"You let each of us read you." Radha's voice was low and sweet.
The surface of the demon stone shivered almost hungrily. My stomach answered with another wave of queasiness. "That doesn't sound so hard."
Light caught Radha's earrings as she shook her head. "It can be unpleasant for some. And draining."
"How exactly do you 'read me'?" I asked, keeping my eyes on her rather than the demon stone.
"Each of us will make a connection with you—with your energy field, if you want to be technical about it—and through the field, we can sense what's in your mind—"
"You'll read my mind?" I interrupted.
"Not exactly. It's more a matter of feeling for any demon trace within you."
I shuddered, not liking the thought of demon trace or having someone else in my head. "Isn't letting someone connect with your field kind of like what the demons do?"
"We don't try and take you over," Ian said with a piercing look. "Or feed off your energy."
"Then why is it draining?"
"It takes energy just to maintain the connection. The fields effectively flow around both people while they're joined. A bigger field takes more energy to sustain, just like using energy for a working does."
Demon stone or sharing my head with five strangers. Hello rock, meet hard, hard place. I'd had a demon piggybacking on me for years; I wasn't keen to let anyone else attempt anything similar, magical cops or not.
So it mostly boiled down to whether or not I trusted Cassandra's assessment that I was truly free of the demon and therefore the demon stone couldn't hurt me.
Cassandra's eyes held a quiet sort of strength. I latched on to that. She'd helped me. Healed me. If I trusted any of them, it was her.
"Thanks, but I'll take my chances with that." I nodded at the bowl.
Cassandra's eyes crinkled at the corners, deepening her wrinkles as she smiled approvingly. The others all looked surprised. My stomach flipped and churned again. Did they really think I might still be under the demon's sway?
If they were right, I could be about to die. Then again, if they were right and they found the demon trace by reading my mind, I doubted they'd go easy on me either. This was quicker. A binary situation.
I eased my fingers free from the chair and straightened, smoothing my shirt as I looked at the demon stone. "What do I do?"
"Stay right where you are." Antony picked up the bowl with two hands and carried it around to me, each step slow and cautious. Ian watched with great concentration. I didn't blame him. If they were right about what demon stone could do, then the amount of damage it would wreak on the art and furniture in this apartment if it spilled was not pleasant to contemplate.
"Cassandra, go help," Lizzie suggested.
I waited for further instructions. Cassandra came over to us and took up position behind me, her hands resting lightly on my shoulders. Her touch eased my fear a tiny bit.
"Ready?" she asked.
I nodded, and she said something I didn't quite catch.
A field of white light sprang up around us.
"Just in case of spills," Cassandra said as I flinched in surprise. "Ian wouldn't want you ruining his rugs."
Or his whole condo. I didn't welcome the reminder of the potential destruction—including my own. My next breath shuddered.
Antony leaned down and held the bowl in front of me. "Just put the flat of your hand against the surface."
I took another shaky breath. Then another. When I felt I could lift my hand without it trembling, I did as he'd instructed.
The liquid . . . metal. . . whatever was ice under my palm. It quivered for a moment, then flowed over my skin, engulfing my hand.
"Don't move," Cassandra warned.
She didn't have to worry about that. The touch of the demon stone held me frozen, not even breathing, as ice-cold fluid encased my hand and wrist. Somehow it wasn't smooth or slick like water or oil, but rather slightly rough as it flowed over my skin. Rough and freezing. My hand shone silver, like it should belong to an alien or a robot. Not like anything that belonged to me.
Creepy.
The stuff moved like some sort of living thing, questing for prey like a snake sliding through grass. The back of my mind chittered with fear. If it was the snake, I was the small, furry, vulnerable thing. But I stayed motionless, not daring to move as a thin trickle separated from the rest of the stone and started to flow toward my elbow.
Numbness spread up my arm as the demon stone paused, trembling in place. Almost if it was thinking. The urge to bolt or burst into hysterics screamed in my mind as the cold surrounding my arm intensified to the point of pain. My teeth dug into my bottom lip and the hot salt of blood hit my tongue.
