Personal Demons

by Stacia Kane

  Something flared over her entire body, a choking, squeezing sensation that made bursts of light dance behind her eyes. Art laughed in her head.

  She fled to her car, more certain than ever she'd just made a huge mistake.

  * * * *

  "You know, you can trust me, Megan. How many times do I have to say it?” Brian shattered the silence as he stood up from the bench to throw his food wrapper in the garbage can a few feet away. They were on the riverwalk, a wide sidewalk dotted with benches and trees planted in circles of earth set in the cement. Another part of the millennium project, but one Megan liked a lot more than the fashionable strip.

  After leaving the parking garage she didn't want to be inside, didn't want to be anywhere with a lot of people. She needed air. They'd stopped off at a burger stand and sat down to eat.

  "It's not personal.” It was all well and good for Brian to say she could trust him. It was even tempting to do so, until the thought of Radio Counselor Believes Demons Walk Among Us made her close her mouth. “I'm just not comfortable with any of this."

  "Then I'm not doing my job."

  "Or I'm just being difficult."

  He smiled. “Maybe a little bit of both?"

  "Sure.” At least he wasn't asking what the scene at the station was all about, though she knew he was dying to.

  "Tell me about the Misters Brown,” he said, glancing at the bench next to them where the three brothers sat surrounded by piled-high hamburger wrappers. Between them they'd polished off at least three dozen. She had no idea how she was going to keep them fed for the next—week? Month? How long would she be living like this?

  "Not much to tell. Friends of a friend."

  "Of Greyson Dante's?"

  "What if they are?” Megan focused her attention on the river. The last rays of sunlight shone across its surface, making it look like molten gold moving slowly by. Picturesque, certainly, but Megan thought of riptides and underwater predators lurking in the depths. Once or twice a year somebody would try to swim across it. Few survived.

  "They look like bodyguards to me. Are they?"

  Megan shrugged. “Maybe after last night I felt like I needed some help to feel safe."

  "So you asked Greyson to help you."

  "What makes you think they have anything to do with Greyson?"

  "Don't they?"

  The breeze blew light strands of her pale hair across her face to tickle her nose and lips. Irritated, she tucked them behind her ear. “Why do you care? Maybe Greyson did help me find them. Friends help each other. They do favors for each other. Isn't that the way the world works?"

  "It's how the mob works, if that's what you mean."

  "Stop trying to make this look sinister."

  "It isn't hard to make them look sinister.” Brian glanced at the brothers, who were scanning the sidewalk and surrounding area with their arms folded. “Look, Megan, I wasn't going to say anything, but I think you ought to know."

  "Know what?"

  "About Dante. About his ... connections."

  "Connections? As in, who he knows?"

  "Connections, as in he's connected.” He leaned towards her and whispered. “Megan, your buddy is in the Mafia. Those guys are probably hit men or something."

  The residual nerves from the encounter with Art had faded. Now they came back with a vengeance. “If that's the case, isn't it awfully dangerous for you to be discussing it?"

  "Not as dangerous as it is for you to be involved. I don't think it would be good for your career if people knew you had friends like that."

  Was he blackmailing her? Radio Counselor Revealed as Mafia Princess. “What are you saying?"

  He shook his head. “I'm not saying anything. Just that you should be careful, is all."

  This was ridiculous. Why sit here listening to Brian's double-speak when she could just read him? She hadn't done it before because she'd been a little scared to use her abilities. This felt too important to let fear stand in her way. She lowered her shields very carefully and reached over with her mind.

  It only took a second to realize it. Another second to try to pull back, quickly, before he caught her.

  Brian Stone was psychic.

  His eyes widened. “You—"

  "What?” She kept her eyes down. Maybe he'll think he was mistaken, maybe he'll let it go...

  She knew he wouldn't. She was right.

  "Megan.” He grabbed her hand. Something leapt from his fingers into hers, his anger transmitting itself. Her face went hot, and she knew he saw it.

