Demon Hunter

Jenny Schwartz

You can bleed and die banishing a demon, but Fay Olwen discovers there are worse hurts. Betrayed by the Collegium and by her father, she must build a new life away from New York. Leopard-shifter Steve Jekyll would have her build it with him. But loyalties are never simple and new love never easy. When demons are unleashed, Fay tracks the evil back to the Collegium, and now all hell will break loose because Fay fights for the innocent, and Steve will protect what is his.

For fans of kick-ass heroines and shifter heroes who are alpha-male and sinfully sexy.

Demon Hunter is a paranormal romance novella.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Note from the Author

Chapter 1

Fay Olwen walked cautiously through LaGuardia Airport. Security checks and luggage collection had been negotiated successfully, but her tiredness, the confusion of people and the knowledge that some magic users saw weakness as opportunity kept her scanning the crowd. With a demon in her pocket, she couldn’t afford to be challenged.

“If you continue ignoring me, people will guess I’m a bodyguard,” Steve Jekyll said.

He walked beside her with the deceptive slouch of a hunting cat, aware of everything and waiting for prey. The slouch matched his height to hers, six feet of daunting strength and speed. His dark hair and skin carried a hint of the Arabian deserts where his ancestors had hunted. He was a were-leopard, a mercenary and currently, her self-appointed guardian.

She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. “I told you I’d manage.”

“Yeah, but I watched you crawl out of the grave two days ago.”

“Not literally.”

“Damn near.” He met her eyes for a second, the dark brown lightening to aroused leopard.

She dropped her gaze. Magic had healed the broken bones and vicious wounds inflicted by the demon, but her mind remembered. Two days ago she had touched death in the jungle. A lesser magic user would have died.

The silver disk in her pocket heated and burned with the memory. She knew it was a sensation created by her damaged mind and spirit, but she strengthened the amulet’s warding anyway. LaGuardia didn’t need a demon loose in its environs. She flinched at the thought.

“You should have banished it,” Steve growled.

“My orders are that the researchers at the Collegium need to study the demon.” They’d had this conversation before the demon fight and after.

Steve regularly ventured onto battlefields, but it seemed demons were an unacceptable risk. “If they want it so badly, why aren’t they here to collect it?”

Good question. Apparently, she was demon fighter and courier. “Who better than a proven fighter to carry the disc?” She attempted a shrug.

He wasn’t buying. “Did you tell them it tore you up?”

“No.”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah.” Some of her tension relaxed as she released a sigh of wry acceptance. “I’m an idiot on so many levels.”

His shoulder bumped hers.

Touch was rare in her life and it took a couple of seconds for her to recognize the intent: comfort. She smiled. The bump would have staggered a lesser woman.

The doors of the airport opened, releasing them into the cold air of a New York spring day.

“Frigging weather. I hate this city.” Steve zipped his jacket. The well-worn leather emphasized his masculine presence and the aura of menace that clung to him. A person would have to be crazy to attack him.

The thought failed to cheer Fay. There were too many crazy magic users out there, men and women who’d abandoned both honor and commonsense. They kept the Collegium busy, neutralizing their threat. And the Collegium kept her busy. Automatically, she assessed the environment for danger, letting her senses test for the tug of magic.

“Cab or car? Did you drive to the airport, Fay?”

“No, I never do. We’ll need a cab.”

He grinned, and she realized what she’d said, “we”. She slowed and stopped a couple of feet from a cab. “No.”

“Glad to see you’ve accepted reality.” He slung her bag and his into the trunk of the cab. “Until that damned amulet is the Collegium’s problem, you’re stuck with me.”

And despite her “no”, she was glad for his presence. She was the demon hunter, but Steve had his own kind of power. Still, she had no claim on him. “It’s not your problem.”

“I’m the one who asked for you to deal with the demon. After last year, I knew you’d cope.” He frowned at her. “I didn’t know the Collegium would insist on binding not banishing it. You’re in this mess because of my request.”

“Like you said, you didn’t know what the Collegium would order.” She tried humor. “Apparently, they feel exorcism is wasteful.”

He grumbled low in his throat. It was the warning of a big cat. In leopard form he’d have lashed his tail.

She ignored the threat. “Demons channel a great deal of magic and it’s not limited by the form they possess. The Collegium wants to know how they do it.”

“Demons are evil.” His tone of voice said that sum of knowledge was all a sensible person needed to know about demons.

Fay shrugged. She more than half agreed with him. She opened the cab door and slid in.

He followed, his big body nudging and pushing at her, insisting that she make room for him. Like in the plane, where he’d been too big for his economy class seat, but having him between her and the aisle, between her and the world, had helped her feel safe. Well, as safe as a woman could feel with a demon in her pocket.

“Where to?” the cab driver demanded.

She gave the Collegium’s address while she scanned for magic or its residue in the cab. Some magic users left behind them traces of spells they carried, or actively planted watch-spells, trawling for information they could use or trade. Fay was in no mood to have others’ magic around her. A neutral environment was best for containing demons.

Thankfully, the vehicle came up completely mundane—except for Steve.

His presence filled the small space. Anger against the Collegium vibrated from him and infected the driver.

The man’s shoulders hunched and he drove the cab like a rabbit darting for safety.

It added to the thrill of New York traffic, but Fay’s plan was to live. She put a hand on Steve’s knee.

He stilled.

Good. Her shoulders relaxed as he responded to her unspoken warning. His shoulder bump in the airport had reminded her that weres used touch to communicate. In the circumstances, it seemed preferable than using magic or saying something the driver might overhear.

She left her hand a moment on his knee. The rare indulgence of human contact made her absurdly aware of the smooth weave of his jeans against her fingers, and the warmth of his skin heating the fabric. When she inhaled, his scent pushed against the stale cab odor.

Her whole body relaxed, losing the hyper-vigilance of the airport. That wouldn’t do. She withdrew her hand. She was tired, and therefore, susceptible to the innate power of an alpha were. Steve felt protective and she was tempted to allow herself the luxury of leaning on another’s strength. Her hand curled in her lap, wanting to reach out and touch him again.

“If you want to calm me, I respond well to stroking.”

The low, near soundless purr whispered against her ear. Steve leaned in close, his body angling protective and dominant, shutting out the driver.

A shiver danced down her spine. Men had whispered in her ear before, on Collegium-ordered missions. They’d whispered intel and commands.

But this was different. “You’re flirting?” No one flirted with her. No one touched her. No one teased and tantalized her senses.

His fingers traced her throat as she swallowed. “I’ve watched you fight and heal, face fear and win. I’ve sat beside you for hours inhaling your scent, ylang-ylang and rose. And then you touched me.”

“All weres touch.” Her voice was as low as his, as intimate as their breaths mingling.

“You’re not a were.”

For a second, the old sense of exclusion, of not being wanted, claimed her.

He nuzzled her throat. “For you to touch, you must trust. You trust me.”

She shivered, simultaneously excited and afraid that he’d understood her so well—and that he was right. She did trust him. “Steve.”

His eyes blazed. “If we were anywhere else…”

“Without an audience.” She could see the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He couldn’t hear them, but he could see, and he was curious.

“I’m coming home with you.”

“Yes.” Her agreement came without thought.

Steve’s power surged. Triumph, satisfaction, relief, anticipation. He gripped her hand and sat back. “Yes.”

Energy that was sheer sexual chemistry flowed between them. Fay shuddered at the raw, rare sensation. Second thoughts bit at her, reminding her of her usual caution. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

His grip tightened.

One heartbeat, two. The driver muttered a rude assessment of other road users. He seemed to have a problem with cyclists.

Steve’s grip relaxed and he ran a thumb over her knuckles. “We’ll talk.”

She turned her head against the headrest and looked at him.

Lounging in the back seat he was big, tough and intent. She had seen him kill a man and cuddle a toddler too terrified for tears. She had trusted him with her knife, the blade enchanted to kill anything and to banish demons. If she’d failed to contain the demon, she’d trusted him to exorcise it.

He had returned the knife to her and waited in the ruins of the jungle village while her bones knit and her skin crawled together. Then he’d torched the clearing—and the “Village of the Dead”, as the locals called it, ceased to exist.

The cab stopped in front of a familiar building; one that was all steel, glass, and pretension: the Collegium.

Fay’s memories stopped, too. As did her sense of comfort and connection to Steve. Habit wound her in protective attitude and magic. She’d fought and survived demons, but inside the Collegium were far less predictable and far more numerous opponents.

The Collegium maintained a low profile. It blended in. To the mundane world it was one of numerous think-tanks specializing in analysis of international affairs. In reality, the Collegium had an active role in protecting the world.

Only a tiny percentage of the population were magic users. In earlier centuries Western magic users put their magic to the service of God and kept a low profile. Werewolves were Knights Templar, mages were priests and exorcists, and witches wove the cloths and tapestries that made churches sanctuaries. Then with the rise of Modernism in the late Nineteenth Century, magic users pulled away from both the Church and from an increasingly aggressive scientific society. They existed in secret and apart from humanity

But the First World War destroyed the illusion that they could exist alone. If they ignored the blood, violence and suffering of millions, then they denied their own humanity. Hundreds of magic users fought and died in the trenches of that horrible war, but they should have fought earlier and smarter. They should have stood against the magic users who’d allied themselves with evil and fed on the violence.

Theodore Coomb, Fay’s great-grandfather, survived the trenches, and so did the men under his command. The experience formed him as a protector of humanity. He’d faced evil unprepared, and swore he’d never do so again. He created the Collegium and brought together like-minded magic users to track evil, fight it and heal its effects.

The Second World War showed how frail the Collegium’s efforts were against magic users and mundanes who allied with evil to rule as demon kings. To serve the Collegium required total dedication. The scroll above the Collegium doors read, Serviam. I will serve.

Fay shuddered and tugged her hand free of Steve’s hold. Cold replaced the warm excitement of arousal.

I will serve.

How could she forget? How could she think about herself or waste time dreaming dreams? This wasn’t about her life or her needs. She had a demon in her pocket, its scars on her spirit and a duty to complete.

“I’ve got it,” she said, forestalling Steve’s reach for his wallet. She magicked her credit card into her hand and paid the driver, aware that Steve watched with narrowed eyes before sliding out to retrieve their luggage from the trunk. She waited long enough that he had time to place her bag on the sidewalk, but he didn’t.

The cab departed and Steve stood, holding her bag.

“I have to deliver a verbal report,” she said carefully.

His brief nod acknowledged the statement.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take.” She would have to report to Captain Lewis Bennett who ran the guardian forces, and perhaps to her father, the President. Collegium research staff might have questions about the wardings she’d added to the amulet, double-binding the demon.

“You’ve changed your mind.” He put her bag down on the sidewalk between them and folded his arms.

“Yes.”

Out in the cold air with the smell of car fumes and the noise of the city, his impact on her senses should have lessened. Instead she was intensely aware of the life in him, of his vital warmth. She had the disconcerting, oddly whimsical thought that he was a fire-lit cabin in the heart of a blizzard, and she was outside, freezing, as she looked in, with the door forever barred to her.

He touched her face, his calloused fingers gentle. “Why?”

Tears lodged achingly in her throat. “I can’t.” Her gaze slid betrayingly from his hard face to the Collegium behind them.

“I would wait for you.”

His fingers were warm against her skin. His low, rough voice soothed and coaxed. He was offering casual sex and caring, and either, in their own way, would destroy her. They would open her to wanting more.

She stooped, dislodging his touch, and picked up her bag. Even trying to answer him made her vulnerable. She couldn’t spill her emotions on the steps of the Collegium. He made her feel—and that was unacceptable. She looked at him. “Please.”

A harsh, indrawn breath answered her.

Fay dropped her gaze, appalled by what he might have read in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

“You’re scared.”

“Not of you.”

“Who?” Voice, body, aura, everything about him vowed vengeance.

“I don’t know. Of myself.” Her breath choked in a strangled half-laugh. “Of how I feel.” Serviam. I will serve. Standing on Collegium ground, the words bit into her bones. She felt as if she balanced on jagged glass. One fall and she’d be gutted. She would bleed out.

“I’ve never had a lover. I can’t take one, now.” The truth, harsh and painful, freed her feet. She ran, and left him standing on the bottom step scowling after her.

Chapter 2

Fay’s boots rang on the polished granite floor of the Collegium foyer. The rhythm was too fast and uncollected, revealing her distress. She recognized the giveaway and paused between one step and the next. If she couldn’t force calm, she could pretend it.

Three men and a woman sat at a grouping of sofas and chairs in the corner, intent on their own discussion. The receptionist smiled at nothing, talking on the phone. Then like mice scenting the cat, they all turned, sighted her and went still. The receptionist hung up his phone.

“Ms. Olwen.” At the Collegium, receptionists were chosen for their courage. While mundane politicians and business people came through the front door, anything could come through the back door, the roof or the basement. The receptionist was smoothly charming. “Welcome back. Mr. Olwen is expecting you.”

The four expensively dressed people in the corner returned to their discussion after shuffling to keep her in sight.

Fay’s hand tightened on the bag she carried. She had hoped to steal some time before seeing her father: an hour, a day, a month. She was raw from her encounter with Steve, and Richard Olwen was a master at using someone’s emotional turmoil against them. He had done it all her life.

“Thank you.” Defying his order would bring retribution and Collegium gossip. If it had been dangerous to show weakness at the airport, here it was positively suicidal. A magic user who brought her down, would make their own reputation.

She marched across to the bank of elevators and stabbed the call button. Inside the cage, she kept her shoulders square, aware that cameras recorded every moment in the Collegium building.

The Collegium guardians had always resented her power and her father’s ambition. Her training to become one had been a test of endurance, punctuated with challenges. She’d become accustomed to blocking out her anger and pain. Fear, she’d learned recently, was more insidious.

Steve had banished that fear for the length of a cab ride, encouraging in her the ridiculous hope of intimacy.

She remembered how he’d looked in the jungle when he’d stripped off his shirt and offered it to her in place of her demon-torn and bloodied clothes. The shirt had smelled of him, and returned her to the warmth of human existence. She’d hugged his shirt around her for reassurance.

Steve couldn’t protect her, here.

Her shoulders tensed despite herself. The frightening reality was that she didn’t know the source of her fear. Dread had become a constant companion, and it screamed at her when she stepped inside the Collegium. She couldn’t even blame the demon because she’d felt like this before answering Steve’s call of a demon on the loose.

The elevator doors chimed open, allowing in a swirl of warm, perfumed air.

Fay shifted from introspection to combat alertness. That scent, expensive and cloying, had always meant battle. She strode out, broadcasting confidence.

“Ms. Olwen,” Nancy Yu said. It was a naming, not a greeting.

Nancy was Richard’s secretary and mistress, and Fay was the child of his failed marriage. Fay’s mother had rejected everything Nancy had never been offered. But a three year old child doesn’t understand the reason for an adult’s hatred. A seven year old child learns to protect herself.

As an adult, Fay fought back, with politeness. “Good morning, Nancy.” For all the emotion in her voice, she could have been addressing office furniture. If others saw that self-protective distancing as arrogance, let them. Nancy should never have taken out her anger on a child.

Richard should have stopped the behavior for both their sakes.

Fay paused and looked around. The outer office had been redecorated, again.

It was Nancy’s lair, and designed to provide a suitable backdrop for her rigorously maintained beauty. Hints of peacock blue in the Persian carpet were picked up and repeated in an accent wall and in a large glass vase that sat on a low table. Fronds of exotic grass extended from it, head high, dead and dried. A bronze sun disk flared across the wall behind Nancy, its rays giving the impression that she wore a crown.

Queen Bitch. Her own burst of bitterness shocked Fay. Nancy wasn’t worth such hate; wasn’t powerful enough for Fay to attack. Then again, there were forms of power other than magic.

“Richard is expecting you.” Nancy’s cool voice accused Fay of sloppy time-keeping. Her scornful gaze scanned Fay’s travel-mussed blonde braid, the crumpled collar of her unbelted coat and the worn jeans beneath it with their faded spots where bleach had taken out blood stains. Apparently her sturdy boots were a final insult, because Nancy reared back in her seat. Her own feet were delicately clad in lethal high heels.

The derogatory appraisal sourly amused Fay. “If I wore high heels, I’d be taller than Dad. He’d hate it.”

Startled, Nancy met her eyes, and the two women in his life shared a unique moment of understanding: the President hid a dangerous insecurity.

And why has it taken me this long to acknowledge it? Fay dropped her bag, letting the thump of it distract them both.

“May I leave this, here?” When she looked at Nancy, they were back in their familiar roles of wary duelists.

“If you must.” Nancy granted grudging permission for the scruffy bag to temporarily contaminate her elegant setting.

Fay knocked and entered her father’s office.

One step took her from a feminine domain to a masculine den. Her father’s office smelled of expensive cologne, leather and the ozone of strong magic. Richard believed in wards and spent most of his minor magic on them. He wasn’t a powerful mage, but had achieved his eminent position in the Collegium by relentless ambition. That drive for power disciplined his life—and had defined Fay’s.

“Good morning, Dad.”

“Do you have the demon?”

The typical exchange provoked an unhappy smile from her. There she was observing the courtesies, while Richard made his demands. But perhaps he didn’t need to use careful politeness as a protection against others’ expectations and envy? His shield was arrogance.

She fished the silver disk from her jeans pocket and stared at it as it lay in her palm. It felt light. “I nearly died for this.”

“Problems?” Richard raised an interrogative eyebrow and leaned back. Now that he’d seen the amulet, he could adopt his usual pose of detachment. Fifty eight years old and still physically strong, he’d drilled a generation of guardians into respecting and fearing him.

“It was the strongest demon, yet.” Fay sat, uninvited. She let the familiar routine of reporting steady her. “Steve was right. The whole village called the demon. I felt age and youth, not many men. A survivors’ village.” The sort of place that appeared and disappeared in a long-running civil war. The people ran from one atrocity, only to be caught in the next. These people had decided to stop running. “They must have been so scared.”

Great pride could contemplate calling a demon. So could anger. But fear was the most desperate reason—and in the end, it always hurt worst.

The demon summoned and bound by the villagers’ blood broke its binding and entered a new host, the warlord Leo. He was why Steve called her.

People do evil things, but demons laugh at the atrocities. Once heard, demon laughter is never forgotten. Steve and Fay had fought a demon before and Steve had invited her back to do so again.

They returned to the original village because it was marginally easier to exorcise a demon if you acted at the site of its release. The rupture in reality could be torn again to return the demon to hell. Fay had hoped it would also aid the demon’s transference and capture in the amulet.

“We returned to the village and everyone was dead. Trees, huts, people, everything hacked down by machete. Something hadn’t wanted to waste bullets. Or it had wanted the greater bloodshed.”

In the village of the dead, chickens pecked among the corpses. The jungle animals had stayed clear of the evil. Steve’s eyes had flared to yellow and his upper lip pulled back in a silent snarl, but he ruled his instincts and not vice versa. He’d prowled the perimeter, then entered.

“The demon responded to my summoning, coming in the body of the warlord. We fought.” Magic against magic, until the demon closed with her, raking her body with unnatural claws.

When she thought back, it must have required enormous self-control for Steve to stand out of the fight. He had trusted her and her judgment.

“I won in the end.”

The vicious wounds pulsed a moment in memory. She’d lain on the ground, too raw for touch, her breath bubbling as she called magic to heal the unnatural violence. Ants ran over the drying puddle of her blood. She met her father’s pale blue eyes and mentioned none of the fight or its aftermath.

“The warlord died and I drove the demon into the amulet. It’s double-warded.” She looked down at the silver disc. It sat in her palm, warm with blood heat. “Do you want to call a researcher to come and claim it?”

“Don’t you trust me with it?” The thin smile said Richard was pleased and risking a rare joke.

Fay’s fingers closed about the disc. Her phantom wounds throbbed again. Here was the problem, the source and power of her disintegration. She just hadn’t wanted to see it. “No, I don’t trust you.”

The challenge jerked him straight in his executive chair.

“Fay.” Part protest, part scold. Richard eased back, gathering the power of his position. “If you’ve warded the amulet correctly my lesser,” he emphasized the word with acid. “My lesser power won’t matter. The demon will remain bound.”

Once again, any blame was deflected and became Fay’s. She identified the ploy with weary clarity. Her greater power as a mage was Richard’s weapon in so many ways.

She placed the silver disk on the mahogany desk. It gleamed against the polished surface.

“You can have the amulet, Dad.” There was little relief in relinquishing the demon. “You know, the Collegium has always watched to see if I get special treatment, being your daughter. They’ve been watching for the wrong thing. When you can’t get me to do something because I’m a guardian, you ask me as your daughter, and it’s the same in reverse. The person being used, here, is me.”

She stood. “I don’t trust you because I can’t.” And so she balanced on jagged glass. “You ask too much and you take too much. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see it.”

Because I love you. Because I want you to love me.

“I tried to tell you I’m burning out, but you gave me the spiel, all about service to the Collegium.” She could hear the echo of the cold words in the heavy air of the office.

Her father’s voice in her memory, calm, measured and distant. “It’s battle fatigue, Fay. I know it feels like you can’t go any further. All powerful guardians go through this stage. Fieldwork is the answer. Aggression will channel your fear and anger. Fight through it and you’ll be tempered steel, pure warrior. Nothing will touch you.”

“I gave you good advice,” he said now.

“Did you? You gave me words and orders to hone me as a weapon. Another demon fight, and another. Harpies, rogue mages.” Her breath shuddered. The pain of betrayal was no less acute for being belatedly recognized. “You don’t care about my feelings, my empty life.”

“I advised you to take Lewis Bennett as a partner. He shares the guardian life.”

“And has a ruined marriage and burnt-out powers, but he’s loyal. My father, the pimp.”

“That’s enough.” Richard roared to his feet.

“Yes. It’s enough.” Her lungs were crushed with the ashes of her old life, the ruin of the world she’d been trained to serve. Once she opened her eyes and looked, it was all too much. Intolerable. She had bled agony for the Collegium, and for what? Her father’s ambition? “I resign.”

“You can’t.”

The simple, satisfied certainty in his voice shattered the last of Fay’s control. As President of the Collegium, Richard thought he owned her oath to it. He was wrong.

Her misery translated into power. Raw magic tore through the room. It hunted down the oath ties and drilled loyalties that bound her to the Collegium. They ripped from her father’s grasp and incinerated.

“I resign.” She met his glare. Collegium training had given her one gift: despite the wounds that bled and shivered inside her, she gave no physical sign. Training gave her the strength to walk out with dignity.

“You’re no longer my daughter.” He followed her to shout it from his office door.

Nancy stared, wide-eyed. The large glass vase lay in shards on the coffee table.

Fay scooped up her bag and kept walking. Mouth set in a grim line, chin up, shoulders straight. Her boots sank in the deep carpet, then struck the wooden flooring of the corridor.

