Bone Lantern Witch

by Kat Simons

  While the most common way for a demon to escape into this realm was for it to break out of its summoner’s control, they lost power when they did that. The only way to enter this realm and still maintain their full power was to “possess” a human host. But that wasn’t as easy as people thought. It took a very powerful demon, a lot of blood sacrifice, a lot of time, and in the end, the human didn’t survive hosting a demon for very long. Possession wasn’t a plan for a demon to get loose into this realm for more than a few days at most.

  But it was possible. And a Molder demon was powerful enough to have turned Grant into a host.

  With the realization, everything that was happening suddenly got a lot lot worse. A demon couldn’t occupy Grant’s body for long periods without killing him. But it could take over his body if there’d been enough time, preparation, and the deal they’d made had allowed for it. And if it was inside Grant’s body, it could walk around free in this realm.

  “We need to go,” Angie said, rising from the floor in a rush. “Sebastian, we have to check in at Dana’s Cauldron. Now.”

  He nodded and moved away from the windows.

  Ellen launched off the couch. “Wait. What will happen to us? To Mara? If he comes here for us, if the demon comes here, we don’t have any protection.”

  “Stay here, in this building. In this complex. Don’t leave,” Angie said firmly.

  “And don’t call any demons of your own,” Sebastian warned. “That will only make matters worse. I promise you that.”

  Mara hung her head. “I can’t let him kill her,” she muttered. “He took her from me once. I won’t let him do it again.”

  “But a demon isn’t the answer,” Sebastian said gently. “Stay here and safe. We’ll deal with Grant.”

  Angie didn’t miss how he didn’t call the man Mara’s father anymore. Which was a kindness to her as well as the truth. Grant might have raised Mara and pretended to be her father, but he’d never been a real one to her. Not in any way that counted. Blood or no blood, Grant had held her as a hostage. He hadn’t been a dad.

  “And if he kills you both?” Ellen said. “What then?”

  “Another demon hunter will come,” Sebastian said, without flinching. “My mentor will ensure you’re safe.”

  “Who’s your mentor?”

  “A legend,” Sebastian said. “And she trained me well. Don’t worry. We’ll stop Grant. No matter what it takes. We’ll stop him.”

  “Why didn’t you before?” Ellen asked the million-dollar question. Again.

  Angie watched Sebastian carefully. His expression didn’t betray any of his inner thoughts. But the faint red in his dark brown eyes was more prominent just then.

  He looked from Ellen to Angie and said, “Because Grant’s demon killed the last hunter who went after Grant.”

  Her chest tightened. She’d been afraid of that. But hearing her worst fears confirmed made her gut hurt. If the demon had already killed one hunter…

  It could kill another.

  “What makes you think that won’t happen again?” Ellen snapped. “To you.”

  “I have a stronger will than it does,” Sebastian said, holding Angie’s gaze.

  For a demon hunter, that was all that mattered.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Angie was nearly jumping out of her skin by the time they reached Dana’s Cauldron. It was well past midnight at that stage, and the shop closed at ten, but she’d been given a key a few months ago and the code to the security system.

  No one was inside. At least, it didn’t appear to be occupied from the outside. Sometimes the psychics worked late or had private clients in during afterwork hours. The trusted psychics, like Angie, were given the key and security code for this reason. But if someone was inside after hours, they pulled down a purple shade over the front display window to let the other employees know.

  The shade wasn’t pulled tonight.

  Angie let out a deep breath, relief making her weak.

  “You okay?” Sebastian asked. He’d been quiet all the way here. There wasn’t much they could have said on the subway anyway.

  “I’m not sure. I’m happier knowing the place is closed up and no one is here, but…”

  “We’ll go inside,” he said. “You can make sure.”

  “Thank you.” She unlocked the door and raised the inner security screen.

  Most of the surrounding businesses had outer metal screens they pulled down to cover windows and doors at the end of the work day. But that system gave away when someone was inside late at night, so the owners had moved the protective screen system to an interior design. It meant the occasional broken window to fix. But since anyone who knew what Dana’s Cauldron was usually worried the “witches” might curse them, the store went mostly unmolested.

  She punched in the security code on the panel just inside the door. Then closed and locked up behind her, including pulling down the security screen again. The interior of the store was dark, with only some faint light from a few working lava lamps and one of the small water fountains bubbling away near the front of the store. Angie didn’t need light in Dana’s to know where she was going, though, so she left the overheads off, preferring to keep her night vision.

  Sebastian didn’t question the choice. He had excellent night vision.

  She started at the counter, where she knew the man who’d come looking for her would have stopped to talk to Laura. For a long moment, she stared down at the counter top, afraid to touch it. If the man with the dirty aura had actually been a demon, Angie wasn’t sure she wanted to sense him.

  “I’ve got your back,” Sebastian said quietly. “I’ll pull you away if you get overwhelmed.”

  “I hate that you know me so well still,” she murmured.

  “Two years isn’t long enough to forget.”

  She closed her eyes, briefly, the truth of his statement a sharp jab to the gut. “I haven’t forgotten anything either. Despite my best efforts.”

