She turned away. The demon’s possession of Bryce had brought her and Mark closer than she’d ever anticipated. Current danger and old childhood acquaintance had allied them. Temporarily. She didn’t think the demon was a big danger to her or Doris; who had to have decided the same if she was going beyond the warded estate at night for line dancing. The demon’s danger was in Mark’s obsession.
She picked up a blank canvas and balanced it on the easel. Tomorrow, she’d begin a surrealist painting she’d been thinking of on the cross-country drive. A flat Earth with stars waterfalling up from it.
If you got trapped in your past, you couldn’t build your future. She hoped Mark worked that out, too.
“Mark’s gone,” Doris said.
Clancy had barely made it downstairs and was still thinking of that first, all-important coffee of the morning when her grandma made her startling announcement. “Gone where?” Clancy kept shuffling toward the coffeemaker. Priorities. She hesitated a moment, the old-fashioned coffeepot suspended in mid-air. “Did the demon get him?”
Doris tsked. “No.”
Clancy poured the coffee.
“He got a phone call from Teresa, his grandfather’s wife. The old fool tried to go chasing a coyote last night, fell and broke his leg.”
“Why was he chasing a coyote?”
“Apparently, it stole his dentures.”
Clancy choked on her coffee.
Doris giggled. “George and Teresa were camping. Anyway, Teresa phoned to let Mark know, and he realized she’d need help getting George home from the hospital and settled. The man is a terrible patient.”
“I can imagine.” Clancy wouldn’t want to nurse the autocratic George Yarren, semi-retired Hollywood movie investor. He tended to ask for the moon—and get it.
“Mark will probably be away a few days. Texas might even do him good. Distract him from his focus on the demon.”
“Grandma, it’s been his obsession for seven years. I doubt a few days away will help.”
Doris frowned at the toast she was buttering. “It’ll give us time to sort out a few things.”
Clancy popped two more slices into the toaster. “Like what?”
“How extensive was your training at the Collegium?”
Clancy stared at her.
“Not your use of geomagic. Your general training in magic.” Doris sat at the table and waved a piece of toast impatiently. “Mark’s been collecting books on magic for years. With him away, I think you should look through them.”
“For what? And he’ll know I’ve been snooping.”
“Not snooping. Cleaning!” Doris smirked triumphantly. “He employed you to help me. Well, it would help me if you worked out what he was thinking and planning.”
“Or we could just ask him,” Clancy mumbled, snagging her toast and sitting down opposite Doris.
“Like he’d tell us!”
Clancy sighed. Her grandma might sound like a teenager, but she had a valid point. Mark wasn’t about to confide his demon-related plans to them. He intended to keep them ignorant and safe. “I’ll start after breakfast.”
Chapter 5
Mark had a fascinating collection of books on magic. Centuries-old grimoires rubbed spines with cheap paperbacks on New Age mysticism. Clancy took the books off the shelves in his study, stacked them, wiped clean the shelves, then dipped into the books for a hint of what they contained and what Mark might be searching for in them. What he might be planning. It was more fun than she’d thought it would be—and she knew more about magic than she’d realized!
She re-shelved a book on twenty first century shamanism next to its companion on alien magic, and climbed back down the ladder. She’d gotten up early this morning, not caring that it was a Saturday and that technically she didn’t have to work. Doris had weekends off, which meant Clancy did, too. But she’d wanted to finish checking this bookcase of books and, the truth was, she didn’t want to break her rhythm.
She’d fallen into a pattern. In the mornings she worked at the house, cleaning and reading Mark’s books. By starting early, she got eight hours of work in before stopping for a late lunch. Today she’d beaten the dawn by an hour, crossing to the house in the dark. In the afternoon, she painted, and the surrealist painting on the cottage’s front porch was advancing better than she’d hoped. She wanted to paint its stars today.
