Текст книги "A Devil in the Details"

Автор книги: K. A. Stewart

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

She was neither amused nor distracted by my crude humor. “What’s wrong, Jess?” It was that “Don’t give me your BS” voice.

I sighed softly. I didn’t want to tell her, and yet I knew I would feel profoundly relieved once I had. “Guy Archer is missing.”

She was quiet for a long time, nibbling her lower lip. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”

“We . . . don’t know that for sure.”

“But you think they are.”

I ran a hand over my hair, habitually checking to see that it was still confined tightly in its usual tail. “Yeah. I think they are.”

“And the others?”

“Ivan wants me to send out an all-call through Grapevine. He’s gonna come up here, when he’s done down in Mexico.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Goddess . . . Poor Rosaline.”

“Yeah.” There was no doubt in my mind that Mira would get along just fine when something happened to me. I wasn’t so sure about Rosaline. “Ivan will see that she’s taken care of, and she has all of Miguel’s family, too.”

“Is there any way to find out how it happened? To put their souls at rest?”

I shrugged. “Ivan’s working on that, too. If there’s a way, he’ll find it.”

“I could scry for Guy, too. If I had something of his.”

“No.” Even as I gave my flat refusal, her jaw firmed and I knew I should have chosen a different tone. “There’s no reason for you to tax yourself that way. If Ivan wants him scoped out, he’ll find someone to do it. Miguel’s mother, maybe.” Miguel’s mother was a powerful bruja in her own right.

“Or you could just find a way to get me something of Guy’s, and I could do it myself.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and I did the same. Mexican standoff. Great. “We have to know, Jesse. If Guy’s in trouble, if we can find him, we can’t afford to wait.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip for a bit, debating the different courses I could take. And in the end, I caved—sort of. “All right. I’ll see if I can find something. But, we give Ivan a chance first. He may not even need you to do this.”

A certain wariness crept into her green eyes. “And when he finds who did this?” she asked as if she already knew the answer. Maybe she did. She married me, after all.

“Then I’m going hunting.” I could have told her I’d stay out of it, but she knew better. My wife is a smart woman. “I think I’m going to go in early to work. I don’t really want to be alone at the house.”

She nodded a bit, her eyes dark and unfathomable. “Okay. I’ll work on the wards when I get home.”

I reached for the door, then paused. “Hey, Mira? Keep an eye out for any blue cars cruising the neighborhood that you don’t recognize, okay?”

“Blue cars?”

“Yeah, little ones. Ford Escorts.” Mira wouldn’t know an Escort from a Humvee, but it was worth a shot.

“Why, exactly?”

“Just because.” It felt like lying, and I hated that feeling. But she didn’t need any more worry. “I love you.” People say you should always tell your loved ones how you feel, because you might not get another chance. I wonder if they really, truly, to the depths of their souls, understand how true that is.

She reached out to grip my hand, squeezing with all her might. “I love you, too, Jesse. Please be careful.”

It occurred to me, much later, that she hadn’t actually agreed to my terms on the scrying. Dammit!

13

Despite what I’d told Mira, I swung back past the house again. Ivan needed me to get the word out, and it was far better than just sitting and doing nothing.

I felt a prickling on my skin as I ducked through the doorway into Mira’s sanctuary, no doubt crossing the boundary of some spell she’d placed there.

I didn’t come in there often. I always felt as if I was intruding. But that’s where the computer was, so on occasion, I dared to invade her domain. She didn’t seem to mind. I fired up the machine, waiting patiently as the ancient, five-year-old contraption whined and purred in its gyrations. If we could afford it, I planned to get her a new one for Christmas.

I had to jump through three or four security hoops before I could get to the site I was actually aiming for. Ivan had named the database Grapevine. I’m not even sure why. Within, you could find the names and addresses of every champion Ivan knew. You could also find the dates of battles, identities of clients, and various and sundry other trivia. That is, if you could get in. It was hidden behind I don’t know how many types of encryption and firewalls and security and . . . Well, we’ll just say I consider computers right up there with magic. I don’t understand them, and I don’t need to, so long as they work.

The elderly computer doggedly worked at loading the site, when a window popped up with a message and a woman’s electronic scream echoed from the speakers. “I see you!”

“Gah!” My heart slammed in my chest, and I heard a faint snicker coming from the earphones where they rested on the desk. After I recovered, I snatched up the headset with its handy mic and slapped it on. “Goddammit, Viljo, that’s not funny!”

