Hollywood Demon (The Collegium Book 6)

by Schwartz, Jenny

  Clancy glimpsed the wall of the neighbor’s house where Faust had—maybe—appeared, and then, they were speeding past it. Maybe it was cowardly, but she wanted her and Mark’s conversation to do the same. She didn’t want silence, as they’d had on the drive back from Hollywood Boulevard, but she also didn’t want to discuss the tough stuff.

  “I came home to be ordinary,” she said mournfully.

  Her comment, or perhaps the unexpectedness of it, surprised a laugh out of him. She smiled faintly. “Tell me about your work. I don’t remember you as a gamer.” He’d been too active, always outside, always surrounded by people.

  Not like now. She realized why he’d winced away from her comment in the kitchen that morning about being too alone. She’d been talking about herself, but he’d become isolated by his obsession with Faust.

  “I always gamed a bit. But I got into it in a big way about six years ago.” After Phoebe’s death. Perhaps that was the story of his life, before and after Phoebe? But his voice was relaxed, confident and self-deprecating. “I had to do something after college.”

  “You were doing something.” She watched the competent movements, the small adjustments of his hands on the steering wheel as he took the back streets, weaving through them to the car yards and his office in Sherman Oaks. “You were modelling and working on a script. Oh. Screen writing, games development. It’s all storytelling.”

  “That’s it. Gaming was the path I took,” he agreed. “I found that the stories I wanted to tell, epic adventures in unknown worlds, suited gaming.”

  Epic adventures. Stories in which good battled evil with the odds stacked against the hero. Was that how Mark saw himself, as the lone hero on a quest?

  He frowned at the road as it twisted and turned, climbing before suddenly descending. Suburban houses had claimed the hillside, jumbling against each other and crowding out the trees. She might have been distracted, but he wasn’t. “I also got involved in gaming because producing the games requires coding.”

  “And Silicon Valley isn’t far away,” she said, demonstrating her business savvy. Being able to recruit the people you needed was important.

  He coughed, although it didn’t quite disguise his laugh. “True, but that’s not what I meant. Faust, the demon, uses code to strike a bargain with people to steal their souls. So I needed to learn about coding and how it wraps into people’s lives, into their dreams and influences their choices.” He pulled out around a garbage truck.

  She slumped a bit in her seat. It seemed that they couldn’t help but discuss the demon.

  “Games are the obvious medium for demons to enter Earth. People playing them are already in a state of heightened imagination, even arousal. They’re more likely to consent to something weird.”

  “Kinky,” she muttered. She didn’t think he heard.

  “What I’m working on is a counterspell to erase all Hell-linked code.”

  She sat up straight and stared at him. “A counterspell is high magic.”

  “I know. And I know it’s beyond me.” A nerve pulsed in his jaw. “But I’m modelling the counterspell on the original demon-binding that my great-grandfather and the other Collegium mages used a century ago. I’m being careful.”

  “Does the Collegium know?” She wasn’t its biggest fan, but Mark was meddling with dangerous forces, ones significantly beyond his power level.

  “No.” His voice was solid, about as yielding a granite.

  “But you told me.”

  “It’s not like you’re a fan of the Collegium. I heard you complaining about Neville.”

  She folded her arms in a self-defensive gesture. “I still abide by their rules. Mostly. I try to. I have to, if Jeremy is to let me stay here.”

  He shot her a quick, but fiercely incredulous look. “Why wouldn’t he? And why does he have any say over where you live?”

  “It’s about geomages and territories. What Doris and I were discussing. California is Jeremy’s territory.”

  “I realize that, but…you’re his sister. Why would you think he’d throw you out?”

  She drew an unsteady breath. “Because my magic is unstable. Sometimes, when I’m emotional, it slips and makes a connection with the Earth where I am. And then, it does things.” She might as well tell him. She’d have to tell Doris sometime. Mark could be her practice run. “You know that latest volcanic eruption in Iceland a month ago?”

  “Heathrow Airport was closed for three days.”

  She winced.