Shamanism. Accessing the unknown through the known. She stared up at the book she’d just re-shelved. A whole stack more waited on the desk behind her. She’d dip into a couple more before breakfast. But…shamanism. The Collegium hadn’t approved of its wild magic.
“Good morning.”
“Holy heck!” Clancy shrieked. She spun around and there was Mark, leaning a shoulder against the door frame, looking casual, looking mad! A frown tugged his dark blond eyebrows together. She gulped. “When did you get home?”
“Just now.” He straightened and strolled forward. Prowled forward. His blue eyes were very intent—on her.
She backed up a step. “Uh. Grandma suggested I clean the bookshelves.”
“Did she?”
Clancy kept backing up, until the desk stopped her. “How is your grandfather?”
“Complaining. Healing.” He stopped less than an arm’s length from her. Too close. “Are you trying to work out what I’m planning?”
“Yes.”
“Have you?”
“Um.” She went to rub the back of her neck, bare since her hair was tied up in a messy ponytail, and realized she still held a cleaning rag. She tossed it into the trash can. “You seem to be looking for ways a demon could enter our world and stay masked.”
Surprise widened his eyes before his frown returned. But really, what did he expect? He’d left paper slips with scrawled notes on inside the books. Once someone snooped—she winced—his thoughts were easy to track.
“Have you found it?” she challenged him.
Wariness replaced some of the anger in his expression. His gaze shifted from her, to the books still piled on his desk, and on to the bank of computers against the far wall.
This time it was her eyes that narrowed. “In the code, you said. Do you think demons are manifesting online?”
“I think they’re in the Dark Net, but then, the Collegium thinks that, too.”
“They do?” She hitched herself onto his desk. “No one tells me anything,” she muttered. But as she watched him prowl off, circling the room, assessing what she had touched—cleaned—like a cat reacquainting itself with its territory, she realized that he hadn’t actually answered her question. And his evasion answered it for him. “So, you’re not chasing demons’ activities online.” She thought through what she’d learned studying the books on magic for the last few days, and what Mark had said on Tuesday. It all circled back to his belief that Phoebe had sold her soul to Faust. “But you think they’re contacting people through code. Software. You think the demon’s invitation to people to sell their souls is written into software!” As it all clicked together, she stared at him. The demons didn’t have to be present for their trap to snap shut.
Mark halted by the library ladder, pushed it a few inches, pulled it back. “I thought there was time to set up a counterspell to stop Faust and other demons. Faust didn’t seem to be pushing. Demons live for centuries. A few years are nothing to him. But with him possessing Bryce and going after you, we have to stop him, now. The counterspell will wait. It is Faust who must be bound, since he’s the one that is focused on me.”
“But not to stop you,” Clancy said. It was one of the things she’d been thinking on as she searched his books of magic. The demon could have killed Mark at any point over the last seven years. At a minimum, it could have arranged for his death if it thought he was a real impediment to its plans to enter this world for more than a few minutes. If they weren’t invited in, demons found it difficult to stay on Earth. Faust’s recorded appearances indicated it was a powerful denizen of Hell.
“No. Not to s
top me.” Mark curled his hands into fists, then relaxed them. “Faust enjoys my torment.”
“Why yours in particular?” She tried to sound casual. This issue, more than discovering his intentions, had occupied her over the last few days, with her suspicions growing into near-certainty.
“Because I lack the power to stop it.”
They’d known each other as kids and circumstances had brought them close on Tuesday, but they weren’t friends. Clancy knew that saying anything more was a risk. She was about to trample where even family would fear to tread. On the other hand, if Mark was messing with a demon, he might need the warning. Sometimes the smartest people couldn’t see the obvious.
“Mark, I don’t believe you were hallucinating when you saw Faust collect Phoebe’s soul. Or when she tried to bargain that the demon take your soul instead.” She took a deep breath, gripping the edge of the desk on either side of her jeans-covered thighs. The full sleeves of her rusty-red sweater fell over her hands. “Of course the demon couldn’t take your soul. You hadn’t consented. But when it took Phoebe’s soul, you loved her. You had a soul-connection, and it’s that connection that brings Faust back to you.”