Collegium staff, drawn by her storm of power, watched from office doorways. Fay ignored the elevator and clattered down the stairs. More staring eyes waited in the foyer. Some among them would have felt the snap of her ties of belonging. Any number would have heard Richard’s shout.

And not one was a friend to offer sympathy or a farewell. Rage stirred because they had all used her power. She was the mage without limits on the magic she could call and control. Theodore Coomb’s bloodline had triumphed in her. Richard’s gamble in marrying Yolanthe, Theodore’s granddaughter, had paid off.

Until now.

She refused to play to the gallery. She ignored the curious stares and murmur of speculation that ran behind her. But the internal tremors were worsening. She would not fall apart in the Collegium.

She hit the outer doors at a near run. Despite herself, she looked for Steve.

“Stupid.” She’d made herself clear and what man would wade through rejection for her? She was a bad risk.

“No.” She widened her eyes, defying the rare tears to fall. One spilled. “Hell.”

She ran down the steps. Her apartment was close by, but it was a Collegium rental and the thought of staying there sent a shiver along her spine. She took it as a warning and instead plunged downtown. Her father’s revenge would be unpredictable. Without her, his position in the Collegium might be challenged. Despite his repudiation of their relationship, he’d send someone after her.

Training made it instinctive to use the confusion of public transport to avoid pursuit. She moved carelessly through the subway crowd, her bag making her just another traveler and one uncertain of her direction. A pickpocket veered towards her, mistaking her for a tourist.

She caught the teenager’s wrist and her fingers curved around unexpected fragility. She could break the thin bones without magic.

He stared at her, frozen, as predator became prey.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

God, it tore her heart.

He used her momentary distraction to pull away. He ran through the crowd, the slap of his sneakers lost in the noise of a train’s arrival.

Fay rubbed her eyes. So many kids out there, lost, homeless, victims in waiting. What would she have done if she hadn’t lost the kid? Bought him a meal? Given money? Walked on and forgotten him?

She sighed, spine slumping, as she boarded a train. At least she had money, experience and the dubious advantage of adulthood. Whatever happened, she’d survive. But she and the boy had something in common: if they survived, they survived alone.

By the time she reached one of the cramped, down-at-heels hotels that accepted cash and asked no questions, she was out on her feet. The bed had clean sheets and she crashed, letting the tiredness of the journey from Africa carry her beyond thought and into welcome darkness.

She had found the source of her fear and it wore her father’s face.

Chapter 3

Fay stared at the ceiling. A crazed plaster crack ran across the left corner.

You’re no longer my daughter.

She needed—craved—sleep to restore the energy she’d lost in Africa, but the relentless clamor of New York rasped against her nerves like an enemy bombardment, growing louder as evening turned to night. And deeper, within her, was a vibrating rawness where she’d torn away her binding to the Collegium. She had been its creature all her life.

Now she was her own.

“I do not serve.”

Panic spiked through her and she flung herself out of bed. Her isolation in the Collegium had been underpinned by the bedrock of duty. Without it she had nothing. No purpose, no direction, no structure to her life. Hell, she had no life.

She couldn’t lie there any longer, trying to sleep. Instead, she stripped and showered, tilting her face to the sting of cold water, smelling the rust in it. She rinsed her hair and braided it wet, tightly confining the strands.

The hollow feeling in her stomach could be ascribed to hunger and she welcomed the physical need. It was something she could deal with, something to get her out of the room and away from her thoughts. She laced her boots, checking the steel-sharp ironwood knife tucked in the ankle sheath.

Her hand hesitated on the haft. But Collegium training held. Habit was strong when you felt vulnerable, so she faced the world armed.

The hotel corridor smelled of bathroom cleaner and room deodorizer. The elevator stunk of cigarettes. Fay held her breath, exhaling as the elevator doors opened at the first floor. She took a deep breath of the cleaner air, itself heavy with city fumes.

“Faith?” A small, blonde woman rose from the stained sofa in the hotel’s foyer.

Blood pounded against Fay’s temples. Blackness sparked with lightning darkened the edge of her vision. She stopped, afraid she’d fall or vomit.

The stranger rushed forward, hands out to help.

Fay retreated. Her ungraceful stagger bumped her into a wall and she stayed there, letting its support steady her as the world reeled.

“Faith, I’m sorry.” The woman’s hands gripped and twisted each other. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me. I thought Richard would have destroyed all the photos.”

“He did.”

Richard had a way of disowning his failures. You’re no longer my daughter.

Fay looked into her mother’s face and couldn’t say how she recognized her. They looked nothing alike. Fay’s oval face was strong-boned, a match to her body, while the older woman was rounded, snub nosed and frankly plain. Only their tawny blonde hair suggested a likeness, and her mother’s was silvering

Perhaps it was the tentative eagerness of the woman’s expression that had sparked Fay’s instincts. The fact that this stranger truly looked at her, as if Fay and not her magic, was important. As if there were no ulterior motives in this meeting.

“But you know me?” Strain drew deep lines from the woman’s nose to her mouth. Her make up stood out clownish as the blood receded from her face and left her pale. “Richard would say blood called to blood. He was obsessed with bloodlines.”

“Yes.” Fay had pieced together the story of her parents’ ill-fated marriage from chance-heard gossip and Nancy’s spite. She knew Richard’s obsession wasn’t with bloodlines. It was with power.

Magic increased and dropped away in four generations. A strong grandmother had a weak daughter, a slightly stronger granddaughter and a powerful great-granddaughter. It didn’t always happen that way, but often enough to be a general rule.

Arguably the inheritance effect protected the world from a magical family’s dictatorship.

Richard Olwen married Yolanthe Cage because her grandparents had been powerful mages, founding and presiding over the Collegium. Richard’s ambition outstripped his powers, but he had the intelligence and arrogance to push beyond those limits. And what he couldn’t be, his child would achieve.

Yolanthe was the weakest generation of her family, raising the odds that her child would be powerful. Richard gambled with fate and won. Fay was born with all the magic of her mother’s family and something all of her own.

However, at Fay’s birth, Yolanthe discovered why Richard had married her. Perhaps if she hadn’t loved him, the betrayal would have been less. As it was, she ran. She would not grant him another child by her.

But he kept Fay.

“Why now?” The question burst from Fay. Her chest ached. She flattened her hands against the wall, ignoring the desk clerk’s interested stare. Much more pressure and she’d break apart. She had lived years without as much emotion as this one day held.

“Because the warding against me broke a few hours ago. Suddenly, I could sense where you were. I could make contact. Faith, I came as soon as I could.”

“Why?”

Yolanthe flinched.

“Lady, get outta the way.” A burly man brushed past them, his work clothes stained with sweat and stinking. A tired woman walked resignedly after him. Client and prostitute.

“We can’t talk, here.” Fay looked around the dingy foyer and met the desk clerk’s eyes. He turned away. “I have to eat.” Hunger was undoubtedly contributing to her spacey feeling. It was twenty four hours since she’d eaten anything but airline food.

“I think I walked past an Italian restaurant on the corner.”

“That’ll do,” Fay said.

They walked fast since Yolanthe’s blue sweater wasn’t a match for New York’s cold. She shivered and crossed her arms.

“You don’t live here?” It could have been small talk, but it wasn’t. Fay was curious, part of her needing to know who this woman, her mother, was.

“I live in Fremantle, Western Australia. We’ve just had a long, hot summer. To me, this is freezing.”

“Africa was hot.” Fay spoke without thinking. Australia was as far from the Collegium as it was possible for Yolanthe to run.

“You lived in Africa?”

“No. I just did a job. A demon binding.”

Despite the cold, Yolanthe stopped. “You bound a demon?”

“Collegium business.” She shouldn’t have mentioned it.

“The Collegium banishes demons. It doesn’t bind them,” Yolanthe said definitely. “Demons don’t belong in this world.”

“They’ve been coming through.” Fay frowned as her mother shivered again. “Let’s get inside.”

The restaurant was warm and filled with cooking smells. Plastic table cloths hung limply in the narrow, crowded space. A teenage waitress seated them and scribbled their order for lasagna and chicken tortellini. She dumped a basket of herb bread between them.

Fay ate a piece of bread, aware of how closely Yolanthe watched her. It made it difficult to study her in return, unless she outstared her. It didn’t seem worth the effort.

“You’re beautiful.”

“Hardly.” Fay wiped her buttery fingers on a paper napkin.

“You are. Beautiful strong bones. And tall. I always wanted to be tall.” Yolanthe sighed. “You’re not really like Richard or me. Grandmother’s grandmother was an ex-slave.”

Fay blinked.

“Grandmother said she walked so tall. She was proud of who she was—free—and what she’d survived. Courage made her beautiful. I will always remember Grandmother saying that. The lives we lead, every decision, it shows on our faces.”

“Not with Botox, it doesn’t.” The conversation and its direction confused Fay. Where were the apologies, the explanations, the reasons for Yolanthe’s appearance? From Australia to New York was no small journey.

“Here are our meals.” Yolanthe looked beyond Fay to the kitchen and sat back in her chair.

The waitress thumped down their plates and retreated.

Fay picked up her fork. The tortellini was good, flavored with basil. It filled and warmed her.

Yolanthe was slower to start eating. “I’ve spent years thinking of all the things I’d say to you when we finally met, and now, they don’t seem important. My daughter is sitting across the table from me.”

The open emotion that set Yolanthe searching for the paper napkin to blot her tears sat awkwardly with Fay. She swallowed a mouthful of tortellini, found it suddenly dry and drank some water.

“I never thought of you at all.” She winced at the baldness of the statement, the cruelty of it as a response to Yolanthe’s tears.

“I know.” Yolanthe wadded the paper napkin. “That was Richard’s warding, keeping me away.”

“Are you saying Dad bound me not to think of you?” It was just possible that a warding begun in infancy and reinforced every year could constrain her greater power. Until she blasted all ties this morning. “Oh my God, he kept me from you.”

The deep internal shudders of the morning returned. He’d isolated her on purpose—even from her mother, and she hadn’t known. “How much of my life has he twisted?”

Yolanthe shook her head, distressed. “In the beginning, Richard was right to keep me from you. When I learned why he’d married me.” She broke off. “Have you heard the gossip?”

“That he married you for your bloodline, gambling on a baby like me, a new tool for his ambition.”

“I don’t think he meant to use you.” Yolanthe abandoned even the pretense of interest in her meal and pushed aside the plate of lasagna. “I was too young to see how much he resented those with more power than him. He wanted a child who couldn’t be patronized or sidelined. All his discipline and effort couldn’t narrow the gap against a stronger magic user. Richard wanted you to have that effortless mastery.”

“Effortless.” Fay stabbed a piece of pasta. “I can’t remember a time when Dad wasn’t training me in magic, in fighting, in Collegium knowledge. He wouldn’t allow me friendships with mundane school friends because they might distract me from learning to be a guardian. Other Collegium guardians begin training at eighteen. By eighteen, I could defeat any master at the Collegium. My formal training was short and brutal as they all tried to take me down.”

“Faith.” Yolanthe looked sick.

Fay struggled to force back the volcano of emotion. Anger and pain ran through her like lava, deep and scarring.

“Do you know my reputation is for detached control?” Fay abandoned her meal. Her stomach was too knotted to eat. “Today, I’ve accepted and rejected a lover, rejected my father and my job, which is the only identity I’ve ever had, and met you. I don’t think I can claim emotional detachment anymore.”

“Why would you want to?” Yolanthe put her hand out. “You’re a living, breathing, hurting person. You’re allowed to show that hurt. I’m desperately sorry for my part in it. I should have been braver.”

“Can we leave?” Fay pushed back her chair.

“Of course.”

Fay dropped enough money and over to cover the meal and headed for the door. The walls of the restaurant were falling in on her and the other diners had grown sly-eyed and threatening. “I can’t do this. I can’t hear your excuses or face anything more about Dad, about who I am.”

“It’s okay.” Yolanthe’s hand on her arm stopped Fay in the street. “We don’t have to talk, but you’re not returning to that hotel. I’m not much of a mom, but a friend wouldn’t leave you there. Come home with me.”

“Australia. I can’t.” It was more than the official papers required. The thought of the long flight daunted Fay physically and psychically. She couldn’t stay locked in a tin can that long. “I can’t.”

“I have a portal.”

The simple statement broke through Fay’s panic. She stared at Yolanthe.

“Actually, it’s not mine. It’s my husband’s. Jim traded travel with Cynthia here in New York. She’ll send us home. If you’re willing?”

“You married again?”

“It took me a couple of decades. After Richard, I went self-destructive. Jim taught me to trust again.”

Fay shook her head. The world wasn’t making sense. “But you said Jim owns a portal?”

“Oh, he’s crazy.” Yolanthe readily picked up Fay’s doubt. “All portal managers are mad. But Jim’s madness is the good kind.”

Fay sagged against a grimy wall. She really needed time to process this horrible day with its twists and turns.

“Come home,” Yolanthe said simply.

Home. All Fay had ever had was the Collegium. “All right.” At this point, any direction would do. Home? “I need to get my bag.”

Chapter 4

The portal was in the basement of a house in Queens. It was not the official Collegium-recognized portal for New York, nor was Cynthia Nguyen a Collegium-recognized porter.

She was, however, typically portal crazy.

In her case, the mania took the form of collecting soft toys. Teddy bears, rabbits, ducks, cartoon characters and rag dolls filled shelf after shelf in the heated basement. Magic animated each toy and they ruffed, quacked and chatted in a low volume clamor.

“They’re company,” Cynthia said. “And Squiffy guards the portal.”

Squiffy was a blue lamb that fluffed its fleece in pleasure at being mentioned. Then it nibbled at the green line enclosing the portal. The line flickered and sparked.

“Instinct.” Cynthia smiled fondly at the blue lamb. “Isn’t Mama’s Squiffy a funny baa-lamb, trying to chew the portal?”

Squiffy sneezed and trotted over to butt Cynthia’s shin.

“Quite right,” she said. “Jim is waiting to hear from us. Are you ready, ladies?”

“Ready and eager to be home,” Yolanthe said.

“Good.” Cynthia extended her hand over the line of green light. Her physical intrusion into the portal was sufficient to trigger its powers. “Jim, are you there? You owe me travelling time.”

“I pay my debts, Cyn. Send them on through.” The Australian drawl sounded clear despite the portal’s echo.

Cynthia pinched two dabs of green light and tagged Fay and Yolanthe.

Immediately, Yolanthe stepped over the green line and vanished.

“As casual as a stroll in the park.” Cynthia nodded approval. “Clear to see her partner’s a porter.” She frowned at Fay. “Hurry it up.”

“Thank you for use of your portal,” Fay said meticulously. It didn’t offer her nearly as much delay as she suddenly wanted. How had she forgotten how much she hated portal travel and the need to trust her safety to a stranger?

Easily. Yolanthe’s offer of portal travel had given her the chance to escape the city and evade the Collegium’s trackers. That was worth the discomfort.

“Thank Jim.” Cynthia flapped her hand in a shooing gesture. “Get on through.”

Fay glanced down at the tag of green light on her arm, braced herself for the shock of immersion, and stepped into the portal.

The basement vanished. Around her the darkness was lit by slowly swirling stars. There was no up or down. Her disorientation was complete. Only the green light still glowing on her arm reassured her that Cynthia could always find and retrieve her. She walked forward three more steps and the cheerful Australian voice said. “There you are.”

Blue light zapped her, dislodging Cynthia’s green.

Her fourth step took Fay out of the darkness and through another portal.

The blue light faded, leaving a small square cellar softly lit by an unshaded, low watt light globe. The walls were honey-colored, rough-cut limestone, the floor white beach sand, and hundreds of sea shells spread in patterns over the floor and on niches in the walls. The hushing sound of the sea filled the crowded space like a lullaby.

Fay wasn’t comforted. She shuddered and shook like a dog coming out of an unwanted cold bath.

“Hell, Yolly. The kid’s not portal fit.” A short, broad man who could only be Jim, scowled at Yolanthe even as he grabbed Fay’s arm. He bristled like a grey-haired terrier. “Up the ladder with you.”

The ceiling was barely higher than Fay’s head, yet the crude wooden ladder seemed dauntingly tall. Her legs were wobbly, but her hands grasped the ladder firmly. She knew from experience that she’d feel better away from the portal. “Promise me coffee and I’ll make it up the ladder.”

“You can have a whole pot full,” Jim said.

“If you fall, I’ll catch you,” Yolanthe added.

Fay choked on a laugh.

Jim put his head back and roared. “She’s double your size, darl.”

“I’d manage.”

The concern and determination in Yolanthe’s voice were unfamiliar to Fay. No one caught her when she fell. Life lessons of self-reliance sent her up the ladder faster than prudence dictated. She emerged into a tidy storage space and shuffled aside as Yolanthe and then Jim followed, carrying Fay’s bag. He closed and bolted the trap door and kicked a cotton mat over it.

“Coffee.” Jim lead the way through a cement-floored laundry room with a double sink and large table beneath the louvered window.

The kitchen was across a wide hallway. Fay blinked at the bright sunlight. She wasn’t up to calculating time differences, but the cuckoo clock above the sink read half past ten. She had lost half a day and it was morning again. For all the disorientation in the portal, the experience would have been no more than a minute, tagged as she’d been from porter to porter.

“I’m sorry, Fay. I didn’t see you weren’t portal fit. Nor did Cynthia.” Yolanthe’s forehead wrinkled at the final thought. “Jim?”

“Yeah.” He poured coffee into three mugs. “Cyn should have seen. I owe you an apology, Yolly. How’d you hide it, Faith?”

She accepted the mug of coffee, refusing milk and sugar, and wrapped her fingers around the heat. “My weakness, my problem.” She’d had practice.

“Huh.” Jim snorted. He rummaged through a bread box and loaded a plate with an assortment of pastries and rolls. “Come and sit in the conservatory. You look like you need warming up.”

“Like last night’s leftovers?”

Jim grinned. “You’ll do.”

The conservatory failed to live up to its grand name. It was a relaxed space off the kitchen. Someone had glassed in half the back veranda and filled it with potted ferns, orchids and white wicker furniture. Through the glass you could see a brilliant blue sky and closer at hand a backyard with a third of it graveled for parking and the rest divided into lawn and garden.

Fay chose a chair in the sunlight and sunk into it gratefully. She concentrated on her coffee and the heat of the sun. The muscle-eating chill of the portal gradually eased, taking with it the distressing shudders of weakness.

“Have a pastry.” Yolanthe pushed the plate towards Fay.

“I’m sorry. How long have I…?” She’d been sitting in a daze, ignoring these two virtual strangers. She’d let them see her weakness.

“About twenty minutes,” Yolanthe said.

“I’m a boring guest.” Politeness slipped on like a distancing armor.

Jim was having none of it. “You’re not a guest. You’re my stepdaughter. This is Yolly’s home, and yours.”

The definite claiming was outside Fay’s experience. She stared at him.

Yolanthe clasped his hand. “Thank you, darling.”

“Only telling the truth,” he grumbled. But his eyes were bright as he returned Yolanthe’s clasp. “Piper Lodge is a boardinghouse, Faith. We have four lodgers, all magic users. Daniel’s away on field work, and who knows where Piotr is, but you’ll meet Linda and Esse at dinner, tonight. I’ve fixed up your room with clean sheets, but I know Yolly will want to add special touches to it and you’ll probably have your own ideas. It’s at the top of the stairs.” He scowled. “And you’re not to pay board. You’re family.”

The avalanche of words stopped, and Fay was grateful for the break. “Thank you.” This alternate universe was confusing: no questions, no demands, just giving.

Jim’s scowl relaxed. “Good girl.”

Yolanthe punched his arm. “I told you I hate that phrase. It sounds like you’re talking to a dog.”

Fay studied their relaxed interaction, felt excluded by it and reached for a pastry sticky with honey and hazelnuts. It was delicious.

“A local bakery.” Yolanthe smiled at her. She seemed calmer and stronger in her own home. “Jim picks up a selection on his way home from his morning swim.”

“Are you that close to the ocean?”

“Almost on the beach,” he said.

“But close enough to walk into town,” Yolanthe said. “Or—Jim, do you still have your scooter?”

“The Wasp?” He grinned. “You wanted me to get rid of it.”

“Well, the way you ride, I thought you’d kill yourself. But Faith’s more sensible.”

“Ha,” he interrupted. “She arrived portal sick. That’s way more dangerous than my riding.”

“I heard what Constable Harrington said to you when he gave you your third ticket.”

Jim flushed and abandoned the argument.

Yolanthe turned back to Fay. “If you need to get around, Jim’s scooter is in the shed. He’ll dust it off for you.”

“Thank you, but—”

Her mom hadn’t finished. “When he learns the reasons for you travelling portal sick, he’ll apologize.”

“Reasons?” Jim sat forward.

“Faith has fought with Richard, quit the Collegium and abandoned her lover.”

“Holy cow,” he said reverently.

“I didn’t abandon Steve.”

“Is that his name?” Yolanthe was interested.

“And we weren’t lovers.”

“You are absolutely Yolly’s daughter.”

“What?” The two women stared at him, baffled.

“No half measures. It’s all or nothing. Life,” he said with satisfaction. “Is going to be interesting.”

Chapter 5

“When I travelled to New York I hoped to convince you to visit one day. That you’re actually in the house, part of the family.” Yolanthe’s hands clenched. “I dreamed of this day, but I didn’t believe.”

Fay backed away from the emotion. She picked up her bag which Jim had left in a corner of the kitchen and swung it over her shoulder. Yolanthe was showing her to the guest room. “Do you have other children? Does Jim?”

“No. But even if we did, you’d be special, wanted.” Yolanthe caught her breath, cutting off the stream of words and emotion. They walked in silence along the hallway that cut through the middle of the house. Halfway along, the staircase rose, built of the same wood as the floor, rich and red, subtly gleaming.

“Jarrah.” Yolanthe patted the bannister. “It’s a local hardwood. Most of the old houses use it.”

“How old is the house?”

“A bit over a hundred years. It was built by a retired sea captain. His wife was the first porter here. The first European porter,” Yolanthe corrected conscientiously. “The Nyungar people probably knew of it.”

“Nyungar?”

“The local Aboriginal people. Their shamans have stories of journeys that resemble portal travel, but Jim hasn’t encountered any Aboriginal porters. Seems colonization disrupted the transfer of site knowledge.”

“Or else they’re staying secret, like Jim.”

“Jim’s independent, not secret. But you’re right. Aboriginal porters could be protecting their portals with silence.” Yolanthe paused at the top of the stairs. On the top floor, the house’s simple plan repeated itself with another corridor bisecting the house.

“Jim and my room is to the left. Opposite is Susie. Next to her is Paul.” She indicated the room opposite the stairs. “And beside him is Daniel, who is away at the moment. His room overlooks the backyard. So does Linda’s. She’s beside you. And here you are. Next to the stairs, I’m afraid, but we’re all quiet. You won’t even hear Susie slip out at night.”

