4.

Grace remained quiet through the six-hour train trip to Bath, and Sal napped on and off to kill the last of her hangover.

“Hey, if I said anything last night to make you uncomfortable, I’m sorry,” Sal said as they got off the train, when Liam was out of earshot.

“You didn’t,” Grace said flatly.

“Really? Cause you have been avoiding me all day,” Sal said. “I figured you were mad about something.”

“I’m not,” Grace answered, and walked away.

Sal shook her head. What had she said?

• • •

When they got to the outside of the Bath flat where Liam had tracked his ex, Imogen, Grace finally spoke again.

“What exactly are you expecting here?” she asked. “More plates and vases thrown at you?”

“I hope to let her know I’m very sorry for hurting her and for getting her involved with the Network, and to tell her I’ve changed,” Liam said, almost as if he were reciting something.

“And you just think she’ll forgive you?” Grace asked.

“Probably not. K-Stag didn’t. But that’s not the point. I can only do what I have control over. I control whether I apologize or not. She controls whether she accepts it or not.”

Grace sent a skeptical look toward Sal.

“We had a sergeant in my old precinct who went through AA,” Sal explained. “Step nine was very uncomfortable, but we were all glad she acknowledged everything she had done to make our jobs hell for so many years. Even if Imogen doesn’t forgive him right now, she may feel better about it later.”

Grace shrugged and Liam knocked on the door.

It opened so violently that Liam jumped back and bumped into Grace. The small woman in the doorway began shouting at them.

“I’ll have your bloody rent by next week, ya cunt, you can’t expect me to get anything done if you’re knocking on my fucking door every hour!” she shouted, and then recognized Liam. “Oh. You. You’re not here from my landlord are you?”

Liam looked baffled. “No, I just wanted to come see you,” he said. He looked over his shoulder. “Is your landlord bothering you?”

She grabbed Liam’s arm and pulled him inside the flat. Grace and Sal managed to make it in after him before Imogen slammed and locked the door behind them.

“He keeps bothering me about the rent,” she said, straightening and patting her curly brown hair. “I told him I just had to get some work done and then I could get it to him.”

Sal looked her up and down. Imogen wore a short frilly robe over a white corset, white stockings, and heels, and impressive cleavage peeked out of the opening of the corset. “Did we, ah, interrupt your work?”

Imogen put her hands on her hips, making no effort to cover herself further. “Who the hell’s this?”

“This is Sal, and that’s Grace over there,” Liam said, pointing at Grace, who was studying the photos on the wall. “They’re my friends.”

Imogen sighed and rolled her eyes. It was clear what she thought of the women Liam was friends with. “What do you want, Liam? You want money? I got nothing.”

Grace sat on a love seat and leaned back, watching them. Liam took a deep breath and then let it out. “Imogen. I wanted to say I was sorry. I got you involved with the Network, I broke your heart, and I was a wanker. I’m trying to make up for some things I’ve done and I wanted to find you and apologize.”

“You’re sorry? You’re sorry?” Imogen said, and then she took a deep breath and seemed to swell to twice her size.

Here we go, thought Sal.

• • •

They met in the Archives, Menchú settling into the cracked leather couch and Asanti sitting at her desk.

“What do you want to know?” he said plainly.

She smiled at him, lips closed, as if she knew something he didn’t. “I’m glad you’re finally willing to trust me with this.”

He raised his hands. “It wasn’t about you. It was me. I see this being—Hannah, it calls itself now—as …” He groped for the words.

“As a personal failure?” Asanti suggested, her face sympathetic.

He didn’t like how she came up with that so quickly, but he nodded. “Yes. Admitting it existed meant digging up some still-rotting corpses. I didn’t want to uncover the smell.”

“How descriptive,” she said. She pulled out a notebook. “So you are absolutely sure, even though this one is an adult woman and not a young boy, this is the same being as the one you encountered during the slaughter of your village?”

She said it so matter-of-factly. He winced. “Yes. It’s the eyes. You don’t forget those eyes.”

She looked thoughtful. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. So it’s unlikely that the being driving that monster is the same as the one inside Sal’s brother.”

“Is it?” Menchú asked bitterly. He wasn’t so sure about Perry, but was usually polite to him out of respect for Sal.

“Yes,” she said. “So what is this one capable of?”

“It’s capable of handling armies,” he said. “Slaughtering innocents. It manipulates life on this plane as if it’s kneading bread.”

“But why?” she asked. “What motivates it? And Perry?”

