Queen of wands

CHAPTER TWO

“I see a light purple,” Barbara said, looking at the monk who was bent over a scroll. “Tinges of orange, but that might be from his robe.”

It had taken two days of very careful practice for Barb to learn to open up her ability to see auras. It wasn’t a matter of concentration, quite the opposite. It was more a matter of opening up a part of her mind. She had to obtain a nearly Zen state to see one consistently. They had also practiced closing off her Sight with small, inoffensive neutral entities that Sharice conjured. Today was the day of practicing on the real thing.

They’d gone to the Foundation’s extensive library to find some subjects for aura reading.

“And I’m seeing a coral color,” Sharice said, sighing. “Very pure. And there we go with the fun of aura reading. Different people see different auras…differently.”

“What’s purple mean?” Barb asked, flipping through the tome on her lap. “Vanity? That doesn’t seem right. Chun Chao is one of the least vain people I know.”

“Which is the problem with reading auras,” Sharice said. “Most people see them one way, but others see a completely different spectrum, if you will. Demons are the same way. I might see a spider. You see a snake. Chun Chao might see a snarling traditional Tibetan demon. Nobody sees these things the same.”

“Why?” Barb asked.

“Isn’t it your Holy Book that says the mind of God is ineffable?” Sharice asked back. “Ask Him. The guesses are all over the map. My favorite theory is that it has to do with the mind of the viewer. What your Sight is Seeing gets translated by your brain into something that you can recognize, the same way that a hallucination converts images into something your brain can recognize.”

“So if the book’s useless,” Barb said, tossing it lightly onto the side table, “how do I figure out what auras mean?”

“By watching them,” Sharice said. “You just watch auras and deduce from what you know about people and their actions what the auras truly represent. What do you know about Chun Chao?”

“Studious,” Barbara said. “Meticulous. Intelligent. A serious researcher…”

“Cowardly,” Sharice added. “Afraid of his own shadow. Unwilling to leave guarded premises unless he’s in the company of someone like, well, you. He came here with a group of more powerful monks and hasn’t left the grounds to so much as take a walk.”

“So…purple…” Barb said carefully. “That’s probably related to his studiousness and intelligence. And the flashes of orange…are nervousness?”

“Very well hidden, mind you,” Sharice said. “And that’s just for you. Me, I see mostly coral. You don’t, by the way, See with your actual eyeballs. Once you become accustomed to it, you can See with your eyes closed. It’s one of the really advanced techniques in martial arts, when the Master puts on a blindfold and still wipes the floor with all the rookies.”

“Seen that,” Barb said, nodding. “I figured he was just hearing them.”

“Nah,” Sharice replied, grinning. “It’s cheating, really. He can still see their auras. And when you get good enough, auras can tell you what a person’s actions are going to be much better than body language. So not only can he See them right through the blindfold, he can tell what they’re going to do before they know.”

“ That would be a useful skill,” Barb said, nodding thoughtfully.

“And you develop it the same way you get to Carnegie Hall,” Sharice said. “Practice, practice, practice.”

“See this box?” Sharice asked, pulling an elaborately carved wooden box out of a niche.

They’d moved from the library to a building Barb had previously never even seen. If she’d been asked, she would have said that the path to the building looped back to the main path to the rear of the grounds. But there was a small side branch that led to the heavy stone building. Thinking about its position, she realized it was very close to the center of the compound and flanked by the prayer houses of four major gods. The doors of the building were heavy wood and steel with mystic symbols inscribed all over them and a massive lock.

The interior was simply one large room lined with niches. Boxes filled most of them, and above each niche were more mystic symbols. There were four tables set at the cardinal points of the compass, and in the center of the room was a large pentacle, the sort of symbol that always made Barb very uncomfortable.

“Okay, I don’t need to look in it,” Barb said, backing up. “I can feel the evil radiating off of it. Don’t let the EPA know about this place.”

“We have a permit,” Sharice said, setting the box on a table. “The feeling of evil comes from buildup more than anything This is, in fact, a very unpleasant but minor drakni. It’s a gluttony demon, a demon that is, alas, common in the United States. They’re damned hard to catch, by the way. You have to have someone who is willing to be exorcised, and pull the thing out in this plane, then capture it. Much, much easier to dispel them back to their own. Now, I’m going to open the box. Even with the lid open, the drakni cannot escape. It’s in a different sort of box. However, you’ll be able to See it. A person without Sight would just see an empty box. Ready?”