  They sat in silence for a minute that seemed like eternity. “I see,” he said finally, removing his hand. “The psychic psychological counselor. Makes sense."

  Just like the psychic reporter, she thought. He had some fucking nerve getting funny with her about her use of her abilities. How many people's minds had he invaded to get good interviews? In fact, had he ... he'd been the one reading her at the restaurant the other night, hadn't he? And she'd been too distracted to realize it was him. Only fear of what might happen if he included her abilities in his article held her back from starting an argument.

  "I'm a real counselor."

  "I know.” He leaned away from her onto the end of the bench, dangling one arm over the back, and studied her. “But I guess you're just that little bit better at the job, huh?"

  "I help people."

  "I'm sure you do. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

  "What?"

  "Oh, come on. I'm not a fool, Megan. You just happened to have a break-in, you just happen to be good enough friends with one of the city's most powerful, dangerous organized criminals to have him at your place in the middle of the night wearing pajamas, you just happen to suddenly take a break from your regular practice. Spill it. What is going on, and how is Greyson Dante mixed up in all of this?"

  She sucked her cheeks in. If he hadn't been quite so cold, so cruel, she might tell him everything. He might even be able to help. She needed all the help she could get.

  But he'd mentioned Dante. Why was Brian so interested in the man? Or demon, or whatever—she still wasn't entirely certain how she should think of him.

  She shrugged. “I don't know what you're talking about. I'm having trouble with my practice because of the publicity around the radio show—publicity and problems you contributed to, when you hung around the office interviewing people. Greyson was in his pajamas because he rushed over to help me, and I don't know anything about hit men or mobsters, only that he's an attorney I know vaguely through a friend. The break-in was a coincidence."

  "And you didn't read the intruders to see if you could identify them."

  "I didn't think of it.” Shit, he'd caught her with that one. How could she tell him her attackers were simply dead bodies powered by evil?

  "It's usually an instinct. Or do you use your powers for other things?"

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It means I wonder who you're working for, is all. I can imagine a lot of shady businessmen would love to have someone with our abilities playing for their team."

  "This is absurd.” Megan ignored the fear tracing an icy path up her spine. “Are you accusing me of criminal acts?"

  "No."

  She relaxed a little.

  "I'm accusing you of being an accessory to criminal acts. You're letting a murderer hang around with you and provide you with bodyguards who look ready to pull the heads of people just for stepping into your path. You're not totally naive, you must have read them all and checked them out. Either you aren't very good, which I know isn't true because I just felt your power, or you don't care. Which is it?"

  Megan buried her face in her hands. If she told Brian she couldn't read Dante he'd want to know why and she'd either have to admit he was a demon—which she was not about to do, no matter what—or tell him she'd never tried, which made her look stupid.

  Stupid was the better option. “I never tried to read him,” she said. “I try not to read people out
side my office. I didn't try to read you until just now, right? Besides, if you're that interested, why don't you read him yourself?"

  "I tried,” Brian admitted. “He blocked me."

  "Why would you assume he didn't block me?"

  "I figured he had. I was fishing anyway, just in case."

  Megan slammed her hands down onto the wood bench. The brothers jumped. So did Brian. “That is it,” she said, standing. “I am tired of this. I don't need to be interrogated like I've done something wrong, I don't need to be your guinea pig while you use cheap reverse psychology to try and dig up information. If you have something to say, say it."

  "Hey, Megan, I'm sorry. I just thought maybe you could help me with—"

  "Say it."

  He met her glare for a minute, then looked away. “I want to do a story on organized crime in the city,” he said. “I thought you might be willing to help. If you're not part of it, of course. You have nothing to lose, right?"

  Chapter Eleven

  "I think it's pretty self-explanatory,” Greyson said, handing her a fresh drink. They sat in a corner booth at one of the hip downtown nightspots Megan generally avoided. Tonight, though ... she wanted people around her, a crowd of loud, sweaty, half-drunk people, despite the inner shivers she got whenever she thought about what rested on each of their shoulders.

