As the demon Devina wandered up and back across cold concrete, her path was not straight, but full of curves. Winding in and out of rows of bureaus, the discordant
Everything had been given a place here, her collection safely moved into the basement of this two-story office building. The location was perfect, just outside of Caldwell’s downtown, and to appear legitimate and uncontroversial, she projected an illusion that a human resources firm took up the space above where she was pacing: As far as people were aware, a hustling, bustling business had rented the place to accommodate its expansion.
Stupid humans. As if in this economy anyone was hiring or could afford hand-holding when it came to filling jobs.
Pausing by a Hepplewhite bow front that had been made in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1801, she ran her hand over the mahogany top. The original finish was still on the piece, but then again, she’d kept the thing safe from sun and water damage since she’d bought it over two hundred years before. In its drawers were baskets full of buttons and rows of spectacles and jumbles of rings in boxes. The other bureaus had similar objects, all personal items fashioned out of various metals.
Aside from her mirror, this collection of hers was the most precious thing she had. It was the tie to her souls down below, the tethering security she needed when she felt insecure or stressed-out here on earth.
As she did now.
The problem tonight, however, was that for the first time since she’d started hoarding aeons ago, she was not calmed, nor reassured, nor eased. Walking around this repository of objects, she was summarily unaided by the addiction that had long proved to e so useful.
And what seemed even worse? This evening should have been “a seminal moment,” as her therapist called them, a time to center herself and savor her accomplishments: She had won the last round against Jim Heron, and even though he and Adrian and Eddie had infiltrated her previous lair, she had safely gotten her things installed in this new, secure facility.
She should have been fucking ecstatic.
But shit-on-a-shingle, even the scent of fresh death drifting over from the bathroom gave her no pleasure: To protect her mirror, she needed so much more than what ADT or Brinks monitoring had to offer, and the new sacrificial virgin she’d strung up over her tub was bleeding out nicely—getting ready to be useful, not just decorative.
Everything was going her way, at least on the surface, and yet she felt so . . .
Ennui, she believed it was called . . . and what a lovely name for such a crappy, unmotivated state.
Maybe she was just exhausted from setting everything up after the move. She had about forty bureaus full of acquisitions from all eras of humanity, and whenever she was forced to reestablish herself in another place, she was compelled to touch every single object one by one, reconnecting with the essence of the victim that lingered in the metal. She had yet to start on the contact ritual, however, and was a little surprised at herself. Usually, she could focus on nothing else until she fractured time, stepped into the space between minutes, and completed the lengthy process.
She supposed her therapist would have seen this as progress, considering the compulsion was typically prompt and undeniable: These precious items, from ancient Egypt to Gothic France to the Civil War and the present here in the States, were what tied her to home when she was so far away.
Still, there was no panicky rush to snuggle up with what was hers for eternity. All she seemed to want to do was mope around and pace.
It was all Jim Heron’s fault.
He was just too defiant. Dominant. Extraordinary.
He had been chosen by her and that supercilious sonofabitch Nigel because Heron was equal parts good and evil—and as she had learned through the ages, when it came to mankind, evil always won. In fact, she’d assumed that drawing him over to her side would be nothing but a tedious bore, the kind of thing she had done to men and women since time had cast its first hour so very long ago.
Instead . . . it was she who had been sucked in and seduced.
Heron was just so . . . unownable. Even when he had turned himself over to her and she had been playing with him, her minions swarming him, her true nature revealed . . . he had been unbowed, unbending, unyielding.
And that strength made him unattainable.
She had never known that before. From anyone.
The thing was, it was in her very nature to take over: She was a perfect parasite, niggling her way in and replicating her essence until what she had entered became hers forever.
Heron’s challenge to her was intoxicating, a slap in the face, a breath of fresh air. But it also seemed to deflate the importance of everything else.
Pulling open a drawer, she took out a thin gold bracelet that had a little dove charm dangling off of it. The inscription on the inside was in cursive and just precious. From parents to a daughter. With a date from the year before. Blah, blah, blah.
She hated the name Cecilia. She really did.
That irrelevant virgin . . . what a thorn in her side. The purpose of that Barten girl had been to protect the mirror. Now the little shit had some kind of connection with Jim—
Just as she was going to crush the fragile memento, a waft of warmth went through her, as if a lover’s touch had passed not just over her flesh, but through to her very bones.
Jim.
It was
Ditching the bracelet, she hip-checked the drawer closed and ran down the row to an ornate floor-length mirror that functioned only to check her appearance. As she went, she changed her form, assuming the body of a gorgeous brunette who had gravity-defying breasts and an ass with more ledge than a bookshelf.
Fluffing her hair, she smoothed her black skirt, and decided the hem was too long. Willing it upward, she pivoted and flashed her smooth thighs and perfect calves.
Suddenly, she was
Well,
Except she was not going to be stupid about this.
Confident of her hemline, her neckline, and her hairline, she went into the bathroom.
“How do I look?”
She did a little twirl in front of the young man who was hanging upside down over her tub. Except he didn’t have anything to say, even though his eyes were open.
“Oh, what the hell do you know.”
She bent down and dipped her fingertips into the blood that had been steadily draining out of his carotid artery. Impatient with the delay, she quickly traced around the doorjambs and the floor, going back and forth to the tub to get more. The purity of his essence formed a seal that was better than any security alarm any human could ever create—plus, the process rid the world of one more mortal creature.
Made her job easier.
Closing herself in with Mr. Chatty, she turned to face the ancient mirror that hung in a mangy frame that had rotted out centuries and centuries ago. The leaded-glass surface had a constantly shifting reflection, waves of dark gray and black swirling around a background the color of a rug stain. The thing was a hideous portal, and the only way for her to get to her well of souls.
“Hang out,” she told the stiff. “I’ll be back.”
Stepping through the surface of the mirror, she was pulled into a vicious suction, and she gave herself over freely, the body she assumed going taffy through the wormhole. On the far side, she emerged at the base of her well, spit out of the tempest, but requiring no time to recover.
As she patted her hair, and smoothed her tight skirt, she thought how stupid it was not to have a mirror