“Ready,” Barb said, raising her hands into a panther position. She wasn’t particularly worried about the demon attacking her. Gluttony had never been one of her weaknesses. But if it got out, she wasn’t planning on it just going back in the box, tough to collect or not.

What was in the box…wasn’t really a snake. She hadn’t spent much time staring at the demons before, she simply tried to avoid looking at them. But this time she could examine the thing.

It was about four feet in length including the coiled tail. Scaly like a snake but with a humanoid body, stubby arms and long fingers. The abdomen was vastly swollen, taking up most of the interior of the box, but the head was the strangest. There were no horns, but it had enormous, whorling red-and-black eyes with pupils nearly the size of her fist. The mouth that the thing opened to hiss at her was lined with back-curved teeth like an anaconda’s and had four long fangs.

“Once that thing bites down…” Barb said.

“It’s very hard to remove, yes,” Sharice replied. “I’m seeing something like a small dog with very nasty teeth. You?”

“More snaky,” Barb said. That was about as simple as you could put it. “Or an Indian naga.”

“One of the traditions of the myth, I’m sure,” Sharice said as the thing hissed and tried to rear up out of the box. “Back, you,” the witch added, flicking her finger at it. Barb saw a very brief flash through the air, like a flicker of static electricity, and the thing sank back down. Lazarus had flared up into full Halloween cat mode and hissed back, but as the thing settled down, so did the familiar.

“Now, here’s the trick,” Sharice said, setting the box on a table. “Make it disappear.”

“You mean dispel it?” Barb asked, raising her hands. “Didn’t you say they were hard to catch?”

“Just complicated,” Sharice corrected. “But, no, I mean turn off your Sight. You’ve Seen it. Now don’t See it. Suppress, as you did with your aura reading.”

Try as Barbara might, she could not get the drakni to disappear. She tried concentrating on it going away, which worked with auras. Nothing. Then she tried the Zen state which was required to read auras. Still the thing obstinately remained. And it appeared to find the whole thing very amusing, making occasional whistles of derision. It was getting annoying.

“Okay,” Sharice said, patiently. “Try this. This guy really is a total nothing. If he got loose there’d be one more seriously obese person in the US, which is already awash. He’s a total loser. Demons are like very stupid artificial intelligences. They have a simple program they follow. Dispel one of these guys and it’s like stamping on an ant. He’s nothing. Not worth your notice…”

“That worked,” Barb said as the demon slowly faded from view. She could feel the change in her brain. Concentrating on the demon again, he faded into view. Ignoring him caused him to disappear. “That works. But what if I’m in ignore mode and there’s something really deadly around?”

“Ever get one of those feelings where you just don’t like being somewhere?” Sharice asked. “The vibe is wrong?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d had Sight and opened it up, you’d have probably seen demons,” Sharice explained. “Probably a lot and probably more powerful than this fellow. But you could still sense them vaguely. If you get that feeling again, open up and check out your surroundings. I’ll give you a hint and we’ll practice it later. If you open up your Sight but keep suppressing your aura, which we worked on the last time, you can stay under their radar. Don’t look directly at them, don’t open up your power or use anything but Sight, and you can pick them out without them realizing it. If you want to challenge, just look straight at one and open up your power. But be warned, if there is more than one, they’re all going to get onto you. They can’t hurt you, but they’re annoying as hell.”

“Yeah, dealt with that already,” Barb admitted. “And if I attack one?”

“You?” Sharice said with a chuckle. “You’ll blow it apart. But once they’re attached, they sink a mystical barb into their target. If you blow one off of the person, they’ll just grow back. The only way to get rid of them is to have the person be willing to be exorcised. They’ve got to believe they’re there and they have to want to get rid of them. Note, really want and really believe. Otherwise it’s pointless.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Barb said, frowning. “That’s not the world of my God. You don’t mind if I experiment a bit, do you?”

“Feel free,” Sharice said. “Who knows. You might be able to blast one out of a person’s soul, with all the power you draw. Not sure what it would do to the person, mind you. And unless they had a change of heart, they’d be a ripe target for the next drakni of the same type they run across.”

“Where do they come from?” Barb asked. “I mean, from hell, obviously…”

“Hell might not be a there, but we’ll go with it,” Sharice said, smiling. “Besides, your own Holy Book clearly states that the earth was given over to Satan. But here on this plane, they get generated by lesser Mothers, minor versions of Tiamat, in other words. There aren’t a lot of those, comparatively, but getting rid of them is even harder than getting rid of drakni. They generally attach to a family, being handed down generation by generation. Each produces specific drakni.