The thread of demon stone darted higher then paused again. I held my breath, unable to look away, wondering if it was about to flow right over me, choking me with cold. Wondering if the last thing I'd see would be silver flooding my eyes.
I couldn't hear anything else in the room over the roar of my pounding heart, but I got the impression that no one else was making a sound.
Then, just as I decided I couldn't take another second, the demon stone reversed direction and flowed back into the bowl, leaving my hand bare but freezing, the skin pale and blue as though I'd plunged it into ice water.
I gasped in relief, and everyone seemed to start breathing again at the same time.
"I guess that solves that," Cassandra stated with satisfaction. "You can take your hand back, Maggie."
I pulled my hand away from the bowl as fast as I dared. My skin started to redden, the return of blood and warmth like acid flowing through my veins.
The white light vanished, and Antony carefully carried the bowl back to the table and replaced the lid. I stayed where I was, rubbing my skin, trying to ease the pain.
"Radha," Cassandra said. "Perhaps you can help Maggie out."
Radha nodded and came to join us, placing both her hands around mine. A glow of green flowed around my arm and the pain increased exponentially for a second, making me whimper. Then it was gone.
"There." She smiled. "That should be enough."
I flexed my fingers. No pain, just a hint of pins and needles. "You're a healer, right?"
"Yes. When I'm not doing this." She gestured at the other four.
I craned my neck around to Cassandra. "How much time do you spend on 'this'?" The papers weren't exactly filled with stories of witches gone wild. Probably just as well. The normals outnumbered those with any sort of magical ability about five to one. There'd been a few points in history when witches had been persecuted, but now normals and those with magic got along as well as anyone could expect.
The rising temps and water levels of the early twenty-first century, as well as the upheavals of the following decades and the accompanying food and water crises had made a lot of other concerns seem petty. Humanity had remembered how to play nicely, and that attitude had largely stuck.
Not that that couldn't change in a heartbeat if witches started doing bad things on a large enough scale to raise the normals' fears.
I wiggled my fingers, trying to shake the last of the tingling away. None of the Cestis had answered my question. Guess I didn't have the right security clearance or something.
Right. New subject. "What would’ve happened if I failed the test?" I asked out of morbid curiosity.
"That would depend on how bad the taint was," Cassandra said, patting my shoulder. "Don't worry about it."
Easier said than done. Like it or not, I had to know how this thing that was after me operated. "The taint would make it easier for the demon to control me?"
"Yes. It helps them make a connection."
"Like a computer virus? A vulnerability waiting to be exploited?" I said more to myself than Cassandra. If that was the case, then I just needed the right antivirus. Good in theory, not so good in practice when it seemed the right antivirus was magic.
Lizzie nodded at me from across the table. "Close enough. The demon tries to take over your programming via whatever means it can."
"Lowered barriers. Right, Cassandra mentioned that already."
Something was nagging at the back of my brain, but I couldn't quite grasp it. I worried at the feeling for a few seconds but nothing became clear, so I let it go. We had more pressing concerns. Like Nat. And where the hell she was.
I straightened and turned my attention to Ian. "All right, I passed your test. Now what?"
"Lizzie will try and scry for Nat shortly," Cassandra said. "But first we wanted to talk to you."
I fought the urge to yell, “Can we just get on with it?” Nat was somewhere out there, and I didn't want to chitchat. But the Cestis held all the cards, so I had to play the game their way. Arguing the rules would just slow things down even more. "Talk away."
"Cassandra tells us you only have a basic knowledge of magic. Yet you killed an imp," Ian said in a tone that was distinctly principal-reprimanding-naughty-student.
“Beginner's luck," I said, keeping my own voice calm.
Antony frowned at me with his magnificent eyebrows. "Relying on such luck is dangerous."
Okay, this was wasting my time. Worse, it might be wasting Nat's, and we didn't know how much time she might have.
"Look, Cassandra already gave me this speech. I'm not going to run around setting fires, I promise. I really don't want anything to do with any of this."
"This?" Radha said with a rattle of bracelets.
I wiggled my fingers in the air. "You know, magic."
Four sets of eyebrows shot skyward. Cassandra just looked resigned.