She opened the door to Fay’s room. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. It’s not the biggest room.”

But it was a lovely one. Pale apple-green walls provided a backdrop for handcrafted wood furniture, while the starkness of white bedding and curtains was lightened by apple blossom pink cushions on the window seat and bed.

“I hope you’ll be happy.” Yolanthe paused in the doorway. “You probably need some time to yourself. If you need anything, Jim and I’ll be downstairs. Otherwise, lunch in an hour?”

“Thank you.”

“I am glad you’re here.” Yolanthe closed the door behind her.

Fay dropped her bag at the foot of the bed and explored the room and the private bathroom that continued the white and green color scheme. New soap and fresh towels waited. There was a bathmat patterned in green ducks on the tiled floor. A rummage in the cupboard revealed shampoo and conditioner.

“All the comforts of home.” The would-be flippancy rebounded as Fay recognized the truth. Yolanthe and Jim wanted her to feel at home. The room had been prepared with love, not expecting her to join them so soon, but hoping.

She sat in a comfortable armchair and pulled off her boots, putting them to one side before standing and shrugging off her coat. The polished floor was smooth and pleasantly cool under her bare feet. A breeze blew in the open window, warm and scented with honeysuckle. Fay inhaled. The salt tang reminded her of Piper Lodge’s proximity to the sea.

“A beachside holiday?” She tested the concept. How long since she’d had a holiday? The fact she couldn’t remember suggested it was a while. Since school, perhaps?

She slammed the door on thoughts of her father and the Collegium. “Live in the moment.” She needed this breathing space and she’d earned it with that shattering portal travel.

But if she stayed alone in her room, she’d brood. She jammed her dirty clothes into her bag and carried it all down to the laundry.

Yolanthe heard her footsteps, and popped her head out of the kitchen. “Everything okay?”

“I wondered if I could use the washing machine?”

“Of course.” Yolanthe came all the way out of the kitchen. She took laundry detergent from a cupboard, measured and added it to the machine, while Fay stuffed in her clothes. “Normal wash?”

“Yes. No stains, this time.”

“Ah.” There was a pause as Yolanthe clearly thought of and dismissed the stains Fay might acquire in her work. She pushed the start button. “It’ll take just over half an hour.” Still talking, she lead the way out of the laundry and closed the door behind them, shutting out the sound of the machine. “We don’t have a dryer. Fremantle has such sunny days. The clothes line is out here.”

She opened the back door and they went down the veranda steps and turned left. The clothes lines occupied a corner of the lawn. Honeysuckle grew over the side fence. A small black and white bird with a long tail chittered loudly and flirted across the adjacent herb garden.

“A willywagtail.” Yolanthe smiled. “Which is a ridiculous name, but apt.”

The bird landed on the fence and its coquettish tail dipped in proof of its name. Beyond the herb garden, a tidy vegetable patch was framed by a lemon tree and a fig tree losing its leaves in preparation for winter. The hum of slow city traffic sounded distant. It was as if a spell of drowsy contentment compelled the visitor to linger.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Seven years. Jim bought the Piper Lodge nine years ago. We met at an art auction and after we married I moved in with him. He couldn’t leave his portal.”

Fay nodded. Portal managers were self-appointed wardens with an added twist of devotion. Theirs was a difficult talent to unravel. A few inherited portals down ancient family lines, such as the descendants of a clerical family in Beijing. However, families like the Li were rare. Most porters spent a number of years unattached. They explored the space between the portals. When a portal manager died or through ill-health was compelled to relinquish his or her portal, competition to assume responsibility for it was strong. Porters willingly traded their freedom for the security of a personal portal.

The Collegium kept track of porters and their portals, occasionally doing deals to use this swift form of travel.

Fay hadn’t seen the Fremantle portal on any Collegium list. When added to Cynthia’s unrecorded New York portal, it suggested a shadow web of global travel, a world of magic beyond the Collegium. It was a world she’d have to discover, one where she’d have to build a place for herself, a life.

“I don’t know Jim’s full name.”

“James Hubert Smith. I took his name when I married, so I’m Yolanthe Smith.”

Fay followed Yolanthe down the narrow side path to the front of the house.

Red roses, carnations and a frangipani tree filled a narrow space between a low limestone wall and the veranda. Potted gardenias guarded the front steps. Either Yolanthe or Jim liked a perfumed garden. The street was narrow and old, built for walking and carts. Parked cars crowded it as it struggled to accommodate a modern world.

Yolanthe trotted up the front steps and sunk into a wide swing chair on the veranda. She patted the cushion beside her. “We have a few minutes before lunch. This is one of my favorite places, warm in the sun and watching the street. We have wonderful neighbors.”

The cushions were comfortable and the slight swing of the chair relaxing. But Fay couldn’t help the tension that invaded her, sitting close to this woman who was her mother.

“I’ll answer any questions you have, Faith. Anytime.” Yolanthe was tense, too, despite her cheerful hostess chatter. Her hands tightened around her hooked up knee. “Having you here is more than I deserve. It’s up to you to set the pace of our relationship, the parameters. Your father…” She shook her head. “You’ve been portal sick. Now’s not the time to talk seriously. But don’t think badly of Richard. He had reason to protect you from me.”

Fay shifted sharply.

“No! Not that I’d hurt you.” Yolanthe breathed deeply and continued in a quieter voice. “I had a breakdown when I learned Richard married me for my bloodline. I’d have run away with you if I could and I wasn’t in a state to be a fit mother. I drifted for years. Richard gave you stability.”

“He gave me the Collegium,” Fay said bitterly.

“Which he loved dearly. You could say he shared his most precious love with you.” Yolanthe’s voice was strained, striving for dispassion.

“Or that he sacrificed me to it.”

“Was it so bad?”

“I don’t know.” Fay stared at the tangled, sculptural branches of the frangipani tree. “The Collegium is all I’ve ever known. Developing my powers to serve it was my whole life. Dad cut away everything else. Without it, I don’t know who I am. If he ever really loved me.” She forced out the final words. “He used me. And you abandoned me.”

“Oh God, Faith.”

But Fay was locked tight in her own agony, unable to respond to her mother’s pain. Help came from another quarter.

“Yolanthe, get away from that woman. She’s evil!”

Chapter 6

An old woman stood on the footpath outside the boardinghouse, clutching its low gate. Although barely waist high, the white wooden pickets were a protection she seemed unwilling to relinquish. “Get away, Yolanthe. I’ve seen her in my dreams. She’s a demon consort.”

“Linda, she’s my daughter.”

Fay caught back the power she’d called. Linda was the name of one of the Piper Lodge boarders. Fay steadied the violently rocking swing chair. At the first hint of threat she’d leapt out and positioned herself with her back to the solid wall. Now her hand tightened painfully on the chair back.

Yolanthe struggled up, worry in every line of her. “Faith, Linda is only a minor prophet. She won’t hurt you.”

Linda stalked through the gate, snapping it shut behind her. She was tall and thin, beginning to bow with age and dressed in a wild swirl of purple. Numerous scarves were all aflutter as she put a hand dramatically to her throat. “I’ve dreamed of her, Yolanthe. Evil dreams of demons.”

The repeated mention of demons convinced Fay. The woman was terrified of Fay’s work. She wasn’t a threat. Fay released her summoned magic.

“What the hell?” Jim ran out the front door. He held a paring knife in one hand and a carrot in the other.

“I think we should go inside before the neighbors notice us,” Yolanthe said quietly. Her gaze moved warily among them and settled on Fay. “You are always welcome in this house.”

“Yolanthe.” Linda’s cry was despairing.

“Faith is my daughter. She fights demons.”

“Fights?” Linda subsided, contemplating the idea.

“What did you do?” Jim put the knife and carrot behind his back, but he stayed in the doorway.

“No harm.” Fay acknowledged his right to protect the portal. “I summoned magic when Linda shouted. When I didn’t need the power, I turned it sideways. You won’t be bothered by mosquitos in the future.”

“You released a protection spell?” Jim tilted his head, clearly listening to the hum of the portal. His shoulders relaxed. “Sensible. Better to use the magic than try to send it back.”

“That’s what the witch who taught me the spell said.” Fay concentrated on reassurance. “There are a few places around the world that’ll never need mosquito nets.” She looked at Linda. “And if you’ve been seeing me in dreams the last two years, I have been fighting demons. The Collegium installed a new reporting program and it increased my duties. You’d be surprised how many people summon demons and then lose control of them. I apologize for bringing their evil into your dreams.”

  “Yes, but why was I seeing you?” Linda walked up the veranda steps and stared at Fay with faded blue eyes. She wore amethyst earrings and a scent of lavender, and clutched an oversized handbag.

“Maybe your talent picked up my link with Faith.” Yolanthe eased between them and touched Jim’s elbow, turning him back into the hallway. “Let’s go inside.”

Fay waited until Linda’s gaze dropped and she walked inside, skirting just slightly as she passed Fay. Then, unobserved, Fay rubbed her arms and the rash of goose pimples.

Demon consort. The naming was out of Fay’s worst nightmares. Lilith had been the first. She had taken a demon lover for the power and for the half-demon child she’d bear. Her daughter had eaten her, but no one mentioned that part of the story, nor the incestuous relationship between daughter and father. Demons perverted all they touched.

And Fay had been proximate with demons for two years.

Maybe Linda was right and she wasn’t safe to be around?

“Get inside, girl,” Jim called. “I want my lunch.”

A shudder broke Fay’s paralysis. She was welcome here and a porter had deep protections against evil contaminating his portal. Crazy they might be, but porters protected their power.

And Yolanthe hadn’t hesitated to defend Fay and to claim her.

If there was evil in the world, there was also its opposite, too. Goodness. Love.

Fay closed the front door behind her.

“Do you drink tea?” Jim asked as she entered the kitchen. He frowned at Yolanthe in a minatory demand for silence.

Fay’s tension eased another notch. His determined normality was neutral ground. “Tea’s fine. Although I refuse to pollute it with milk.”

“Barbarian.” He chopped the carrot with swift precision. A jerk of his head indicated the tea canister, teapot and kettle. “If you make the tea, it’ll be ready about the same time lunch is on the table. Five teaspoons of tea. Linda lunches with us.”

A teaspoon of tea for each person and one for the pot. Fay knew the routine. She boiled the kettle, poured a little water into the teapot to warm it, tipped it out, added the tea leaves and more water and replaced the lid.

Yolanthe handed her a crocheted tea cozy. It was striped orange, black and white, like a tiger, and fitted snugly over the brown china pot. It was the essence of everyday life, and despite the strain in the air, they all tried to match it.

“We pour the tea at table,” Yolanthe said. “So if you could carry it through?” She picked up a tray of sandwiches and walked through the wide door opposite the conservatory. It lead to a dining space that opened to a light-filled living space complete with sofas and a large television.

Sitting at the massive wooden dining table was Linda. Her mouth was pursed, her eyes cautious. The enormous handbag sat prominently on the table beside her.

Fay set down the teapot and took a chair opposite. The four place settings made her seat easy to guess. Jim was at the head of the table, Linda on his right, Yolanthe on his left, closest to the kitchen, with Fay beside her.

Yolanthe poured tea.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter.” Linda watched Fay over her teacup. Her hands shook a little, swollen arthritic joints burdened with silver rings.

“Faith’s been working for the Collegium,” Yolanthe said.

“Oh.” Relief clattered Linda’s teacup back onto its saucer. “A Collegium guardian.” She smiled at Fay, a woman transformed. “A Collegium guardian, how wonderful. You do fight the demons.”

Fay had encountered that response before. Elderly magic users had enormous respect for the Collegium and its work. They remembered the strength and idealism of its early years. They remembered her great-grandparents.

“I’ve resigned,” she said discouragingly.

“Oh dear.” Linda tutted. “Why on earth…” Abruptly, her eyes widened. “Oh, my dear. Three nights ago, that was you?” Her amethyst teardrop earrings trembled.

Fay stiffened in her chair. “What did you see?”

“A woman dancing with a demon. She had your long, blonde hair, but I didn’t see your face. You called it by name.”

“Don’t say it,” Fay ordered.

Linda blinked, shaken from the half-trance of memory.

“That demon isn’t banished, only bound. You don’t want to say its name.”

“You made it tell you its name.” Linda stared at her. “It screamed and slashed you.”

“I needed its name to bind it,” Fay said steadily.

“It killed you,” Linda whispered.

Yolanthe moved convulsively.

Fay took her hand. It was as cold as ice, as cold as hers. “It didn’t kill me. It tried, but I won.” She squeezed Yolanthe’s hand. “I survived.”

“I’m glad you resigned from the Collegium,” her mom said fiercely.

Linda spooned more sugar into her tea and stirred it with an uneven clink, clink-clink of spoon against china.

“I saw it kill her,” she whispered.

The cold in Fay eased. She, who ran scared from human contact and relationships, had reached to comfort Yolanthe. She had reacted instinctively and Yolanthe had defended her with the same instinctiveness. Fay might be demon scarred, but she was human, not demon-mad. “Yolanthe said you’re a prophet?” Fay looked across the table.

“Yes.”

“Then you see truth in strange forms. The demon fight foreshadowed not my death, but changes in my life.”

“Resigning from the Collegium.” Understanding and acceptance blazed through Linda. “Of course. Leaving it must be like death. The old loyalties, your duty. How it must hurt to leave them.”

“Faith’s first duty is to herself,” Yolanthe interrupted.

Fay released her hand. “Don’t worry. I feel no guilt at leaving the Collegium. But the death of that old life is what Linda saw. The demon’s existence simply blurred the picture.”

“What is it like to fight a demon?” Jim’s question changed the tension around the table.

“Horrifying. For all but the most powerful demons, to act independently in our world, they have to possess a body. All those I’ve fought have taken a human. Sometimes that possession is forced, and then, I can save the person, casting out the demon. But other times.” Her voice slowed. “Some people invite them in. Then exorcism kills the demon host. Last year, I had to kill a man I knew, another Collegium guardian.”

“No,” Linda exclaimed, bright-eyed and pleasantly intrigued. She nibbled a sandwich, ignoring the salad Jim scooped onto her plate. “A Collegium guardian summoned a demon?”

“He was a minor mage and wanted more power. He left a journal.” And a wife and five year old son. Fay had stood at the back of a graveside crowd, divorced from it, and watched a five year old boy throw rosemary onto his father’s coffin. The widow had stood dry-eyed. Death gave an ending, but it couldn’t heal old hurts. Betrayal came in many forms.

“More tea?” Yolanthe offered the only immediate comfort she had.

“Thanks.” Fay sipped it unsweetened. She wanted to answer Jim and explain why she’d killed her old life. She’d been rejecting more than her father’s rule. “Fighting a demon is like fighting a man with his skin worn inside out. They are slick with horror and wrongness, and they want to drag you to hell with them. The physical injuries they inflict heal. No one talks about the spiritual scars.”

“On the basis that a good Collegium guardian toughs it out?” Jim asked.

“Maybe.” Fay considered, then shook her head. “I think it’s just too difficult to reveal the scars.”

Linda interrupted. “Do you like the chutney in your sandwich. I made it. I’ll give you the recipe.”

“I don’t cook.” Fay blinked at the change of subject.

“Nonsense, dear. Anyone can follow a recipe. And you did say you were changing your life,” Linda added coyly.

“Not radically enough to cook.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m chief cook,” Jim said.

“A very good thing.” Yolanthe smiled at him. If the smiled was forced, everyone still appreciated the effort. “I married him for his cooking.”

“A lie. You married me for—” He broke off, glancing at Fay who watched intently, wanting to understand her mother and her choices. The humor dropped from him. “We married because we love each other.”

“The best of reasons.” Linda finished her tea and sandwiches. “You’ve all been very kind to an old lady who muddled her prophecy, but I won’t trespass further on your family time. It was good to meet you. Faith, was it?”

“Fay. Fay Olwen.”

The Olwen name passed by Linda without an eyelash flicker. “Fay. I’m sure we’ll talk in the future.”

They listened to her footsteps ascend the stairs.

“Linda usually naps in the afternoon,” Jim said. “You should, too, Yolly. You look washed out.”

“It’s Faith’s—Fay’s—first day, here.”

“She’s a big girl and can look after herself.”

“Jim, don’t be rude.”

He opened his eyes wide. “I’m not. It’s the truth.”

“I want Fay to feel welcome.” Yolanthe was upset enough to start a fight.

“I do feel welcome,” Fay intervened. “And if I’m family, you don’t need to stand on ceremony with me.”

Family. It was a magic word for all of them.

“If you’re sure? I am tired. Perhaps you could nap, too, after being portal sick?”

“Maybe.”

“Well.” Yolanthe stood slowly. “I will have a nap.” She touched Fay’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Fay nodded and Yolanthe walked out, looking back twice.

“Stubborn woman. She’s exhausted.” Jim gathered up plates. He worked efficiently, filling the dishwasher and setting it running. “Do you have plans for this afternoon?”

Fay hesitated with the rinsed teapot in her hands. She needed exercise, not rest. Her body might be tired, but her mind and emotions were over-busy. The whir of the dishwasher reminded her of a forgotten chore. “I have to hang out my laundry and if I’m staying a couple of weeks, I’ll need some more clothes.”

“There’s money in the biscuit barrel.” He nodded at a daisy-painted china container that stood on the corner of the bench.

“I have money.” American dollars, not Australian. It didn’t matter. “I have credit cards.”

“Do you want your father to track you to Yolanthe through them?”

She hesitated.

“Look, Fay. I know I’m a stranger to you and God knows what shit you’ve gone through. You don’t give trust easy. But all I want is Yolanthe’s happiness. I have more money than Midas. I used to be an investment banker and I still dabble. You can spend money like a golden river and I’ll not notice it. Anytime you need money, take it from the barrel. If you need more than is there, just tell me. Later, if you insist on paying me back, we can work it out. I’d prefer it if you considered the money a gift. I might be a crazy porter, but I value family. Yolanthe and you are it.”

It was generous, honest and a refusal would be an unmerited rejection.

“I will pay you back.”

Jim relaxed into a grin. “Well, then, I’ll insist on paying you for mosquito proofing the house and yard.”

Fay shook her head in admiration. “Does anyone ever win an argument with you?”

“Yolly, sometimes.” He opened the barrel and pulled out a wad of notes. “Happy shopping. Walk to the top of the street and turn left. You’ll find the city center.” He turned back to the sink in dismissal.

“Thanks.” She pushed the money into a pocket and walked out to the laundry room.

Hanging clothes in the sun was a rare, pleasant relaxation. She fastened the last peg and stood a moment breathing in the mixed scents of honeysuckle, sun-warmed lawn and the herb garden. Then she returned the laundry basket to the back veranda and went in search of the city shops.

She was, after all, on holiday. Either that, or unemployed.

Chapter 7

Fay licked a honey and macadamia nut ice-cream and watched seagulls mug tourists in the green stretch of parkland. Despite numerous “do not feed the gulls” signs, the white and grey birds feasted raucously on chips and sandwich scraps.

She’d been coming to the park for three days, trying to learn the joys of idleness. It wasn’t easy, but slowly her tension was ebbing and she was rebuilding her energy. She concentrated on the smooth richness of the ice-cream.

The pain struck without warning. Her mouth filled with the copper taste of blood and the injuries the demon had inflicted a week ago—great gaping wounds and shattered bones—seemed to tear open.

Her head arched back in a silent scream before she slammed protective magic around her. So close to the sea it came with the wild ozone of the ocean. The clean air drove the stink of the demon and the African jungle from her nostrils. Her vision cleared.

Children still played in the park, couples strolled, tourists ambled and took photographs. Only the gulls had noticed anything different. They were scattering in shrieking panic. 

The protective magic won her thinking time, perhaps five seconds before another attack of magic struck. It was time enough for her to realize that powerful though the attack was, she wasn’t the main target.

“God in heaven.” She dropped the mangled mess of ice-cream cone and eased back, letting one of the park’s massive pine trees support and partly hide her.

The demon was trying to break the warding she’d placed on the amulet.

It shouldn’t be possible. To reach her warding, the demon would have had to break the Collegium’s protections; protections set by a team of security experts. Her warding had been superfluous, present only for her own peace of mind after the mortal battle in the Congolese rainforest.

The demon’s power roared, flaring against the warding she’d traced onto the amulet.

Fay closed her eyes, gathering magic from the ocean and land, from the sky and from her own spirit, before sending it into the warding. Physical distance didn’t matter when the spell was her own. It was simply a matter of re-enforcing it.

Simply!

The demon shifted the focus of its attack, no longer trying to sneak past the warding which burned with power. Instead, it wanted her and all she represented: its defeat, its new chance of freedom, revenge and opportunity.

As agony twisted her body, she guided her magic through the final turns of the warding. The pattern locked, sealed beyond hope of the demon’s undoing.

Pain vanished.

Fay slid to the ground, her back against the smooth tree trunk, her legs awkwardly sprawled. Ice-cream oozed over her fingers, mixing with blood where she’d dug her nails into the tree and torn them.

She touched the tree, sending a wisp of healing for the damage she’d caused, then rested her forehead on her knees and panted. She was as weak as if she’d fought for her life—which she had.

“Are you okay?” A woman with a toddler strapped into a stroller stopped in front of Fay. She left a prudent distance between them, but her expression was concerned. “Do you need some help?”

“I…” Fay couldn’t summon even enough magic to hide her bloodied fingers. Her mind spun and shifted on a lie that was almost truth. “I had a panic attack. I’ll be okay.”

“Is there someone I could call?”

“No…Yes. My mom.”

The stranger smiled encouragement. “Do you have her number?”

Fay pushed slowly to her feet, picked up the mangled ice-cream cone and dropped it in the trash. “That’s all right. She doesn’t live far away. Thanks for checking on me. I’ll be okay now.” The need for privacy was strongly ingrained, stronger than surprised gratitude for a stranger’s concern. She glanced at the toddler babbling happily to itself.

“If you’re sure.” The woman nodded and moved on, looking back once.

Fay rinsed her hands at a tap on the edge of the park and wiped them on the rear of her denim shorts. She headed back to the boardinghouse, her pace quickening from walking to flat out running as strength returned to match her fear.

She’d bound the demon securely this time, relying on no one but her own power. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. How had it broken the Collegium’s warding and what damage had it done?

“Jim.” Fay found him in the conservatory.

He peered over the top of a newspaper, took in her appearance and dropped the paper.

“I have to go back to New York.”

“What the hell has happened?”

She’d known she’d have to explain, that or lie to enlist his support. “The demon I bound last week broke the Collegium’s protections. It came after me, trying to break the warding I’d put on its amulet. It’s still bound—tighter than ever now—but I need to get back to New York. I don’t know what damage it did breaking the Collegium’s protections.”

“Leave ’em to look after themselves.”

