Excerpt: Double Negative

I slipped into my chambers and closed the door behind me, leaning on it with a sigh. Looking up, I saw a naked Devil staring back at me.

This really oughtn’t come as any surprise. During the spring, I would periodically find O curled up half in the fireplace for warmth with all of his clothes off so as to not burn them. He assured me that he usually got up and redressed before I returned to the room, but I had caught him napping in the nude often enough to consider walking in with my hand over my eyes. This being the hottest season of the year, however, O hadn’t been taking his fireplace naps. Devils on their home world weren’t prone to wearing clothes and only did so on other worlds as a necessity to keep warm. Besides, the Devil in the center of the room wasn’t O. I could tell that easily at a glance because this world traveler was a girl—and a very curvaceous one at that.

We stood there, regarding each other fixedly for a minute, my eyes roving up and down her tall, lean frame from her taloned feet and fall of straight black hair. She looked to be about my age, which was to say about seventeen in Hell years and not the rough equivalent in the nineties in Yohkish years.

After she had sufficiently stared me up and down as well, she snorted almost mockingly, “Are you the Great Solennelle?”

“Great what?” I blurted before realizing that I made myself sound rather ridiculous. To be fair, I hadn’t heard myself being referred to as such, and this was the first time that anyone had used that adjective in front of my name, my full name, no less.

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her curvy chest, her long tail swinging in long arcs behind her. She fixed her dark brown eyes on me and flipped her long hair over her shoulder before asking again, “Are you the magician they call ‘the Great Solennelle?’ The guards told me this is your room.”

“Uh,” I stammered, sounding just as eloquent as before. Had she arrived to Yohk in that state? I was surprised the guards hadn’t run frightened or flocked to her side. Either way, I was confused as to what she wanted with me. I rarely had visitors outside of other castle personnel.

Before she could ask me once more and I could stick my foot in my mouth yet again, I managed to squeak out, “My name is Solennelle. I’m the Royal Court Magician. Uh, how can I help you?”

She opened her mouth to speak but the door I had been leaning on suddenly lurched behind me, pushing me effortlessly to one side as though I hadn’t been standing there. Hopping aside so as to prevent being knocked to the flagstones, I peered around the edge of the door and saw O entering the room. His reaction to the guest in the room was not what I was expecting.

“Emmy!”

M.E.? I wondered as he rushed to her, pulling her into a big bear hug with a wide smile on his face.

“That’s ‘Em,’ O,” she retorted though the frown was gone from her face, replaced with a winning smile.

M? I thought with a frown. Was everyone on Hell named after letters of the alphabet? Wouldn’t they run out after a while?

“That’s ‘Uncle O,’ Em,” my mentor shot back with a smile as he released her from the bone-crushing hug. “When did you get here?” he asked as he motioned for her to have a seat on the couch and the pair of them began walking around it to sit down.

I was finally brought back into the conversation when M nodded in my direction by the door as she lowered herself onto the couch, an elbow propped up on the back as she leaned her head in her hand. “I read that you were the Great Solennelle’s mentor in the papers after the Grand Tournament. I figured I’d find you if I found her, and here you are.”

O turned and saw that I was indeed standing beside the open doorway, and I reached out with a hand to push it and swing it closed. Letting my arm drop to my side, I walked stiffly over to the couch. So she hadn’t been looking for me, she had been looking for her uncle. That explained what she was doing here, more or less, but it didn’t explain why she had been looking for O in the first place.

My mentor nodded at me as I approached and indicated me with his hand as he introduced me, though introductions hardly needed to be done at this point. “Yes, this is Solennelle, my apprentice, though around here for appearance’s sake we pretend that I’m her assistant. It looks better what with her being the Royal Court Magician in this country.”

M seemed to scoff a little as though she thought maintaining appearances was a silly idea but she obligingly held out a hand to me which I took. “Pleasure,” she grinned toothily, her bright, pointy teeth standing out very white against her dark red skin.

“Sol, this is my niece, Em,” O explained, his eyes on her rather than on me. The tension between us was back now that O knew I was in the room, but M didn’t seem to notice it as her attention was on her relative. I released M’s hand, and she turned back to O, forgetting me as O asked her, “What are you doing here? This is quite a ways off from your usual haunts.”

M stretched a little and settled more comfortably against the couch as she explained, “Normally I’d never stick my nose in a backward place like this, but I’m here because of Aunt Kay.”

OK, so now I knew that O had a niece named M and she had an aunt named K. How O and K were related, I had no idea, but I was hoping to find out. I knew that O had two older sisters, so maybe K was one of them. I pulled out a chair at the table behind the couch and sat down, waiting to hear more.

My mentor shot a glance in my direction as though unwilling to let me be a part of this conversation, but he couldn’t think of a way to tell me to butt out. This was, after all, my room officially, and M didn’t appear to have any problems talking in front of me. In fact, she seemed to have almost forgotten that I was there.

“Kay?” O asked in a quiet voice as though speaking more softly might exclude me from the conversation despite my being right next to them. “What does Kay need with me?” My mentor’s face had darkened visibly at the mention of her name, and he looked almost as annoyed talking about K as he had been with me lately.

“It’s not really about Aunt Kay,” M explained lightly. “It’s Casey and Ian. She’s having some trouble with them, and everyone decided it’d be best if you came back and helped out.”

OK, more names to try and remember: K.C. and E.N. I hadn’t heard about them any more than I had heard about K, and I was now totally enthralled with the conversation, leaning in further despite O’s obvious reluctance to let me listen. M continued to ignore me, which made it easier on me to be a hanger-on.

The names K.C. and E.N. caused O’s pointed ears to perk up, and he took an immediate interest, concern written on his face as he asked, “What’s wrong?” Then he thought better of having M explain it here and now and he raised his hands to stop her from responding as he declared, “You know what, just take me back to Hell. We can talk about it there, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Back to Hell?” I blurted, forgetting that I was supposed to be a fly on the wall. Sitting upright, I gaped at him and demanded, “You’re going to Hell? For how long?”

My mentor looked over the back of the couch at me and sighed.