He thought for a moment, not saying all of the obvious answers, like “They’re God-damned demons straight from hell who want to destroy us.” If that were entirely true, they would have destroyed everything by now.

“It mentioned something about an experiment,” Menchú finally said, reaching for the elusive memory.

Asanti snapped her head up. “An experiment? What kind?”

“I don’t know. It felt like an aside. Like she let something slip.”

“An experiment. Interesting word,” she mused, writing something down. “So, you don’t know her motivation. But she’s here. And she’s interested in you.” Menchú shook his head. Asanti’s eyebrows raised. “No?”

“No. It’s interested in us.”

• • •

Liam sat patiently while Imogen let him have it. She blamed him for everything from the sorry state of her current bank account to the case of crabs she’d gotten the previous year (which seemed like an exaggeration to Sal, since they were last together a few years ago, according to Liam).

To his credit, Liam’s temper didn’t flare and he didn’t argue. He was actually taking this twelve-step thing seriously. He sat through all the abuse she threw at him.

When she was done, she stood, panting, and then said, “Well, aren’t you going to give some of my own back at me?”

He shook his head. “No. I said what I needed to say. I’m sorry. Now it’s your turn.”

“Huh.”

“So what have you been doing with yourself?” he asked conversationally.

“Well my credit is shot and I can’t get a job. I’m making money as a webcam girl,” she said.

“Oh, that’s why …” Sal said, and gestured vaguely at Imogen’s outfit. She sat down next to Grace.

“No, I just hang about the house like this,” Imogen said archly.

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Sal said. “I don’t judge.”

Imogen rolled her eyes. “Listen, Liam. You’re good with the tech. You wanna make things right with me? Come figure out what’s up with my cam. It’s older and doesn’t always work right.”

Liam stood immediately. “I’d be delighted to.”

She led him into the bedroom, with a little too much sway in her hips for Sal’s comfort.

• • •

Grace sat back on the love seat with Sal beside her. She shifted irritably. Imogen kept her flat too warm—Grace supposed she would need to as well if she had to be in a nightie all the time—and she could feel sweat begin to bead on her forehead.

After Imogen led Liam to the bedroom, Sal sighed. “Do you think he’ll be all right in there?”

“I don’t know. Liam may be doing a special kind of apologizing. Something I don’t want to see,” Grace said.

Sal snickered. “He’s doing a good job, though,” she said. “He’s mature. I’m impressed.”

“That’s true,” Grace said dimly.

Sal sat next to her in jeans and a white button-down shirt, the top button casually undone, a cross warming against the skin on her chest. Grace focused on it, hearing Imogen and Liam talking in the bedroom, but not thinking much about it.

Sal caught her. She gave a small smile. “What’s up?” she asked.

Grace swallowed and glanced away, annoyed. “Nothing,” she said.

Sal frowned. She halfway stood as if she wanted to go into the bedroom to check on Liam. Then she settled back on the love seat, where her shoulder leaned against Grace.

Grace moved away, feeling as if she had been shocked. She shifted on the seat to put her back to the couch arm, opening herself up to Sal, who leaned into her. Now they half-reclined on the love seat, Sal leaning against Grace’s chest, her hair tickling Grace’s nose. Grace froze, unsure of what to do. She was trapped.

She didn’t feel trapped, though. She had the strength to easily move away, but Sal wasn’t a monster to pick up and throw across the room.

“Are you comfortable?” she heard herself ask.

“Very,” Sal said, and shifted to lean further into Grace’s chest.

Grace didn’t know where to put her hands. She finally put one arm across the back of the love seat and the other over Sal’s arm, her hand resting lightly on Sal’s wrist.

Sal looked at Grace’s hand on her wrist and reached over with her other hand and twined her fingers with Grace’s. Grace barely breathed as she saw their two hands clasped, so casually, as if it meant nothing, as if there weren’t two other people in the room with them.

There were two other people in the room with them. Or at least there had been. Where were the other two people? Sal cuddled up to Grace even further and made a soft, comfortable noise, and Grace’s other arm went around her, her forearm going across Sal’s chest, her hand touching the open collar of her shirt, her fingertips tentatively teasing the collar open a bit more so they could rest on the suddenly hot skin underneath.

Sal’s breath hitched raggedly and she looked up at Grace. Her lips parted, and her other hand came up to take the back of Grace’s head and pull downward.

Then Liam screamed from the bedroom.