The man’s voice on the other end chuckled. “It was from where I am sitting.” It never fails to amaze me how well he speaks English, especially after dealing with Ivan’s regular slaughtering of our language.

A Finnish native now residing somewhere near Pikes Peak, Viljo is our pet computer geek. By “our,” I mean Ivan and his champions. As far as I know, Ivan is all that stands between Viljo and extradition back to Finland to face charges for computer crimes.

Once upon a time, dear Viljo bargained his soul away. I’m not sure who fought for him, but as repayment for being freed, he kept Grapevine functional and tightly locked down as only a hacker can.

You might ask what a computer genius sells his soul for? (Well, I wanted to know, at least, so I asked.) The answer is the world’s greatest hack, of course. Ever hear of the Great Firewall of China? Yeah, that thing that pretty much edits whatever the Chinese folk get to access on the Internet? A couple years ago, a hacker with the handle GMontag brought it crashing down to the point where it took the Chinese government three months to get it functional again. GMontag was a legend amongst hackers, their very own cyber-messiah (or so I’m told). And GMontag was none other than our very own Viljo.

I asked him once if it was worth it. He said, “If I had been thinking clearly, I would have arranged to bring it down forever, not just for three months.” Ah, the clarity of hindsight.

“What brings you to my neck of the cyber world? You are not due to check in for another two weeks.” Another window popped up, this one with a choppy video feed of Viljo’s face. Our poor computer could barely handle it, and the resulting image was grainy and barely recognizable. It didn’t help that he was sitting in a dimly lit room, surrounded by at least seven computer monitors (that I could see). All I could make out was the dark outline of his glasses and the dyed matte black of his long hair. And was that a tiny scraggly attempt at a mustache? Ye gods.

He frowned at the screen in disgust. “You still do not have a camera? Or even an adequate operating system?” I watched him for a few moments as his attention focused on the three keyboards he kept within easy reach, the image jerking like bad stop-action animation. I knew he was poking around inside Mira’s computer as easily as he did his own.

Some ungodly wail came over the headset, and it took me a few moments to realize Viljo was listening to music. “Are you listening to Björk?”

He made a quick motion with his hands, and the song cut off in midhowl. “No.” Even over a crappy webcam feed, he looked sheepish, and I laughed. “Do you know what I could do to your computer from here? And still you mock me.”

I snorted. “You won’t do anything to it. You’re afraid of Mira.”

“That is not true.” Yes it was. Anyone in his right mind would be. My wife is a formidable woman. I guess it’s true that we look for wives just like our mothers.

“Even if I did not plant a virus here, anyone else could.” The flustered little geek gave me a stern look. It might have had a better effect if I had never heard him scream like a girl at the sight of a spider. “You realize that even the manufacturer says this operating system should not be connected to the Internet, yes? Do you even listen when I tell you these things?” The stuttering picture shook its finger at me, glowering behind the thick lenses. Nerd rage is an amusing thing to see.

“Ivan wanted me to check in. He has no Net access where he is.”

“Is he still in Mexico?”

“As of this morning, yeah. He’s still trying to find out what happened to Miguel.”

Viljo sighed and shook his head, his pixelated image taking a few seconds to catch up with his words. “I do not like it. It feels all wrong.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. “Can you send out an all-call to everyone, and have them all check in early? Ivan wants a head count.”

“Even the Knights Stuck-up-idus?” The Ordo Sancti Silvii, the Order of St. Silvius, was a small band of champions attached to the Catholic Church. They considered themselves separate and apart from (and snidely superior to) our loose organization. Personally, I thought they were a bunch of elitist snobs, but Ivan claimed responsibility for them, anyway, and expected us to defend them just as we would anyone else.

“Yeah. I doubt they’ll answer, but we can try.” I rocked in Mira’s chair, noting absently that it was nice to have a chair with both arms firmly attached. “Can you check and see when Miguel and Guy logged in last?”

“Yeah, sure, easily done.” I could see the frown, even in the grainy image. “But it is funny you ask. They both e-mailed me, saying they were having problems connecting to the site.”

“When was that?”

“Oh . . . three weeks ago, for Miguel. Guy was longer than that. Five weeks? Of course, I do not hear from Miguel that often. He must go into the city to get a connection as it is. But Guy, he has never missed a check-in, until now.”

Shortly before Miguel disappeared, then. And, if Guy was truly gone, then shortly before his disappearance as well. “You figure out what the problem was?”