Without moving a muscle, Mark seemed to grower bigger. A threatening fury swirled in the room. “I do not love Phoebe. That emotion died when she tried to trade my soul to Faust.”
“But the betrayal lingers,” Clancy said. She’d read—okay, skimmed—the same books he had, but evidently she’d reached different conclusions. Humans summoned demons in various ways. Bitterness attracted them like wasps to jam. “If you want to be free of the demon, you have to forgive Phoebe.”
“This isn’t about Phoebe!” He pushed the library ladder and it rattled wildly as it hit the far side of its run. He stared at it, then at the floor, obviously fighting for control.
Clancy slipped off the desk. “I’ll return the books to the shelf, later.”
“Wait.”
She paused in the center of the room.
He didn’t look at her. His head remained bowed. “I’m meeting a demonologist in town for breakfast. Do you want to join us?”
“The Collegium sent someone?” She was stunned. The last she’d heard of the Collegium was the furious phone call her grandma had received Thursday morning.
The Collegium-appointed demonologist was not happy to find that on visiting Bryce Goodes in hospital, Doris’s friend, the retired priest, had already been in and completed a discreet exorcism. Apparently, that wiped the Collegium demonologist’s ability to sense anything of the original possession. Doris had been scathing, responding, “Maybe you should have been faster?”
“No.” Mark finally looked at her. All emotion was wiped from his face. Even his tension no longer showed in his body. “Rivera Dryden isn’t a Collegium demonologist. She’s independent.”
“And you think she can bind Faust?”
“She’s confident she can. We spoke a few months ago, and I phoned her while I was in Texas. We’re meeting to go over the background and any other details about Faust that I can add.”
“Why ask me along?”
“I wasn’t going to.”
It was what she’d expected.
“But if you’re this interested.” A bit of bite to his voice and a gesture at the stacked books, the empty shelf.
She flushed. “The demon—”
“It touched your life. I get it. So, come along. Meet Rivera.”
“All right.” Clancy made her decision swiftly, with a touch of defiance. Mark didn’t really want her along. He was angry with her, justifiably since she’d intruded into his study and obsession, and this invitation was part punishment. “When are you going?”
“Now. I came home to shower and change, which I’ve done.”
“Okay. I need two minutes to wash my hands.” They were gritty with dust from the old books. In the guest bathroom she studied her reflection in the mirror. She unpinned her hair from its messy ponytail and finger-combed it. She hadn’t even brought lip gloss with her. The new sweater and faded jeans were acceptable, and her boots were kickass.
What did it matter? It wasn’t as if they’d be meeting a demonologist somewhere trendy.
“Here?” Clancy squeaked. The health food café filled with fashionable people had the bustle of a busy weekend. Tables spilled out into a pretty courtyard.
“Rivera owns the yoga studio next door,” Mark said absently.
Clancy’s gaze went to the discreetly painted lavender and cream building with its frangipani trees framing the doorway.
“There’s Rivera.” He moved forward.
Clancy tracked his focus. And because she was brave, she kept walking even as her inner self back-pedaled.
Rivera Dryden could have been a model. She sat serenely alone at an outdoor table. Her yoga gear looked casual, but Clancy expected its cost matched the expensive studio next door. Rivera was about thirty. Ash blonde, eyes hidden by sunglasses, tall with generous curves disciplined into svelte lines. She smiled at Mark in a cool expression of greeting, and rose unhurriedly to shake hands.
“Clancy Ramirez,” he introduced Clancy and she received the same firm handshake. Rivera’s eyes remained hidden by her sunglasses.
“Do you mind taking those off?” Mark asked.
“You know your stories.” Rivera’s voice was surprisingly light-toned. It lacked the authority of her presence. Still, there was no doubting her self-assurance. She removed her sunglasses, revealing clear hazel eyes. No hint of red from demonic possession.