She bared her teeth. “Second reason to go back is I’m not risking the Collegium messing with this demon again. I’m going to banish it. The damn thing near killed me.” She thought of the agony in the park, the muscles twisting and tearing from her bones. “Twice.”

“That I understand. Have you told Yolly?”

“No. She’s at her studio.” It surprised Fay, but Yolanthe was a skilled potter with her own gallery and studio a street from the boardinghouse. The last three days had been peaceful, baby steps to learning about one another. Yolanthe hadn’t pushed and Fay had appreciated the time-out. She’d visited the studio once. “I won’t stay in New York. I’ll be back.”

Jim scowled at her. “Yolly will want to say good-bye. Her kid’s going to face a demon, she needs a kiss and a hug.” He plunged forward to where the phone hung on the wall in the kitchen. “You get yourself dressed for New York weather, I’ll call Yolly. Fifteen minutes, you can be out of here.”

Unspoken was the reality that without his portal it would take her one hell of a lot longer to reach New York.

“Fine.”

His scowl intensified. “You know, it’s okay to let people care about you.”

“Do I have a choice?” She was already through the door, starting down the passage to the staircase.

“No!” Jim’s shout followed her.

Fay grinned, though the momentary warmth and humor faded fast.

In her room she stripped, dressed and packed with swift efficiency. The summer holiday clothing she left hanging in the wardrobe. Like she’d said, she would be back. Whatever life she built outside the Collegium, Yolanthe and Jim would be part of it.

“Oh, baby. I didn’t mean to cry.” Yolanthe was, though. She released Fay and clung to Jim’s hand. They all stood at the edge of the portal. “Be careful.”

Jim was more practical. “Take a shell. Porters call them ‘tokens’. We keep them by our own portal long enough to absorb its energy. The shell will get you into any portal and then back to this one. But it’s not an easy journey. A couple of seconds if porter hands you to porter. With a token you might wander for hours.”

“But it will get you home,” Yolanthe said.

Fay closed her hand around a leopard cone and slipped it into her pocket. It was a talisman for what Yolanthe offered: home. She would examine the seashell’s new-to-her magic later. “Thanks.” She hitched her bag securely over her shoulder.

“Cynthia will collect you in New York,” Jim said. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Fay stepped into the portal.

The transition wasn’t as bad as last time. She was stronger, for all that the demon had tried to rip her open again. She clasped Cynthia’s hand in the confusion in-between and let the woman’s surprisingly strong grip guide her out.

Squiffy, the blue toy lamb, butted Fay’s ankle as she stepped out of the portal. With Jim’s token in her pocket, she regarded the soft toy collection with new eyes: not an ageing woman’s eccentricity, but a storehouse of portal power. Squiffy’s animation suggested he’d be an effective guide through the portal for an unaccompanied user.

“Thank you for use of your portal, Cynthia.” Fay hesitated. The Collegium used the New York portal run by Paul O’Halloran and he charged the Collegium for courier services. Fay didn’t know what Cynthia charged or if Jim had traded portal favors. “What do I owe you?”

Cynthia sank into a recliner in the corner of the basement. Squiffy jumped onto her lap. “You brought watchers to the house. Take them with you when you leave.”

“Watchers?”

“The first turned up four hours after Yolanthe and you entered the portal. The Collegium guardian arrived after twelve hours.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to reveal your secrets.”

“Ha! You haven’t. Some people already knew of my portal. The Collegium leaves me alone. They learned that once through the portal, I might guide them anywhere—but definitely not where they demanded.”

“It’s dangerous to provoke the Collegium,” Fay said carefully.

“My portal is well-guarded.” The overhead light sparkled in the eyes of the ranks of soft toys. Squiffy nudged Cynthia’s petting hand. “And I shan’t leave till it is safe again. Take the watchers with you.”

Fay nodded. She adjusted the weight of the bag slung over her shoulder. “You said the second watcher is from the Collegium. Do you know anything more about him or her?”

“They’re guardians. Security, they call themselves. They watch from the street on eight hour shifts.”

“What about the first watcher?”

“A were-leopard. He’s broken into the empty apartment behind my house. He watches alone, although sometimes he has visitors. Both watchers have set magic to alert them. While you are in the safe circle of my home, they can’t detect your presence.”

“May I return here to travel through to Yolanthe and Jim?”

“Paul O’Halloran does not know of Jim’s portal.” Cynthia set the recliner rocking. “Families have a right of safe passage. You are Jim’s family. You are welcome.”

Family. Trusted with secrets and safety. And outside a were-leopard waited for her. Was it Steve?

Hope was a dangerous risk. Better to assume that all the watchers ill-wished her. She pushed aside the question, what if it was Steve?

It had taken the Collegium guardians twelve hours to track her to the portal. Had her habit of evading pursuit delayed them so long, even if she hadn’t consciously hidden her path? Or had it taken her dad that long to realize the change in his own powerbase when she broke ties with the Collegium? What message did the Collegium watchers carry? What did they want with her?

She asked Cynthia’s permission to use the back door, thanked her again and walked out into the 3 a.m. quiet of New York City.

Magic brushed across her senses. A cat yowled. A security alarm whined in the distance, insistent and unanswered.

Fay threw her bag over the back fence and leapt over it herself. She skirted the dumpster tucked into the apartment’s alleyway and jogged through the shadows to the street.

Even magic wouldn’t summon her a cab at this hour, but the subway was two blocks across. She’d catch a ride uptown.

Of course, she could just let the Collegium guardians catch up with her and drive her there. But the raw place in her where she’d broken ties with the Collegium winced at the thought. She was on her own and she’d act like it.

“Shit.” She froze, one foot off the ground, then slowly balanced herself. The cracks in the pavement shone with magic.

Someone had triggered a capture spell and it was aimed at her. The magic creeping through the cracks would stick her feet like toffee. She could break its hold, but it would slow her. Perhaps slow her enough to make her vulnerable for another magic attack?

Anger whipped through her.

Observation was one thing. Setting traps was quite another. The Collegium guardians had no right to act against an innocent magic user. That they were doing this confirmed her fears: her dad didn’t just use the power of his position. He abused it. So much for free will.

She wrenched at the magic in the pavement, pulling it up by brute force. The energy of it surged, fought with the original spell-caster and at her insistent tug, became hers.

A straggly tree caught her eye. She gathered the flaring magic and flung it over the tree, seeing the net of power settle and sink into the sapling and deeper into the earth. The tree shuddered as it absorbed the energy, then it grew as if observed under time-lapse photography. In seconds, it stood a ten year older tree.

Someone had put a lot of power into the spell aimed to stick Fay’s feet. More power than most Collegium guardians could handle.

“If you’ve finished playing.” A voice purred in her ear.

“Steve!”

He grabbed her wrist and dragged her over to a SUV. Its doors clicked open.

Fay considered her options and climbed into the passenger seat.

The engine started with a roar as unsubtle as a leopard’s challenge. The dashboard lighting showed Steve’s unshaven, tired face. He looked grim. “Can you deal with it?” he asked.

“With what?”

He jerked his head, eyes going to the rearview mirror.

Fay turned in her seat.

Lumbering up behind the car was a golem.

Chapter 8

The golem was seven feet tall, the shape of a sumo wrestler and it gleamed sullenly in the night. In the glare of a streetlight, Fay saw the amalgamation of its construction: bricks, concrete, bitumen, all the mix of chemicals that had soaked into the city’s soil. It wasn’t made of clay, but of New York, itself—and it moved fast.

A hand like a fielder’s mitt lunged for the rear bumper of the SUV, skimmed and missed as Steve floored the accelerator.

“It was waiting for you,” he said. “I sensed something unnatural, but I couldn’t tell what the hell it was and I couldn’t contact you. You’d thrown your friggin’ cellphone in the friggin’ trash.”

“I cut ties with the Collegium.”

“Idiot,” he snarled as the SUV cornered tightly.

The golem should have been slow, but the power of its massive legs was relentless. It churned the road behind it, part of its clay.

Fay gathered power and as the golem rounded the corner, blasted it. She ducked, anticipating the explosion.

Instead, the golem absorbed the power. It grew. A split opened in the monstrous head. A mouth gaped open. Red light spilled out and a bellow rumbled down the sleeping streets. The damned thing gained speed, too, lunging again for the car.

Steve swerved, more than half his attention on the rearview mirror. He hit a curb and jerked the steering wheel, bringing them back onto the street. A low growl deep in his chest answered the golem’s challenge.

“It shouldn’t be able to do that.” Fay knelt up on the seat, fully facing the creature.

Golems were powered by magic, but only by as much as their creators commanded. They could not absorb more. And they were voiceless.

It bellowed again. A minotaur in a maze. A golem in the city. They were running in its home, in its powerbase. Somehow, its creator had tapped that power.

Time enough to work out how later. For a start she wrenched back the power she’d thrown at it. There was a moment of resistance, then the magic surged around Fay. She batted it away, turning it with a thought into the anti-mosquito spell she’d used at the boardinghouse.

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the golem. The power that had come back to her had been tinged with darkness.

“New York is my city, too.” This monstrosity was its shadow side. But she remembered the friendly neighborhoods, the excited tourists, and the committed workers. Compassion, laughter and tolerance.

It was too easy to forget the good people did. The media sold horror stories and she dealt with even worse. But the city didn’t just destroy, it nurtured. She would not allow the golem to live off a perversion of the city’s energy.

She levitated one ton of golem into the air, breaking its connection to the earth. Her muscles trembled at the flow of power required. She rummaged through the lines of magic animating the golem and holding its body together.

Here and here and running back, centering at the solar plexus.

She gasped at the pain, closed a mental hand around the object buried deep in the golem and twisted it.

The golem exploded.

“Stop.” Fay fumbled with the door handle, pushed it open and fell out. She rose from her knees immediately, all her attention on finding the object.

Concrete dust rose in a miasma of city decay.

“They must have built it of the demolition site down the road,” Steve said.

Fay found the object and shuddered. “God, I wished I was wrong.”

“What is it? An amulet?” His eyes flared yellow in the night. “A blasted demon?”

“Yes.” She wrapped her own warding around the amulet, binding the demon again. “Not one I bound, but…”

“It looks like the amulet you brought to the Congo,” he said flatly.

“Collegium issue.” She straightened. “Powering a golem.”

“A golem chasing you.”

She climbed back into the SUV. Her knees hurt, but the jeans weren’t torn. Bruising. Her soul hurt and that was from betrayal, both personal and of ideals she’d bled for.

“So where are we going?” Steve asked. He put the SUV in gear.

“Where else? The Collegium.”

It was at least a thirty minute drive to the Collegium, even in the empty streets of 3 a.m.

Fay picked up her bag from where it had fallen in the foot space and dropped it onto the back seat. The movement brushed her right arm against Steve’s shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d wait for me.” She retreated to her own space, unnerved by her sensory hyper-awareness. He felt warm, strokable, as if touching him stroked her. In the silence, the click of her seatbelt sounded loud.

Her breath came a fraction fast. The golem was scary, the implications of the amulet that had powered it were ominous, but what terrified her sat inches away driving with relaxed precision. The angular, arrogant lines of his face were part lit, part shadowed by the dim dashboard lighting.

“I said I would wait for you.”

He’d promised on the steps of the Collegium, after she’d accepted him as a lover, then changed her mind.

She’d been crazy that morning, tearing apart with need and fear and so many conflicting emotions. The scars the demon had left on her soul ate like acid. But her desire for him had been real. It was with her still, heating her skin and tensing her muscles. Her denial came automatically, drilled into her. “I can look after myself.”

“I know.” He stared straight ahead. “But I couldn’t forget the fear in your eyes. Do you have any idea what it did to my self-control?”

He stopped for a red light and looked at her. His eyes were leopard yellow. “My cat wanted out to protect you. God, I stood on those steps fighting for control. I didn’t think you’d appreciate a were guard in the Collegium and my only other option was to snatch you away. The last three days, I wished I’d done so. Hell, when I heard you’d broken with the Collegium, I knew your fear had been real.”

The lights changed and he accelerated.

“I’m not scared of the Collegium.”

“So why did you resign? No one’s ever done that before, broken ties. Everyone else negotiated a release by the Collegium.”

“Did they?” She wasn’t interested. “Probably the Collegium kept silent about other renegades. They’re good at keeping secrets.” She stretched, but tension remained locked in her muscles. “The Collegium was using me. I always knew they used my talents. I vowed to serve. I believed—believe—that power brings responsibility. But Dad didn’t want me as me. He wanted a weapon. That’s what he was turning me into. He admitted it. He wanted the emotion burnt out of me.” She tipped her head back against the seat. “He almost succeeded.”

A growl rumbled from Steve. “You are the most passionate woman I know.”

“Me?” She hooked a knee up, turning in the seat to study him.

“I’m a were, Fay. Discipline can hide passion from human senses, but not from mine. I smell your emotions. I feel the intensity of your emotion. Compassion, anger, sensual indulgence.”

“I don’t indulge…in anything.”

A smile tipped the corner of his mouth. “Do you remember the beach in Sierra Leone, after the first demon banishment? We were all hot, sweaty and sticky with dirt. The sun was setting, great golden lines of light across the sea, as if we could walk on them. You kicked off your boots, unbraided your hair and walked into the ocean. When you walked out, your shirt and trousers were plastered to you. You were fully covered and the most erotic sight I’d ever seen. You laughed at the ridiculousness of what you’d done, and I wanted to tear your clothes off with my teeth and bury myself in you while you surrendered to me the way you’d given yourself to the sea. Your sensuality is disciplined, Fay, but it’s there. I want to let it out to play.”

He flexed his fingers, loosening his too tight grip on the steering wheel. “Four days ago I spent the flight back from the Congo fantasizing about joining the mile high club. It was pure torment sitting next to you, wanting you, believing you were indifferent. And then, in the cab…”

“You nuzzled my throat.”

He shot her a swift glance. “Did you like that?”

She swallowed, forced the word out. “Yes.”

“Be sure, sweetheart. I’m raw, tonight. It wouldn’t take much encouragement for me to take what I want.”

Her body pulsed with desire, and his were senses had to be telling him that. He knew she wanted him, but he needed the words. She pressed her hands down her thighs. “What do you want?”

“You.” Stark, definite.

She’d had three days in Australia, resting, thinking, discovering something of her own dreams. Perhaps envying what Yolanthe had found with Jim: peace as well as passion, the confidence to trust. There was no point in resigning from the Collegium if she lacked the courage to reach out. Steve wasn’t promising forever, but maybe she couldn’t handle forever. She had to take what she could. “I want you, Steve.”

The car swerved to the side and stopped. He unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned over Fay and smiled.

He was hunger and passion and total male beauty.

Excitement beat a tightening rhythm low in her stomach. She put a hand to his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, waiting for his kiss.

He pushed aside her collar, bent and bit the soft curve of throat and shoulder. Teeth, tongue and hot breath combined to create a shivering inferno. He pulled back long enough to study the faint mark and his smile held a feral edge. “Mine.”

It wasn’t foreplay along the lines she’d expected, but she lived for challenges. Her mouth curved. She pulled at his shirt, exposing tanned smooth skin, and bit him as he’d marked her.

The flavor exploded against her tongue: salt, musk and addiction.

His heart thundered under her hand. He was hot, so hot, and so was she. The seatbelt cut maddeningly across her chest, restricting her instinctive move closer.

“Old fashioned bench seats,” he muttered. “That’s what we need.”

He captured her mouth, kissing her as she’d dreamed. All hard demand and assured seduction. But his hand, gentle against her face, had the faintest tremble. He pressed his cheek against hers and she felt the scratch of stubble.

“The front seat of a borrowed car. I had plans, Fay.” It was a half-desperate, half-humorous plaint.

“Tell me.” She smiled, breathing in the scent of him. “Show me.”

“I intend to.” He nipped her ear before sitting back in the driver’s seat. “But I don’t want us interrupted by a golem or whoever powered it. I want your full attention.”

“Egoist.”

“Ah, but in return, I promise complete satisfaction.” He put his hand on her thigh and squeezed.

Sensation pierced her.

“Fay,” he said roughly, answering her body’s response with his own reluctance to let go. His nails scraped at the inner seam of her jeans.

It was difficult to remember commonsense, but she’d returned to New York for a reason. “The demon came back, today.”

“What?” His hand froze, then splayed across her thigh, protective and possessive.

“The demon I bound in the Congo, it broke the protections the Collegium placed on the amulet. Then it tried to break my warding. It attacked me. Not as strongly as before. My binding partly held, but when the Collegium’s broke, it must have frayed mine. The demon wanted to kill me and break free.”

Steve swore and swung the SUV back onto the road. He ran an amber light.

She missed the feel of his hand on her thigh. Her skin tingled with the imprint. “I re-enforced the binding and I think it’ll hold now, whatever anyone else does.” She hesitated. “It’s not enough though for me to feel safe. I came back to exorcise the demon and to see what damage it caused at the Collegium when it broke their protections.”

“I haven’t heard any rumors,” Steve said. “But then, the Collegium keeps its secrets.”

“They won’t keep them from me,” she said grimly.

“They might try. You’re not a member anymore.”

“The demon is my business.”

They drove in silence till Steve broke it. “So that’s why you came back.”

Chapter 9

Fay listened to what Steve hadn’t said: she had come back for the demon, not for him. Yet he’d waited for her, worried about her and just now, won her enough time to study the golem and take it down.

He’d looked out for her and she wasn’t used to that protectiveness or loyalty.

“How did you track me to Cynthia’s portal?”

“Old fashioned, non-magical detective work. I found your hotel and the Italian restaurant you went to. I asked people if they’d seen you. People remember you, Fay. You’re strong and beautiful.”

“You followed me from the restaurant…so you know who I was with?”

“I know she was an older woman, small and worried-looking.”

“My mom.”

His head snapped sideways to study her, proof enough that he’d heard her parents’ story. “Your mom.”

The slow soft drawl raised the hair on the back of her neck.

“So when you asked me to become your lover, you already knew you were skipping out?”

“No!”

“Huh. No wonder you looked so scared. Planning to break ties with the Collegium would make most magic users piss their pants. But you dared to resign. What was I, another chance to stick it to your dad by taking a were lover?”

The lovely warm feeling flowing between them cracked into dark coldness.

“I didn’t know I’d leave the Collegium. I was upset about…everything. It was a turning point, to be alone or to risk sharing myself.”

“You walked into the Collegium alone.”

“I told you I was upset. I had a duty to complete and—I’m twenty four years old, Steve. The last time I trusted a man I was seventeen. I was accepted into the Collegium early and joined the guardians’ training. Ethan was five years older than me. He laughed and joked and he touched easily. Caresses that I didn’t know how to handle, that I wanted more of. He made me feel special. I thought he loved me.”

If she thought sharing would draw the sting from Steve’s anger, she was wrong.

“So what went wrong? Did daddy forbid the relationship?”

“I found out why Ethan was expected to do well in the guardians. He was a natural amplifier, very little magic of his own, but the ability to concentrate and share others’. Soon after we started dating, the Collegium reassessed his power level. That’s when Dad asked me if I knew Ethan was using my power.”

She looked down at her hands fisted on her lap. “I hadn’t known. He tapped my magic when I was distracted. When he kissed me and touched me he was doing so to grab more power. He was ambitious.”

“Like your dad.”

“Yes.” She swallowed the unhealthy mix of sorrow, anger and embarrassment. “Dad married Mom to have me. He used her. Ethan used me. I found I couldn’t trust people.”

“Men, you mean.”

“But I trust you.” She turned to him. “I respect you. It’s more than the fact you’re sexy. The thing is, I have no experience. If we were to be lovers, I wouldn’t know what to do, what you’d expect of me or what claim we’d have on one another. If it would be a casual one night stand and if I could walk away from that.”

“It wouldn’t be casual.”

“I’m not used to relationships, Steve. I’ve only ever had the Collegium.”

“What about your mom?”

“It takes more than a blood tie to build a relationship.” Then, explosively. “Dad used my power to keep her away. He bound me not to think of her, and for Yolanthe to stay away. He started it when I was a toddler. I never knew how unnatural it was never to think, to wish for, my mom. When I broke my ties to the Collegium, I broke Dad’s ties too. Mom came straight away.” A pause. “She loves me.”

He gave a curious feline grumble, impatient, angry and dismissive.

“What?” she demanded.

“Do you really find it so hard to believe someone loves you?”

“I have twenty four years’ experience.”

“Twenty four years distorted by your dad and the Collegium. Hell, this is the wrong time for this discussion.”

Fay glanced out the window and recognized the Collegium’s neighborhood. “It’s a difficult discussion any time.”

“It’d help if I was able to hold you.”

She stared at him.

“Body to body there wouldn’t be lies between us or nervousness or any other damn thing. In my arms, all you’d want is me.” He parked out front of the Collegium.

“Will you come in with me?”

“Yes.” He slammed the car door and looked at her over the hood. The light caught his eyes and they gleamed. “Will you be ashamed to walk in with a were?”

She refused to answer the insulting question. Weres’ magic took the form of shape-shifting and the senses of their were creature. They didn’t wield magic: they were magic. Consequently, the Collegium looked down on them and refused to accept them as members. Fay had her suspicions as to the hidden reason for that refusal: fear. As well as being unable to wield magic, it also didn’t affect them. A magic-powered golem could crush a were, but the were would snarl through a sleep spell and rip the magician’s throat out.

“Fay?” Steve caught her wrist and shook it.

“You’re serious?” she asked in disbelief. “You seriously think I consider weres lesser?” Her free hand came up in a furious strike.

He blocked it and snapped her close. “Just checking.”

“How would you like it if I insinuated—”

He kissed her, quick and fierce, teeth nipping at her lower lip.

She stomped on his booted foot.

“Temper.” He laughed and let her go.

She stalked through the Collegium entrance and he caught her up two steps inside.

Across the foyer, the night receptionist looked up and froze.

“Ex-Collegium mages aren’t covered in the training manual,” Steve murmured.

“Nor are the cast-off daughters of Collegium presidents.” She bared her teeth in a threatening smile before she turned away from the desk, heading for the bank of elevators.

“Uh.” The receptionist stumbled on how to address Fay and the bigger problem, how to stop whatever she intended.

Elevator doors opened and Fay stepped in. She held the doors for Steve who came and stood a fraction too close for good manners, a subtle statement of intimacy. The doors closed and the elevator shuddered, shaking in place rather than ascending.

“Oh no you don’t.” After a demon, a golem and a were leopard potential lover, Collegium protections weren’t about to stop her. She ripped the hold spell from the elevator and mundane electronics took over. They shot up to the seventeenth floor, one of the research centers. Specifically, the lab where they studied the demons she’d bound.

The elevator doors opened.

Fay stalked down the corridor to the third room. She twisted the handle and found it locked. Magic pulsed, re-enforcing the physical barrier.

“Damn door.” She kicked it.

“There are people in there.” Steve’s shoulder brushed hers. His head tilted as he listened. “Voices. I think the receptionist phoned a warning.”