“No. I needed to be on at the same time they were to see what was happening, and we never got the chance. Why? You think it is connected somehow?”

“Viljo, in the three years you’ve been doing this, the site has never gone down or had any access or security issues. Not once. And suddenly two people have problems, and then disappear? Yeah, it’s hinky.”

“I did not think of that.” He sounded ashamed.

“Listen, why don’t you flex those hacker skills of yours. See if you can find anything in their phone records that match up, or any registered travel plans or anything.”

He grinned at the webcam. “You are asking me to hack across international lines, you know.”

“That a problem?”

“Not as long as the old man has bribe money for immigration.”

I snorted. “If you get caught, you deserve to get deported. You’re better than that.”

He flexed for the camera. “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it. Anything else?” I hesitated long enough that he asked, “Jesse?”

“I’m here.” I so did not want to do this. “Do you have anything of Guy’s? A personal item?”

“Um . . . I have the card he sent me for Christmas last year.” That made me feel bad. I’d never sent Viljo a card.

“That might work.” I’d be happier if it didn’t. “Could you send me that, or anything else of his you have?”

“Mira working some mojo?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, I can overnight it. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Viljo. Nice mustache.” I shut down the window before he could retort, then sighed, finding myself alone in the quiet house.

Part of me hoped that Viljo didn’t find anything on Miguel and Guy. I wanted this to be a horrible, tragic coincidence, even though the churning in my gut was telling me otherwise. I wanted to laugh with Miguel and Guy about it, a week from now. Most especially, I did not want Mira trying to scry for Guy’s location—not this close to the last attempt; not at all, really.

While normally I enjoyed peace and quiet as much as the next guy, today the house was eerie without Mira’s bustling and Anna’s usual chatter. Even the creaking and groaning of the building itself seemed ominous, a warning of impending collapse or something. I didn’t want to be there.

Had I remembered that Rookie Paulo would be at work, I don’t think I’d have been in such a rush to get there, either.

Señor Sulk was slouched against the wall behind the register, where someone had apparently left him on his own. Thankfully, there were no customers. His sullen gaze followed me all the way to the back as I dumped my stuff in my locker, then back out to the front.

“Hey, Paulo.” I glanced up to find Sarah on a ladder above me, rearranging the T-shirts on the wall. “Hey, Sarah.” Realizing what she was wearing, I averted my eyes quickly. Please, someone tell the girl not to wear skirts when she’s climbing ladders. Kids.

“Hey, old dude. You wanna hand me that?” Her hand fluttered in the air until I blindly slapped a T-shirt board into it. If she was surprised to see me start my shift early, she didn’t say so. “Kristyn says we’re moving the clearance shelves to the other side, if you wanna start on that. Paulo’s got the register, and I’m right here to keep an eye on him.”

If I hadn’t been in such a grim mood already, I might have danced. Okay, maybe not danced, but I could have twitched a little or something. Training Paulo was not high on my list of life’s enjoyable events. “So who else is coming in today?”

“Um . . . Chris, I think, and Kristyn’s coming in at five to close.”

“Cool.” I liked closing with Chris and Kristyn; we always had fun. Granted, I wasn’t technically supposed to close tonight, but if Kristyn needed the help, of course I’d stay.

The clearance shelves were a disaster. The shirts were scattered every which way, with nonclearance merchandise stuffed in between. “Damn savages.” I mentally cursed whoever closed the night before, and set about getting things organized before I could even start trying to move the fixture. The best therapy is often mindless menial labor.

I know I worked on it for a good hour before I felt that heavy gaze on me again. Standing up, I found Paulo on the other side of the fixture, sneer firmly in place. “Hey, Paulo. Something you need?”

“So . . . what does a security consultant do, exactly?”

That made me blink. I didn’t realize he’d paid that much attention to Kristyn’s introduction upon our last meeting. “Depends on the client. Sometimes I just test security systems. Sometimes I do actual bodyguard work.” Please don’t let him ask me anything about computers.

His dark eyes ran up and down as if he could actually see me through the shelving. “You don’t look like much. You’re skinny.”

“Looks can be deceiving. And I’m wiry.” I bent to my work again. I didn’t need to get into a dominance struggle with a kid who obviously thought I was the big dog he had to take down. Though, I have to admit, sometimes it’s hard to remember I’m supposed to be the adult.

“ ’Course, all you have to do as a bodyguard is get shot instead of the other guy, right? I could do that.” In some way I couldn’t figure out, I’d made him mad. His accent was stronger. “A mannequin could do that.”