  “That was you?” In his disbelief, he almost didn’t see the stop sign and had to brake hard. The SUV lurched to a halt. “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” She readjusted the seatbelt that was trying to cut her in half. “Uh, yeah, the Icelandic thing was me. I was taking photos for a fashion shoot. Anyway, some of the clothes hadn’t arrived. The fashion designer was having a meltdown. His assistant was in tears. The models were huddled in a car with the heater blasting. I went for a walk. We were near some thermal pools.”

  She paused, remembering the eerie way the steam had gusted on the air and the faint sulfur stink. Not brimstone but hydrogen sulfide. “I guess I’d walked further than I thought. I’d been taking photos, not really paying attention to where I wandered.”

  Being a geomage, she always knew she could find her way back. Like a homing pigeon, something in her knew exactly where she was all the time.

  And, maybe, like a homing pigeon, she’d had to come home. Something to think of later.

  “I walked around a lump of lava that had cooled and weathered to this fabulous shape, lichen on it in orange. Weird and amazing. And around the corner of it, a woman beaten and bloody and pulling on her clothes. She’d been raped. She’d come up there to soak alone in a hot spring and some…”

  “Bastard,” Mark supplied.

  “Yes. He was there, on the far side of the pool. He stared at me, at the woman. I could have taken his photo. I could have screamed. I could have run.” She was lost in the memory. The shock in the man’s eyes that he’d been discovered, then that instant’s flare of the desire to hurt her, too. She hadn’t been scared, though. She’d been furious. “My magic just lashed out. The woman was closer to me than to the man. She was on solid rock. He was on the edge of the hot spring, tramping across the mud in his thick boots. I made the mud boil. He screamed.”

  “Clancy. Clancy?” Mark’s voice, intense with concern.

  She blinked and blinked again when she realized that he’d pulled to the side of the road and parked. How long had she been lost in the memory?

  He was worried, but he wasn’t touching her. He was scared for her and obviously uncertain if he’d make things worse.

  “I didn’t really hurt the man,” she said. “His skin was no more blistered than from sunburn.”

  “I don’t care if you boiled the flesh from his toes.”

  She gasped. “That would be torture.”

  “And you’d never do it.” He clasped her hand then, cautious and gentle. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You reacted as anyone might.”

  “I exploded a volcano!”

  “Doris would be proud of you.”

  Her jaw dropped. Clancy could feel it, but she couldn’t make it shut. Shock.

  “You protected the woman and yourself.”

  “The man ran away. But the police caught him. Lianne, the woman, she was so brave. She walked with me back to the fashion shoot.” She smiled, a wobbly effort but a real one. “Don’t ever believe that the fashion industry is heartless. The instant they saw Lianne, not one of them had another thought for the shoot. Every one of us was part of getting her to the hospital.”

  Her uncertain smile died. “Erik, the geomage responsible for Iceland, met me outside the hospital and ordered me gone. I hadn’t even realized the volcano had erupted.”

  Anger shimmered in Mark’s blue eyes, deepening their color to cloudy sapphire, but his clasp of her hand remained gentle. “So, you saved a woman and yourself, reacted n
aturally, and for this the Collegium sanctioned you? That’s why the chief geomage, this Neville, wanted to berate you some more?”

  “Berate is a good word. Unusual. Old-fashioned. It suits Neville.”

  Mark slowly released her hand, restarting the car. “Doris is right. You don’t need the Collegium.”

  “That’s kind of true,” Clancy said. “I don’t need them, and they don’t need to worry about me, because I don’t intend to use my magic again. I told Neville.” And when Mark swore under his breath. “It doesn’t matter. I was never a powerful geomage. I just enjoyed ‘talking’ with the Earth. But there are other things I can do. I’m going to take up painting, again.”

  She exhaled shakily, feeling adrenaline still coursing through her body, stirred up by her memories. “What sort of car do you think I should buy?”

  There was a beat of silence, before he said, “How much money do you want to spend?”

  She relaxed as he let her change the subject to a determinedly ordinary one. “Five thousand. I ought to be able to get a reliable car for five grand.”

