Stacia Kane: Demon Possessed

What Megan did not enjoy about dealing with demons was exactly what they lived for: fucking with humanity, leading them astray, and in most cases making a damned good living from it. The Meegras were like the Mafia, only with a lot less trouble hiding the bodies; a fire demon could reduce a corpse to ash in less time than it took her to sear a steak.

Which was probably not the best analogy to use, now that she thought about it, especially not as she’d planned to have steaks with her fire demon that very night.

Sort of. Sort of hers.

The less she considered that question, the better.

She rested her head on her forearms on the desk. Only one appointment left; she was closing early on this particular Thursday and taking Friday off. She was off for the next week, although technically her birthday was an excuse rather than the reason. The reason was the meeting, and the meeting was now in jeopardy. Oh, who was she kidding? They wouldn’t cancel it. They certainly wouldn’t change the location. The Bellreive was the most expensive and luxurious hotel in the city, and the other Gretnegs would just as soon slice off their own heads as stay in an inferior hotel.

Seemed rather silly to her, to stay in a hotel for a week when everyone involved had perfectly nice homes right nearby. Well, no. She had a perfectly nice home. The other Gretnegs had mansions.

But the politics behind who hosted what on which day and how many servants and assistants everyone needed and would be allowed or whatever had proved too frustrating, and thus the Bellreive was being used as a compromise. Everyone could make their own arrangements and stay in whatever suites they liked. It had taken almost two months to get everyone to agree and to get everyone booked, and now . . . shit, where would they go?

Maybe they’d cancel the damn thing altogether, which wouldn’t bother her. It wasn’t as if she had a lot to do there, since she refused to get involved in Meegra money schemes. In fact, she’d prefer them to cancel, since she knew one topic of discussion was bound to be the Haiken Kra ritual and why she hadn’t done it yet.

They all wanted her to. Wanted her to allow the piece of demon inside her, nestled by her heart, to grow. Wanted her to magically somehow become demon, or at least more demon than human. A demon majority, as it were, right there in her body.

She didn’t want to do it. She’d come close to it back in December, when she’d had to allow the demon—not just the demon but the part of her that connected to the Yezer—to grow. She’d thought at the time that might have actually been the Haiken Kra and that the decision had been made without her actively having to make it, but no. It had consolidated the demon, had set its power on a direct path, but it hadn’t physically made her a demon.

It had simply defined her. Psyche demon. A demon with mental powers, not physical ones. It had turned her own gifts into something far more intense, but it hadn’t gone farther than that.

A happy medium, in her opinion. Not so in those of the other Gretnegs. Why doing the ritual was so important to them she had no idea. And she liked it that way.

“You don’t look very happy.”

She raised her head, every inch an effort, like hand-winching up a drawbridge. Oh, good. Just what she needed when she was feeling down. “Hi, Roc.”

“I thought you had an appointment with Ted.” The little demon’s eyes darkened for a second, becoming little more than marbles in his dark green face. Rocturnus, who was both her assistant—for lack of a better term—and her own personal demon, liked Ted. Or liked Ted’s problems. For him it was the same thing.

“Ted’s not coming anymore.”

“Oh?” Another little flash in the eyes. Not because of Ted this time but because of her.

“Would you not do that, please? Not while you’re looking right at me. It bugs me.”

Roc shrugged. “We have a deal. I help you, and in exchange I get to feed off you. You’re upset, that’s food for me. I’d think you’d be used to it by now.”

“You think that because you have all the empathy of a piece of newspaper. I mean it, Roc. Feed off me if you must, but do you have to let me see you do it? It’s weird.”

“You feel it anyway. What difference does it make?”

Her arms tightened around her, an unconscious hug that she stopped the moment she realized what she was doing. Yes, she did feel it now. She hadn’t before, but now she did. One of the dubious joys of her new . . . demon-ness? Whatever. “I just wish you didn’t enjoy my personal problems so much.”

“Hey, it’s not like you’ve been awash in misery lately. I take it where I can get it.”

“I watched Schindler’s List for you the other night! And cried. Which I hate doing. Just because you said you were feeling light-headed.”

“Yeah, that was good. Maybe tonight we can do it again?”

He was impossible. No, he wasn’t; that wasn’t really fair of her. Roc was what he was, and, in a way, so was she. As she looked at him, a little warmth that could only be fondness stole over her heart.

He frowned. “You’re not playing fair. That’s useless to me, you know.”

“Fine. I’ll think about Ted some more, if you promise not to look at me. He’s gotten himself mixed up with one of those exorcists. A faith-healer type.”

Roc giggled. “Really?”

“It’s not funny, Roc. He could get hurt. He honestly believes he’s possessed, that some demon is, I don’t know, stealing his strength or whatever. When I read him, he seemed to think it was dragging him down somehow.”

Roc’s wizened little face wrinkled even further as he fought his grin. “You do realize—”

“Yes, but not like how you guys do it. He thinks of it as something inside him that controls him. He thinks he doesn’t have a choice.”

Roc finally stopped smiling. “But choice is the most important part. If there’s no choice there’s no victory, and if there’s no victory it’s like . . . like cookies without frosting.”

Not exactly the tack she was hoping he would take, but at least he was getting the point. Mostly. “Right. But I’ve seen these guys on TV before. It can be really dangerous, even without the psychological damage it can do. Some of those men tie their subjects down, they don’t feed them or give them water for hours on end . . . I think people might have died, if I remember correctly.”

She was sure she did. Something else she’d seen on that TV newsmagazine? Perhaps that was why they’d done the story to begin with?

She’d google it later. Thinking about being tied up without food or water made her think of torturous interrogations, which made her think of the FBI. Which didn’t make her happy, which also caused the slight shiver down her spine that told her Roc knew she wasn’t very happy and was having himself a nice little snack. Ugh. The less she thought about that, the better.

Having Roc around was rather like eating nothing but fast-food French fries and ice cream for dinner. Not a problem until she really stopped and considered it. Then it made her want to scour out her insides with steel wool. Which wasn’t appealing either.

“What else are you thinking about?”

“A—an FBI agent came here. Right before Ted. She wanted to ask me about the meeting next week.”

“An FBI agent? Really? Did she have a big shiny badge like the last one? Did you see her gun? I—”

“Yes and no.” Agent Reid had certainly had a gun, but Megan hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t looked. On purpose. “And that’s not the point. The point is, she knows about the meeting. The FBI knows about the meeting.”

Roc tilted his head to the side. One papery ear moved faintly in the current of air from the vent; with temperatures outside approaching one hundred, the air conditioning was working overtime. “What did Lord Dante say?”