“Yeah, but mannequins have a union. It’s a bitch to get around the paperwork.” I stood again and folded my arms on the top shelf, giving him the eye. “You know, I’m not having the best day of my life right now, so I’m just gonna ask. Did I do something to you I’m not aware of, Paulo? Or are you just a pissy little bastard in general?” Okay, it was not my most adult moment. I admit that.

Hatred flared in those dark eyes. Not just anger, but deep-seated, depths-of-the-soul hatred. No one that young should be capable of that much rage. “You don’t know me. Don’t think you get to judge me.” His accent grew thicker with every word. In another moment, he’d start spitting Spanish at me, and I’d be lost. Languages are Mira’s strong suit, not mine.

“Look, you’re right; I don’t know you. So I don’t know what your problem is. But if you can’t get a grip, one of us is gonna get canned, and I can guarantee you it won’t be me. You want this job, you cool it.” Whee, lookit me be adult again!

Maybe Sarah saw a problem brewing. The doorbell sounded its cheery “bing-bong,” announcing a customer, and she said, “Hey, old dude, you take this one, I need Paulo’s help on the ladder.”

Paulo gave me a look that could have melted titanium, but he went back to work under Sarah’s direction. What is it with kids these days? In my day, the worst we had to worry about was somebody keying a car. (Yes, saying “in my day” officially makes me old.) These days, I thought kids were scarier than any demon I’d ever stared down. I hoped Annabelle wouldn’t grow up to be one of those angsty teens.

The customer turned out to be an angsty teen himself, sporting a blond Mohawk and enough metal in his ears to make drowning a risk if he fell in a pool. I noted his clothing as I approached, trying to guess what I might be able to sell him. With his white T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and pair of scuffed boots, he looked more like he belonged in a fifties greaser movie than our usual goth customer base.

“Hey, welcome to It. Is there something I can help you find?”

Mohawk looked up at me with a sly grin, and I felt ice run down my spine. His eyes flashed red, and I heard my own voice drip from his lips. “Is there something I can help you find?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I grabbed Axel’s arm and dragged him to a convenient corner.

“Hands off the threads—these were expensive.” He frowned and pretended to dust my touch off his bare arms.

Looking over his current form of choice, I felt sick. “Tell me you didn’t possess some idiot kid.”

“Nah, humans are too much work. This is all me, baby.”

It wasn’t an illusion. His arm felt all too real under my hand. In the future, I would have to rethink my opinion on just how dangerous Axel was. “You’re not welcome here.”

He grinned lazily, perusing the shelves with half interest. “Public place, Jesse—you can’t keep me out.” His eyes roamed over the store. “Cute place. You sell men’s clothes here?”

“What do you want?”

Axel shrugged his shoulders. “Just shopping. Trying to expand my social horizons, that sort of thing.”

“Get out.” A glance around revealed that Sarah and Paulo weren’t paying attention to us—yet. I needed to keep it that way.

“Nah.” True to his word, he started browsing, picking things up, and letting them fall to the floor. “You don’t really want me to go, anyway—not until you find out why I’ve bothered to get all gussied up and come a-callin’.”

“Hey! I have to pick all that up!” I followed along behind him, scooping up the mess he was making.

Axel snorted. “Demon . . . Hello . . .”

I dumped the armload of baby tees on a rack and moved to get in front of him again. “I don’t want you here. Nothing you have could be that vital.”

There was a chorus of noise from the back as Chris arrived for his shift. He was easily visible over the racks, towering above most other folk in his bright SUPERHERO T-shirt. His shaggy brown hair hung in his eyes, a futile effort to avoid notice.

“Oh, I know your soul’s in hock at the moment, Jesse . . . but I’d be willing to take one of theirs.” For the first time, Axel’s voice took on that quality that screams “demon.” It was an oil slick in my head, a taint at the back of my tongue. To hear my own voice echoing in the recesses of my skull was disconcerting at best; nauseating at worst. “Take that one, for instance.” He nodded toward Chris, a dark smile on his otherwise handsome face, and pointed a finger at the kids.

Atop the ladder, Sarah toppled with a startled squeal when her foot slipped on a rung. Chris, moving faster than I ever thought him capable of, caught her at the bottom.