“They knew I’d come here.”

“Or he had the sense to read the elevator display.” It was a quiet reminder to control her anger and suspicions.

She nodded, then raised her voice. “Open the damn door.”

No response.

Her mouth compressed. Three seconds later the door shrieked away from its frame and collapsed inward.

Inside, an older man replaced the phone on a corner desk and glared at Fay across the expanse of scratched wood that lay on the floor. A younger man and woman stood at the entrance to an inner room, the demon lab. Perhaps it was the unearthly timing and night light, but their complexions held a greenish tinge and even the adrenaline of her entrance didn’t straighten them from their slumped postures.

“Angus.” Fay knew the chief demonologist. Under orders, she’d handed him the nine demons she’d bound to amulets. “What happened here, tonight?”

Steve entered after her, prowling the perimeter of the room.

Angus ignored him, concentrating on the threat he understood: Fay. “We had problems. We resolved them.”

“Hell you did. I solved your problems. The demon broke your protections and came after me. I re-bound it and I’ll exorcise it.”

“No.”

Steve snarled under his breath.

Everyone looked at him.

“Blood,” he said. “I smell blood.” He advanced on the inner room.

The two demonologists pressed themselves against the door, half in retreat, half in defense. The woman glanced once at Angus for help before her attention focused fearfully on Steve.

“Call him off,” Angus commanded.

Vicious anger spiraled through Fay. Steve was not an attack dog. “Who died?” she asked flatly, and knew her guess was right when the woman jumped, startled. The young man’s left hand closed tight on the doorframe.

“It is none of your business, renegade,” Angus said.

“As an insult, renegade lacks power.” Steve looked at Fay. “You want in?”

The young woman slid away from the door, her courage gone. Angus’s glare could have incinerated her where she stood.

“In a minute,” Fay answered Steve as she crossed the room. She stopped beside the woman. “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten your name.” She had never bothered to make friends, had known its unlikelihood in the Collegium.

“Emma Jonker.”

Fay nodded acknowledgement.  “Who died, Emma?”

“Lia and Hampton,” the young man beside her answered. “It ate them.”

Emma shuddered.

“Enough,” Angus snapped.

“More than enough,” Steve purred.

Fay met his eyes and gave the faintest nod. He stepped forward and the young man conceded the entrance.

“Wait.” Angus walked around the desk. “What do you intend?”

“I told you. To exorcise the demon.”

“The Collegium still has use for it.”

“The Collegium lost all rights over my decision when the hell-born thing killed, then came after me. You want me gone, Angus? Believe me, I don’t go till the demon has.”

“It’s strong.” Emma slumped to the ground, her back to the wall. She looked up at Fay. “You’ll need help, but I…”

“Knowing your limits is part of strength.” Steve found the words of absolution. He opened the door to the demon lab and the stench of gore and guts released on a wave of death.

The young man broke. He ran out of the room with a hand to his mouth.

“Young punk. Weak.”

Leopard yellow flared in Steve’s eyes as he turned back to study Angus. “You were in charge. Their terror and pain, the demon’s kills, they’re your responsibility. Your burden.”

Fay walked past him into the lab.

Chapter 10

Demonology was a conservative discipline. Shelves around the edges of the lab held jars of poison, amulets and the raw materials for their creation, metals and crystals. A large freezer held animal carcasses. Shelf after shelf held texts, prayers and chants. The floor was marble, easy to wash chalk marks off, not easy to burn.

A man and a woman’s bodies lay torn in the middle of the room. The protective diagram chalked on the floor was smudged and broken. Candles were waxy pools set in a pattern new to Fay. She stopped at the edge of it.

“Why haven’t you had the guardians in?” she asked Angus. There had been time enough since the demon attacked her in Fremantle for a clean-up operation.

She read the answer in Angus’s tense face and his hovering in the doorway. “You weren’t sure the demon was contained.”

“He was probably waiting for a way to escape responsibility for the screw up,” Steve said. He waited between Fay and Angus, protective.

“People are irrational when it comes to demons,” Angus said. “I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t destroy the amulet.”

Fay saw it, the silver gleaming, in the center of the broken pattern, beside the outstretched hand of the dead woman. The demon had ripped off half her face.

“I’d say fear is a healthy response.” Fay breathed shallowly. The stink, the echoes of terror and the indefinable stench of demon all combined to induce nausea. A small part of her mind wondered how Steve’s heightened senses were dealing with the onslaught.

She bent and drew her knife from its ankle sheath. It was the same blade she’d lent Steve in the African jungle. She’d been honing its magic for years. She could have thrown it at the golem, but she’d known she’d need it now. With a demon, there were seldom second chances.

“Oran.” She’d learned the demon’s name in Africa. “Be visible.”

The demon’s power was bound within the amulet, a binding it fought with the whole strength of its rage.

Fay flinched.

It was strong, standing here between the two people it had killed.

“Bloody hell,” Steve whispered behind her.

For one of the rare times, the demon appeared in its own form rather than within a human body. It was terrifying, so beautiful and remote that it hurt. It wasn’t flesh and blood, but fire. Colors of orange, crimson, saffron and white gold melded into one another to form a creature half a head taller than Fay. It was naked but for the crimson bat wings that folded around it.

Without possession of a human body, Fay didn’t know if her knife could touch it, kill it. She held the blade ready for an underhand strike, ripping up through the stomach, under the ribs, to the heart. “Oran, I banish you from the world of humans, from the earth that nurtures, the sea that endures, the sky that holds our dreams. You are deceit and destruction. I know you. Name you.”

The demon bared its teeth and threaded its own words through the ritual of exorcism. “You think you’ve won. You’ll lose everything. The infection is deep in the Collegium. I taste it.” Its tongue flickered.

Ancient in evil, the demon followed its words with another sly attack. It worked around her bindings, not venturing a direct attack. She felt the lick of its powers fumble towards her heart.

Steve covered her left shoulder blade with his hand and she pressed back into his human strength. But the demon wasn’t trying to physically kill her. She felt its frustrated rage as it touched her torn bindings to the Collegium. Through them it could have sunk claws into her, negating her exorcism by sending even a part of its power into her; blood to blood from the two demonologists it had killed.

But she had destroyed every link to the Collegium.

“Oran, I cast you into the exterior darkness, into hell with no hope of return.” Revulsion that it tried to possess her through loyalty to the Collegium gave her anger. She struck the air with her knife, opening a rip in reality and kicking Oran through it.

The rip sealed behind the demon, leaving only the stench of brimstone and the amulet that had bound it melted to a blob of silver and gold.

Fay leant back against Steve.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her there.

A near silent whisper crept from the doorway where Angus stood. “Ego voco vos...” I summon...

Steve released Fay and shifted.

Even her senses, trained and experienced in sensing magic pulses couldn’t track the speed of his shift.

One moment human, the next, Steve snarled a warning. He was a leopard, but three times a leopard’s normal size. As his lips pulled back from sharp teeth, he looked more sabre-tooth tiger than hunting cat. His roar rattled the jars on their shelves and cut off Angus mid-word.

The demonologist abandoned his summoning to shape and fling a constraining spell.

Fay shrugged. Idiot. A spell wouldn’t affect a were leopard immune to magic attack.

The futile spell fell shredded to the ground. Angus’s mouth gaped open, then his eyes widened and he staggered backwards.

Steve paced forward.

Angus flung another constraining spell, then a fire spell. From the outer room, Emma screamed as he grabbed her and slung her at Steve.

“Enough.” Fay walked through the door.

Steve shifted back to human. “You useless bastard.” He grabbed Angus by the collar of his shirt and slammed him against the wall.

Fay hesitated. She was trained to attack and defend, but Steve had that covered. Instead she bent and helped Emma from the floor. “Are you hurt?”

Emma shook her head, but burst into tears and cried against Fay, who patted her shoulder and looked helplessly at Steve. They ought to reverse roles. He’d know what to do with a crying woman.

Steve had other concerns. Nails sharp as claws drew blood at Angus’s throat. “You waited till Fay was weak, vulnerable from cleaning up your mess, and then you attacked her. What was the spell you planned to use?”

Glassy-eyed with terror and straining to vanish into the walls, Angus stayed silent.

Sobbing and hiccoughing, Emma answered. “I recognized the chant. It was a summoning spell. They’re death magic. He wanted to call a demon to possess Fay.”

A feral growl split the shocked silence.

Then came the disgusting stink of Angus losing control of his bowels. “I was under orders. Demons channel magic. The Collegium wants to harness that ability to increase the magic it commands. Fay has no limit to the power she calls. It was…logical to channel a demon through her.”

“I’ll eat your heart,” Steve said.

Fay’s own heart seemed to start working again after the moment of frozen disbelief. Demonic possession was a cruelty beyond belief. For the Collegium to consider…no, decide to sacrifice her to that horror stabbed viciously.

“I didn’t know. I would never…” Emma whispered.

“It’s okay.” Fay patted her shoulder.

Blood ran down Angus’s throat. “It’s by the President’s order. Since Fay won’t give her services freely, he said we must compel her.”

“No father would order demonic possession of his daughter,” Steve said with the outrage of weres’ strong family and clan loyalty.

Fay knew no such certainty. Her dad had ordered her possessed, utilized as a weapon, her spirit strangled. Freezing cold flowed out from her heart, chilling her thoughts into the cold ruthlessness she’d been trained in.

“Go home.” She released Emma.

“I should…” The woman looked from Fay to the other room, where the corpses of her friends lay.

“We’ll clean up.”

Emma’s gaze skitted away from Steve and Angus. She retreated slowly, then as she reached the outer door her pace quickened. She ran down the corridor.

“Let him go,” Fay said to Steve.

Angus collapsed to the floor.

“He should die.” Steve faced her.

“The Collegium can deal with its own trash,” she said. “Since no one else has called the guardians about two demon kills, I will. Their families need to be told. And Angus must take responsibility.”

“He’ll lie or he’ll run. He’s a coward.”

“Emma will tell the truth and there are truth-seers in the Collegium. You need to leave, Steve, so I can seal the room.”

He glanced back at Angus. “Lie and I’ll kill you.” He walked out.

Fay followed him to the door, then called magic. It answered sluggishly, her nerve endings burning. She’d reach the ragged end of the power she could command. First re-binding a demon, then destroying a golem, and finally, exorcising the demon took everything she had. Add in the emotional shock of her father’s treachery and she was running on empty.

She ignored the pain and wove magic around the room, its windows and doors. Until the Collegium guardians arrived and brought their own mage, Angus would be trapped inside. Her ears popped as the room sealed.

Steve put his hand at the curve of her neck and shoulder, possessive as much as protective. She didn’t shrug him off, but she didn’t lean into him either. They walked that way to the elevator and its doors opened.

“I should have killed him,” he said.

“Inside the Collegium building? Right or wrong, the guardians would have hunted you down. You’d have been judged and executed.”

“What he did was wrong. What he said to you—” His hand tightened and released. “Sorry.”

“Dad could have given that order.” Abruptly her cool voice shattered. She shuddered.

Steve’s hand dropped to her waist. He stepped closer, pressing against her back. “He couldn’t. No father could.”

“Mine could.”

The elevator doors opened.

Fay tilted her chin and stepped out. She caught the receptionist’s worried gaze as Emma leaned over his counter, half-hysterical. Fay spoke clearly, infusing her voice with the tone of command. “Dr. Angus Barnes is upstairs with the dead bodies of two of his staff. He tried to control a demon, partly loosing its binding. I’ve exorcised it. He should be charged with murder, manslaughter at the least. A Collegium demonologist banishes, he doesn’t call them.”

“He tried to summon one to possess Fay,” Emma contributed.

The receptionist’s eyes widened in dismay. “Is Dr. Barnes still alive?”

“Regrettably,” Steve said.

“Call the Collegium guardians to detain him,” Fay said. “They need to collect the bodies and formally identify them. Inform their families.”

The receptionist fumbled for his phone, his attention on Fay with Steve at her shoulder. “I’ll call Nancy.” The all-purpose fixer who stood between the President and the Collegium, breaking his staff’s bad news to him, softening his arrogant commands to them.

“Forget Nancy. Forget Dad. Call the damn guardians—and look after Emma.” Fay swung on her heel.

Steve held his ground. “I have a message for the Collegium guardians and anyone else who needs to hear it. Fay isn’t yours any more. Let her alone.”

“Or else?” The receptionist re-discovered his spine.

Steve’s massive leopard form dominated the foyer. He flickered back to human. “Next time, Fay won’t stop me hunting.”

Chapter 11

Steve took the seatbelt from Fay’s clumsy grasp and fitted it home. “You’re wiped.”

“I’m furious.” She turned her head and looked at him, seeing the stubble shadowing his jawline. He was hard and masculine, protective, concerned—but this was her fight. She pushed back a wave of fatigue. “You shouldn’t have threatened the Collegium.”

“It was a promise.” He switched on the engine, pulling away from the Collegium.

“Ha.”

“Cute snort. You’re important to me, Fay.”

She ignored him, too churned up with her own emotions to pursue his. “I’m in a mess with the Collegium. The smart thing would be for you to stay clear till I sort out what’s happening. It’s all gone to hell. Did you hear the demon Oran? He tasted infection in the Collegium.”

“I heard.”

“It’s awful. I shouldn’t even be in your car. Stop and let me out. I’ll take the subway.”

“To where?”

Her brain turned over the question, stuttering with tiredness. It found no answers. For her, New York had always meant the Collegium. Now the Collegium threatened her and was itself threatened, infected. If only she weren’t so hell-blasted power burned. She had to crash.

“I have a place in New York,” he said. “Deep protections. A witch owed me a favor. It’s not in my name, either. We’ll leave the SUV at a were house and walk. The Collegium guardians might be able to track technology, but not you or me.”

Him because he was a magic-immune were, and she because habitual protective magics guarded her.

“I thought you lived in Cyprus?” She’d pictured him lounging in a hammock in the sunny grounds of a Mediterranean villa. In her vision, his eyes opened. He smiled at her and held out his hand, inviting her to tumble into the hammock with him. Cicadas shrilled in the yellowing summer grass.

“Frig.” She rubbed the heel of her hand along her thigh. Her thoughts were scattering. Exhaustion shot concentration. She had the Collegium to deal with, her dad.

“I do live in Cyprus. It’s a convenient jumping off point for espionage. But I’m in New York often enough to keep a small place.” A pause. “I’m not poor, Fay.”

Her answer stalled on a yawn. “You never look rich.”

“Why paint a target on my back?” He touched her cheek, thumb brushing under her eye. “You’re rambling tired.”

“Am not.” She closed her eyes to savor the caress and woke when the SUV stopped.

Steve jumped out, leaning back in to haul out her bag.

She moved more slowly, testing the realization that she’d slept in his presence, unconsciously trusting him to protect them both. “I could find my own place.”

“Forget it.” He slotted the SUV’s keys through a mail box and ran back down the steps of the apartment building. He moved beautifully, balanced and powerful, taking three steps at a stride.

He grabbed her hand and she gave up the argument. She wanted to go home with him. He led her on a tangled run through a maze of buildings and she used her magic subtly, a dusting of confusion, to hide their path.

The run woke her up. Blood that had flowed sluggishly from emotional shock warmed. Her skin flushed.

They moved from shadow to darker shadow in the predawn darkness.

The Collegium was hunting her. By her dad’s orders, they’d use her anyway they could.

Fury, shame, betrayal, a cauldron of emotions roiled as she thought of the Collegium using demons, allying with evil to increase its power. The motto was I serve, but there was no service to humanity when you danced with devils.

The scars the demon had left on her pulsed as if her blood had turned bitter. Pain chewed at her bones. It was grief. She had fought and bled for an institution whose actions revolted her.

“We’re here.” Steve entered a code that got them into the steel and glass building, and pressed his hand to the bio-reader to call the elevator.

He was a leopard. It figured his den would be high.

It turned out to be a penthouse, occupying a corner of the top floor and furnished with expensive simplicity. The walls were white with floor-length windows and sand-colored curtains a shade lighter than the smooth bamboo floor. They were open, revealing the night cityscape. Large, comfortable furniture had the elegance of European design. Bookshelves ran along one wall with the opposite wall holding a television.

Steve strode into the open plan living space and dropped her bag. He peeled off his leather jacket and dropped it over the back of a sofa.

“Let me.” He took Fay’s coat and flung it after his. The skin of his face showed his tension. It stretched tight over his cheekbones, hollowing shadows.

He had challenged the Collegium for her, not offering his protection, but insisting on it. No one ever defended her. All her life she’d been expected to be the strong one. 

She touched his chest, fingers brushing over the flannel shirt, feeling the softness, aware of the hardness underneath.

His breathing quickened, as it hadn’t during their run.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“In my lair?”

She half-smiled, because the humor and the disregard of danger were typically Steve. He made his decisions and then he lived with them. She put her arms around him. “Hold me.”

“With pleasure.” He picked her up, carrying her to a massive armchair that had its back to the room. He settled her in his lap, caging her in the power and sensuality of his body. One hand curved possessively over her thigh.

With the dim lighting in the room behind them, their reflections showed ghostly over the city scene. Fay studied the tableau. They looked like lovers, with rights over one another’s bodies. She surrendered to the fantasy and rested her head against his shoulder.

His hand slid down her thigh to her knee where his thumb moved idly.

She hadn’t known knees were an erogenous zone.

“I should have known it couldn’t be casual between us,” he said.

The determination in his voice, as much as the words, jerked her out of her floating sensual daze.

“Three nights I spent, waiting for you, wondering where the hell you were. On the way to the Collegium, I said you were mine and I meant it. But you need to know who I am before you decide. A relationship between us…wouldn’t be easy.”

“I’ll deal with the Collegium,” she said.

“Hell. I’m not scared of your friggin’ Collegium. And you’re not facing them alone.” His arm tightened around her shoulders. “I’m talking about me. I bring baggage, too, and mine’s not the kind that ever goes away.” His chest rose and fell sharply. “How much do you know about me, Fay?”

“I know you’re a mercenary specializing in hostage recovery. You also do some bodyguard assignments, but never for long periods. You consult on safe passage arrangements through war zones. You’re the most lethal fighter I’ve ever seen. I respect that.” She tugged his hand to rest on her stomach and covered it with her own. “I trust you.”

“You’ve forgotten the point most members of the Collegium would put first. I’m a were.”

“So?”

Weres were human, intermarrying. Nothing Fay knew of them prevented a relationship between a were and a magic user. All it meant was directing a blast of magic at Steve wouldn’t affect him at all.

“So while weres aren’t part of the Collegium, we do have a loose social structure. Most of us are well-integrated into human society and it provides the framework for our behavior. However, our animal halves need the reassurance of a final authority. It’s not something we talk about with outsiders.”

He paused. “We have a Suzerain, someone who carries the burden of decisions and responsibility. If a were goes rogue, he gives the order to execute. He decides conflicts of territory and renewal of traditions. The position is hereditary. The current Suzerain is my grandfather.”

“You’re royalty?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” She gave his chest a mock-consoling pat. He was so tense, it worried her. She didn’t want there to be another reason for caution, a reason to end their closeness. She wanted to relax into him and let everything else go.

“The suzerainty is passed from grandfather to grandson, skipping one generation.”

Not royalty. She finally understood what he was saying. Heir to the throne. “You’re telling me you’re the next leader of the weres.”

“A leader with limited powers, constantly debated and shouted at, but yes. I’ll be the next Suzerain.”

Her muscles slumped in defeat. A casual affair with her was one thing, but without even going to bed together, they’d dived into deep water—and Steve had responsibilities. The last thing he needed in his life was the cast-off daughter of the Collegium President pursued by demons and guardians.

He gave her a little shake. “You could at least answer me.”

She blinked. Surely he knew he could count on her commonsense? This attraction between them couldn’t be acted on.

“I know you’ve hated being the Collegium President’s daughter, but the Suzerainty is different. Lower profile, for a start. You hadn’t even heard of it. I’d keep the demands away from you as much as possible, but they would be there. Some weres think it’s smart to get the Suzerain’s partner onside.”

“Steve?” She shoved against his chest, trying to straighten, but his tight hold held her against him. His eyes were topaz, glowing. Aroused. It confused her. “If you need me to agree a relationship is impossible—“ 

“Not impossible. Bloody difficult. But I’d do everything to help you. We could take it slow, one step at a time, whatever you need.”

It sunk in slowly. “You want me.”

“Of course I do.” He exhaled in sharp frustration. “You’re in my blood. But a relationship between us would be serious. I was kidding myself thinking otherwise. You need to know me. Not Steve-your-mercenary-were, but the man who has family and dreams and responsibilities. You need to know that when you’re threatened, I’ll fight. And when I’m snarling at the world, you’ll be the one who can calm me, can pet me, can call me on my bad temper.”

“Steve—”

“And don’t even think of backing away from what’s between us because you think it’ll save me from the Collegium. Take me to your bed or don’t take me, I’m still going after the Collegium. I’m the next Suzerain. If the Collegium is messing with demons, they’re a danger to weres. Hell, they’re a danger to themselves.”

“I don’t think the whole Collegium can be corrupt.” But she wasn’t concentrating on the words. “We’re in your home. If anyone takes anyone to bed, you have to take me.”

“Take you?” He slid a hand under her shirt.

The skin to skin sensation shivered through her body.

“Decide, Fay. Can you deal with who I am?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 12

“I want to make love with you,” Steve said.

“Mmm.” Fay reached up to pull his head down to hers. Great minds thought alike. Her body craved contact with his, her skin so sensitive that the shift of fabric against it was a sensual enticement.

“Alexandria will be safe.”

“What?” Since he wouldn’t bend, she stretched up, intent on claiming his mouth.

“The Suzerain’s house is in Alexandria, close to a portal, central to political routes. It’s been protected for millennia. The Collegium with all its guardians can’t get through Granddad’s defenses.”

Her intent to kiss him froze. “You said your apartment was protected.”

“It is, but it’s still in New York. The city is Collegium ground. You’ll be safe in Alexandria. Then we can concentrate on one another.”

She wriggled in his lap, but with annoyance rather than desire.

His mouth compressed and his hold tightened, preventing her attempt to escape.

“This is not your decision, Steve. I have to stay and face the Collegium. They can’t be allowed to get away with perverting their founding purpose. They’re meant to serve. If I hadn’t burnt out my powers, I wouldn’t be here, hiding. As soon as I’m rested I have to deal with Dad and stop the Collegium dealing with demons.”

“I know your sense of duty, Fay. I respect it. But I’m a mercenary. I calculate risks for a living. For you to stay in New York serves no purpose.”

She pushed against his chest. “I can’t—I won’t—leave Emma to stand her word against Angus’s for what happened in the demon lab.”

“A witness report doesn’t have to be delivered in person. Stop being emotional and think.”

“Emotional? Me?”