“There is actually something of a sovereign remedy for drakni Mothers, drakia, in certain Christian beliefs,” Sharice said, frowning. “Let me see…Saints, saints.”

In the antechamber to the prison was a small bookcase. Sharice pulled a book down and flipped through the pages, looking for something.

“Alas, I don’t think it would help you, though,” she said, flipping back and forth. “Most of the saints whose patronage is possession aren’t recognized by the Episcopalian church.”

“We don’t do saints quite the same way Catholicism does it,” Barbara said. “But any port in a storm. Well, any reasonably Christian port in a storm.”

“Your best bet, if it works for your theology, is Saint Dymphna. She’s a Catholic saint for the possessed and anyone suffering from mental illness. Strange story. Her mother died, and her dad looked high and low for a woman who was as beautiful as his wife. Finding none, he noticed that his daughter was as beautiful.”

“Ick,” Barb said.

“Ick indeed. Story goes on, including fleeing to a far land and being tracked down by the father. Martyred herself to escape his attentions. The interesting aspect to it is that it was believed her father was possessed by a demon of lust.”

“And with what you’ve just told me, that’s distinctly possible,” Barbara said. “But he’d have had to be a pretty sick puppy to begin with.”

“So Dymphna, despite being an otherwise quite inoffensive creature, is reputed to have a real case of the butt with demons, especially drakni and drakni Mothers. I’d suspect the deep story is that it was a drakia who possessed him, and it may have been generational.”

“So I’m supposed to pray to St. Dymphna if I’m dealing with drakni?” Barbara asked. “That’s not really how Episcopalians handle things. More of a Catholic approach.”

“Not…exactly,” Sharice said, biting her lip. “I’m afraid to tread on your theology if I go further. My simple answer that should be inintrusive. Christian theology is a bit opaque to me sometimes.”

“Try me understanding Wicca,” Barb said.

“Point. Here’s the thing. And it’s simply the real and skinny. Your White God allegedly gave over the world to Satan, which means Satan’s troops, within limits, have free reign.”

“Because we have free will,” Barb said. “We can choose to resist.”

“Accepted,” Sharice said. “However, there are indicators that just as demons can possess, so can higher spirits. Angels and saints. There is historical basis for the latter.”

“If you’re saying you want me to call on St. Dymphna, who, if I get this right, was a teenage girl, to possess me, to help me fight drakni…”

“It’s more likely that she would possess someone similar to her,” Sharice said. “And it’s very hard to arrange. Extraordinarily rare. It would require someone who is pure of soul, about the right age, preferably has the right look, and who is in mortal danger from a demon. Preferably a similar one to the one that possessed Dymphna’s father. And it would probably require some type of…free pass? I’m trying to put this in Christian terminology. In pagan terms, it would require that the door be opened from both sides of the planes, that another entity opened the door for her to pass through. Not to mention a nod from the White God and acceptance of His Gift upon the part of the possessee. And you don’t have to have help to fight drakni. Or even drakni Mothers. But Dymphna would probably be able to wipe out a whole Legion of drakni Mothers. Or at least dispel them. Cast them back into the infernal realms. Of course some idiot would probably just summon them again, but it’s a point on our side. If a person became possessed of Dymphna and we found out about it, trust me, we’ll recruit her in a heartbeat.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Barb said. “Especially if I can stop seeing these things all over the place.”

“Now, this is just a gluttony demon. That’s not too bad. But there are others. All the usual sins, of course. Then there are anger demons, hate demons, lust, as in Dymphna’s father, and the worst, murder drakni.”

“Serial killers?” Barb asked.

“As far as I know, universally,” Sharice said. “Even the ones the FBI considers ‘common.’ Ted Bundy, a Legion, at least sixteen separate types including several flavors of murder drakni; Charles Manson, Son of Sam. I don’t actually know of one that wasn’t infested. But the point to remember is that they had to have an opening. The demons might have pushed them over the edge, but they had the desires and the interest. As you said, there is free will. The person has to be willing to take the demon into their soul. Whether they realize that willingness or not. And they have to choose to carry out the agenda of the demon.”

“So we don’t chase these?” Barb asked, incredulously. “They cause mayhem and death and they’re just off our radar screen?”