"Why not? You have the power," Ian asked.
"Power has never done anything for me so far. In fact, it's caused nothing but trouble. My mother was hardly a good role model, and then I was bound to a demon. That demon is now hunting me, if you're all telling me the truth. Any sane person would be running away screaming at this point."
The five of them exchanged somewhat appalled glances.
"Yet here you are," Ian said.
I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. "Let's get one thing straight. I'm here to find Nat, to make sure she's safe. I'll do your lessons and learn what I need to be able to protect myself, but that's where my interest ends. I don't want this." I looked at each of them in turn, hoping they could see I was serious.
Their expressions were blank, but their fields swirled in agitation. I got the feeling I might as well have been speaking Swahili.
"But you have a gift," Ian said eventually.
"Didn't you hear what I just said? I don't like magic." Not least because, if my gut was right, magic was going to lose me Damon. "As far as gifts go, this is one I'd be quite happy to return."
"You may change your mind about that," Lizzie replied.
I hitched a shoulder. "Maybe, but don't count on it. So, can we look for Nat now?"
"Why don't you wait outside?" Ian said. "We need to discuss some things that are Cestis’ business."
Sit outside the principal's office and wait to see whether or not I got detention? I didn't think so. I stayed right where I was. "Nat's my friend, and I saw what Cassandra did already when she tried scrying. What exactly are you worried about me seeing?"
Ian locked eyes with me. "It wasn't a suggestion, my dear."
I turned to Cassandra, but her expression didn't give me a different answer. All for Nat, I reminded myself. For Nat I would put up with this. I bit down on my temper, and the hackles Ian had raised, and walked out the door. As it swung shut behind me, I heard Lizzie say, "But she's strong—" in an outraged tone before the thick wood and possibly an audio shield—or even magic—cut all sound.
I cooled my heels in one of Ian's rooms, plied with coffee and sandwiches and tiny little cakes by the same guy who'd opened the door. The food was welcome but didn't help stave off my temper. The longer I waited, the more I felt the desperate need to bite something other than a sandwich.
Checking for messages on my datapad was an exercise in frustration; nobody had seen hide nor hair of Nat.
I left another message on Nat's system and logged off. All I could do was sit and stew, my mind circling an endless loop between Nat, her weird behavior at the club, demons, the Cestis, Damon, and the problem with the game. Which proved to be even more frustrating. I couldn't come up with a new angle or idea on any of them, so I gave up, deciding to do some of my homework and check out the reading Cassandra had sent.
One of them was a treatise on demon lore. I didn't really want to know, but after my experience with the imps and the demon stone, I wasn't keen on having any more nasty surprises. I kicked off my shoes, curled up on one of the silk-covered sofas, and began to read.
About twenty minutes later, I was regretting the sandwiches. And not just because I'd been reading about demons. Nope, what had macraméd my insides was the sudden grip I'd gotten on that elusive thought that had been nagging at me.
I needed to talk to Damon.
But as soon as I reached for my datapad, the door opened and sandwich guy appeared.
"They're ready for you."
My teeth set. I liked Cassandra, and Lizzie seemed cool, but collectively, the Cestis attitude got on my news. I wasn't the type to jump just because someone else told me to, and the Cestis seemed to want me to not only jump but do it cheerfully.
Still, giving in to my emotions wasn't going to solve anything, so I gathered my stuff and followed him back to the other room, wondering whether I should run my theory past the Cestis.
The snotty look on Ian's face as I walked in made me decide that Damon deserved to know first. I would deal with the Cestis to find Nat for now. Apart from that, I didn't owe them anything.
Nat's ring lay in front of Lizzie on the crumpled silk scarf. "Did you find her?" I asked.
Lizzie shook her head. "I can feel something, but I can't tell you where she is. I do think she's alive though."
My knees wobbled and I grabbed for the nearest chair, clutching its back until I was sure I would stay upright. "Good. Okay, that's good." I grinned at Lizzie, unable to come up with anything more to say as relief flooded through me.
"She's alive but I think she's in trouble. There's a real sense of darkness around her." Lizzie fiddled with one of the knobs of her hair and a long coil of red sprang free.
