Demon Inside

“He’s not the one who—”

“Stop playing the martyr and think, darling. What could have happened, who could have been powerful enough to make sure your father stayed in business, stayed everybody’s friend, while you twisted in the wind? Whose influence could have been brought in to play here?”

Duh. “My dad made a deal with Maldon?”

“Looks like it to me.”

“…the position in the firm was just waiting for me. He had my name put on the door before I even got there—a gift to me…”

“I suppose we need to go over there later and find out.”

“That’s my girl.” He kissed the back of her hand and looked toward the front of the church. “Does your brother ever shut up?”

She laughed before she could help herself, a quick nervous bark. Heads turned, and she quickly looked down. “Shit.”

“What?”

“What do you think? Here I am, Megan the murderous ghoul, giggling at my father’s funeral?”

Now he laughed, thankfully much more softly than she had. “What do you care what they think?”

“My mother—”

“Is a bitch. You don’t need these people, bryaela, not for anything. They can think whatever they want.”

The words sank into her, through her, a spark of truth she didn’t yet know that she could fully accept. He was right, absolutely. The thoughts and opinions of the residents of Grant Falls should be no more important to her than the results of American Idol.

Shouldn’t be, but still were. Was she that much of a wimp? Anger rose in her chest, insinuating itself through her brain, but she couldn’t tell if she was mad at them or herself. Or mad, again, at her father, who certainly had not been “the best father any girl could ever ask for.”

Dave finally ceded the floor to someone else, a face vaguely familiar to Megan and a voice more so. Bill Ryan, a golfing buddy of her father’s. She had a few dim memories of the two men drinking and talking about sports in the backyard, before she reached her teens and they did their drinking elsewhere. Bill was followed by a few other speakers, then the pastor again. Megan wanted to listen. She felt like she was at the funeral of a stranger, someone she’d never really known, and wondered if perhaps somewhere in their words she would find him.

But a small voice in her head refused to let her, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Greyson’s. What did it matter? The man was dead. He’d never really been much of a father and now he was gone. Why should she try to know him when he’d never tried to know her?

The man they buried today had died to her thirteen years ago when she’d gone to college. Before that, even. This was just the final period on a sentence that ended long before, so what did it matter?

That wasn’t right. She should care. She should be sad.

Instead she was bored. And that thought, more than any other, brought tears to her eyes.

Beside her Greyson turned and murmured something to Malleus, who got up and crossed behind them. Going to set things up with Orion, she guessed.

Rustlings and gentle scrapings indicated that everyone else in the church was getting up too. Was the service over?

No. The mourners were lining up in the center aisle, getting ready to go say their good-byes.

Megan tensed in her seat. Should she go up? If she did everyone would watch, but if she didn’t they would all wonder why she wasn’t going, and would stare even more.

“Are you actually supposed to get up and just stare at his dead body?” Tera whispered, leaning across Brian. “I mean, isn’t that a little weird?”

“It’s…you’re supposed to say a prayer, or something,” Megan said.

“But you don’t put anything in the casket with him, or touch him or anything?”

“Well, not as a rule, I guess.”

Tera rolled her eyes. “Regulars are so confusing.”

Several people glanced at her as she said it; Megan bit her lip to keep from laughing while a rush of affection for her friend flowed through her. The combination of Tera’s comment and Greyson’s earlier about not needing these people seemed to coalesce in her head in that moment and a weight she hadn’t really known was there lifted. She was no less hurt, no less angry or scared, but she had people who cared about her.

It wasn’t only that either. The service was over, she’d made it through the worst of it, her last public appearance in Grant Falls. Relief made her giddy. Her chest swelled with warmth, her vision seemed sharper.

The church emptied around them while Megan sat and enjoyed, for the first time in days, the feeling of being absolutely in control, absolutely safe. Her demons still crowded the ceiling, there for her. Six people flanked her sides, there for her. It felt good. She smiled to herself and squeezed Greyson’s hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” She didn’t look at him, though. She was too busy looking around, thinking about how she’d never have to see this place again, about all those people with their petty worries and miseries, the blackness in their tiny hearts, how insignificant they were compared to her.

“I’m ready.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt.

“Meg, maybe—”

“I’m fine,” she said again. “Just need to pay my respects, right?”

Greyson’s hand tightened on hers, but she shook it off and squeezed her way past Brian and Tera into the aisle. Her mother and Dave stood there; Dave’s arm was around Diane’s shoulders and her head was bent, her handkerchief pressed to her face.

“Megan,” Dave said. “I, uh…”

“Sure, Dave. Excuse me.” She brushed past them, lowering her shields a tad as she did so she could feel their shock and pain. Ha, served them right. Silly little things, so worried about their stupid miserable lives, about the opinions of others and their social standing in this piss-ant town…just like her father had been. Just like they all were.

It seemed to take no time at all to reach the front of the church, as if she had glided up the aisle rather than walked. Behind her she heard her friends talking to each other in low urgent whispers, but she ignored them.

Smooth, cold wood pressed against her palms as she curled her fingers around the edge of the coffin. There he was. Her father.

Older than she remembered him, of course. Despite the yearly Christmas photo she still tended to think of him as he’d been when she’d last seen him. Now the years sat plainly on his still, cold face. Even plainer was the truth; this wasn’t her father. He was really gone, and in death he was no less remote to her than he’d been in life.

So sad. She started to whisper it, thinking it might be fu

She squeezed the wood, suddenly terrified. This wasn’t her, having these thoughts, standing over the dead body of her father and wanting to laugh. This was someone else, someone cold who lurked inside her, someone who’d taken advantage of her relaxed and wandering mind to lower her shields and open herself to the energy of her demons.

She’d sat in that pew and fed on the mourners. It was their sadness, their pain, making her high.

Footsteps beat a muffled, quick tempo on the floor of the aisle behind her. Her knees gave out, and she fell into Maleficarum’s arms just a second before the world disappeared.

“It was tribute, Megan. They didn’t know it would upset you,” Rocturnus said again. Megan turned around to look at him, perched on the backseat of Greyson’s car. “They were trying to make you feel better, to pay you for letting them be there.”

“Yeah, I feel great now.”

“They thought you might punish them for staying through the whole service if they didn’t.”

“They know I’m not going to punish them,” she snapped. “Why can’t they just get—”

“They don’t know that, and even if they did they would still wish it wasn’t so, and you know it. They need their lives to be run in a certain way.”