“Not always,” Sharice said. “But mostly. We just don’t have the time, Barb. You’ve been taking family time over the last few months. I’m not meaning to guilt you, but the rest of us have been stretched. We could have used a Level Three at least five times while you’ve been playing Suzy Homemaker down in Mississippi. A Level One can dispel a drakni if the possessee is willing. A priest that’s not even particularly holy can get rid of one. Drakni are training demons, mostly for sight and hearing as we’re doing here. Now, a drakni Mother might require a Level Three. And if when we find those, we get rid of them if we can. But, again…”

“The possessee has to believe and be willing,” Barb said with a sigh.

“Right,” Sharice said. “So, you ready for the next step?”

“Which is?” Barb asked suspiciously.

“To dispel one without using massive amounts of power, you have to have its True Name,” Sharice said, grinning. “As I said, you can get that with The Ear. But he’s going to have to be out of the box.”

Barb glanced at the pentacle, then looked at Sharice.

“You have got to be joking.”

“Ready?” Sharice asked, opening the box.

“I hope,” Barb said, getting into panther position again.

“Confidence is pretty important with any demon,” Sharice said, touching one of the symbols on the box and muttering. “There’s a reason I chose this one.”

“Which is?” Barb asked as the demon popped its head up over the top of the box. She heard it almost immediately, the whispering in her mind. It was more of a craving for…Cheetos? Okay, so she liked Cheetos. It wasn’t like she was…Man, she really wanted some…

“You’ve never shown much interest in food,” Sharice replied. “Now, me, I’ve got all my defenses up. But I’ve worked with him before. But I figured there wouldn’t be much of a hook with you, not with your figure.”

“Thank you,” Barb said.

“Don’t make me get out the vanity demon, skinny,” Sharice said.

“I can handle it,” Barb replied.

“Or the pride one.”

“Okay,” Barb admitted. “Point. But it doesn’t really matter. It found a hook.”

“Not much of one,” Sharice said, gazing at the demon. “It hasn’t leapt. What’s the hook?”

“So I like Cheetos…And fried chicken. Is that a sin?”

“Not if you don’t overindulge,” Sharice replied. “But ignore the Cheetos and cheesecake…”

“I hate cheesecake…”

“Never mind. Ignore it. But open up your Ear. Don’t focus. Just stay calm…”

“Zen…” Barb said. “Ignore the dressing with gravy…”

“It’s there,” Sharice said, hypnotically. “Can you hear it? It sings its name along with the food. Very faint, an undercurrent, almost unnoticeable…”

“Zagnatag,” Barb said. “Is that what you mean?”

At the sound of its name, the demon dove into the box.

“How long have you…?” Sharice asked, hands on her hips.

“Pretty much from the beginning,” Barb said, straightening out of her defensive crouch. “It was louder than the Cheetos. I just figured it was white noise or something.”

“There are times I really dislike you, Barbara Everette,” Sharice said, half bitterly. “I’ve got years of training, and having someone as Gifted as you come along is just…I had to sit with this thing for a week to catch its True Name!”

“Yeah?” Barb said. “Well, do you go around with whispers and shouts filling your head all the time? Huh?”

“Good point,” Sharice admitted. “One which we’re going to have to work on. But since you know its True Name, control it.”

“How?” Barb asked, crouching again.

“Oh, quit that,” Sharice said. “Fix the name in your mind and call it out. Tell it to move around. If your will is stronger, it will have to obey. You don’t even have to open your mouth.”

Barbara raised her hand to do just that, then paused.

“I’m not sure I should,” Barb said.

“It’s not hard,” Sharice pointed out.

“No, I mean I should not, not I can not,” Barb corrected. “My religion does not control demons or consort with them. We destroy them.”

“Jesus sent the Legion into a herd of pigs,” Sharice said. “Think of it that way.”

“And it wasn’t a popular thing to do,” Barb said. “Can I do it? Probably. Should I do it? That might take some soul searching. It feels wrong.”

“Well, you can find out a True Name faster than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Sharice said with a shrug. “And once you have that, and your level of power, he’s basically putty in your hands. If you really feel the need to dispel him, feel free. We’ll have to find another one eventually…”

“No,” Barb said, shaking her head. “The Foundation does God’s work. But each…”

“Must find their own God,” Sharice said, nodding. “Okay, you seem pretty solid on this stuff. Pulling out the rest of the boxes would be fairly pointless. Well, the ones I’d normally pull out for beginners; and I don’t have a couple more trained adepts to pull out the advanced. So…Time for field work.”

“Fun, fun, fun,” Barbara said. “Where?”

“Rubs.”