The stern line of his mouth relaxed. “Your Collegium training is cracking. You’re definitely emotional—and you’ve a right to be. Your dad—“

“Don’t you see? He’s why I have to report to the Collegium in person. I can’t challenge the President from a distance, hiding like a coward.”

“Retreat sounds reasonable to me. Write a report and send it to all the senior members of the Collegium. Let them know what is happening. I don’t like the Collegium, but I don’t believe it’s changed so much that they wouldn’t be horrified.”

“The demon said the Collegium is infected.” Her hands clenched on his shirt.

“And you’d trust the word of a demon? Even if you do, he said infected, not diseased. Give them the information to mobilize against the infection. When you know what they choose to do, then you can decide how you’ll fight.”

Her emotional need to attack because she’d been attacked and betrayed, clashed up against her training. Logic won, but by a slim margin, and she resented Steve for forcing the conclusion on her. “Fine. I’ll leave New York.”

“Good.”

“But I’m not going to Alexandria.”

She waited for his argument and was disappointed.

“Where?”

“You said Alexandria has a portal. Well, so does Jim, my mom’s husband. I’ll go to Fremantle, Australia.”

Calculation narrowed his eyes, then he nodded. “We’ll go.”

She tilted her head in challenge and question.

“A joint report, Fay. I saw the demon, too, and Angus’s betrayal. Attempted possession is filthy. It’s my fight, too.”

“Okay,” she said grudgingly

“And of course, there’s the matter of love-making.”

The heat in his gaze transformed her anger into an even more volatile passion. Her stomach muscles tightened at the stroke of his fingers. “I don’t like you much at the moment.”

“I gathered that.” He lifted one of her hands from his shirt and kissed it before cradling it against his face.

“I don’t like running away.”

“I don’t like standing by while you fight. But I control my instincts to protect even when you tackle demons. Sometimes not fighting is the harder choice.”

She melted.

This time when she guided his head down for a kiss, he allowed it.

Desire. Tenderness. Hunger. Need.

His hand skimmed up her body to push aside the sensible bra and cup her breast, massaging with sensual, possessive enjoyment, while his tongue stroked into her mouth, coaxing and demanding. The hard power of his arousal pressed against her thigh.

She wanted to part her legs and ride the ache he was creating, ride him. She might be a virgin, but that didn’t mean ignorance of her sexuality or her body’s needs, just that she’d been scared to share herself. But she trusted Steve.

“Wait.” She broke the kiss long enough to stand and come back to him, glad for the massive chair that let her settle astride. Her head arched back at the sheer heat of pressing into him.

He bit her throat as his hands gripped her hips. She held onto his shoulders and ground into him. He cupped the back of her head, holding her in place for a savage kiss.

“Wildfire,” he muttered.

She blinked, unable to focus. Sheer sensation stormed her body, blocking thought, leaving only Steve and a building tension.

He unzipped her jeans, forcing his hand roughly between them and beneath her knickers. Pressed so close to him, she wouldn’t allow him space or time to move with finesse. She felt his fingers against her hot flesh, rode them as they stroked and bluntly entered her. She climaxed.

Hot, desperate satisfaction, leaving the results of her burned out powers to roll over her in a wave of pleasured exhaustion. She turned her face a fraction and tasted Steve’s throat.

He was hard and tense beneath her, but he stroked her back with slow, easy pleasure.

She cuddled into him.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he said.

“Hmm?” She nuzzled the curve of his throat and lied. “I’m not.”

His hands went to her waist and lifted her up and onto her feet. “I don’t feel like being sensible either, but if we’re leaving New York we’ve a better chance of doing so before the Collegium guardians get organized. We already know they’re watching your friend’s portal, hence the golem.”

He waited till she was awake and steady, then crossed the room and picked up her coat. He helped her into it. She leaned back and rested against him.

“We’re not going to Cynthia’s.” She put her hand into the pocket of her coat and her fingers brushed the shell Jim had given her. “We’ll use the Collegium’s preferred porter, Paul O’Halloran. They won’t expect me to walk into their territory.”

“But Paul will know where we go.”

She gripped the token. “No, he won’t. If I’m with you, he’ll assume we’re running to Alexandria.”

“For that, we’d need to contact Faroud, the Alexandrian porter. Calling your stepfather—“

“I don’t have to. I don’t need a porter, just access to a portal. Jim gave me a token which will guide us to Fremantle.” She paused. “According to Cynthia, Paul doesn’t know Jim’s portal exists.”

“So the Collegium can’t track us.” Steve nodded. “That’s why they were waiting at Cynthia’s portal. Like me, they’d lost you.”

She turned in his arms. “You won’t lose me again.”

“For damn sure.” He kissed her.

Paul O’Halloran’s portal was walking distance from Steve’s penthouse, something Fay was sure he’d calculated before buying it. Fast travel was important to a mercenary—and to the heir to the Suzerainty, an element of Steve’s identity that her tired mind struggled to deal with. She put it aside to consider later. Steve was still Steve, and she trusted him.

The Collegium-registered porter was annoyed at being woken by their unscheduled visit.

“Put it on my account,” Steve said.

Neither he nor Fay had sensed watchers, and Paul didn’t look as if he’d been warned to delay or report back on Fay’s actions. In fact, it didn’t look as if he recognized her. She hung back a step behind Steve, grateful that her dislike of portal travel had led her to mostly travel as mundanes did. There were worse things than airport security.

Paul lead the way down wooden stairs to the portal, grumbling. “Your porter, Faroud, hasn’t phoned me.”

The portal glowed green. There was a circle of river pebbles around it.

Tokens, Fay realized.

“We won’t need his guidance.” Steve’s hand tightened around hers. “Ready?”

“Hey! You’ll get lost and then—“

But Steve didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, and Fay went with him through the portal.

In between, her senses collapsed in the usual sickening confusion. She made herself ignore the portal-induced nausea and concentrated on the seashell in her left hand. Steve’s body bumped against hers as their joined hands towed him after her. Like her and all non-porters, within the between their senses were effectively blind.

Blind astronauts. She slowed her breathing, aware of panic nibbling at her exhausted control.

Steve wrapped both arms around her, never releasing her hand. She was his lifeline out of there. Without her and the token, he was lost.

The sense of his deep trust brought her mind out of the beginnings of a spiral of panic. She hated portal travel. Hated it. But this way they’d be safe, untraceable. She concentrated again and felt the shell pull, the resistance like the lightest of threads. She groped in that direction and the thread thickened from cobweb to cotton, cotton to yarn, yarn to rope—and they were out.

“You’re safe.”

Fay stumbled from the Fremantle portal straight into Yolanthe’s worried hug. Her mom had been waiting by the portal, seated in a camping chair.

“I have to get out of here.” Fay appreciated the concern, but she had to get away from the portal. Power-burned, portal-sick, she had to get out into the open air before she disgraced herself.

“Up the ladder.” Steve understood. He pushed her towards the ladder, then rested his hands against her back, then thighs, supporting her on the short climb.

“Who are you?” Yolanthe demanded.

“Steve Jekyll. Fay’s friend.”

Fay brushed past Jim as he hurried into the laundry. “I’m okay. I just need…” She reached the back veranda, gripped the railing and breathed deeply. The evening air was alive with the scent of herbs.

A few seconds later, Steve stood behind her. She let go of the railing and let his strength support her.

“Anything following you?” Jim asked. A good question since he had the power of the portal to draw on for protection.

Fay shook her head, her eyes closed.

“We used Paul O’Halloran’s portal,” Steve said. “We didn’t tell him our destination and Fay used what she called a token to guide us here. Could he have followed us between?”

“Paul couldn’t track a fart in a paper bag.”

“Jim,” Yolanthe protested. She stood beside Fay at the railing and touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

Fay opened her eyes. “Tired. The demon’s gone.” Her eyes closed of their own volition.

“She’s power-burned,” Steve said. “I didn’t realize using a token between would require so much effort or I wouldn’t have allowed her.”

“My choice.”

“Ha.” He swung her up in his arms. “Is there somewhere we can sleep? We’ll tell you the full story in the morning.”

“Fay has a room,” Yolanthe began.

“That’ll do,” Steve said.

Fay crashed.

Chapter 13

The near silent tap of keys filtered first through Fay’s waking consciousness. She rolled over to face the sound, opened her eyes and saw Steve.

“Good morning, rohi.” He sat in a chair swiveled to the window, one foot braced on the sill and the computer balanced on his knee.

“Morning.”

He wore jeans but no shirt and his skin gleamed where the sun bathed it. The bed smelled faintly of him. A delicious sense of rightness flowed through Fay. She stretched and realized that though she wore a shirt, her trousers were gone.

“I need a shower,” she said. The bedside clock said it was nearly nine o’clock. “And breakfast.”

“I’ve showered, but for breakfast, I waited for you.” His hair was still wet and he’d shaved. “I thought I’d save time. I’m drafting the report to send to the senior members of the Collegium.”

Fay’s drowsy pleasure in the small intimacies of life broke apart. She sat up.

“Don’t worry. They can’t track us back.” He tapped the small computer. “Even with new technology, I’m a leopard. I don’t lead anyone to me and mine.”

It wasn’t the thought of pursuit that bothered her. It was what the report meant: the Collegium’s purpose to serve humanity had been perverted by who knew what emotions and ambition, and the cause was her father.

“I’ll grab that shower.” She scooped up her bag on her way into the bathroom. Her dad’s betrayal went further than her. It went to the heart of the organization he’d been trusted to lead. Her report would destroy him—at least, she had to hope it would. If the Collegium members refused to believe her and Steve, and Emma from the demon lab, then Fay would be forced to fight her dad and all the organizational power he commanded. Demons could not be loosed on the world.

She ducked into the shower and turned her face to the stream of hot water. Fifteen minutes later she left the bathroom dressed, hair neatly braided and emotions under control. She would fight her dad if she had to, and she would win.

“May I see?” She indicated the computer screen.

Steve swiveled it to face her, putting an arm around her hips.

She put her hand on his shoulder and felt the heat of his bare skin.

He had started the report with the golem’s charge and covered the exorcism briefly. His disapproval of Angus came through clearly. Nothing, though, could make it easier to read Angus’s charge against her dad. “By the President’s order, we are to compel Fay and her powers.” Angus had attempted demonic possession.

Steve set the computer down on the windowsill. “You haven’t kissed me good morning.”

Her attention was on the report and the emotions it stirred, but his request nudged her with new obligations. Early morning intimacy included a kiss. She touched her mouth to his and was snagged by a surge of recognition. Steve, her lover. She deepened the kiss.

His lips parted in welcome, tongue teasing lazily. His hand slid from her hip firmly up her body to close over her breast.

The gentle squeeze sent pleasure through her, as sharp and urgent as pain. She made a muffled sound against his mouth and gripped his shoulder for balance while her free hand threaded through his hair. The rough silk of the short cut curls tickled her palm as her fingertips kneaded his scalp.

He broke the kiss. “If you were naked…” He rubbed his face against her breasts, showing without words his pleasure in their position, he seated, she bending over him. “I want to lick and suck and bite you.”

She dropped to her knees, breathless. “You’re almost naked.” She caressed his chest, finding a flat nipple and tracing a circle. She leant forward and licked it.

“Do it properly.” A low masculine command laced with approval.

“What?” She drew back to question him.

“Not with the arm of the chair between us.” He guided her in front of him. “Here. Between my legs.”

She shivered at how good it felt with his hard thighs around her, and at the sight of his erection pressed against his jeans.

“Ignore it.”

She glanced up at his face, to see his wry smile.

“The first time, I want to come inside you. And not in your mom’s house.”

Fay blushed.

He stroked her face, enjoying the soft dampness of her lower lip. Back and forth his finger ran until it coaxed her from embarrassment and she darted her tongue at it, tasting him. Then he guided her head to his chest. “Please.”

She teased one nipple, then the other, licking and lightly biting, discovering how good it  felt to fill her senses with him and how his response heightened her own arousal.

“Enough.” He groaned and hauled her up to lie on top of him as he ravaged her mouth.

They were both panting when they broke apart.

“The report,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She levered herself up slowly, reluctantly, stealing a final quick kiss.

“I’ll get us a hotel room,” he said.

“Yes.” She was grateful for him understanding, sharing, her reluctance to make love in the boardinghouse. As much as she wanted him, the knowledge lurked at the back of her mind that her mom—her mom—knew they were in here. What if Fay forgot herself and screamed?

She scooped up the computer and retreated to the bed with it.

Steve pulled on a shirt and buttoned it, while she edited the report, adding a couple of details, formatting it automatically to Collegium style. She added a couple of additional recipients to the list of senior Collegium members Steve had assembled. Captain Lewis Bennett might be burned out, powerless in terms of magic, and her father’s choice of a partner for her, but Fay judged Lewis cold and clear-eyed enough to see the truth and act on it; and he was no mean strategist. If he believed her and Steve, Lewis could be a decisive actor in the drama.

But she didn’t want to think of divisions within the Collegium and the need to tear it apart to cleanse the demon’s infection. She sought a distraction, and one was nearby and looking sexy. “What did you call me earlier? Rohi?”

Steve smiled at her, sensual anticipation and intimacy in his eyes. “An Arabic endearment. Literally, my soul.”

“Oh.”

He sat beside her on the bed, the dip of his weight bumping their shoulders together and sliding them hip to hip. “Is it ready?” A nod at the screen indicated the report.

“Mmm. I think so.” She hesitated. With this report, her personal break with her dad became a public challenge to his power and actions. Her breath shuddered as she inhaled.

“Hit send.” Steve rubbed her back.

The tiny tap of fingernail on plastic sent the message out irrevocably.

“Good.” He took the computer and switched it off. “Now breakfast.”

“Then the hotel room,” she said.

He kissed her temple, a salute to courage. She held onto the promise of it. No matter the bad stuff, this was her chance to build a new life. One rich with emotion and people to love. She grabbed Steve’s hand and hauled him up from the bed. “Mom’ll be waiting.”

The report served a dual purpose. When Yolanthe and Jim had read it, they knew what Fay had faced, and still faced.

“Richard.” Yolanthe’s tone made the name a curse. “God damn the bastard. Demonic possession.” She grabbed Fay’s hand across the dining room table and held on fiercely enough to hurt.

“I suspect that twist was Angus’s idea,” Steve said.

Yolanthe transferred her glare from the computer screen to him. Outraged maternal protectiveness could have incinerated him on the spot.

“Probably,” Jim agreed. “He sounds like a shit. But the Collegium has no right to try to control anyone’s powers. If the agreement isn’t freely given…”

Steve nodded. “Without consent, it’s a combination of attempted slavery and rape.” The were yellow of his eyes contradicted the cool control in his voice. “I don’t think the senior Collegium members will tolerate, let alone support, Richard’s actions. They’re arrogant, not evil.”

Unlike Richard.

Fay intervened quietly. “The report finishes Dad’s career. If the senior members believe Steve and me—and I’ll fight to make sure they do—then an investigation will find Dad guilty of ordering the use of demons and attempting to compel my powers. He’ll lose his position as President.”

“He should lose more.” Yolanthe turned to Jim.

He held out his hands in a what-more-can-I-do gesture. “From what you’ve said of Richard, ambition and reputation rule him. Stripped of them…he’s impotent.”

“I’d like to draw blood.” Steve looked at Fay. “But hurting him hurts others, too. Is the price worth it?”

She leant against his shoulder for a moment, appreciating his understanding of her conflicted emotions. Richard had betrayed her, but he was still her dad and old ties of loyalty still ached.

“It’s Fay’s decision.” Yolanthe accepted the situation reluctantly. A sob caught in her throat. “Baby, you’ve had the worst parents.”

“Hey, none of that.” Jim put an arm around her and offered a clumsy hug. “Your daughter’s a strong woman. Be proud of her.”

“Thanks, Jim.”

“I am.” Yolanthe bumped her hip on the table as she hurried around it to hug Fay. “Just be careful.”

“Richard and the Collegium don’t know we’re here.” Steve closed the computer. The faint click closed the subject, too. “I’m going to book a hotel room and we’ll spend a few days in Australia while the senior Collegium members sort themselves out. This is their mess. They should fix it.”

Implacable. Fay heard the tone of unequivocal judgment. Just so would Steve rule as Suzerain to the weres. And all hell would break loose if the Collegium’s senior members didn’t fix things to his—and her—satisfaction.

“You can stay here while you wait,” Yolanthe said.

Steve and Jim exchanged a masculine look of understanding.

“Kids need their space,” Jim said.

Steve grinned.

“Oh. Oohhh.” Fay’s mom hesitated. “I wouldn’t mind if…well, I would…but I don’t have any right…I mean, Fay’s twenty four and…you’d be safer here at the portal.”

“A hotel room is fine.” Fay mastered her own embarrassment. A parental chat, even obliquely, about sex was oddly uncomfortable. Richard hadn’t bothered. She’d learned the facts of life at school.

“Dinner tomorrow. At seven,” Jim said. “We’ll expect you.”

“We’ll be here.”

Chapter 14

The hotel room was glorious, white and blue with subtle touches of a nautical theme. Scandinavian-style wooden furniture invited guests to sit and dream. The huge windows looked over the port to the distant horizon, the Indian Ocean clashing blue to blue with the immensity of the cloudless sky.

Fay looked at the bed. It was massive, bridal in its whiteness. A tumble of pillows and cushions were artfully arranged by the headboard. She hugged her arms awkwardly around herself, straight-jacketed by acute, uncharacteristic shyness. If there was a way to navigate this minefield of pre-foreplay, she didn’t know it.

“Ravish me.” Steve threw himself backwards onto the bed and his eyes laughed up at her. He reached out for her.

—and that easily, the unexpected jitters vanished. This was what she wanted. He was what she wanted. She just had to let go and the desire between them would do the rest.

“Idiot.” She fell on top of him.

“Be gentle.” He hitched her hips into alignment with his and her thighs naturally parted to trap him beneath her. He squeezed her butt.

“Why?” She nipped his throat.

“I’m fragile.”

“Uh huh.” The hardness pressing between her legs gave the lie to that story. She wriggled happily, moving up his body to reach his mouth. She licked her tongue from her lips to his and joined their mouths. A shiver of anticipation mingled with satisfaction. His taste was spice and male challenge. She stroked his lower lip, enjoying the moment.

His chest rose and fell beneath her, powerful and aroused. His tongue touched hers, slid past and into her mouth. A stealth attack, like his hands. They roamed up her body, sliding from her jeans-clad butt, under her shirt, unclipping the bra, pausing.

“Please,” she whispered permission against his mouth.

“Take off your shirt.” His thumbs moved maddeningly just below the swell of her breasts. “Seduce me.”

Ravish me had been a tease and a challenge, helping her out of shyness. Seduce me was tender and true.

She’d seduce both of them. Fay sat up and unbuttoned her shirt, holding his gaze. She liked the heat in it, the hunger and appreciation. She flung aside her shirt and bra, uncaring where they landed. Her attention was on Steve, whose features were stark with passion.

“You’re beautiful.”

Her breasts were swollen and tight, aching for his touch. It was erotic to be semi-naked over him, the last of her shyness burnt away by his response. She could feel his tense arousal, but he was controlling himself, taking it slow, respecting her inexperience.

He dragged himself up the bed till he reclined among the cushions and pulled her up over him. Her breasts pressed against his chest till he held her a fraction away from him. “Watch.”

With one finger he traced a blue vein beating under the pale skin of her left breast. She studied the tanned strength of his hand against her softness and shivered as his fingertip circled a nipple. The swollen bud hardened further. She gripped his shoulders, bracing herself, unconsciously grinding into his pelvis. He circled the other nipple, sensitizing her skin, wrenching her between wanting to scream for him to hurry and wanting to linger in the moment.

“Lift up,” he said.

Her thighs trembled as she knelt up, presenting her breasts to his mouth. It was flagrant, pagan. His warm breath felt scorching. Then oh so slowly his tongue circled the nipple, his mouth covered, tightened and he sucked.

“Steve!”

Color burned over his cheekbones. He looked up at her without releasing her breast and sucked again with luxuriant possession. His eyelids lowered, dark lashes fanning against the soft skin beneath his eyes. He had given himself up to the pleasure of her breasts, sure in the knowledge it pleased her, too.

She shivered as air cooled the wet nipple, but he was already nuzzling a path to her other breast, teasing her with how it would feel. It felt incredible.

Her jeans zipper slid down unnoticed. With her thighs spread, he couldn’t work the denim down, but he scratched his nails across the cotton of her knickers and her hips bucked at the sensation.

Her instinctive response triggered Steve’s, breaking his slow careful control. He flipped her on her back and pulled down her jeans and knickers in one swift movement, tearing her bootlaces with were strength so that she lay naked on the white bed.

“I want you.” Muscles flexed in his arms as he stripped the bed covers.

She lifted obligingly, settling back on the cool linen to watch him undress. “It’s mutual.”

The shirt went first to reveal the gorgeous chest she’d petted and kissed this morning. She licked her lips, then froze as he shoved down his jeans and his arousal jutted out. When she dragged her gaze up to his face, she found his eyes waiting for her.

Deliberately he kicked off his boots and jeans and put a knee on the bed. He was big all over. Ready for her.

The butterflies in her stomach thundered like dragonflies. She covered the taut muscles with her hand, seeking to ease them.

He stretched out beside her, teasing her breasts with one hand while he bent over her and indulged in an endless, mind-blowing kiss. Her nervousness subsided under the leisurely play till she was arching up into his touch and touching him in turn.

“I like you like this,” he said.

“Like what?” She could barely form the question.

His hand was between her legs, stroking, teasing, dipping shallow, never staying long enough for her to find satisfaction.

She arched into his next intrusion, taking him deeper and squeezing.

“Mercy, woman.”

“Then give me what I want.”

“What we want.” He braced his weight above her, kissing her urgently as he nudged inside. Her groan filled his mouth. He stopped.

She scored his back with her nails. “More.”

“Fay.” The warning was too late. Her desire snapped his leash. He thrust once, completely entering her. “Hell damn.” Tension shook him as he forced himself to still. “Fay?”

“You’re big.”

“Damn it, I know. Did I hurt you?”

“First time.” She breathed quietly beneath him, adjusting to the odd rightness of being stretched and filled so intimately. She traced the line of his spine. There was less pain than she’d anticipated. More a sense of accepting an irrevocable change. Steve was part of her, literally. She kissed him. “Continue.”

He shuddered and thrust. “Have to. Rohi.”

“My soul.” She encircled his shoulders as the power of his beautiful body imposed the rhythm of loving. It was hard, demanding and primitive. Tender. She moved with him, testing her own demands and finding them overwhelming.

“Please, please, please, Steve.” She wrapped her legs around him. The position rubbed him against her in new sensitivity. It was too much. She screamed as her climax exploded.

“Hell, yes.” He followed her into the darkness.

“I thought first times were meant to be traumatic.” Fay lay with her head on Steve’s shoulder.