  Mark gritted his teeth to hold back the offer to just give Clancy a car. Hell, it was past time someone did something for her. What the seven bells was her brother thinking not to be flying out to Collegium headquarters, thumping the chief mage’s desk, and arguing Clancy’s case? Instead, it sounded as if Jeremy had joined the chorus of condemnation.

  Unlike Doris.

  Some of his outrage eased. Clancy wasn’t without family support.

  “Five thousand should get you a good car.” He had no idea. He’d never bought a used car. Then he recalled horror stories heard on the news of used car salesmen cheating single women. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “What?” She stared at him.

  “At the car yard, a woman on her own. You might get cheated.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you, just…laughing. This is one ordinary thing I can do. I’ll be fine buying a car.”

  “Can I ask why you laughed?” There was a car yard in the near distance and another just beyond it. He tried to decide between them.

  “The Collegium offered practical courses as well as training in magic for those who’d work in the field. I studied mechanics. I understand engines, I can drive most things, and I like cars.”

  “Huh.” He remembered the big rig she’d arrived in. “I guess you’ll be okay. This car yard do?” At her assent, he turned in.

  “I appreciate your offer to help.” With the laughter still in her eyes, she looked young and pretty. Heart-catching.

  He stared at the car salesman observing their entrance. It would help Clancy’s bargaining that he’d driven the old warded SUV and not the Rocinante. Still. “If you don’t find a car you like, call me and I’ll pick you up.”

  “You’ll be in a meeting.”

  “I can still answer a phone.” He recited his phone number and waited for her to enter it in hers. “Call me so I’ve got your number just in case.” His phone blipped and her name showed. “If anything worries you, phone.”

  “The demon isn’t going to bother me.” She got out of the car.

  They didn’t know Faust wouldn’t attack her. However, Mark was counting on the demon’s past behavior. It liked to skirt the edge, doing just enough to torment him, but not enough to provide proof that the Collegium would pursue.

  “Have a good meeting with NASA.” Clancy smiled and shut the door. She ignored the salesman and walked toward a family sedan with a $6,999 price tag. Her cardigan slipped from one shoulder and she hitched it back before shoving her hands in its pockets. She looked casual. She’d seemed confident and positive she’d enjoy car shopping.

  Mark put the SUV in reverse and backed out of the yard. In the rear vision mirror he saw the car salesman approaching Clancy, smoothing his tie.

  The wind blew in the open windows of the small, white car. Such an ordinary little car with excellent fuel economy and only one previous owner. Low mileage. Good condition. Clancy had the radio on, and if the sound was tinny, she didn’t care. She sang along to an old blues song.

  Bargaining for the car had been fun. She’d seen it as soon as Mark drove them into the yard, but she hadn’t made a bee-line for it. She’d haggled in Jakarta, and Indonesians knew how to bargain. So, she’d had her strategy and she’d kept to it, and she’d gotten the car for five hundred less than her budget. That meant she had five hundred dollars to play with. A quick search had found her the nearest art supplies store.

  She drove into its car park with a neat flourish and parked, switching off the engine and giving the steering wheel a fond pat. Wandering through the art supplies store was fabulous, although five hundred dollars didn’t go nearly as far as she’d hoped. Ouch! She packed her purchases into the back of the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. There she paused.

  She was accustomed to living and working alone, but Mark had done her a favor—too many favors if you thought about it. He’d given her a lift to the car yard, a job, and okayed her to stay on the estate. The least she owed him was reassurance that the demon hadn’t eaten her.

  Bought car. Driving home. See you there. Not the world’s most effusive text, but…her phoned buzzed.

  Congrats. Mark’s text was even briefer.

  She smiled and dropped her phone onto the passenger seat. The engine of her little car purred happily to life, and continued to purr as she crawled slowly through LA traffic.

  She got home with evening drawing in, parked to the side of her grandma’s cottage, and saw Doris hurry out. They admired the car. Clancy kind of knew Doris didn’t really care about cars—they were just things to get her efficiently from A to B—but it was quietly exciting, heart-warming, to share her pleasure in her new purchase with someone.