“How horrible life must be for him,” Axel almost purred. “Freakishly tall. Too awkward for sports. Hopelessly in love with that girl but terrified to speak to her . . . What do you think he’d give me, for just one night? Just one kind word from her?” The two teens stared at each other for a moment before Chris set Sarah on her feet and retreated, blushing to the roots of his limp hair.

“Or the girl.” He tsked softly, shaking his head. “So terrified that no one loves her. That she’s not good enough, that someone will find out she throws up every single day. What would it be worth to her if I could promise her eternal beauty, unconditional love?” As if his words had conjured it, I could feel the despair settling into my bones; the loneliness, the choking uncertainty, the weight of a terrible secret. Despite knowing it was an illusion, I found it hard to shake it off.

“Or maybe they’re too close to home. Maybe . . . someone you don’t know.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the windows, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “That one there, the girl in the pink shirt? She’s trying to get into Yale, but she plagiarized her last paper.” He smirked as he murmured into my ear. “You’d be amazed what she’d give to have that go unnoticed. Oh! And the tall man just past her, he’s pretty sure he has an STD, and he’s in deep shit if his wife finds out.” Axel snickered, and I felt my stomach do sick somersaults with someone else’s dread. “They’re not even good people, so what would it hurt?”

“Don’t.” Through sheer willpower, I relaxed my muscles and blocked out his voice. I concentrated instead on my own heartbeat, a bit elevated but still steady. It grounded me, and the heaviness of other people’s feelings faded—for the most part.

“What do you care? You don’t even know them. And I’m not hurting them. I’m offering them their dreams, Jesse, in exchange for something they wouldn’t even miss. . . . Generous creature that I am, I am willing to throw in a bonus for you, too, something you so desperately need to know.” He shrugged and released my shoulders, his predatory gaze returning to my teenage coworkers. “I don’t think you’ll find a better deal, but I am nothing if not negotiable.”

“It doesn’t matter if they’re strangers, or if they’re not lily white in the deeds area. They’re not for sale.”

Behind the counter, a shaken Sarah refused to go back up the ladder, so Paulo took her place. He almost attacked the T-shirt wall, yanking things into position with a screech of tortured plastic.

The demon smiled. There was something ravenous in his eyes, a starving man eyeing a feast. “Ah, now that one. You wouldn’t believe the secrets I could tell you about him. So angry. So betrayed . . . An emo– rock song, just waiting to happen. What would he be willing to give up to have one chance to just get even?” Axel’s eyes glowed, more than the mere flash he usually let slip.

I grabbed his hoop earring and yanked his head around to look me in the eyes, all but growling in his face. “These people are off– limits. Get out now.” I could have escorted any human Axel’s size out the door with no problems. But Axel wasn’t human, and I had no idea how to get him out of the store if he wouldn’t leave voluntarily. My keys with the small canister of demon Mace were in my locker. No way was I leaving him alone with the kids long enough to get it.

He chuckled, calmly extracting his earring from my grip. “Ah, Jesse, ever the honorable warrior. It’s going to get you killed.” He patted my cheek, just short of a slap, then wandered toward the entrance. At the door, he paused to give me a sorrowful glance over his shoulder. “And there’re so few of you left as it is.”

Mentally, I said every four-letter word I knew, and a few I made up for the occasion. “What do you know, Axel?”

He shot me that thousand-watt grin. “I know someone’s not playing by the rules. Shame shame, I know his name. But I’m not telling you without something in return.”

The bell chimed as he let himself out. A pack of kids passed by outside the plate glass window, and when they were gone, so was the demon. Only then did I think to unclench my fists, useless gesture though it was.

I felt a presence behind me, and nearly turned to swing before Paulo spoke. “Friend of yours?” Apparently, he’d taken more notice of our “customer” than I’d thought.

“No. No, that was definitely not my friend.”

“He comes back, you want me to throw him out?”

I only shook my head to the negative, and I found reasons to stay near the door for the rest of the night. If Axel came back, I wanted these kids to run away screaming, but I didn’t think they’d believe me if I told them.

As a precaution, I grabbed my key chain out of my locker and stuffed it in my pocket. My assorted antidemon trinkets made for uncomfortable bulk, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Kristyn arrived on schedule at five, and Paulo and Sarah left at seven. I should have gone with them, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave Chris and Kristyn unprotected. The logical part of my brain knew he could still get to the kids outside work, but the totally irrational part was quite certain my mere presence would ward Axel off. It wasn’t unusual for me to stay well past my shift, and since we were busy, no one thought anything of it.

