Personal Demons (15 page)

“No, but—”

“They're here,” he said, standing so close now that she could smell his cologne, “to protect you. Their job, what they get paid for, is to protect you. Do you think they deserve to get paid for today?”

“They couldn't have known—”

“It's their job to know. It's their fucking job to keep their eyes open and their fat little mouths shut, and to save your life. What if you'd died today, Megan? What do you think would be a fit punishment for them letting you—”

This time she pulled him to her, this time it was she who cut off his words with the pressure of her lips.

He hesitated just long enough for Megan to wonder if she was doing the right thing at all. Part of her knew she wasn't.

Then his arms went around her, crushing her to him, and all thoughts of reasons and consequences flew from her mind in a blast of pure heat.

Perhaps because his emotions were already stronger than they'd been the night before so, too, was the passion of his kiss. His lips plundered hers, angry, needy, forcing her head back. She tasted blood and wondered if it was hers or his. It didn't matter.

She was caught between the smooth edge of the countertop and Greyson's hard body. He bent her almost backwards over the counter. She lifted her legs to wrap around him, encouraged by his hands supporting her thighs.

The movement brought the already buzzing space between her legs into direct contact with the hard ridge of his erection. She gasped against his mouth, and he responded by pressing himself more firmly into her, letting her feel the entire length of him as he propped her on the countertop.

His hands curled into her hair, tugging her head further back so he could explore her throat and neck with his lips. She blazed everywhere he kissed, every time his teeth scraped against her delicate skin.

This was more than it she'd meant it to be, more than it had been the night before. Megan was drowning in him, in the sensation of every nerve ending in her body springing to hot, instant life.

She clutched at his shoulders, his back, as if she would fly spinning off the earth if he weren't there to hold her to it. Her legs tightened around his waist, pressing him still closer. His hand invaded the small space between their bodies to caress her breast with heat, and she arched her back as he lowered his mouth further to kiss down the open neckline of her shirt.

She didn't know what might have happened if Tera Green hadn't chosen that moment to walk into the kitchen.

Megan wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't opened her eyes to yank Dante's tie out from under his collar. Tera watched them, her arms crossed and a look of intense interest on her face.

Megan gasped and pulled away at the same time Dante spun around, almost dropping her. As carefully as she could, she loosened her legs. They barely held her up when her feet hit the floor.

“The door was unlocked,” Tera said. “I knocked, but I guess you didn't hear me.”

“Um…the meat was cooking pretty loudly.” Megan had no idea what to do. Laugh it off? Be offended? Tera shouldn't have walked right in, but Tera didn't seem the type to worry much about social niceties.

“Right. The meat.” Tera looked them both up and down. “Is there anything to drink?”

“Yes, um, beer, wine, Coke, water?”

Tera accepted a beer. “I'll wait in the living room, Megan. I don't have all night, either.”

Megan didn't breathe again until the other woman's back disappeared around the corner. How must this look, how must she look? Like some stupid teenager, some preposterous woman who couldn't control herself?

Greyson reached for her, but at the first touch of his hand on her arm she cringed. What had she been thinking?

He dropped his hand. “I need to go talk to the boys.”

She watched him walk out. Her body still throbbed and ached. Only the conviction that this was the wrong time, the wrong thing, kept her from leaping back into his arms.

At least, she thought that was all it was.

“O
kay.” Tera stepped back about ten paces, leaving an expanse of browning grass between herself and Megan. In the center stood a plastic cup. “Try again.”

Megan glanced over at the house. Greyson was in the living room making some phone calls, and the boys…she didn't know what they were doing.

Greyson's voice had echoed through the house, yelling in the demon tongue. She hadn't heard such lengthy speeches in that language before. It sounded like some sort of supernatural Esperanto.

“Don't look for Grey,” Tera said. “Try to move the cup.”

“I'm not looking for him.”

“I do have eyes, Megan.” She folded her arms across her chest, covered now by a soft blue sweater and matching jacket. Even her casual clothes looked tailored for her. “Look, I don't expect you to be able to move the cup. You're not a witch. It's just a focusing exercise, to teach you how to focus your power.”

“I don't have any power,” Megan said, not for the first time.

“Yes, you do. It simply manifests itself as the ability to see into people's heads. You need to teach it to work
for you in a better, stronger way. How do you think you build your shields?”

“I don't know. I just know they're there.”

“Don't you picture them as anything? See them in your head?”

Megan thought about it for a minute. Her shields…they were clear. She saw them, though, transparent walls around her head. “I guess so.”

“Okay. How do you focus energy to them?”

“I don't. I keep telling you, I don't know how I do any of this, and—”

“Look.” Tera pointed down. The cup had moved.

“How did I do that? Did I do that?” She'd long since come to terms with her abilities, but this—she had to admit, her heart beat a little faster at the thought that she might have actually moved an object with her mind.

“I'm pretty sure you did. See, you got mad. I've noticed that about you. You don't get hurt, you don't shut down, you get mad. I wonder why that is?”