The relief drained away like someone had pulled the plug. Darkness? Did that mean danger? Was she hurt? I had a thousand questions but somehow knew Lizzie had no answers. "So what do we do about that?"
"I'll keep trying to narrow in on her, but you're going to have to look for her the old-fashioned way as well." Lizzie wound the stray hair around one finger.
"We are—I mean, I am." I didn't know whether Damon was still looking for her or not. "I'll keep trying." I was going to do some serious hacking when I got home. Go through her mail accounts, her data streams, her financials. She'd be mad as hell when she found out, but I'd rather have her mad at me than missing.
Lizzie stabbed a pin through her re-coiled hair. "If you find anything, just let us know. Even a more specific area you think she might be would help me."
"I'm seeing Cassandra tomorrow anyway."
Tomorrow. It sounded like forever when all I wanted to do was find Nat now, now, now. But at least I knew she was alive. Or that Lizzie thought so.
I took a deep breath and told myself to focus on the good news. "Thank you for your help."
Lizzie nodded. "Are you sure there's nothing else you can think of right now?"
"I can give you the same list of places she hangs out as I gave Damon." Crap, that reminded me about my theory. I tried to keep it off my face. Damon deserved a warning before I brought a bunch of mystic magistrates down on his head. "But he's already checked all those places. Nobody's seen her."
"Nothing else she wears more than this ring?" Lizzie pushed the ring around the silk with a fingertip, frowning.
"That's her favorite."
"All right. I would like that list. Send it to Cassandra, and she'll pass it on."
"I'll do it now." I pulled out my datapad and shot off a message.
"Chill. Thanks." She leaned back and stretched, looking tired.
"I'm the one who should be thanking you."
That earned me another headshake. "Thank me when we find her."
I hoped I would have something to be thankful for when we did.
It was nearly nine o'clock, and the day had been a thousand hours long, so I headed home. I couldn't believe I'd started the morning in Damon's bed and close to happy. Part of me wanted to go to Damon and talk to him about my theory straightaway, but I needed some sleep and an hour or so with Nat's system, not necessarily in that order.
The apartment was still silent and empty when I got home. For once I wished I'd rescued another cat after Gran's old boy had died a few years ago. On second thought, perhaps I'd be better off with a dog. A witch with a cat was too much like the fairy-tale version of magic. And witches in fairy tales never came to a good end.
Definitely a dog.
And I definitely needed some sleep if I was pondering pets when I should’ve been looking for Nat.
I headed for Nat's room and opened her system.
Somewhere along the line, I must've fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew was the door buzzer jolting me awake. I eased up, my neck and back protesting from my unplanned nap facedown on Nat's desk.
I squinted at the time in the corner of the desk screen: 1:30 a.m. Who the hell was ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night?
I staggered out of the chair, letting out a groan as my back and neck squalled in stiff protest, and hit the intercom on the room panel. "Hello?"
"Maggie, it's me. Let me up."
Damon.
I stared at the intercom. What was he doing here? My heart started to pound, though I couldn't tell if it was from a crazy hope that he'd come to make up or excitement at the possibility that he'd come to tell me he had news about Nat.
Either way, I had to know. I buzzed him up.
"Tell me about demons again," he said as soon as I opened the door.
So much for here to make up.
I let him in and he strode into the living room. He still wore the clothes he'd been in at his house, though he'd added shoes. His hair looked like he'd been sleeping standing on his head, only I didn't think he'd slept at all. Stubble darkened his jaw, and the shadows under his eyes were just as black.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, hoping he still might have news of Nat.
"Tell me about the damn demons," he repeated.
No news then. This was going to be fun. I squinted at him, still half-asleep. "Don't you have a whole company of people to research this sort of stuff for you?"
His eyes narrowed. "I thought I'd ask an expert."
I laughed, the sound bitter. "Okay, if you think I'm an expert on demons, then you really are barking up the wrong tree. I already told you, I don't know much about magic."
"Cassandra must’ve told you something."
"A little," I said warily.
"Then tell me." It was almost a snarl.