As the evening wore on, I felt increasingly stupid. Axel was obviously not coming back. He’d accomplished what he’d intended by sowing doubt and temptation in my mind—the big jerk. And if he wasn’t here hassling me and threatening my coworkers, where was he? My first thought was for Mira, of course, but I knew she was safely behind the house wards.

Still, what if he’d only avoided the wards because he had no reason to go inside until now? What if he himself was the one breaking the rules? I wouldn’t put it past him to bargain a soul for a confession. What if . . . ? It occurred to me, when I noticed Kristyn staring at me, that she’d been trying to talk to me for several minutes. “Huh?”

“I said, Chris and I are gonna haul the trash out to the Dumpster; we’ll be back in a bit. You okay, old dude?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I forced a smile for her. “I’ll hold down the fort.” Once they were out the door and out of sight, I dropped my head to the glass counter with a sigh. I wasn’t sure I was fine at all. My stomach was in seven different kinds of knots, and I couldn’t seem to shake the goose bumps along my arms. Maybe I was getting sick.

I crouched to fish under the counter, looking for any Tylenol left behind. I had no luck, of course, but as I closed the sliding door, something caught my eye in the reflection. It was no more than a flicker of movement, somewhere behind and to my left, a black blur darting out of sight.

Whirling, I reached for the volume on the stereo, plunging the store into eerie silence. Nothing moved. “Who’s there?” Why do people always ask that? I mean, if something’s hiding from you, you really think they’re just going to pop up and say, “Oh, it’s me!”

I stepped out from behind the counter, glancing beneath the clothing racks and even the shelves, though something would have to be the size of a rat to fit under there. Nothing. Ok, maybe you’re taking paranoia to an extreme, old boy. You know . . . maybe I was taking paranoia to an extreme. And that wasn’t usually like me.

I fished my key chain out of my pocket, singling out the tiny mirror dangling on its chain. On the surface, it was the kind of compact mirror any girl might carry to check her makeup. But on the back, out of sight, Mira had scratched some runes that turned it into something more. It would take only a moment to see if my new suspicion was true.

I held the mirror up so that I could see over my right shoulder, turning slowly to scan the back of the store. Something twitched in the shadows under the clearance rack. I turned to look without the help of the mirror, and sure enough, that darker spot wasn’t there. “Tricky little bastard, aren’t you?”

Using the mirror again, I watched beneath the rack. Slowly, the culprit emerged to sit in the middle of the aisle.

It would have been easily mistaken for an extra-filthy dust mop, black coils of fur sticking out all over, except, y’know, for the four vaguely insectoid legs protruding from the scruffy mass, each ending in three grasping fingers. There were no eyes that I could see, but as I watched, the thing opened its massive mouth and started to groom its fur with its creepy little hands. The mouth took up nearly half its bulk, and I could see row upon row of sharp white teeth within—like a shark, and venomous to boot.

It was a Scrap demon, one of the parasites of Hell. I’m not even sure it should properly be called a demon. They had very little intelligence and normally existed by draining the life force out of unsuspecting humans. Like all true parasites, they weren’t strong enough to kill their host, but the intense feelings of despair and paranoia they exuded generally made for short life spans in their humans.

In rare circumstances, a stronger demon would use them to soften up his prey, and I had to wonder, “Who sent you, Creepy?” It almost had to be Axel. Dog Boy already had my soul under wraps; he’d gain nothing by this little guy’s sucking me dry. But Axel had reason to push me, to beat me down.

It obviously wasn’t smart enough to realize it had been seen. The Scrap demons hovered just on the other side of the veil, invisible to the naked eye or seen only in peripheral vision. Most of the time, they were explained away as a trick of the light or the neighbor’s cat. Only with something like Mira’s mirror could I get a decent look.

It appeared to be bored. It spidered its way around the floor, idly exploring this and that as it scuttled from shadow to shadow. Its legs bent at impossible angles with more joints than should have been necessary, and it opened its mouth on occasion as if making a cry I could not hear.

I couldn’t just leave it running loose. It was obviously sucking on me, and if I let it alone, it might attach to one of the kids. I just needed to get it into the physical where I could deal with it. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy magic mirror for that.

We sold novelty letter openers in the shape of swords, and I slowly slipped one from the counter. It’d do well enough. I followed the parasite’s reflection in the mirror, waiting to catch the whole thing in the glass. “Come on . . . just a bit farther . . .” As if it heard me, it paused with one foot poised, hesitating as I framed its image fully within the mirror. “Gotcha.”