  What rested on her shoulder? For the fifth or sixth—or twentieth, or fiftieth—time that day, she folded her hands together to keep from feeling around in the air by her head. Whatever sat there, she didn't want to touch. She didn't want to know. She'd seen enough for one day.

  "Humor me.” She leaned towards him. To any casual onlooker, they probably looked like—Megan swallowed—lovers. Or, at least, a couple on their third or fourth date. The casually territorial way Greyson's arm rested along the back of the booth would certainly give that impression. The heat of his body caressed her through both of their clothing, the warm scent of his skin assailing her and making her breathe a little more deeply than necessary.

  He was so close that if she leaned forward another couple of inches, tilted her head to one side ... they would be kissing.

  He cocked an eyebrow, as if noticing the same thing. “Humor you how?"

  She jumped back. “Explain it to me exactly as if I didn't know demons existed until a day or two ago, and I'm a complete novice at this sort of thing, okay?"

  He nodded. “The personal demons—the Yezer Ha-Ra, as the ancient Hebrews called them, the ones who are after you—are small. They rest on the right shoulders of humans. Everyone has one—well, almost everyone—and they're responsible for most of the mischief and misery mankind causes itself."

  "Like when someone cuts in front of you in line at the store kind of mischief, or killing people kind of mischief?"

  "Both.” He sipped his drink, his eyes scanning the room over the rim of his glass. He looked back at her. “It depends on how many of them there are."

  "You said everyone has one."

  "No, I said almost everyone has one. Try to pay attention. This is important."

  Megan swallowed her nasty reply along with a mouthful of gin and said, “Fine, almost everyone has one. Some people don't have them?"

  "Some people have more than one. Sometimes a personal demon does an excellent job with their human. They manage to send that particular person farther down the spiral of whatever misery they're causing—making them more and more violent, or sneaky, or drunk, for example. The human grows more vulnerable, the demon more powerful. Soon it's powerful enough to call another demon to its command. They both gang up on the person, sucking out the energy and life-force and using that power to attract more demons, who steal more life ... eventually leaving nothing but a shell, if they aren't stopped."

  Megan shivered. “How do you stop them?"

  "It's different for everyone. Some people go into counseling or join twelve-step programs or something to help them hold on to the force they have left. In time they can even rebuild it. Others...” he shrugged. “They kill themselves. Or other people. Sometimes both."

  A drunken woman in a dress so low-cut Megan thought her breasts would pop out at any second stumbled and fell onto the table, jostling both of their drinks and spilling them all over what little there was of her dress.

  "What the—” Megan started, but then she snapped her mouth shut.

  Greyson looked at Megan oddly,

  The woman struggled back to vertical. “Oh, sorry.” Her too-large mouth hung open as if she had something else to say, but had forgotten it.

  Greyson rose, grabbed the woman by her elbow and whispered something in her ear. The drunk's eyes widened. She glared at someone across the room, then lurched away.

  Greyson turned back to Megan. “What was that all about?"

  "I could ask you the same thing. What did you say to her?"

  "I told her that guy over there was checking her out and his girlfriend called her a whore."

  Megan looked. Their drunken friend was already arguing with a blond woman. “Was it true?"

  "No. Just fun. Back to you. You went pale, and stopped talking. Why?"

  "I just stopped, is all.” Her date liked to start fights between total strangers. Then again, what did she expect from a demon? She tore her gaze away from the now-screaming women.

  "Megan, getting angry isn't like an engraved invitation to be overrun by personal demons. You're not going to make things worse by being pissed at some drunken idiot."

  "Maybe not. But I seriously doubt it's going to make things better, either."

  "I don't know. Maybe you need to let off a little steam."

  "Are you in the Mafia?"

  She'd expected a reaction—anything to make him stop staring at her like that—but she hadn't expected him to practically choke on his drink. “What? What the hell kind of question is that?"