“I don't know. I don't think I'm a very angry person.”

“Hmmm.” Tera's bright eyes watched her. “If you say so. The point is, your emotions tend to manifest as anger or, at least, anger is the only emotion that manifests itself as power. What you need to do is harness that anger and don't let it get away from you.”

“Are you saying I have to be angry in order to accomplish anything?”

“No, I'm saying you're a bit of an odd duck, but if you pay attention you can do this.” Tera smiled at Megan's frown. “You're letting me distract you. Stop that. I'm just making observations. Deal with your rage issues on your own time.”

The cup flew another foot.

Tera's grin widened. “Almost as effective as telling me to go fuck myself and much more ladylike.”

“But I don't know how I did it.”

“Think about it. You got mad at me, and…what?”

Megan's brow furrowed. She had been mad, mad at Tera for analyzing her so easily and mad at herself for being transparent. The comments about “rage issues” set her teeth on edge. After all the time Megan had spent teaching herself to stay calm, not to let her feelings show, to find out now that she wasn't nearly as good at it as she thought hurt…

But the hurt felt more like anger and it had broken through the shield…no…
over the top
of the shield…and reached for something harmless. The cup.

“It was like a wave,” she said, staring at the ground. “In my head. I wanted to hit you with it.”

“Okay, good.” None of this seemed to bother Tera in the slightest. The woman was as emotionless as a lizard. “Now you know how your power manifests, and you have some idea how it works. Try it again. Try to move the cup on purpose this time.”

Megan focused, staring at the cup. Tera took her hand.

“Don't look at the cup. Or rather, don't focus on the cup to the extent you aren't looking inside yourself, too. Somewhere inside there's a place where you keep your power, where your strength comes from. Find that place, that door, and open it. See your power hit the cup.”

The cup didn't move. Megan searched inside herself and found nothing. She lowered her shields all the way and tried to force her energy to the cup, but it stayed in its spot on the grass as if glued there. She was trying to read it, not move it, she realized. “I can't.”

“Damn it. Yes, you can. You're not paying attention.” The frustration in Tera's voice sent an echoing shimmer of the same emotion through Megan's body. With her
shields down, she was picking up little things like that from the other woman. Not much, not enough to read her—if that was possible—but enough to catch some of her feelings.

“Oh, no,” Tera said. “Don't think you can get around this by sneaking into my head. I'm not as impervious as the demons.”

“I'm not trying to sneak anywhere. You're projecting. You made me lower my shields, I can't help it if yours aren't strong enough.”

Tera inhaled, then blew air out through her nostrils. “Okay. Don't focus on the cup. Focus on your energy and the cup and try to turn your power into something. Something that can make the cup move. A stick or a blade or a flyswatter, even. Anything you can use.”

Megan tried again.

The cup blurred in her vision. Damn it, why couldn't she do this? It was so irritating, so annoying…and there it was. A peak of something, a brush of energy. She grabbed it as it flared and, in her head, saw it as a stick, a long skinny tree branch. The cup and the stick merged somehow, in her head, and the cup moved, rolling a few inches across the grass.

“I'm surprised. You might not be a total failure at this after all.” Tera stepped back and looked at her watch. So much for congratulations on a job well done. “What time do you need to get back into the kitchen?”

“About fifteen minutes. Do you want to just go in now?”
No! I want to play some more!

“No. Let's try pulling energy from around you. This will be hard for you, because you're not a witch. We do it automatically, but you'll have to focus hard—unless someone's feeding you energy, in which case it's easy to get overwhelmed. My sister Lexie would probably be
better at teaching you this part than me, but since Grey doesn't want her around, I'll do my best.”

Megan refused to ask. “I'm sure you'll be fine.”

Tera's mouth quirked. “Thanks. There's energy all around you, right? You can feel it, like when the wind blows, but you don't know how to access it. It goes around you, not through you. You have to learn to open up to it, so you can keep it stored inside you for when you need it.”

“I don't see what good any of this will do,” Megan said. “I can't beat them.”

Tera glanced towards the house. “You can, with enough power…and practice. Let's get to work.”

 

“W
E NEED TO TALK.”
Greyson pulled her into the small hallway leading to her spare room.

“I have to get the food—”

“It can wait a minute.” He glanced towards the living room, where Tera settled herself on one of the couches to watch television. “We have to decide what to tell Brian and we have to decide now.”

She'd been trying not to think about this. Sooner or later, probably sooner, Brian was going to show up, and he would want to know what happened in the park. “Can't we hypnotize him or something?”

“Not with Tera here.”

“After she leaves?”

“I keep forgetting you haven't spent much time with witches. As long as there's free food or drinks, she won't leave. She'll probably want to take your bed tonight just because she's too tired to go home, and as enjoyable as time in your bed must undoubtedly be, I don't think Tera would get the full benefit from it.” His hands ran up her arms, transmitting heat along her skin.