Grace could apologize to Sal later, but for now the reality was that Sal was on the floor, probably bruised, definitely annoyed, and Grace was across the room, bursting into the bedroom.

Inside was an amateur porn star’s boudoir. A bed sat on the far side of the room, with black satin sheets and a pristine white bedspread. Light diffusers sat in the corners, casting light all around the room and nearly eliminating shadows. Beside the bed was an honest-to-God fainting couch, upon which Liam writhed. He was held by nothing and apparently attacked by nothing, but he screamed as if he were on fire.

Beside the door, facing the bed, was a video camera and tripod, currently filming.

Imogen was on the bed, kneeling, legs spread lewdly, her tongue out at the camera. She paid no attention to Liam, but instead began to do what amateur porn stars do on webcams.

The camera was plugged into a laptop that sat on a small desk. Grace saw that the feed was live and already had hundreds of viewers.

“Don’t touch that,” Imogen panted. She’d removed her robe and was only in a corset, panties, and stockings. “I need it.”

Grace had seen enough. She started forward, figuring she could take Imogen without burning any of her candle. She could definitely punch a porn star.

Liam managed to pull himself off the couch and place himself between Imogen and Grace. “No,” he panted. “Don’t hurt her.”

Grace frowned. “What the hell is wrong with you? What is she doing to you? Are you mind controlled?”

Liam gritted his teeth, clearly still in considerable pain. “N-no. She’s using my existing connection to the Network to boost her signal. It’s letting her feed off the men who are watching. Like a succubus.” He glanced over his shoulder at his ex-lover, who was still trying to writhe for the camera, using the intruders as peekaboo props instead of people blocking her from her viewers. “I made her this way.”

“How?” Sal asked from the doorway. She massaged her hip and glared at Grace.

“She, ah, liked to make love on camera,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “So we would connect and log on.”

“Could you get more disgusting?” Grace asked.

Liam collapsed, and Imogen was down another scrap of clothing.

“Fight evil now, insult Liam later,” Sal said.

“Ah, God, forgive me, Imogen!” Liam cried.

Sal went to the computer and typed a little. “It would be good if he could snap out of whatever spell he’s under and fix this,” she muttered. “All I know how to do is pull the damn thing out of the wall.”

Grace grabbed the laptop and the camera and yanked both, severing their connection and taking part of the wall with it. A wave of energy came out of the computer and knocked Sal and Grace back, and the apartment was swallowed in darkness.

• • •

This is wrong. It’s midday. Why is it dark?

Sal floated in the darkness, furiously blinking her eyes to try to acclimate. She saw a spark to her right and tried to maneuver towards it.

Sal.

That was her. Someone was saying her name. She thought it was the spark. She floated toward it with more urgency. It grew, and warmth emanated from it. She wanted nothing more than to touch the spark and feel its heat.

Sal.

She had no real body, she realized with little surprise. She had been distilled to the essence of herself. Was this her soul? Was she dead?

The spark got larger and larger and kept saying her name. She got the hang of her locomotion once she grasped the concept of her lack of body and suddenly she was there beside the spark, which had grown to a pillar of fire.

Sal, it said.

She reached out her hand, or what she thought was her hand, to touch it. Some corner of her head screamed at her to stop, to think, to not merge with an unknown entity because that was how every single problem in her life recently had begun.

The pull was too strong. She reached out again and touched her fingertip to the pillar of flame.

It devoured her.

The warmth was delicious. She felt a release of a breath she didn’t know she held, a satisfaction like the final piece of a puzzle fitting in with the whole. She had a body now, and eyes, which were shut.

She opened them and saw Grace floating with her. Their hands were entwined.

“What happened?” she asked.

Grace craned her head around. “I’m not sure.”

Their eyes met. “I’m not sure I care,” Sal admitted.

“No,” Grace agreed. “This feels right.”

They no longer had any fingers; their hands glowed brightly where they touched, as if they were becoming one pure being.

“I haven’t felt … right in so long,” Grace said.

“You’ve been alone for so long. You don’t let anyone in,” Sal said, not unkindly.

“You got in,” Grace whispered.

Their knees touched, the light growing brighter. “I feel like we should be afraid,” Grace said.

“It doesn’t feel bad. It feels—” Sal searched for the words.

“—Right,” Grace gave her.

It was the only word that worked. “It’s like it’s a gift,” Sal said. “What do you want?”

“You,” Grace said. Her lips hovered an inch from Sal’s.

