Demon Inside

There wasn’t. She ducked through the ladies’ room door anyway, to gird herself.

In the bathroom mirror she looked sallow, half dead. The flickering bug light above the rust-stained sink did not flatter. Megan thought of the women who came in here to check their lipstick or brush their hair. What did they see when they turned their drunk gazes on themselves? Did the ugliness of their lives reflect back at them?

Silly thought. They saw what they wanted to see.

She turned back and opened the door, keeping her head down. She could probably slip past the girls without them seeing her; hell, they probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone. If she couldn’t gossip with authority about various useless heiresses and the general misery of raising children, they weren’t interested.

Megan clutched the strap of her purse and entered the bar, only to be assaulted by hostile glares. Coming to the bar had been the wrong thing to do. Leaving it, even worse.

Keeping her head down, she tried to push her way through the crowd, but the bodies would not budge.

“Excuse me,” she said, then again, louder. “Excuse me, please.”

A few people blinked and moved. Most didn’t. Megan glanced up and saw demons, Yezer Ha-Ra, on every shoulder, in every corner.

Not hers. Roc was at her mother’s house. These belonged to someone else, perhaps Ktana Leyak, perhaps a different demon entirely. A different family. The Meegras didn’t tend to divide land territorially, at least not in the city, but who know what subset ruled here, or in whose power the local Yezer were?

Whoever it was, she was willing to bet they weren’t particularly friendly.

“We don’t like murderers here,” said a man’s voice, low and threatening, from the back of the crowd.

Megan glanced at Cassie and her friends. They looked away, as if they didn’t see what was happening.

Anger boiled in her chest. Why wouldn’t they leave her alone? She hadn’t killed anyone. She hadn’t killed Harlan Trooper, all those years ago. She knew it and the judge knew it. She hadn’t even been charged.

If I wanted to, I could have you all killed, she thought, and was stu

She pictured those guts exploding. She pictured the terror in their eyes when they realized they were messing with the wrong fucking demon, they were—

Demon?

She wasn’t a demon. She was human. She was not a demon, no matter what lump of flesh crowded next to her heart and tried to grow.

She was human.

“Mr. Maldon doesn’t like you here,” one of the Yezer hissed. Her gaze flew to him as he hunched in one of the booths, bigger than the others. The Rocturnus of his family, she assumed.

“Then I’ll leave,” she said, her voice loud and clear as a bell in a forest, answering both the man in the back and the Yezer. She summoned as much of her anger as she could, let it fill her and give her strength, and shoved her way through the crowd and out the door.

She’d stopped shaking by the time she left the gas station with a six-pack of cheap beer and a couple of magazines. Something light, undemanding, gossip about people she didn’t know and didn’t care about, shiny pictures to look at while she tried to focus and relax. Anything to take her mind away from what was happening to her, away from the death of her father and how she felt about that, away from memories of the coldness in her mother’s eyes.

Away from herself. She thought of what she might advise a client to do—back when she still had clients—in this situation, when the misery of their existence and uncertainty as to who they really were closed in on them like rusted iron bars. She might suggest they take up a hobby. That they try and join some organizations to make friends. What bullshit! Jesus, had anything she’d ever said really helped anyone? Had anything she’d ever done in her entire life actually been worth a damn?

And who could help her now? The demon who shared her bed a few times a week? The witch she went shopping with? The psychic reporter who dated a cop and thought what Megan really needed was a good dose of religion?

She turned right and headed back toward town.

Chapter 10

She hadn’t expected the doors to be locked. Weren’t churches supposed to be open all the time?

Perhaps vandals were a problem even in a small town like this—a dying town. Perhaps that was the type of place that had the most to worry about from them, from the spray paint and broken glass. Nobody liked to watch their own destruction creeping up their walls and into their buildings, and to realize they couldn’t do anything to change it.

She edged around the building, trying every door she found, looking for something, anything. She’d never been here before. Apparently her parents had found religion of some kind after she’d left—Diane and David praise the Lord, another photo for the wall—but who knew how much of that was the desire to worship and how much was social climbing. United Methodist was the church of choice for Grant Falls’s movers and shakers, if she remembered correctly. Certainly in this town any other church was regarded more highly than this one, Holy I

Brian was Catholic. Brian was very happily Catholic. He’d once told her he had a priest, as if it was a normal thing, to have a priest who talked to you regularly about everything from women to psychic abilities. Maybe it was.

She just wanted someone to talk to her about something. To look at her with eyes that didn’t judge or hate. So she’d thought of Brian and his stubborn insistence on doing the right thing, and come here, and found it locked against her. The metaphor was so good she almost laughed.

“Can I help you?”

She turned, startled, and found a man standing, silhouetted by the safety light behind him. “Um—I was just—”

“Trying to get in,” he finished, moving slightly so she could see him better. A priest, his collar gleaming.

“I wanted to talk to someone,” she said. “I thought maybe here…”

He looked at her for a long minute while hope rose inside her. He was a priest, after all, it was his job—no, not even his job, his calling—to help people, to counsel them and show them the way, wasn’t it? To believe in God and demons and angels? Maybe he could explain to her why she had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t a demon, why she even wanted to still be human when it seemed all they ever did was try to hurt each other?

“It’s a little late, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Well, yes, but—”

The priest shook his head. “You’ll have to call and make an appointment if you want to talk to someone.”

She blinked, expecting him to say something else, to smile, to change his mind. But he just stood there.

“I’m sorry, F-Father,” she managed. “I didn’t mean to disturb anyone, I just—do you believe demons exist?” The words came out in a rush. She wanted to hook him, to make him listen.

He shook his head. “You just need a good night’s sleep, I bet,” he said. “Good night.”

He turned and walked away. He didn’t look back.

Megan stared after him, her blood heating her cheeks, becoming aware of how stupid she must look. So much for that idea. There was no help, there was no sanctuary, there was nothing but the icy wind whipping around the corners of the building and insinuating itself through her coat.