The bar and grill was part of a small chain in the Asheville area. Copying the success of a much more notable national chain, the waitresses were invariably chosen for their looks, and dressed appropriately.

“Oh, my God,” Barb said as they walked into the bar. It was just the beginning of the evening shift, and while there were still few customers, the full crop of waitresses was on the floor.

“Don’t stare, don’t Reveal,” Sharice said, walking over to a table with a view of most of the bar.

“They’re…everywhere,” Barb hissed, setting Lazarus’s carrier on the table. The cat slid open the bi-directional zipper she’d installed and poked his head out, hissed and ducked back in. Probably because every second woman in the grill, not just the waitresses, had a small demon on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” a man said, hurrying over to their table. “There are no pets allowed…”

“I have a doctor’s excuse,” Barb said, pulling out a sheet of paper. “Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, you have to allow companion animals. My cat is registered as a psychological companion animal. I’m aware that that makes me crazy, but I’m covered under Federal law.”

The response was automatic and rote. Living with a familiar was a pain, but Barb blessed the otherwise incredibly stupid court orders that had expanded the ADA far beyond its original intent. Designed to force companies to make their places wheelchair accessible, the Ninth Circuit, using its usual logic, had decreed that “companion animals” including yappy dogs that were “psychologically necessary” to crazy ladies, were covered by the statute.

Barb was willing to be considered crazy if it meant she didn’t have to put up with the headaches she got when Lazarus was more than a few dozen meters from her.

“Yes, ma’am,” the manager said through gritted teeth.

“I promise he won’t go peeing on the furniture,” Barb said. “Laz. Stay. See?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the manager repeated, walking away.

“Familiars,” Sharice said. “Can’t live with them…”

“We’ve been spotted,” Barb said, craning her neck around. She wasn’t staring at any of the small demons, but she definitely felt eyes on her. Of course, it might have been some of the patrons. Despite her age, she could easily have been one of the waitresses.

“I feel it, too,” Sharice said. “Not sure…”

“Now what is that?” Barb asked, blinking. Now she was staring, even though there wasn’t a demon on the girl’s shoulder.

The waitress was bending over, talking to a customer. Pretty. Very pretty. She looked much like Barb had when she was in her early twenties. Long legs, blond hair, tight derriere and solid double-D chest. On closer examination, though, Barb was fairly sure that was in part fake. But the sense of being watched, even though the girl wasn’t looking at them, was coming from her.

“Aura,” Sharice said, quietly. “Read her aura.”

The girl’s aura wasn’t black but it was darned close. It was a red so deep as to be almost indistinguishable.

“So…I repeat. What is that?”

“ That is a drakni Mother, a drakia,” Sharice said. “That girl is the reason that there are all these drakni here. They’re all vanity demons, by the way. Well, almost all. Now, look around. Do you see some of the girls who should have drakni but don’t seem to?”

“Yes,” Barb said. “And their auras are dark, too. Not as dark…”

“Their drakni have settled all the way in,” Sharice said, then paused as their waitress approached the table. “There are a few who don’t have them. Call them girls who don’t have that particular hook. Stronger-willed, not self-critical and vain at the same time. But they’re rare in a place like this.”

“Welcome to Rubs,” the girl said perkily. “Our Happy Hour specials are…”

“I’d like a Coca-Cola and a plate of hot wings,” Sharice said when the girl was finished with the recitation.

Barb had been trying and failing to not notice the drakni on the girl’s shoulder. It was tiny, no bigger than a small rabbit, and seemed barely attached. But she found herself studying it, and then it noticed. It hissed at her, and she had the hardest time in the world not hissing back. Lazarus had no such reservations, letting out a soft warning yowl from the cat-bag.

“Uhm, ma’am, your cat…” the girl said.

“It’s okay,” Barb said, mentally sighing. She focused on the demon and then Displayed, releasing the mental hold on her own aura and showing just a portion of her true power.

The drakni nearly hopped out of its skin and cowered down, blinking its huge eyes in a way that was vaguely appealing, like a puppy that had been shouted at.

“Down, Laz,” Barb added as the cat released a meow that sounded vaguely like a snicker. “I’ll take the grouper burger, hold the bread.”

“They’re not ganging up on me,” Barb said quietly as the waitress left.

“They saw enough to know not to,” Sharice said, sighing. “But they’ll follow. And they are ganging up on you. You’ve just managed to learn to suppress your Ear.”

“Not really,” Barb said. “I Hear what you mean, now. But there’s so much other white noise…” Now that she paid attention, she could hear the demons cat-calling at her. They were commenting meticulously on her looks and promising that they could make her look better if she’d just take one of them…

“Concentrate on one,” Sharice said, quietly.