Something pinged in Sal’s mind, something that was outside of this perfect light she was making with Grace. Something that was her, individually, the things outside of her emotional need for Grace. Her determination. Her fear. Her sense of duty.

Who?

Sal pulled back. “Who?” she asked.

Grace increased her hold on Sal. She closed her eyes and leaned in. “You,” she repeated. “You know. You’ve always known.”

Sal shook her head against the temptation. “No. This is a gift, but from who?”

“Does it matter?”

“Grace, think about what we do for a living. Of course it matters.”

Her dark eyes opened and a bit of the shrewd thinking returned to them. “But it doesn’t feel evil, or wrong,” she said. “Sal, I—”

“I know, Grace, me too. But not like this. Not here. We need to save Liam, remember?”

Grace’s eyes flew open. “Liam. The cyber-succubus. Oh no.”

Sal leaned back from the temptation of Grace’s lips, and pulled. It was physically painful when their connection broke, leaving an ache she feared would never go away. When they released their hands, they landed hard on the floor in Imogen’s bedroom.

• • •

“Is there anything else?” Asanti asked, turning to a fresh page in her notebook. She’d filled several pages with Menchú’s information.

“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. She raised her eyebrows. “I mean it.” He met her eyes, and she slowly nodded.

“All right.”

“And I’m sorry, Asanti. Things haven’t been the same between us in a while, and my actions regarding this didn’t do anything to help. I hope we can rebuild the trust between us.”

She waved her hand, focusing on her notebook. “It’s forgotten, Arturo,” she said.

His insides tightened. It wasn’t forgotten. And it wasn’t all right. He would have felt better if she’d raged at him, or cried, or even quit the Archives. Those would be honest emotions he could trust. This indifferent, almost calculating, response was worrisome.

But you couldn’t fault someone for forgiving you.

Could you?

“Are you angry?” he asked.

Her attention snapped back to him. He could see her considering her answer carefully. “I was. As you said, you and I have a problem with trust, and it’s not getting any better. This is just another incident.” She adjusted her glasses and looked down at her notes again. “But we have so much information here, I think I can look past it and we can get some work done again.”

“Look past it? You’re going to look past the fact that you can’t trust me?” he asked, outraged.

She smiled. “Arturo, do you want me to be angry with you?”

“I want honesty from you. I want to be honest with you. I want to trust that I can speak with you honestly. And I don’t feel like we have any of that.” He threw his hands in the air, giving up. “And it feels damned strange, yelling at you for not being angry enough. But I want an honest reaction, Asanti! Is that too much?”

She put down her notebook and came to him. She gently took his hands and her brown eyes met his. They were full of kindness, the way he remembered them.

“Arturo, we have years of history between us. We’re not going to let a few rocky months end our friendship. You have trusted me with this information now, and I am grateful for that. This can be a first step to rebuilding that trust between us. I was hurt. A little angry. But I forgive you.” She pulled him close and hugged him.

He hugged her back, but couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to be willing to take the next step in rebuilding that trust.

• • •

Sal blinked her eyes, dazed and aching all over, physically and emotionally. She was very aware of Grace beside her, burning like a beacon. She felt like she wanted to sob, but she climbed painfully to her feet. She staggered toward the bed, where Imogen was about to undress a barely conscious Liam. She grabbed the woman’s arm and wrenched it, hard, behind her back.

Caught by surprise, Imogen screamed, and Sal yanked her upright and presented her to Grace, who was standing with fists clenched.

They didn’t need to speak. Their eyes met and Grace nodded once. She stepped forward and hit Imogen hard, knocking her out. Sal dropped the woman like a sack of potatoes. They looked around the room; it had been destroyed by the wave of whatever had caught them when Grace tore the computer out of the wall. The bed was charred, the dresser and fainting couch were splinters. Liam was still unconscious, but breathing.

“Are you all right—” Sal asked, and then Grace had her in her arms, pulling her close.

Their foreheads touched, and Grace’s eyes met hers. “Just this. Give me this and I’ll ask for nothing else.” Their lips met, tentative at first, but then with more passion.

Sal’s hands came up and touched the sides of Grace’s face, stroking her soft skin and then tangling in her silky hair.

Sal wasn’t sure how long they stood there, holding on to a scrap of the intimacy they had shared in the throes of the succubus, but Liam groaned on the bed, and she and Grace reluctantly stepped away from each other.

“Are you all right?” Sal said, going to his side. Her voice was ragged.