But then, the demon had hidden in Bryce, too.
“May I?” Rivera asked, and a privacy bubble abruptly enclosed them.
Mark nodded his acceptance.
The sensation of the bubble was familiar to Clancy from mage friends who occasionally used the small spell. A privacy bubble locked in what was said, and blurred people’s ability to read their lips. In the crowded café, they could talk as openly as in private. It just didn’t seem that way. Clancy edged her chair away as a middle-aged man leaned back, yawning and stretching, invading her space.
A waitress approached and Rivera released the privacy spell until they’d placed their orders. Eggs benedict for Mark. Fruit toast for Clancy. Rivera didn’t seem to be eating at all, and Clancy didn’t want to contend with anything messy. “And coffee, please,” Clancy added.
“Not here, I’m afraid,” Rivera interrupted before the waitress could respond.
The waitress, short and bouncy, about eighteen, pulled a sympathetic face. “Peppermint zinger tea?”
“Watermelon juice, please.” Clancy would catch up on her caffeine later.
Mark made a similar choice—orange in place of watermelon juice—and the waitress departed. The privacy bubble reformed. “Clancy encountered the demon with me on Tuesday.”
“During the possession you mentioned?” Rivera had slipped her sunglasses back on. Now, those dark lenses turned in Clancy’s direction.
“Faust inhabited Bryce Goodes’ body,” Clancy confirmed.
“I assume the Collegium has exorcised Bryce Goodes?”
“A retired priest has,” Clancy said.
Rivera’s mouth formed a moue of disdain, a silent comment before the waitress returned with their juices. She sipped from her own glass of green sludge. “It would have been useful to acquire Faust’s signature from this man, but there are other methods.”
Clancy had read about some of those methods in Mark’s books. She listened as he and Rivera discussed his experiences and suspicions about the demon. The arrival of Clancy and Mark’s breakfasts barely interrupted them. She ate her fruit toast and considered Rivera.
She considered, too, the unpleasant twist to her gut the sight of Mark and Rivera’s blond heads bent together brought. It wasn’t jealousy. She almost wished it was. Had Mark even noticed Rivera’s resemblance to Phoebe?
Not Phoebe as she’d been at twenty one, slim and thoughtlessly young, but as she might have been had she lived. Blonde, s
tunning, commanding, not just attracting, attention. Even the elegant shape of their noses was the same.
Clancy hurriedly put down her watermelon juice before she spilled it. The thought had just come to her that Rivera and Phoebe could have visited the same plastic surgeon. Not such a strange notion, not in Los Angeles.
She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and edged into the shade of the table’s umbrella. It might be winter, but the morning was already warm—and there was no way she was taking off her red sweater and revealing the stretched and faded, but comfy, t-shirt beneath.
Mark fitted in with the other beautiful people lounging over their breakfasts, talking a little bit too loud, and claiming more space than they had a right to. It wasn’t that he did any of those things. It was that he naturally possessed that indefinable something, something more than money and appearance—call it power of personality—that altered the flow of energy in a space. Even with the privacy bubble hiding what he and Rivera discussed, people still watched him.
Rivera touched his wrist. He’d shed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his raw cotton shirt, and she touched his wrist bone. It was the touch a woman used, not intrusive but not required, that signaled her interest in a man. Small touches. Claiming moves.
Mark didn’t appear to notice. He neither moved his arm at the small table nor returned Rivera’s overture. “So you’re confident you can bind Faust to not return to Earth?”
“I’ve done so before. Not with your particular demon, obviously, but with others. You are aware that the demon’s name isn’t actually Faust? He wouldn’t ever give a human his true name.”
“We’re aware,” Clancy cut in. Basic training at the Collegium had included the power of names, and demons placed even more importance on names than did humans. “But Faust is a suitable name and naming it stops us from underestimating the demon. It’s a personality to us.”
Hollywood Demon (The Collegium Book 6) Page 7