His hand stroke her hip, his own satisfaction evident in the relaxed sprawl of his body and low lazy voice. “How do you feel?”

“Euphoric.”

“I aim to please.”

She tugged at his chest hair to punish that degree of arrogant male pride. “It was a mutual effort.”

“Very mutual.” He found her breasts.

She shifted to grant him better access. There was something hedonistic in simply lying back, enjoying his appreciation of her body. Later she would explore his body. Her muscles ached pleasantly at the memory of his power. She kissed his shoulder, licked at the salt.

“You want to play?” His rough voice teased. He slid down her body, kissing, biting, shaping her with his hands. “I love the taste of you, the scent of you on my skin. You’re strong and soft, so soft.” He nuzzled her stomach.

“Steve.”

He let her drag him back to her mouth. She feasted with new hunger, aware of the tension growing between them, feeding it.

“You’ll be sore,” he reminded them both.

“No.” Not enough to stop the fever in her blood. “You feel amazing inside me. So big. You move and everything goes crazy. All I can feel is you, more and more of you.”

“Fuck, Fay. I’m hard as a rock.”

“A menhir.” She nipped his ear as he settled between her thighs.

“We’ll go slowly this time.”

“Who are you telling?”

“Myself. And you, witch.”

Her laugh ended in a gasp as he entered her. Delicious slow strokes in and out so that she shuddered helplessly, willingly.

“Now do you appreciate slow?” Muscles stood out on his body, mute evidence of the control he exerted.

“Ye-es.” Her head moved restlessly.

“Then we’ll continue.”

She gripped his shoulders as he thrust within her, raising her hips to meet him, digging her heels into the mattress.

“Easy.” He coaxed her down with caresses and kisses and the slow ride built in waves till his shout of completion joined her own.

She smiled. Loving was mind-shattering.

Chapter 15

Dinner the next night was enjoyable. For a start, Fay had stopped blushing. Of course, she looked too often at Steve and smiled too fatuously, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he smiled more than she’d ever seen him do. Happiness suited him.

“Are you really a were?” Linda asked. The old lady was wearing a purple dress and clanking with silver jewelry.

“I’m a leopard.”

“More like a sabre-tooth tiger,” Fay said.

“Oh, you’ve seen him in animal form?” Linda’s bright-eyed gaze transferred to her.

“Yes.” Not in the best of circumstances, but…“He’s gorgeous.”

The smug curve of his lips was distinctly feline. “Thanks, darling.”

“Pass the potatoes.” Jim concentrated on his meal.

Yolanthe handed him the bowl of mashed potato. “What is it you do, Steve? Your job?”

A mercenary. Fay was new to the whole mother-daughter dynamic, but she had a feeling “mercenary” would go down like a lead balloon.

“I have an engineering degree and specialize in logistics.” All true. Steve adroitly navigated the minefield of maternal anxieties, but it was a selective truth.

“He has a lovely apartment in New York,” Fay said.

“New York.” From Yolanthe’s tone, it was a city filled with zombies and bubonic plague. Or Richard and the Collegium.

“I’m based in Cyprus,” Steve said.

Jim frowned. “The nearest portal is Alexandria.”

“My grandfather lives there. I’ll live there, too, one day.” His glance lingered on Fay. “Maybe sooner than I’d planned.”

“Have you visited the new Library of Alexandria?” Esse asked. The sixth diner and quietest of the boardinghouse residents so seldom spoke at the table that they all stared at her. Her narrow face flushed at the attention and she readjusted her glasses.

“My goodness,” Linda exclaimed. “Never say they’ve dared fate. People are so foolish. Imagine rebuilding such a mythical place.”

“It was real enough in its day.” Steve smiled at Esse. “The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina is pretty amazing. Far more than a library. If you visit, you’ll want to spend a few days or weeks.”

“I like the smell of old libraries,” Yolanthe said.

“Dust, silverfish, mold.” Jim grinned, provocative on purpose. “Give me a nice clean digital book any day.”

Yolanthe wrinkled her nose at him. “Philistine.”

“Luddite.”

The conversation flowed with casual informality.

“Mango and ice-cream for dessert,” Jim said.

Fay pushed back her chair to collect their plates. “Sounds good.”

She dropped back in her chair as the mosquito protection spell she’d cast days ago pinged and tore. It slapped against her skin like sunburn.

“What the hell?” Jim started for the front door. Power surged from the portal, slamming through the protections that guarded the boardinghouse, re-enforcing them.

Too late.

Collegium guardians broke through doors and windows, all dressed in black and grey camo gear, the first bullets tearing through the air. Fay recognized their leader, Ethan. Her ex-almost lover. The man who’d used her.

His gun shifted, pointing at Steve.

The power of the portal thundered, shimmering visibly, physically holding the intruders frozen for the space of five breaths. Then Jim groaned, clutched his chest and collapsed.

But he’d won Fay enough time to knock the bullets from the air, to recognize them as silver and to melt the barrels of the weapons. It took silver to stop a were. The guardians had come prepared to kill Steve.

The stink of demons filled the room.

Fay’s rage leapt higher. Someone was using demons as Angus had tried, using demons to attack humans.

Steve blinked to leopard and lunged. The dining table crashed aside, knocking three guardians off their feet. There was no roar, no wasted time or movement. He was all predator, enraged, protective and lethal. Claws sliced the air. The guardians had only a moment to throw themselves backward, out of reach.

Linda hit the one nearest her with her handbag. Unbelievably, he went down.

“Jim!” Yolanthe was scrambling across the room, intent on reaching her husband.

Steve cleared the path. The guardians had recognized the uselessness of their weapons after Fay’s intervention, and they flung them aside and reached for their magic. In their haste, they forgot it had no effect on weres. Steve deflected the spells, moving through them, slashing and slamming bodies.

Fay turned her attention to the demons. There were two, insubstantial but lending power to the guardians’ attack, enabling them to defy the protective defenses of Jim’s portal. The demons’ signatures were present in their stench. Fay concentrated and traced the binding on them back to the demonologists controlling them.

Idiots and cowards! They were near, very near, but outside. Safe—they thought. Lurking outside, channeling the demons’ power to attack her and those she loved.

They’d learn that no distance was safe.

The temptation was fierce: to loose the demons. The first people they’d turn on would be their handlers. But then she’d have to bind or exorcise the demons to protect Yolanthe and Jim’s neighbors, and she wasn’t sure she’d have the time or energy.

As much as she intended to bring the battle to the demonologists, it would have to be another way. She gathered power from the air, from the portal’s broken protections and the guardians’ failed spells. Then she sent it back along the invisible chains of demon-channeled power.

Like a heat-seeking missile, her power slammed along the chains and exploded around the amulets binding the demons. Amulets that the demonologists held. Their concentration broke.

The portal’s protections snapped back into place, and an instant later the guardian intruders screamed as flames flared from their clothes. The flames licked against the dining room furniture without scorching it.

“Out,” Ethan shouted the order to retreat.

Steve batted aside a guardian and lunged for Ethan, who ducked out the door. Steve roared.

Outside, the demonologists recovered fractionally and directed their attention at Fay. She felt the ooze of demon drool on her face. Illusion, but nearly true. Even with the demons amulet-bound, the demonologists were losing control. They had overstretched themselves, thinking demon-channeled power could take out a portal and Fay.

Steve blinked back to human form and jumped through the nearest exit—the dining room windows—after the guardians.

Fay followed.

Around the corner of the house, in the narrow street, a van waited. The two demonologists stood with their backs to it, arms outstretched, under the skinny leaves of a twisted peppermint tree. The shadows were appropriate. The amulets they held pulsed an ominous blood red.

The bound demons weren’t as strong as Oran, the demon Fay had exorcised in New York, but they were too strong for the demonologists. Too strong and too clever. They whispered to Fay, promising that they would share revenge with her. Two puny humans, they would eat them as appetizers. She could play with their bones.

“Shut up.” She had to think, had to concentrate. The fight was far from over; only now it was outside, in public.

The demons shrieked with glee. Don’t think. Give us freedom. We’ll suck the marrow from their bones.

“No.” She thrust the intrusive voices from her mind, re-enforcing her personal protections, and barely in time.

As soon as the guardians stumbled off the property onto the road, the punishing flames of the portal’s protections vanished. Flames gone, the guardians regrouped. Knives appeared, singing through the air at Fay and Steve.

She gritted her teeth, aware that magic as well as skill guided the knives, and she had to concentrate on the demons because even as the demonologists attempted to use the demons’ power, the demons were gnawing through the bindings of their amulets. She had to control them.

But the more immediate threat could kill her first. The guardians’ knives flashed, glinting in the light from the open front door.

Steve snatched up a chair from the veranda and held it as a shield in front of them.

The first knife barely thudded into the chair, when it—and all the knives—changed suddenly into hornets, spun and darted after their owners.

Fay blinked and looked behind her, uncertain of the source of the timely back up. It hadn’t felt like Jim’s portal power.

Esse, the quiet boardinghouse guest, waved from the doorway. The magic was hers.

Van doors slammed as maddened knife-hornets butted and dented the paintwork and fractured the glass trying to get at the guardians, who had retreated to safety. They hadn’t cared about their demonologist allies, though.

The two demonologists pounded on the outside of the van.

Fay frowned in disapproval as well as anger as she strode forward. The knife-hornets weren’t attacking the demonologists, so the two mages had no excuse for their panic. Survival meant controlling the demons, yet the demonologists’ self-control was frayed to a thread. This was the caliber of person the Collegium trusted with demons?

Angus, the late Chief of Demonology, had failed in more ways than one.

Fay couldn’t fail now. Inside the van, the guardians would be re-grouping. “Let’s end this.” She still lived by one Collegium rule: don’t terrorize the mundane. If this insanity continued, they would attract attention. Outside the boardinghouse, Jim’s privacy portal spells couldn’t hide magic or screams.

The demonologists had tied the amulets to them with blood. So by blood she’d free them. Then the demons, amulets and all, could be sent to hell. That was what her training said to do, but she shook with the demon-fed raw need to send the whole team, guardians and demonologists, to damnation. They had dared to attack her family.

She drew her ironwood knife and cut reality, gashing an opening to hell.

“I need their blood,” she said to Steve.

He pounced. Sharp claws slashed vindictively, one line each from the demonologists’ right eyes. He dropped the sobbing idiots at her feet.

“Thanks.” She took the amulets from them as the demonologists scrabbled up and ran sobbing to the van. This time its door opened. The demons shrieked in her ears. “No. You’re going to hell.”

They were nowhere near as strong as Oran, nor had they been fed on death. She stabbed the amulets with her blade and threw the severed spellwork through the rip in reality. The rough and ready exorcism worked. The demons fell cursing into hell and the rip sealed. A fresh ocean breeze blew away the stench of damnation.

The Collegium van revved and halted as Steve grabbed the tow bar. That was the measure of his were strength and his rage. The smash of his fist shattered the back window.

“Let them go.” Fay put her hand on his back.

“I warned them what would happen if they came after you. I’m going to paint the street with their yellow livers.”

“Animal.” The curse came from the van. Ethan had no brains.

Fay found a rush of exasperation-fuelled power. The van and its occupants vanished.

“Where?” Steve’s question was a snarl, a man deprived of rightful prey.

“Ocean. A mile out. Hopefully they can’t swim.”

“Maybe sharks will eat them.” They jogged back into the house.

Jim met them, leaning against the dining room doorframe with Yolanthe hovering. Linda and Esse waited in the background. Jim waved aside Fay and Steve’s concern. “Power burn, not a heart attack.”

“Are they gone?” Yolanthe asked.

“Yes, and they won’t be back. I’m sorry I brought this trouble to you.” Fay met Steve’s gaze and they shared the thought: the Collegium’s senior members had had a chance to resolve the situation quietly. They’d failed. Now, Fay and Steve would deliver justice. “We need to use the portal.”

Chapter 16

“I shouldn’t have let it go,” Fay fretted as she waited for Jim to climb cautiously down the ladder to the portal. They needed him, as porter, to contact Cynthia. “I shouldn’t have let the senior members get away with that half-assed response.”

Yesterday the Collegium members had read her and Steve’s report, and ignored him, although he was the next Suzerain, and given her a brush-off sharp as a slap. “Your father denies your accusations. But given the seriousness of the charges, we are looking into the matter. Angus is dead.”

“Who killed Angus?” She steadied Jim as he wobbled down the last step.

“Does it matter?” he wheezed.

“It does. Those were guardians who attacked us. Angus was head of the Demonology Department. He knew the shifts of power within the Collegium. Someone killed him and if they hung the suspicion of guilt on me—”

“On us,” Steve interjected.

She nodded. “That suspicion could be spun as a reason to attack us.”

Steve growled. “And if you died ‘resisting apprehension’…”

Her smile was sharp, promising vengeance. “Someone would be delighted.”

“Relieved,” Jim said. “You scare them, kiddo.”

“With reason,” she vowed and clasped Steve’s hand. No one would hurt her family again.

His firm grip said he was with her on that.

“Cynthia.” Jim contacted the other porter. “I’m sending through Fay and her friend, Steve. It’s urgent.”

“Jim, what’s happened?” Cynthia’s voice echoed through the portal on a high note, shrill with worry. “Your portal shook.”

“Someone attempted to break my protections. Don’t panic. The portal’s still mine. I’m sending Fay through. She’ll deal with the mess.” He glanced at Fay, who nodded. He tagged her, then Steve, with the blue light of his portal and handed them both shell tokens. “Explanations later, Cyn.”

“Be careful,” Yolanthe said from the top of the ladder. The cellar was too small for her to add to the crowd.

Careful? No. Avenging furies weren’t careful. Fay swallowed, not wanting her voice to reveal her reckless determination—and worry Yolanthe. “Bye, Mom.”

“I’ll be with her,” Steve said. His voice held all the menace Fay had tried to hide. Hell was about to open for those who’d threatened her.

They stepped into the portal.

Cynthia found them in three steps, dabbed them with green light and hauled them out. “Explain.”

The toy blue lamb, Squiffy, butted Steve’s ankles.

“The immediate threat is over,” Fay said. “And it was never directed against the portals. It’s personal and I’m dealing with it.” Her hand tightened around Steve’s. “We’re dealing with it.”

Cynthia looked at him. She wore a quilted robe knotted at the waist and covered in a forget-me-not flower pattern. Her dark hair was untidy. “I recognize you. You watched my portal.”

“I was waiting for Fay.”

“What about the other watchers, Cynthia,” Fay broke in. “Are the Collegium guardians still there?”

Cynthia eyed her shrewdly, obviously lining up facts and concluding that the Collegium was the source of attack against Jim’s portal.

Fay braced herself. Most magic users would assume that the Collegium naturally had right on its side, and were going after her for a reason. If the other woman attacked them…Fay glanced around at the soft toys. Death by smothering? They’d have to get out. The woman was Jim’s friend. They couldn’t attack her.

But Fay had misread the situation.

Cynthia sank onto her recliner and Squiffy leaped into her lap. “It was only yesterday I realized you’re Richard Olwen’s daughter. So this is Collegium trouble. Paul O’Halloran, the official New York porter, got his knickers in a twist when he couldn’t track you through the portal. I assume you used Jim’s tokens?”

“Yes. What about the Collegium guardians, the other watchers who were here before?”

Steve squeezed her hand. Keep calm. Don’t push her.

“They pulled out after I had a visit from a block of granite. He called himself Captain Lewis Bennett.”

“Ah.” Fay stopped vibrating with the two competing needs: for answers and to get the heck out of there and to the Collegium. She focused intently. Information was vital, especially if it meant allies.

Cynthia petted Squiffy. “Gee, was the captain ticked. Apparently his people hadn’t been watching for you by his orders. He sent them off sharp and asked me if I knew where you were. I could have guessed.” She shrugged. “But I didn’t know. I told him it’s not my responsibility to keep track of everyone who passes through my portal. Then he asked why I hadn’t informed the Collegium of my portal and how many more secret portals existed. So I kicked him out.” She set Squiffy on the floor. “Did the Collegium attack Jim?”

“Yes, but not for the portal. They were after me.”

“It’s interesting, though, how quickly they guessed Jim had a portal,” Steve said. “They came prepared to break its protections.”

“What did they use?” Cynthia asked tensely.

Fay hesitated. Despite everything, old loyalties made her wince away from admitting the truth. And then, she didn’t want to start a panic.

“They won’t use the weapon again,” she said. “The team brought two demonologists who used the channeled magic of bound demons to break Jim’s portal protections.”

“Demons,” Cynthia repeated.

“I know it’s wrong, but it’s not the whole Collegium that’s sick. I’m going to take out my dad, then the Collegium can heal itself. There won’t be more demons, even if I have to exorcise them myself.”

“Still,” Steve said. “I expect Jim will be working on protections that can withstand even demon-channeled power. Perhaps a loop that drags in and uses the power of the attack to stand stronger.”

Cynthia nodded slowly. “I’ll talk with him. Later.” She reached a decision. “If I’m ever not here, Squiffy will let you enter my portal. I’m sure Jim’s given you tokens. If you need to run, run here.”

The two women’s eyes met.

“Thank you,” Fay said. Cynthia understood they were going up against the Collegium. Despite Fay’s anger and power, and the justice of their cause, it could go devastatingly wrong. Steve probably had a were network retreat lined up. It was good to have her own escape route, even one known to the Collegium.

Interesting, that Lewis hadn’t known of the watch for her. He never bluffed. So if he’d told Cynthia the watch for Fay wasn’t on his orders, he’d be furious that someone had gone behind his back to control his forces, his guardians. Even with his magic powers burned out, Lewis’s anger would be formidable. His loyalty to the Collegium’s founding aims was absolute. That was why although he’d burned out his power, Lewis remained head of the guardian forces.

He’d be an ally for her and Steve within the Collegium—or at least willing to listen.

How many other senior members shared his outrage?

Peak hour crowds meant Fay and Steve set off for the subway rather than try for a cab. It was standing room only in the subway car. Not that it mattered. She was too edgy to sit.

As for Steve, his very stillness was a threat. He blocked the press of bodies from her and radiated a controlled ferocity that had even blasé commuters stepping back.

They got out at their stop and jogged up the stairs.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m going to take Dad out.”

“What does that mean?” He shot her a glance, keeping pace when she moved to a run, his breathing even.

They wove through pedestrians. Those who saw them coming shrank out of their way.

“Dad brought the Collegium into this because it’s his powerbase. But the Collegium is about service, about controlling power, not abusing it. I’m going to take Dad’s power from him, his position as President and the respect he’s enjoyed. Not just senior members, everyone has to know what he attempted.”

From the outside, the Collegium building looked ordinary, just another city building, tall, angular, and inward-looking. But the elegant steps were empty. No one entered, no one left.

“Lockdown,” Fay murmured. “Do you sense—“ She broke off. As a were, the spell wouldn’t affect Steve. “The Collegium is in lockdown. There’s a repelling spell in place for mundanes.”

“No witnesses or collateral damage.” He understood the implications. “Suits me. Will you be able to get in the door?”

“It’ll be us getting out that the Collegium guardians will resist.” She rolled her shoulders, shook them, and spread her fingers, shaking loose. She’d been a guardian. She knew what they’d try. But she’d also trained with them for years, and they’d never taken her down. Besides, they’d attacked her family. She wanted answers.

“Well, then.” Steve glanced up from the bottom of the steps. “Shall we?”

She pulled magic and wrapped it around herself and him.

“I can feel that.” He looked at her from topaz eyes, a heartbeat from shifting to leopard form.

“Protections. We’re walking out of here when I’m done.”

The polished concrete steps were slick from a spring shower. They climbed carefully, unhurried, and didn’t break stride as the automatic doors recognized her magic and slid open.

The foyer was filled to bursting with people talking, gesticulating and eddying. Fay recognized faces, added names, sifted and analyzed the scene. The movement of people from group to group wasn’t random. It was a physical expression of loyalties. More than the senior members had gathered at the Collegium this morning. Someone had to have put a call out.

Weather mages and foretellers, demonologists and gremlins with their affinity to all things mechanical, and warrior mages, the group Fay had belonged with, the frontline troops of the guardians. Captain Lewis Bennett was the center of that group, though he stood silent, watching Fay and Steve’s entrance.

His silence spread as others turned and recognized them, too.

Fay looked for Nancy. But Richard’s secretary, mistress and general go-between, the woman who mediated between the Collegium and its president , wasn’t there. Fay wondered what it meant. Had Nancy fled or was she emphasizing her loyalties and staying with Richard in his office? After all, when he lost power, so would she.

“Fay!” Emma Jonker, the woman Fay and Steve had saved from Oran’s attack, broke from a huddle of demonologists. A short, older woman followed in her wake. “Fay, President Olwen denies everything. He says it’s all treachery and lies. But it’s true. We saw it. The demon, the kills. Angus drank acid in his apartment.”

“Acid. That’s not suicide,” Steve said. “The man was too much a coward to choose such pain. That was punishment.”

Fay squelched a cold shiver. Punishment indeed. Someone had been very angry with Angus, and they’d had the power to defeat his protections and enter his home.

“I am now Chair of Demonology, Gilda Ursu.” The older woman introduced herself, but didn’t offer to shake hands. She had wary eyes, blue beneath drooping lids. Her hands were short-fingered, strong looking. She appeared both sensible and capable—not someone who’d have enjoyed working under Angus.

Emma ignored her new boss. “You have to make the President stop, Fay. Demons are dangerous. They shouldn’t be bound forever. They erode the bindings. They connect to humans. They eat our humanity.” She sucked in a sharp breath, clearly hearing the note of hysteria in her own voice. When she continued, her tone was level. Committed. “We need to banish them.”

“I know.” Fay glanced beyond her, speaking to Lewis Bennett’s quiet approach. “Dad attacked me in my mom’s home an hour ago. He used Collegium guardians and two demonologists to do so. They used demon-channeled power to break a portal’s protections. Dad endangered mundanes. He’s not fit to be President nor to wield any magic.”

Lewis’s mouth went tight.

“But you’re here, alive.” A middle-aged man in a stained tie and unpressed grey suit thrust the insinuation at her.

“I’m here to challenge Dad,” she said to Lewis.

“You haven’t proven need,” the unknown man insisted.

“Who are you?” Gilda snapped.

“Derek Hanny, a low level illusion talent,” Lewis supplied. “All purpose trouble-maker.” His voice was emotionless. “However, others will make the same charge.”

The crowded foyer was silent. Everyone listened.

“Fine.” Fay met the challenge. “Where is Ethan Drogan and his team?”

Lewis’s expression didn’t change. “Ethan went after you?”

“Nothing like guilt to add a touch of viciousness,” Steve said.

The two men locked gazes; both knowing Fay and Ethan’s romantic history, his betrayal.

“Ethan and his unit went silent twelve hours ago,” Lewis said. “No one knows where he is.”