“I think—” Liam licked his lips, his eyes still closed. “I think I will send email to all the other people I need to make amends to.”

“Good plan,” Sal said, smiling.

• • •

They identified the source of demonic power as the video camera, a camera Liam remembered once being the property of the Network. They’d been practicing putting scraps of demons into technology.

“It was my idea to put the succubus in there,” Liam said sadly. “Before, I mean. And I forgot about it. So this time she turned it on and I was lost. She had a focus for her energy right here, and she reached more men than ever. I’m sorry, Imogen.”

They shrouded the camera and stood looking at Imogen, whom Sal had covered with a blanket after she and Liam had lifted her onto the bed.

“I feel like I should be sorry for taking her toy away. It looks like she’s made a good living with it,” he said. “Except for paying her landlord, but she was never responsible with bills.”

Sal looked at him as if he were insane. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I know it’s evil, but come on, it’s like we’re taking away a taxi driver’s car. How will she make a living now?”

“She can buy a webcam for twenty pounds on Amazon! She doesn’t even have to put on pants! Buy it! It comes to her door! Hook it up! Do dirty things! Profit!”

Liam frowned. He knew things were overall better, but poor Imogen had felt attached to the camera, and built her life around it. And it had devoured her while it tasted the men she connected with.

In the car on the way to the airport, Liam bought a high-quality webcam and had it sent to Imogen’s flat. She might get kicked out because of the damage to the apartment, but at least he could replace the tech they had confiscated.

He and Sal sat together on the way home. Grace sat across the aisle, staring at her new novel, The Book Thief.

“What’s up with you two? She’s like an ice queen over there,” Liam said, nodding toward Grace.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sal said. Grace didn’t raise her head, even though they were both looking at her.

“Sure, yeah,” Liam said. “So I didn’t wake up to see you two lip-locked like one of you was going off to war?”

Sal’s face went crimson. He grinned at her. “Don’t worry, my manhood isn’t threatened.”

“The last thing I ever worry about is your manhood,” she whispered fiercely, but then sobered. “I guess it was the succubus’s mind control. It made us—it made us almost too late to save you.”

Liam shook his head. “That mind control’s a real bitch, isn’t it?” He sighed. The “mind control” defense was too common an excuse for real feelings if anything magic was involved. It was a damn shame that Sal wouldn’t admit to what had happened.

Should he tell them that the succubus energy they’d felt had only amplified existing feelings and desires? Liam had desired Imogen—how could any straight man not desire her?—and he’d been caught. And Sal and Grace clearly had wanted each other.

He thought back over the last little while and finally figured out what was behind their odd silences. Even if they didn’t know it. Or wouldn’t admit to it.

They’d have to figure it out themselves. He wouldn’t tell them. It wasn’t his job to atone for this; he’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t his job to try to figure out how to make his ex-girlfriend come to terms with her feelings about someone else. There was only so far he would go to help a friend.

He looked out the window and thought of Imogen, and hoped some day she could forgive him.

He checked his email with the plane’s Wi-Fi. Menchú had written to say he and Asanti had met and made some headway in figuring out Hannah’s motivations and goals. That was a good sign. Still, Liam couldn’t believe Father Menchú would have hidden such a secret from them, and let them walk around and work beside such a hellish creature. He might ask for his own meeting with the Father.

He read the email again. At the end, Menchú had said:

I understand if you have questions, and I am here to answer all of them. You’re facing your inner weaknesses and atoning, Liam, and I admire you so much for that. It’s shining a spotlight on my own weaknesses that I must admit to and address. Please drop by when you get in. I would very much like to talk to you.

Liam wrote a quick reply, agreeing to see Menchú after they landed. He felt something release inside him, something he hadn’t known was tight. Menchú was his rock, and someone he could never lose faith in. If he didn’t have Menchú, no one else in the world truly believed in him.

Well, there was Sal. He glanced over at her as she tried to doze. He smiled slightly.

“Sal,” he whispered, leaning in.

“Napping,” she said, not opening her eyes.

“Just thought you should know that the succubus energy wasn’t mind control. Neither of you did anything that you hadn’t already considered.”

Her face grew pink, but she didn’t answer. Let her feign sleep if she wanted. He’d gotten his message across. He was glad she and Grace had found each other. So long as they admitted it before one of them got eaten.

He settled back and closed his own eyes, and wondered how he could get himself a girlfriend who wasn’t possessed by a demon and didn’t end up cursed by the Hand or half turned into an octopus.