  Doris gave her a big hug. “Honey, you did good. It’s a nice, sensible car.”

  “Ordinary.” Clancy smiled, returning the hug. They walked into the kitchen which smelled of lasagna. “Fresh basil.” She inhaled deeply.

  “It’s ready when you are,” Doris said. “I’ve left Mark’s up at the house. He can re-heat it when he gets home.”

  It might be early for dinner, but not when it was her grandma’s lasagna. “Ten minutes,” Clancy promised and dashed upstairs.

  The rich, tomato-y sauce tasted as good as it smelled, and exactly as she remembered. Eating it, she told Doris the story of her experience in Iceland. Mark’s reaction had reassured her that perhaps her lack of control of her magic wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe, in this instance, it was warranted. Okay, the volcano’s eruption was bad, but she could have calmed it if Erik had let her.

  Doris’s fork clanged as it hit her plate. “Neville did what?!!” It was a rhetorical question. Clancy had told her the whole story, including her demotion to a support role at Collegium headquarters. “And Jeremy knew.”

  Yes, Jeremy knew.

  Clancy thought about her brother and her own reaction to his learning of her disgrace within the Collegium. She’d guessed Neville would contact him. Jeremy had been one of the chief geomage’s star pupils. Like Neville, Jeremy successfully juggled his geomage talents with mundane scientific qualifications. Both were highly regarded geologists.

  Clancy had been an Arts major at college.

  She’d come home, returned to California, feeling guilty as Neville had intended she should. That guilt had emphasized how dependent she was on Jeremy’s tolerance for permission to stay here. Now, listening to the angry scrape of her grandma’s fork against her plate, she felt some of the pressure the Collegium’s protocols had placed on her lift. “I don’t need Jeremy’s permission to stay here, do I?”

  “No,” Doris said definitively.

  “I still don’t want to use my magic.” It scared her, the surge and violence of it. No matter how she practiced the patterns and spells of geomagic that the Collegium taught, her magic still disregarded the rules about fifty percent of the time.

  “Your decision.
” Doris filled the kettle. “What do you intend to do?”

  Clancy had a one-word answer. “Paint.” She carted the art supplies from the car to the front porch while Doris made a pot of chamomile tea. A corner of the porch had clear plastic blinds that could be rolled down to enclose the area. She put the easel there, two blank canvases and the paints and brushes she’d bought.

  Doris put down the two cups of herbal tea she carried, and unrolled the blinds, tying them securely. “A good place to paint. You may need an outdoor heater when it gets cold.”

  “I’ll wear an extra layer. And fingerless gloves.” Clancy hugged Doris. “Thanks, Grandma. I’ll find a place of my own—”

  “No hurry.”

  They drank their tea sitting on the porch chairs, the air cool, but not chilly. There was a view across the valley, the lights of LA glittering with promise, shining like home. Clancy sighed, everything in her finally relaxing. “It’s been a long day.” After a series of long days on the road. Her magic gently touched the Earth beneath the cottage, brushing against the power in the chamber. It was a reminder that, if she wanted, she could borrow energy. But she’d promised herself she wouldn’t use magic.

  “I have line dancing, tonight,” Doris said. “Hence, the early dinner. Do you mind if—?”

  “Go. That’s the third yawn I’ve smothered. I’ll do the dishes and watch a bit of TV before crashing.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  Half an hour later, Clancy craned her head around the back of the sofa to smile at seeing her grandma all kitted out in a bright purple Western shirt, skirt and purple boots. Her red hair was tied up in a jaunty ponytail. “You look great, Grandma.”

  “This old thing?” Dangling crystal earrings flashed light as Doris winked and smoothed her shirt. “Good night, hon.”

  “’Night, Grandma.”

  Doris’s car faded into silence. Clancy switched off the television. It wasn’t holding her attention anyway. She walked out to the front porch. From there, she could just see the main house over the roof of the garage. There were lights on in a top floor room. Mark’s bedroom?