Stacia Kane - Demon Inside

“Don’t get snippy with me. I’m trying to help you.”

Megan stared at him, trying to keep her anger from overflowing and leading her to do something she would regret. “I appreciate that, Roc,” she said, enunciating each word carefully. “But I’ve asked you to tell me what’s going on and you haven’t. So do you think I have a right to be angry?”

Now Malleus’s phone rang. Megan closed her eyes. She could refuse to answer her own phone but she couldn’t stop Malleus from answering his. He didn’t work for her. He worked for Greyson, and if he ignored Greyson’s call she had no doubt he would be punished.

With a look that was half guilty, half defiant, Malleus picked up his phone and flipped it open. “Yeh,” he said. “Yeh. Sorry, I—She’s safe, she’s right ’ere. We had a little trouble—the lady found the car, y’know, the one them witches—she wanted to—she said she’d go wifout me if I—Mr. Dante, please don’t—” He cringed and held the phone out to Megan. “He wants to talk to you.”

God damn it. How dare he call her up to yell at her, how dare he order her to the phone like she was his goddamned slave. She snatched the phone from Malleus. “Hello?”

“What’s going on, Megan?”

That was a bad sign. He never called her Megan.

“Nothing,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. She could practically feel his anger through the satellite connection. “Malleus told you, I found the car. Brian and I—”

“Brian?”

Deep breath. “Yes, Brian. He can read inanimate objects and you know I can’t. So we went to see if we could get anything from the car.”

He was quiet for so long she wondered if he’d hung up. Then he said, “Let me get this straight. Someone shot at us the other night. You saw the car you thought they were driving, so you grabbed the choirboy and ran over there to see if you could figure out who they were, after I asked you not to get involved, is that right?”

“Well—”

“And you thought that was a good idea.”

She gritted her teeth. “No, I thought it was an incredibly stupid idea, that’s why I did it. After all, that’s what I do all the time, right? Stupid shit?”

“No, you don’t,” he snapped, echoing her own nasty tone, “which is why I can’t figure out why the fuck you’d do something so reckless when you know how dangerous—”

“I don’t know anything, because you haven’t told me anything!”

“Jesus, I didn’t think you would—”

“You lied to me, Greyson.”

“What?”

“You lied to me. In the restaurant. I told you about—I told you that name and you lied and pretended it was nothing to worry about, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t pretend anything. I told you what I knew.”

“You’re lying! Again!”

“Why didn’t you say the name just now?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I’m not trying to change anything. I say I didn’t lie, you say I did; we’re at an impasse. But I would like you to answer my question, please. Why didn’t you say the name? You said it in the restaurant, why not now?”

“What difference does it make?”

“For fuck’s sake, Megan. You saw her, didn’t you? She showed up while you were broadcasting your presence to every sensitive in a ten-mile radius, right?”

“So what if she did?”

“Are you serious?”

“We got away, we’re fine, I don’t see why you’re so mad at me!” She glanced to her right. Brian was making every pretence of reading her battered copy of The Caine Mutiny, but the speed with which Malleus and Roc looked away told her they’d been hanging on her every word.

Now she looked like some dumb little girl in front of them. “You don’t own me, Greyson,” she snapped. “It’s not up to you what I do or don’t do.”

Pause. “Fine. Do whatever you like.”

“I will!”

“Good.”

“Good!”

This was what her anger and embarrassment had reduced her to. The kind of fights thirteen-year-olds had.

“Just do me a favor, send Malleus home if you’ve decided to commit messy suicide. He’s rather valuable to me.”

“And I’m—you know what? Fine.”

She slammed the phone shut and tossed it back to Malleus. Her entire body shook.

So that was that. He’d yelled at her, she’d yelled at him, and now she’d actually hung up on him. She waited—along with everyone else in the room—for the phone to start ringing again.

It didn’t.

Brian cleared his throat. “It’s getting kind of late, Megan, I should probably call Julie and see if she’ll pick me up. I’m too buzzed to drive.”

She nodded. “Sure, go ahead.”

Malleus, of course, wouldn’t be leaving unless ordered to, and Roc—Roc was enjoying her pain too much. Little demon bastard. Maybe later she’d stub her toe as dessert for him.

So Ktana Leyak was their mother? She could have them, then. Megan would be well out of it all. She could sever the connection, if that was possible—which it must be—and be done with the whole damned thing, and who cared what happened next?

She could build a new practice, out of her house. Lots of counselors did that. Or she could find a little office somewhere, closer to home, where she didn’t have to worry about partners. She could put her rates on a sliding scale, like she’d wanted to before. She could—

Brian had just touched the phone when it rang. Megan watched as he started to pick it up, then glanced at her, realizing what he’d done. She shrugged. Might as well get it over with.

If it was over with. He’d called her back; maybe now they’d both calmed down, they could talk like reasonable adults again, and she’d apologize, and he’d hint at an apology, and all would be well, she thought. They’d never really had a fight before.

“Hello?”

“Megan?”

She knew that voice. She couldn’t quite place it, but she knew it, and for a second the world seemed to twist before it fell back into place.

“Mother?”

“Megan, it’s your mother,” the voice continued, as if Megan hadn’t spoken. So yes, definitely her mother. “There’s been a—there’s been…” She cleared her throat. “Megan, you need to come home. Your father’s died.”

Hostile shadows hid in the corners of buildings and under trees as Megan drove through what the residents of Grant Falls referred to as “downtown.” Or at least used to refer to as. She hadn’t been here in a dozen years.

The heater in her car was turned up full blast but she still shivered. A funeral and the reading of a will and The Lawyer Says You Have to Be There.

Not “Honey, you should come home and say good-bye.” Not “Sweetheart, maybe it’s time we got back in touch.” No. “The lawyer says you need to be there for the reading of the will. Just a formality, of course.” Which meant she wasn’t inheriting anything, not that she cared.

Megan had left her suitcase back at the dubiously named Bev’s Holiday Hideaway on the outskirts of town—although who would ever holiday in Grant Falls she had no idea—and, grabbing a cup of coffee from the McDonald’s next door, started making her way home.

To her parents’ home, anyway.

Hardly anyone was out on the windswept streets, but Megan still felt eyes on her. She’d left Grant Falls to go to college and never returned. Now it seemed the time away had been just a short vacation, that the town had sat here waiting for her with the patience of a predator at a watering hole.

Her hands slipped on the wheel a little as she made the left turn that would take her to her old home. It was a longer route, but it would allow her to avoid passing the hospital where she’d spent several months of her fifteenth year. She never wanted to see that building again.