“I would have thought having Tera and me both in my bed would be right up your alley.”

“How dull. I'm not a spectator, Megan, and I don't share. When I'm in your bed, you won't—”

“Why not just tell him the truth?” She wished her body would stop reacting whenever he made his suggestive little comments. It was hard enough standing this close to him in the darkened hallway without him fondling her arms like that. “Tell him there's little demons after me, and they sent that thing in the park today to kill me, and they made Don Tremblay come after me with a gun?”

“It was a yaksas—a Nepalese mountain demon—by the way. I suppose we could tell him the truth.”

“I don't think we have much choice.”

“There are always choices.”

“Not for me.”

He shook his head. “How cynical of you. Faced with what you've seen in the last few days, you still refuse to accept possibilities.” His fingers cradled her jaw for a moment, as if tilting her face up to kiss.

“And you refuse to stop patronizing me and listen,” she said, but she couldn't put any sting in the words. “I'm having a hard enough time keeping all of this from Brian as it is, what with the whole Harlan Trooper thing, and—”

“What? Who?” He let go of her.

“Harlan Trooper. He was a homeless man who lived in my town when I was in high school. It's a long story.”

She expected him to change the subject back to Brian, but he didn't. “Tell me.”

“He died. They thought I'd killed him.”

“He didn't just die, he was murdered. You saw it?”

“I…I think so. I don't remember much. Can we get back to the subject at hand, please?”

“When did he die?”

“I was sixteen. Please, can we not discuss it? We need to decide what to do about Brian, not rehash some old personal stuff of mine.”

“Hmmm? Oh, Brian. I thought we'd decided.”

“Okay, then. So, we'll just start at the beginning? Do we tell him about you?”

“Do you remember anything about that guy dying? Or what your life was like at the time?”

Megan shook her head. “The oven timer's about to go off, Greyson, so I need to get back in the kitchen. Why don't I decide exactly what to tell Brian and you follow my lead?”

“Why don't I decide and you follow my lead?”

Megan bit her lip to hide her smile. She knew that would get him. “Fine,” she said. “You decide. I have to go roll pastry.”

It wasn't until she got in the kitchen that she realized he hadn't tried to kiss her or flirt with her once after she'd mentioned Harlan Trooper.

 

“D
ID YOU MAKE THAT
from scratch?” Tera stood next to her and poked at the pastry with one long red fingernail.

“No. I buy it pre-made. And get your germy hands out of it, please.”

Tera pulled her hand back. “My hand isn't germy. And you're going to bake it anyway, right?”

Megan glared at her.

Tera glared right back. “I don't know why you're being rude to me. I'm on your side. I haven't done anything to you.”

“I don't mean to be rude, I'm just not used to—”

Tera ignored her and popped a raw baby carrot into her mouth. “My sister slept with him, you know,” she said between crunches. “A year or so ago. She said it was pretty memorable. And that's saying a lot, because she's slept with everybody.”

Megan opened a beer.

“It wasn't much more than a one-night stand, really.” Crunch, crunch, crunch. “I mean, they tried to date, but Lexie isn't exactly the relationship type and Greyson isn't the relationship type at all, so—”

“I can hear you.” Dante's voice floated in from the living room, where Megan told him to stay.

“I know,” Tera said. “Anyway, they had some weird kind of fight and Lexie hexed his car. I think it almost killed him.” She grinned and took another carrot. “It was pretty funny.”

Megan stared at her.

“Eh?” Crunch, crunch, crunch. “It
was
funny.”

“If you say so.” She couldn't help smiling back, though. Standing here in her kitchen, cooking an enormous meal, listening to Tera's rather macabre gossip, felt normal. It felt good. It struck Megan then, as it hadn't before, that Tera was trying, in her own way, to be her friend.

She cleared her throat. “Hey, Tera, I appreciate your help with everything.”

Tera smiled. “No problem. You're doing better than I thought you would.”

Megan finished fitting the pastry into the pie plates and put them in the oven to bake. “It doesn't feel like I—”

Someone was pounding on her front door. She had a sickening feeling she knew who that someone was.

Greyson appeared in the hall. “Do you want me to answer it?”

“Who is it?” Tera asked. “Is it one of the bad guys?”

“Yes,” Greyson said at the same time Megan said, “No.”

Megan sighed. “It's a reporter named Brian Stone. He's been doing an article on me and he witnessed the attack in the park today—”

“What attack?”

“We'll tell you later, Tera. I think Brian's about to break the door down.”

Tera sniffed. “I don't know why he doesn't just open it. It's not locked.”

Megan headed for the door as Greyson said, “Some people don't just wander into other people's homes.”

“You always have to say something, don't you, Grey.”

The door vibrated and bounced with the force of Brian's fists. Megan hesitated for a minute, taking a deep breath, then jumped back as she flung the door open…just as Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud roared out of her spare room and leapt through the doorway and onto Brian.

It only took her a second to realize what the boys, in their zeal, had forgotten.

They weren't wearing their hats.