  "One I'd like answered, please.” She'd never seen him on the defensive before, if that's what this was. It was a rather heady feeling to make him as disconcerted as he made her.

  He rubbed his forehead. “Let me guess—Brian Stone told you that?"

  "What if he did?"

  "Nothing. I could tell you a few things about him, too. Things he may not want to spread around."

  "Like what?"

  "Oh, no. Some of us are honorable."

  It was such a ridiculous statement, and he looked so self-righteous making it, that Megan laughed. “If you mean that Brian is psychic, I already know."

  "Yes, but do you know because he told you, or because you tried to read him and found out that way?"

  "I—” She closed her mouth. Greyson nodded, his eyes gleaming in the reflected neon lights from the bar.

  "He didn't tell you. Instead he told you a bunch of crap about me, probably intended to—well, never mind. The point is, old Stone isn't exactly squeaky-clean himself. Don't you wonder how many people he's read without their knowing it to get a better story?"

  Even as she nodded, she was aware of two things—one, that he was deliberately distracting her from the question she'd asked him, and two, that she'd done the same thing, and Dante knew it. “Is this your clever way of telling me I'm unethical with my patients?"

  "No, I don't think it's the same thing at all. Your patients pay you to make them feel better. The people Brian deals with aren't paying him for anything, and he's sure not helping them, either."

  She considered this for a minute, then nodded. “Are you in the Mafia or not?"

  She'd refused to help Brian with his story. She didn't even want to entertain the idea. At least, not until she knew the truth.

  "Keep your voice down. Ugh, we can't talk in here. Let's go.” He slid out of the booth and stood, slipping on his jacket and nodding to Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud, who sat in the booth next to theirs downing oceans of beer.

  Was he going to fit her with some cement boots? “Maybe I don't want to go."

  "Yes, you do. You hate these places."

  Damn it, wa
s she that obvious? “Maybe tonight I like them."

  "Are you afraid I'm going to—I believe the term is—'whack’ you?"

  "Should I not be?"

  He leaned back into the booth and grabbed her arm, pulling her out of her seat to stand in front of him. “Stop acting like a child."

  "Hold on a minute.” She wrenched her arm from his grasp. How dare he say she was being childish? Even if she was. Especially if she was. “Why do we need to leave all of the sudden? You wanted to be here twenty minutes ago, now you want to leave, and it's all about what you want and not about me. What about what I want?"

  "Fine. What do you want, Megan?"

  At that moment, she wanted nothing more in the world than to slap him right across that sharp-boned face of his. Instead she folded her arms across her chest. “I want another drink."

  She'd grown so used to reading men's minds she'd never paid much attention to their body language, for all she'd studied it in school. Now she had a chance. His fists clenched and opened, his weight shifted on his feet. The roll of emotions across his face fascinated her; his mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed.

  "Fine,” he said finally. “Does it have to be here?"

  Megan paused. She'd won the battle. Was it worth torturing herself in order to get back at him?

  Yes. Yes, it was. “I want to stay here,” she repeated, smiling sweetly. “It's fun here."

  His glare told her he knew exactly what she was doing. “I'll go get us more drinks."

  "You do that,” she said. “I'll be waiting. Oh, and Greyson?"

  He stopped but did not turn back around.

  "Thanks for being so sweet to me."

  She grinned as he strode away.

  * * * *

  "Hurry up.” She unlocked her front door and ushered them all, sweaty and rumpled, inside. “We can talk about it in the living room."

  "Thanks, m'lady.” Malleus held the bloody handkerchief to his nose as he passed her, followed by Maleficarum, Spud, and Greyson, all of whom were nursing various wounds. Last to enter was the blond woman in an immaculate black suit whom Megan still hadn't been introduced to, but who'd helped them escape from the club. Why the woman had followed them back here, Megan wasn't sure, but Greyson knew her.