife!" roared the troll.

"Then you married a demon," said Ash.

"Liar!" Ob Vettir slashed down with the knife he was holding, a bone-splitting
knife with a heavy iron blade.