“I do. He’s drying out after a swim.” Fay started for the elevators. “I thought they needed a lesson. No one attacks my family.”

“So you say.” Derek Hanny was brave in a crowd. He had an anonymous murmur of support. “But where is your proof?”

“I was there,” Steve said. “Do you challenge my word?” His voice rumbled with a make-my-day dare.

Derek backed away.

Lewis shook his head at Steve. “Leave him.” He looked around at their audience, at all the fascinated, reluctant and uncertain watchers. “The Senior Members are here. I called them in. They read your report. I investigated. President Olwen bypassed me to order the guardians to watch and attack Fay when she returned to New York two days ago.”

“The President has been busy. Angus bound the demons and used them with Olwen’s approval.” Gilda folded her arms. “Angus shouldn’t have, orders or no orders. But the Presidential approval was there. I won’t have it. Demons are too dangerous to gamble with.”

Over her shoulder, Emma nodded vigorously.

But others weren’t so sure. There was a movement, a ripple through the crowd. People didn’t want to believe the truth.

Fay studied the senior members. Their resentment at being called to act was obvious in their expressions and body language. By concentrating power in his hands her father had done more than consolidate his position, he’d robbed others of a sense of their own responsibility. She met the senior members’ accusing gazes with her chin up and scorn in her eyes.

Lewis broke the deadlock. “Enough. President Olwen has incited you all with talk of treachery. We are in lockdown because of the uncertainty.” Lewis addressed everyone. “It must end.”

“I will end it.” Fay dared anyone to deny her right to challenge her father. It was part of the Collegium’s charter. Challenge to the president was allowed if there was need. Demons being used to attack magic users and endanger mundanes definitely met the criteria set out for “need”.

Derek Hanny mumbled and retreated into the mass, but someone, in a faceless whisper objected. “Fay. But not the animal.”

The animal. The were. Steve.

Fay’s rage lit from ice storm to volatile inferno. Screw them. She was done playing by the rules. The steel bones of the building groaned as her magic reached out.

Steve’s hand closed around her wrist, halting retribution. He clasped her hand, interlacing their fingers.

Col Ellingham, another guardian, raised his voice. “I’ve fought with Steve Jekyll and I call him friend. Which is more than I’d do for many of you. Bigots. If Fay wants him with her, he has the right.”

“What right?” An elderly weather mage pushed forward, a senior member.

“The right of having shed blood for the Collegium,” Lewis intervened, his voice cold. “Steve’s worked and bled for us in the past.”

The demonologist Gilda smiled victoriously. Blood right couldn’t be ignored. The challenge would proceed.

The crowd opened in front of Fay and closed behind her, pushing forward, surging to accompany her to the President’s office.

“A challenge is not a spectator sport,” Steve said. Menace laced his voice.

Lewis nodded, then jerked his head at the warrior mages. They spread out, blocking the crowd. “Senior members only. To bear witness.”

Seven men and women, plus Lewis entered the elevator with Fay and Steve. She put her back to the doors and faced them. Four of them met her eyes directly.

“You’re glad to see me,” she charged.

“Damn right we are,” the weather mage said, though he edged away from Steve. “Richard’s unstable and he’s infecting the Collegium. He sees treachery everywhere—except in himself. And you know the position of the President. We can’t truth spell him to get at the truth. It would have to be voluntary, and he refuses.”

“Too jealous of his power,” Gilda said.

“President Olwen has shut himself in his office. Ties of loyalty mean we can’t force him from the President’s position, but we can withhold our powers somewhat.” Lewis pressed a button, holding the doors closed for a few extra seconds. “If you challenge him, Fay, it’ll be as a man and your father, not as the President with all the power that’s traditionally entailed.”

Chapter 17

The elevator doors opened. Fay stepped out, with Steve beside her. The echoes of her last visit engulfed her. Then, she’d been alone, raw and desperate. Now, as awful as the situation was, she could feel Steve’s strength. He would be there for her, fight with her.

She bumped her shoulder into his.

He glanced at her, the corner of his mouth turning up.

His return bump would have staggered a lesser woman. Fay was still smiling, remembering how it had all started at LaGuardia airport, when the corridor ended and they entered the outer office of the Presidential suite: Nancy’s domain.

The large glass vase that Fay had shattered when she’d broken her ties to the Collegium, had been replaced with a beaten copper vessel. It sat on a low table, and Nancy stood beside it. In front of the door to Richard’s office.

Nancy looked good. Her suit was a crimson red, bright and defiant—the color of fresh blood. She’d painted her fingernails to match, and they were on display with her hands at her hips, the nails filed to pointed tips. Black high heels had equally sharp toes.

And Nancy’s smile was sharpest of all. “Fay. I always hated you.”

Everyone stopped, just inside the room. It was odd how hate immobilized them. The power of Nancy’s emotions throbbed, filling the space and pushing out the light.

Fay glanced at the windows. No, not just Nancy’s emotions. A storm was rolling in, pressing against the top floors of the building, closing in with furious intensity. It made the artificial lighting in the office starker.

A trick of reflection seemed to concentrate the light on the bronze sun disk that hung on the wall behind Nancy’s desk.

“You made your hate clear.” Fay walked forward.

Steve walked a pace behind her, protecting her back.

“Not as clear as I should have,” Nancy said. “But then, you were always hard to kill.”

Someone among the senior members gasped. Closer, Steve growled a low warning.

Fay felt the threat in the air, aimed at her. It whined and buzzed and whipped around the room. Nancy barely registered as a magic talent. It was in her employee file, part of the reason she’d been cleared to act as the president’s secretary. So where was the threat coming from? Fay looked over Nancy’s shoulder, at the door to Richard’s office.

But again, a flash of light glinted from the bronze sun disk, distracting her.

Her breathing hitched a fraction before deepening into battle-readiness. The disk wasn’t distracting her attention. It was claiming it. Guardian-honed magic instincts screamed at her.

Fay ignored the drama Nancy represented and focused on the sun disk.

It shimmered. Jagged flashes of light rippled over it, and spread through the room.

“Everybody out!” Fay shouted, even as she reached back and grabbed Steve’s arm. He had to stay. He’d fought demons before, and survived. “Out!”

Of course, these were senior members. No one listened to her.

And the demon stepped out of the sun disk.

It took the glimmering form of an elegant middle-aged man, short black hair just silvering at the temples, mouth seductive and full, body beautifully muscled and supple beneath a thin silk shirt and tailored trousers—all in the bronze of the sun disk.

“Faith Olwen.” The voice was whiskey, rough and smooth, a stroke over the senses.

“Kill her,” Nancy demanded.

The demon laughed, head back, enjoying some private joke.

Steve jolted forward, and stopped as Fay’s hand hit his chest.

“Wait,” she said.

Gilda, the head of the Demonology Department, ignored her. She strode forward, the words of banishment unrolling with practiced ease even as she gathered her power.

The demon ceased laughing, but amusement lurked in its voice. “You are an improvement over Angus, aren’t you?” But then it lifted one hand and Gilda slammed up and back, losing consciousness as her head hit the back wall.

“Not her.” Nancy was single-minded. “Kill Fay.”

Steve snarled.

“Settle your fur, cat,” the demon said. “Nancy ceased to compel me years ago.”

Nancy stopped glaring at Fay to stare at the demon.

It raised an eyebrow and looked back at her.

Fay felt nauseous as the ugly story took shape. Nancy had summoned the demon, binding it to the sun disk. She had brought this evil into the heart of the Collegium. And it was a powerful evil, a demon strong enough to have no need to possess a human body. It could maintain a form in this world.

And for years she, Fay, had walked past the sun disk and the demon, unknowing and unaware.

Richard, her father, had lived with it daily.

Of the others, it was Lewis who understood first. “Everybody out!” He turned on the senior members with such ferocity that they retreated before him. He picked up Gilda, shoved her unconscious body at two of the more robust senior members and pushed the whole lot from the room by sheer force of personality. “Go!”

“Clever man,” the demon said. “It’s a shame you burned out your powers saving those children, Lewis. I could have used you.”

Used him? Full understanding hit Fay like a hurricane, and like a hurricane it brought devastation. She ignored the demon and whirled on Nancy. “You stupid woman.”

“Not stupid.” The demon remained urbane. He could have been a host at a an upmarket art gallery, one hosting a billionaires-only private auction. “Merely self-centered. It makes her easy to manipulate.”

“Mano, I own you,” Nancy warned. Her hands were claws, fingers curled with tension.

“No, pet.” And the endearment was anything but caring. It was supercilious, possessive, dismissive and definite. “I own you.” The demon smiled, turning to Fay. “I’m grateful you resisted the urge to remove her years ago. She has been useful to me.”

“I’ll bet.” Fay struggled, her mind spinning with the problem Lewis had recognized and done his best to minimize. The one which meant trouble for all of them.

Behind the door to her father’s office, Richard ought to have felt the storm of power. He ought to have emerged, fighting. Moderate though his own powers were, he held the oath-ties of all Collegium members, and through them, could usually compel their magic to add to his edicts. He could banish the demon.

But Nancy had screwed up that protection. She’d perverted it, under the demon’s guidance.

Now the damned creature smiled at Fay. Smiled as if they were allies, lovers.

Steve stepped close, his hand flattening against her back. He was warm, alive, real and loving.

Nancy dashed for her desk, grabbed a visitor’s chair, pulled it up to the wall and dragged down the sun disk. “Mano, I compel you—”

The sun disk melted and flowed into a new shape; into the form of a bronze pair of handcuffs. They closed about her wrists.

She gaped at them, mouth open, eyes popping. When her gaze lifted to the demon there was fury there, and betrayal.

“She’s a very ordinary lover,” Mano said. “It’s fortunate for me that Richard is satisfied with such a boring mistress.”

“You bastard.” Nancy bared her teeth.

“She’s insatiable though.” The demon was tormenting her, enjoying it. The creature strolled across to Nancy and in an obscene mockery of a lover’s touch, unbuttoned her jacket and explicitly caressed her breast.

What shocked Fay was the instant look of desire that darkened Nancy’s eyes.

The demon hadn’t lied. It had controlled Nancy for years. And through Nancy, it had gained intimate contact with Richard. That had been the path the demon had taken, weaving its magic through Nancy, through Richard, and so gaining access to the oath-ties and power of the Collegium. It would have taken it years to subtly build that control.

Oran, the demon she’d banished two days ago, had been right. The Collegium was infected.

That was why Lewis had ordered the senior members out. Their magic was tainted with the touch of the demon.

That left the three of them. Lewis had no magic power for the demon to harvest. Steve was were and immune to magic. And Fay? She was their best chance of banishing the demon.

It smiled at Fay as it caressed Nancy’s breast. “Sometimes, just to stay interested in fucking her, I’d imagine she was you, Fay.”

Nancy whimpered, a harsh, hurting sound. She jerked away from the demon, and it let her go.

“You know the Collegium won’t let you stay,” Fay said. “They’ll cut you from their oath ties, whatever the price.”

“I know.” It was sly and satisfied. “I have taken nearly all I can here.” Its flickering smile focused on Nancy. “Nearly all.” The demon licked its lips.

Fay reached for her knife.

No human sacrifice was as sweet to a demon as the human who summoned it. Nancy would be the demon’s final death within the Collegium.

Its bright eyes locked with Fay’s. “Consider her my farewell gift. You won’t miss her.” It extended a hand and Nancy moved like a sleepwalker into the thing’s embrace.

“No,” Fay said. “No more deaths. I banish you,” she began.

The demon tightened its hold on Nancy, on its hostage. “Fighting you, Fay, will be as good as fucking you. And maybe I’ll get to do both.”

Steve roared and changed to leopard in mid-leap. He couldn’t kill a demon, but he could get Nancy free of it.

The demon had taken human form and it dripped human blood after Steve charged through the thing’s magical warding and slashed a massive paw, claws out, down its face.

Steve pulled back, dragging Nancy with him, and leaving a path torn through the demon’s warding for Fay to follow.

The path he’d slashed saved her from having to expend precious power creating it.

She had a fraction of a second to appreciate his tactic before the demon slammed at her, shedding its human form for the infinitely more mobile and difficult to corral incorporeal body. It was incandescent flame roaring from floor to ceiling.

Steve abandoned Nancy to Lewis and returned to Fay; staying out of her way, but staying close. He waited, his massive leopard body strong beside her. They both watched the demon with calculating eyes.

Here and here. Fay marked the demon with her knife and with her magic. But the damn thing only drew on the Collegium’s oath-ties. She could feel the human magic surge into it and heal it.

It was the puzzle that had kept her still and silent, giving all her attention to it, until Nancy was directly threatened. Fay frowned, shifting her knife from hand to hand, concentrating on her combat moves as she tried to gain time. How did she cut the demon’s perverted ties to the Collegium? It couldn’t be banished till she did. And she couldn’t let a demon this powerful loose on New York. She had to tackle it now.

Disastrously, though, the demon had been laying its plans for years—even if her own sudden separation from the Collegium had accelerated matters. It knew and was prepared for anything she might do.

But it wasn’t prepared for Steve.

A were in the Collegium was unheard of. That was how Steve had gotten close enough to break the demon’s warding. It hadn’t prepared for an attack from a being immune to magic.

“Steve! Change,” she shouted as the demon’s flame body whirled tighter and tighter, the inner core glowing white.

Steve blinked back to human and she threw him her knife, the knife she’d spent years honing and pouring magic into. The knife that could rip reality and tear a path to hell.

There was one way to cut the demon’s ties to the Collegium. Oath-ties had the power of blood. The demon had perverted them via intimacy. Fay would be even more direct. The President of the Collegium was her father. His blood ran in her veins. And she had power that was just hers. She could sever the demon’s control of the oath-ties, if she gave her life for it.

But she couldn’t give the demon an instant’s warning or it would vanish. It was playing with them now. Secure, as it thought, in its power over the Collegium. But it would flee if it thought itself truly threatened.

Fay wished she had one last chance to kiss Steve and tell him she loved him.

Instead, she leapt without hesitation into the heart of the demon’s fire.

Chapter 18

It hurt. Oh God, it hurt. Pain blazed through Fay’s body and burned into her heart. Agony tore into her, and still she concentrated. This wasn’t physical pain, no matter how her body translated it. This was pain on the magical plane and she could fight through it, just long enough to do what had to be done.

She found the oath-ties to the Collegium, saw them knotted and twisted in the demon’s grasp, coiled around its hold on this world.

She was inside the demon. In its being, where no human should be, and she had only an instant before the wrongness of it and the intense power she was expending to achieve the impossible gave out and claimed her life. Everything had its price, even magic. She grasped the oath-ties, felt them pulse with her father’s blood, and pulled.

The demon screamed, not in pain, but in rage.

Fay fell.

Steve gutted the demon’s fiery body, stabbing it with Fay’s knife, cutting hard enough to rip a dozen universes apart, and sent the damned creature screaming back to hell. Steve had been fast, as fast as only leopard reflexes could be, but Fay had been faster.

“Stubborn, brave woman.” He picked her up from the scorched floor and stood, cradling her in his arms.

She made him happy. Happy in ways she hadn’t even guessed. He’d admired her for years, claimed her as friend, and nearly lost his mind when she’d taken him as lover. He hadn’t meant to ever let her go—no matter what his grandfather said, what the world said, whatever the hell happened.

But she had taken that choice from him. She had died for strangers.

She had left him.

He howled, a long eerie cry of a hunting cat. He wanted to tear the Collegium apart for taking her from him. If it didn’t mean letting her go, he’d do it, too.

The door to Richard’s office opened and the man who should have been Fay’s father, her protector, the man who should have fixed this whole damn mess before it started, walked out.

Steve snarled.

“I hold her,” Richard said.

Steve stepped back, angling Fay’s body away from her father. “You destroyed her.”

“No.” Lewis approached carefully, evidently aware of Steve’s need to kill something. One demon wasn’t enough. “He says he holds her. Richard holds Fay’s lifeline. Mages can, for family.”

“For blood,” Richard said. He looked at his daughter. “You’re right. I destroyed her. I let myself be compromised.” His expression was ravaged. “But even when I didn’t understand, when I didn’t know what was happening, even when I failed everyone else—I never let the demon touch her.”

Richard opened his hand and a ball of golden light glowed. Like a conjuror he rolled it to his fingertips and pressed it to Fay’s forehead.

The light glowed brighter, brighter, and vanished.

Fay opened her eyes.

Fay opened her eyes and saw her dad standing there. But only for an instant, and then, Steve was kissing her and she was kissing him, and she was lost and found, and alive!

The demon was gone. She felt it in the freedom and lightness of the atmosphere. She and Steve had won, working together.

“Never again,” he said roughly against her mouth. “We’re never doing that again. You’re never doing that again. I won’t lose you.”

A shriek of rage interrupted them. Nancy beat her cuffed hands against the desk. “Gone. It’s all gone. He’s gone. I’m the one who’s lost everything.” The cuffs cut into her skin, blood beginning to drip. “I have nothing. I have nothing!”

Richard caught her hands, halting the self-harm.

She hit him then, slapping his chest, becoming hysterical so that he locked her in his arms and forced stillness on her.

“Put me down,” Fay said quietly to Steve. The demon was gone, but not the heartache and devastation it left behind.

He set her on her feet but kept her locked against him, her back to his chest, his strength surrounding her.

“I resign,” Richard said.

Fay looked at her father, really looked. He was the man who’d lost everything: family, respect, and his position in the world. She’d felt the moment he placed the kernel of her life force—that he’d held safe through the years, the tie that was just theirs—against her forehead and brought her back. He had lost so much, but she’d gained something today. As fraught as their relationship had become, he was her father and he loved her. “Where will you go?”

Richard shrugged. “I’ll stay for the inquiry the Collegium will need to hold, and then, there’s always a need for magic somewhere.”

“You’re a fool,” Nancy said.

“Yes. I trusted where I shouldn’t, and became obsessed with my own power. If I had let others in, the demon’s influence wouldn’t have been so absolute. But you helped with that, didn’t you, Nancy? You helped to isolate me.”

It was true. His trusted secretary hadn’t mediated between the President and the Collegium. She had split the two.

“And all for power,” Fay said aloud. For power, Nancy had summoned a demon and unleashed this nightmare. And the demon had played. It had used the Collegium to collect other demons, ones bound by humans, to act as its own slaves.

There would be a merry time in hell for it, and Fay was glad.

The decision as to Nancy’s punishment wouldn’t be so simple, but at a minimum they’d have to take her magic from her so that she could never summon another demon.

Fay looked at Lewis, standing silent to the side. It would be his decision. Had he realized? “Lewis, you’ll have to be the next president.”

He jerked, head swinging from studying Nancy to frown at Fay. “I have no magic.”

“Exactly,” Steve said.

“Devil’s balls,” Lewis swore.

Fay was sympathetic, but realistic. “The senior members actually listen to you, and for a while, everyone will need the reassurance that with your burnt out powers you can’t use their oath-ties to the Collegium against them.”

“As I did,” Richard said. “For myself and for the demon’s entertainment.” He released Nancy who had stopped struggling and now stood in a stillness evocative of despair, her head bent. He stepped back from her. “At least my stubbornness helped in one way. I was so determined that no one would get me out of the presidential office that I refused to open the door to Nancy’s demands. Then by the time I realized the demon was there, I understood the cascade of consequences my pride had allowed. I knew I had to stay in the office and not make the situation worse. But now I can go. Sorry, Lewis. Fay.”

Impulsively she grabbed her dad’s hand. They stared at each other because there were no words. She’d come to challenge him and remove him from office. He’d saved her life.

He nodded once, uncomfortably, and walked out.

Steve put his cheek against her hair, offering comfort. “There’ll be time, later, to build a new relationship.”

“Yes.” She turned in his embrace and hugged him.

He addressed Lewis. “We’re going. Fay’s wiped. I’m taking her home.”

“I’ll need Fay’s report, tomorrow.”

“You’ll have it.”

“Fay.” Lewis’s voice halted them as they walked out. “Thanks.”

She glanced back over her shoulder.

Nancy had slumped into a chair. Whatever had animated the woman, whatever metaphorical demons had driven her, she’d broken.

“Fix things, Lewis,” Fay said. “That’ll be harder than anything I did.”

They left, with Steve phoning a were friend to come and drive them home. “Because you’re in no state to take the subway and my leopard couldn’t cope with that many people.”

Bad enough was the horde of people waiting in the Collegium foyer when the elevator doors opened.

“Go up,” Steve said when they shouted questions at Fay. “Lewis will tell you what happened.” And in a low voice. “Poor bastard.”

The crowd surged and rushed the elevators and stairs. Richard must have taken another way out, or he’d have been caught earlier in the crush of curiosity. Steve pulled Fay free of it, his sub-vocal growl undoubtedly triggering atavistic wariness in the others and keeping a small clear space around them.

It made Fay feel safe.

In the car, she borrowed Steve’s phone to contact Yolanthe. She was too tired to risk portal travel, but her mom needed to know she was okay. The conversation was short and vague with Steve’s friend listening. “We’ll visit as soon as we can. Yes. I love you too, Mom.”

Steve smiled at Fay as she handed him back his phone. “Love you too, Fay.”

She gave him an uncharacteristically shaky, tears-threatening, smile.

He unbuckled her seatbelt and hauled her into his arms. “Always, Fay. Forever.”

They barely made it into the penthouse before stripping off their clothes.

She needed him. Craved him. And told him. She begged him; no longer needing to be brave or independent. “Make me forget everything. Make me know I’m alive.”

His kisses were feral, almost biting. “You are, Fay. You’re with me.”

The back of her knees hit the wide, low sofa and she let herself fall, trusting in his hold to keep her safe as he twisted her sideways, along the length of the sofa.

He parted her legs, calloused fingers sliding tenderly against her soft skin, but not disguising his urgency. She arched up as his fingers found her and slicked against her flesh.

“Fay.” A growl, so full of possession and hunger. And then he was there, thrusting into her, giving her his weight and his strength and all the power of loving.

They lay like that, wrapped in each other, as the aftershocks rippled through them. She pressed her lips to his throat, open-mouthed, tasting the flavor of him. His larynx vibrated and she smiled. “You’re purring.”

His hand swiped lazily down her body. “Mmm-hmm.”

She wriggled and his purr increased. She laughed. “That is so sexy.”

He caught her chin and angled her mouth for a kiss from which she emerged breathless. He smiled, feline satisfaction glinting in his gorgeous hazel eyes. “Now, let’s see what makes you purr.”

Note from the Author

If you enjoyed Demon Hunter, you’ll love my two paranormal romance collections, Indulge and Dare. And meantime, I’ll work on the sequel to Demon Hunter. I think we all want to know what Steve’s story is—and I can’t wait to share his Cyprus home with you.

You can find a list of my other books on my Amazon page, and while you’re there, click “Add Favorite” and Amazon will notify you of my new releases.

Happy reading!

Jenny