I was tempted to snarl right back but kept my temper in check. I had a feeling he'd come up with a similar theory to mine.
"Sit down," I said. "Stop looming over me. I'm not going to turn you into a frog."
"I thought you said you didn't know about magic."
I rolled my eyes and pointed at the sofa. "Joke. I have no idea if frogs are possible. But you're kind of tempting me to find out. Sit."
Finally he obeyed—if you can call balancing on the edge of the seat, leaning forward and practically vibrating with energy “sitting.”
Definitely worried about something. Which worried me. My pulse still bounced like a bumper car. Was it possible to go into adrenaline overload? Someplace where you passed through the fear and worry and strain and just went sort of numb? If so, I wanted to know how. I'd had enough of today's roller coaster.
"Where do you want me to start?" I asked, deciding I might as well sit too.
"Demons can possess people, yes?"
I rubbed at my neck, trying to convince my muscles they weren't actually steel. "Yes."
He twisted the watch on his wrist. "How?"
"Is the person volunteering?"
"No."
"Then their psychic barriers have to be lowered. The demon has to sneak in and take over before they can reject it."
"Fuck." A muscle flickered in his jaw.
I wondered if his neck was as sore as mine. I longed for coffee and some painkillers. "My thoughts exactly."
"Is that what happened to you?"
"No, I told you. My mother volunteered me without my knowledge or consent. What's this about, Damon?"
"I was thinking about the games."
Crap. So much for my horrible theory being farfetched. The ache in my neck spread down my back. "Me too," I admitted.
His eyes widened. "You were?"
"You are still paying me."
He sat back, and the atmosphere eased the tiniest of fractions. "I thought you would’ve had enough on your plate without worrying about Righteous."
"Not when it could all be connected," I said bluntly. "I think it has something to do with the static filter. Is that why you're here?"
This time the stream of curses that came out of his mouth was too rapid and too low for me to make out more than about a quarter of them. Those I could distinguish weren't pretty.
Fuck.
"Damon? Am I right? You think it's the filter too? That whatever it does to make the brain accept the VR also lowers the psychic barriers?"
He scowled. "It's ridiculous. Demons using a game to find people to trap. How do they even know about the filter? Or games?"
"Cassandra did say it would be watching me."
"But the first testers had issues before you got near a game."
"Got near Archangel, yes, but I've spent a lot of time with gamers and heard lots of conversations about game tech. It might’ve figured out it was a possibility." I hugged a cushion as I thought about just how many endless gamer gab-fests I'd sat through.
"It could hear what you heard?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. I told you, I don't understand how all this works. It might just be that those few testers had a tendency toward depression or something that didn't show up in your vetting and the filter set it off somehow. Coincidence, not demons in their case."
He scrubbed his hands over his face. "It still sounds ridiculous."
"Ridiculous but logical when you think about it. And it fits with the timing. I use a game with your filter for the first time and something weird happens. Then I get the chip and all hell breaks loose." My temples throbbed. I gave in and went to the kitchen, returning with two mugs of coffee and a roll of pain tabs. I swallowed three and passed them to Damon.
He gulped the drugs and the coffee, and then leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "It's not logical. The version Nat and Ajax's team were using had been rolled back to an earlier filter."
"Then I guess the demon got smart. Once it knew the loophole was there, it could watch and find it again."
"But if you're the one it was watching, it makes no sense that the other testers were affected." He looked back to me, blue eyes challenging me to convince him.
I stuck to my guns. Solving the improbable was what I did. I knew the buzz that settled in your stomach when you found the right solution, the certainty. I felt it now. "Like I said, it might be coincidence with your early testers. It doesn't disprove the theory. And if Nat is connected to this, then it might have targeted her deliberately because of me. Do you have your people watching the other testers?"
He nodded. "Everyone is okay for now."
Thank God for that. I reached for my pendant, trying to think. "No one's using the games at Righteous?"
"I called a lockdown."
And no one argued with him when he called the plays. Right. Still, he'd done the right thing, which meant I was going to have to as well. "There's something else."
"What?"
I braced myself for an imminent explosion. "I'm going to have to tell Cassandra."