  “I’ll be pleased with that later. Sorry, but I will.”

  She rolled her eyes. Too many memories. It was so easy to fall back into a comfortable rhythm with him. Too easy for all the old feelings to come crashing in.

  “Don’t touch me unless I really need your help,” she said so she didn’t have to deal with the deeper undercurrents.

  He grunted yes and stayed a few feet away, ready to move but far enough to keep from distracting her.

  She let out a long breath, opening up her inner senses, letting her vision blur. She stepped closer to the counter and gently touched the glass surface. A cacophony of different impressions rose up at first, all the customers, queriers, all the employees that had been moving over this spot for the last days. She let the onslaught roll over her, breathing calmly through it, watching but not following any of the impressions as they streamed past her inner eye.

  One unexpected impression made her pause a moment—a newer employee of Dana’s Cauldron was pregnant. They’d have to celebrate as soon as Zadie told everyone. Though to be fair, trying to keep that a secret in a store filled with psychics, aura readers, and assorted witches seemed a waste of time. Still, it was Zadie’s information to give out. Angie let the good news go and went back to sifting through the images for the one she needed.

  Her breath caught when she finally hit it. The sense of Laura’s discomfort grabbed Angie first. Laura had seen and been through a lot in her years at Dana’s. She didn’t waver or worry over every character that walked in. This was New York after all, filled with Characters and Interesting People. And Dana’s Cauldron attracted a lot of those types. But Laura had very very good instincts about people.

  And when the pale man walked up to the counter, Laura raised an inner psychic shield. Angie actually felt that shield go up. Which meant Laura hadn’t read the man’s aura the minute he’d stepped close. It wasn’t his “dirty” aura that had caused the reaction. Laura had shielded against him first. Instinctively.

  That was telling.r />
  Angie breathed slowly through her nose, trying to let the images play out without hiding from them or flinching from Laura’s fear. And there was a lot of fear there, along with confusion. Laura didn’t know why she was afraid. But she was too smart to ignore the instinct, thankfully.

  A full-blown scene unfolded for Angie with bits of the actually dialogue rising up. A vision so clear and detailed, it was like watching a movie.

  Laura greeting the man with a forced, professional smile.

  The man leaning on the counter near where Angie’s hands were now, lowering his voice. A deep voice with a slightly sibilant sound in it. Not Grant’s voice. At least, not the voice Grant had used in his study. But there was something vaguely familiar about it.

  “You have an Angela Jordan working here,” the man said. “I need to speak to her.”

  “Is there anything I can help you with? You need a psychic reading? Or perhaps you’d like your Taro cards interpreted? We have some lovely candles that just arrived yesterday if you need clarity.”

  Laura neither confirmed nor denied that Angie was an employee. Clever and something all the people on the main floor were taught to do. While Dana’s Cauldron got mostly harmless clientele, there were the occasional stalkers everyone had to watch out for.

  “I need to speak with Angela Jordan.”

  “Do you have a card? Contact information perhaps?”

  “Is she here or not?”

  “I can ask one of the managers to help you if you need something more specific?”

  Since Laura was a manager, Angie knew this was a sign of distress and Laura would be calling in the Calvary soon if the man didn’t stop badgering her.

  The man fell silent for a moment and narrowed his eyes at Laura. “This is important,” he said quietly. “It’s a matter of life or death that I speak to her.”

  Laura hesitated, just a moment—to open her senses finally and take in the man’s aura. Angie wouldn’t have recognized what she was doing in that beat of hesitance if she hadn’t known Laura. The pause was subtle, and to an outsider would look like she was considering what the man had just said.

  Laura’s gaze sharpened again, and she stared at the man’s cheek. Not his eyes. She was very carefully not looking him in the eyes, Angie realized. Laura had been doing that on instinct since the beginning. The sense of her fear spiked again, but there was an undercurrent now, not just fear, but determination. A swirl of stubborn determination.

  “Would you like to leave contact information for our staff? Someone is sure to get back to you. The owners like to take care of their people.” Again, words that sounded polite and gave very little away. But the last line was pointed and spoken very clearly.

  We protect our own and you won’t be getting any answers here, demon.

  Angie blinked a few times as that last bit settled in. The “demon” had been a part of what Laura was feeling in that moment. Laura recognized that “dirty” aura as belonging to a demon. She hadn’t said as much on the phone, but she’d known what Sebastian was after reading his aura—or trying to. Angie wasn’t sure if Sebastian had allowed that or not, but even her inability to read his aura would have tipped Laura off. She knew demons and hunters existed. And she obviously knew the man-demon was dangerous enough she didn’t even want to refer to him as one out loud.

  But he wasn’t Grant. At least, not as far as Angie could discern. The question was, did he work for or with Grant? Was he the freed Molder demon shifted into a human disguise? Or was that demon living in Grant’s body—as she’d worried earlier—and this was something else entirely?

  Too coincidental for a demon to come looking for her now, after eighteen months of not dealing with their kind in any way. This was something to do with Sebastian returning to her life. Something directly linked with Grant and Mara and Ellen. She just couldn’t tell how it connected.