“Kavam,” Barb said. “The one on our waitress’s shoulder. I can name off the rest.”

“The Mother?” Sharice asked.

“Uhm…” Barb said, looking over at the waitress. “She’s not talking.”

“Concentrate,” Sharice said. “It’s going to be there anyway.”

“Long…” Barb said after a moment. “I can hear it in my head, but I’m not sure I could pronounce it.”

“And thus we get to the whole unpronounceable name thing,” Sharice said. “But it’s not necessary. Concentrate on the name and then call it over.”

“It’s in someone,” Barb said.

“Just do it and watch.”

Barb concentrated on the waitress, who was delivering a tray of beers to a table, and fixed on the name of the demon, calling it to her. The waitress finished delivering the beers, then instead of heading to one of her tables or the waitress station, came over to Barb’s table.

“Welcome to Rubs,” the girl said, smiling. “Haven’t I seen you in here before?” she added, looking at Sharice.

“I love the atmosphere,” Sharice replied. “You’ve been here a while?”

“Since I turned eighteen,” the girl said. “But I’m getting tired of it. I’m thinking about changing jobs. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Of course not,” Sharice replied, smiling. “Our secret.”

“Uhm…” the waitress said, uncomfortably.

Barb realized that on concentrating on the demon, she’d been staring at the girl’s breasts.

“Sorry,” she coughed. “I was thinking about something. Penelope, that’s a nice name.”

“Thank you,” Penelope replied. “Well, I hope you gals stop by more often.”

“She thinks we’re lesbians,” Sharice said with a chuckle.

“I wonder where she’s going to move to,” Barb replied.

“Nowhere,” Sharice said. “This place is too fertile a ground for her Mother. New girls all the time, most of them fixated on the importance of looks. She’ll end up being a manager when she’s lost the looks to be a waitress. And with that demon riding her, that’s going to be quicker than normal. Vanity demons are like that. They promise beauty and make you ugly faster than smoking.”

“There’s nothing wrong with looking good,” Barb said, frowning.

“I agree,” Sharice said. “But there’s looking good for looking good’s sake, and looking good because it’s all you consider yourself to be. When you dress well and do your makeup, it’s almost a sacrifice to your God. It is one form of worship, whether you recognize it or not. In Janea’s case, for example, it truly is a form of worship. I’ve never brought her here. I’m frankly afraid of the effects.”

“Where is Janea?” Barb asked.

The Asatru High Priestess had been Barb’s partner on her first true case. While Barb was immensely more powerful, Janea, despite giving the air of being a bubblehead, was much more educated in the occult. They’d made a most effective team.

“In Chattanooga,” Sharice said, frowning. “There’s a really strange case up there. Not one case, actually. The problem is, there have been several people who have changed from quite normal to psychotic literally in moments. The FBI’s trying to figure out if it has Special Circumstances. Most of the killers haven’t fit the normal profile. Janea’s up there checking it out. In her own inimitable way, I’m sure.”

While Barb tended to dress well and becomingly, Janea went straight from “becoming” to “scandalous” without any of the normal intervening steps. When she got teamed with FBI agents, it was…humorous.

“Any reports?” Barb asked.

“Not that have come across my desk,” Sharice said as her phone started to play Ozzie Osborne’s “Over the Mountain.” “I’ll be right back. That’s Augustus.”

Barb had just picked up a chicken wing and bitten into it when Sharice came in looking for their waitress.

“We have to go,” the witch said, her face tight. “Right now.”

“Why?” Barb asked, setting down the wing and wiping her fingers.

“Funny you should have asked about Janea at that moment,” Sharice said. “Where is that waitress?!”

Barb closed her eyes and Called.

“I hope that’s not a sin,” she said, quietly. “Lord, I’m only using this demon, and the person that it rides, in Your works. If I have done wrong, I request some sort of sign.”

“Well, it worked,” Sharice said. “Here she comes.”

“Now what about Janea?” Barb asked.

“She’s in the hospital,” the witch replied. “I need the check. Now. A friend’s been hurt.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said. The demon on her shoulder was shuddering as if in pain.

“What did you do to that thing?” Sharice asked.

“I concentrated,” Barb said. “Hard. Janea.”

“It seems she might have found what is causing the problem,” Sharice said. “Unfortunately, they don’t know if she’s going to live. Augustus has arranged a plane.”