He shot to his feet. "What? No."
I stared up at him. "Excuse me?"
"You can't tell anyone. You signed the NDA." He folded his arms. Obviously for him, that was enough.
I wished it were that simple. "Damon, this is more important than a confidentiality agreement. We're talking about a demon. The more people it gets a hold of, the stronger it gets. If it gets strong enough, it comes through to this world, and trust me, from the little I do know, that's something we don't want to happen."
"You can't tell anyone. Not yet."
"Why not?" Was he really going to put his business first?
He threw up his hands. "Do you have any idea how many game systems we have out there? How many games?"
"You want time for damage control?" My voice rose about an octave as I stood. "Are you fucking kidding me? You need to get out there now and do a recall. Once you do that, it won't matter who I tell anyway."
For a moment he looked like I'd slapped him. In a way I had. I understood him. Understood how wrapped up his identity was in Righteous. And I’d just told him he could lose it all. But unfortunately, just like with me and my magic, he was going to have to suck it up.
His eyes blazed at me. "Not all of them have the filter. I just need time to identify which ones—"
I couldn't believe he was going to argue the point. "No. Just recall them."
"It could ruin me."
"A demon could destroy the entire world. You have to issue a recall. If you don't, then I'll send the story to the nearest vidnews stream and it’ll be all over the net in about ten seconds. And I will be telling Cassandra."
He sank back down onto the sofa. "Why does she need to know?"
"Because she's part of—" I paused, trying to figure out how to describe the Cestis to him. They hadn’t told me not to talk about them but I didn’t want to screw yet another thing up. "She’s a member of a group that deals with magical . . . issues. The fact that this demon could be hooked into a whole lot of people via games is something they need to know about."
He put his head in his hands. "I've worked damned hard to build this company."
"And I'm guessing you have a far better chance of keeping it if you're honest with people. If you try and cover this up, it’ll end badly."
His expression was haggard. "We don't even know if it's true."
"Cassandra could help us find out. Or her group, maybe. They'd be able to tell if someone using a game had lowered barriers."
"You're suggesting I let a bunch of witches into Righteous?"
I thought about it for a moment. "No. I'm not sure they'd want to all be seen there in one place."
"Christ, what is this group exactly?"
"I can't tell you." He scowled and I held up a hand. "For one thing, I don't know much about them. I'd never heard of them until Cassandra told me."
"Yeah, but you're not the magical expert, remember?"
I tried not to let that cheer me up, the fact that he'd admitted I might not be an evil witch after all. We still had a long way to go, particularly if I couldn't convince him to come clean about the games.
"We could take a console to them."
Damon's face cleared for a moment. "Do they have chips?"
"What do you think? Look what happened to me when I got a chip. They could use a headset though. And anyway, they don't need to play the game, just observe someone who's playing."
"So we need a volunteer to play a game and potentially be possessed while a bunch of super-witches watch?" He looked as if he couldn't believe the words were coming out of his mouth.
But he'd hit on a good solution, even if he didn't believe it. "Something like that. Though I'm not sure super-witches is the right term for them. But I am sure they can do something to protect whoever shows them the game. It's either that or they can test your testers for demon taint."
"Not exactly flying under the radar."
"Probably not. This is the quickest way. I can call Cassandra now."
He dug his thumbs into his temples. "Do it."
I went to make the call. When I got back, Damon was still leaning back on the couch, staring grimly at the ceiling. He lifted his head and raised an eyebrow at me.
"They can see us right now," I said.
"Where do we need to go?"
"Pacific Heights. Not too far at this time of night." I wanted to touch him, offer some comfort and get some in return, but my hands stayed by my sides. "Look at it this way—you got what you were paying me for," I said, forcing a smile.
I didn't even get a flicker of a dimple in return.
"This isn't exactly the outcome I wanted," he said. Our eyes met, and for a moment I wondered whether he was talking about more than just the game and the demon. Whether he might be sorry about what had happened to us.
But it wasn't the time to ask. I turned away from the window, and the man, and got ready to tell the Cestis how we might just have a demon on our hands who had figured out how to get all the power it ever wanted.