  Angie tried to shift her focus on the vision away from Laura and her overwhelming sense of fear to the pale man and what he was thinking and feeling in that moment. But she came up against a granite wall of silence when she did that. The demon’s psyche was impenetrable. Most were. She might know them at a touch. She might be very familiar with the demon realms—much more than she’d ever wanted to be—but reading them was usually impossible.

  Worth a try, though.

  She tried to shift her attention back to Laura, to see how the rest of the interaction played out, but the image wavered and turned fuzzy, her sense of the exchange fading at the edges. She concentrated, trying to keep her focus on the scene.

  Everything cleared again, the image snapping back into focus.

  And the demon turned to face her. Looked right at her even though she was supposedly just touching a memory impression. The pale man smiled, revealing rows of sharp teeth, his eyes black now, with a hint of red in the depth. Behind him, Laura seemed frozen in the moment. Everything around her had frozen. Angie was no longer seeing a movie scene. She was looking at a still picture. Everything paused.

  Except the demon.

  The demon had moved out of the picture and was smiling at its audience of one.

  “Angela,” it said, the hiss in its voice stronger now. “I’ll see you soon.”

  It reached toward her, long fingers tipped with sharp claws brushing against her arm.

  Angie gasped, nearly screamed, and jumped away from contact with the counter. The image shattered around her like glass, falling down in sharp shards. She blinked hard to pull reality back together, to refocus on her surroundings as they were now.

  Sebastian’s hands steadied her, gentle on her shoulders, something to help her refocus. A part of her recognized that any sort of touch should have bothered her just then. But Sebastian’s didn’t. She always recognized it was him holding her, his touch keeping her grounded and steady, helping her return to the moment, without invading her psychic senses with his thoughts. He willed his touch to only comfort.

  For a touch psychic, having a demon hunter for a partner had its advantages.

  She shivered as the afterimage of the demon reaching for her rose up. She could still feel the brush of its claws against her skin.

  Sometimes, having a demon hunter for a partner was not an advantage at all.

  “What happened?” Sebastian asked.

  He didn’t release her, and for that she had to be grateful because she wasn’t sure she could stay standing just then without his support.

  “The man who came looking for me was a demon.”

  “A freed demon? In a human host or just disguised to appear human?”

  “If it was riding a human host, I’ve never seen the man he was occupying before.” She described the scene she’d seen, and the way the demon had talked to her, touched her after she’d tried to read it. “Should have known better,” she muttered as she finally pulled away from Sebastian.

  “You broke contact on your own this time,” he said, quietly. “That must mean something. Was it a Molder demon?”

  “Not sure. I broke contact too quickly. I wasn’t expecting it to…notice me. I hate the way those fuckers twist space and time.”

  Sebastian’s snort of agreement made her smile faintly. As the after images faded, she settled more and her pulse returned to a steady thump.

  “Been one hell of a day,” she muttered. “Twice had a demon reach through my psychic senses to get at me. Had to see a demon in this realm about to make a deal with a child. And nearly let one loose at the Botanical Garden because I’m out of practice avoiding the wrong kinds of trees.” She shook her head.

  He frowned a little. “What happened at the Garden?”

  “One of the trees caught me. I didn’t mean to look and I found myself staring into the ‘V’ and breaking open that barrier. A demon tried to climb through. If a little girl hadn’t distracted me and made me look away…” She let the sentence trail off. He knew what happened when she opened that barrier between their realm and a demon realm.

  That’s how they’
d met.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” His voice deepened and a touch of anger crept in.

  She scowled. “I wasn’t planning on getting involved with all this,” she said, gesturing back at the counter. “I’m not supposed to be working with demons anymore. And I hadn’t intended to spend the day with you after our meeting. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  Sebastian put his hands on his hips and lowered his chin, giving her a look. “You know nothing is ever irrelevant where demon hunting is concerned. It always ties together somehow.”

  “Don’t you dare lecture me. I was only there because you asked me to meet you there.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “You could have chosen a different location.” She mirrored him, putting her hands on her hips and staring him down. If he was hoping she’d meekly take criticism from him, he was sorely mistaken. Not in this moment. Not ever.

  “You could have insisted we meet somewhere else. Or not at all. You still showed up.”

  “You said it was an emergency.”

  “You still could have stayed away.” He leaned in close, his face in hers. “You made the choice to be there.”

  “You ensured I showed by playing on old feelings,” she snapped.

  “Those old feelings haven’t gone away.”

  “Stop.” She held up a hand and leaned away from him. She couldn’t have that conversation now. Not when her nerves were still raw from the demon attack. “We agreed.”

  “I only agreed reluctantly.” He leaned back too, but his gaze had darkened.

  And there were emotions in his expression—hurt, anger, regret—all things she didn’t want to see. “Because it was for the best,” she said. “We both knew it. I don’t belong in your world.”

  “You were made for this world or you wouldn’t be able to open the realms.”

  An argument he’d made before. She snarled and pointed a finger at his chest. “I’ve only ever come back to this because of you. I would have avoided it. I wouldn’t have almost let a demon out this afternoon, if it wasn’t for you.”