The crowd sighed and shifted a little. Shit, Roc was right. This was what they wanted. Did they know it was bullshit? That she didn’t think she could bring herself to punish any one of them demon style? The only example of such treatment she’d seen had turned her stomach; she still woke up some nights alone in her bed with the image of Greyson’s bloody back in her mind, with the sound of the whip echoing in her ears.

What she could do, though, was hit them with her power. The telekinetic ability Tera had taught her didn’t always work; in fact, it hadn’t been working very well at all of late. Tera said it was because despite Megan’s abilities being so closely aligned to those of witches, she wasn’t a witch. She simply didn’t have the genetic power.

Megan suspected it was more than that, but she didn’t want to think about it. She’d been doing very well with it before the Yezer Ha-Ra had connected to her.

Demons weren’t telekinetic.

But she didn’t need to move any solid objects here. She just needed to let them know how strong she was, how capable. And since they were bound to her, it would be easy.

Deep inside her was a door and behind it lurked her power. Lurked the piece of demon lodged in her chest. Lurked the anger and the fear and—her heart pounded in her chest, red heat spreading from it through her body. In her mind the door bulged and shook, wanting, waiting, ready to—

She opened it.

For the first time since the night she’d been bound to them she opened it and power, shiny bright and cold-hot, burst from it, into her, through her, filling the room.

The little demons screamed in unison. Megan screamed too, but whether it was from triumph or fear she didn’t know. All she knew was her throat ached, her head fell back, and before she could stop it she was pulling the energy back in, pulling it in mixed with theirs, her body acting of its own accord just like the last seconds before an orgasm—

Their power thrust itself into her. Every bit of misery they caused, every shameful thought and deed that fed them, ran through her mind like a triple-speed film played on the backs of her eyelids.

And it was wrong, it was so wrong because it felt good, it felt better than anything, it was power and danger and food and sex and everything she’d ever wanted, and it filled her until she thought she might explode.

“No!” She fell, crouching herself into a ball, trying to fight. The door had to close, the flames inside her had to recede, had to, because if she stayed like this much longer she might decide never to stop it, she might go ahead and—“No!”

With a final, almighty mental shove, she slammed the door shut, locking it tight, and just before she realized she’d fled the Yezer and gone back to her house something came to her, words that turned her shivers into quakes of terror though she didn’t know what they meant.

Ktana Leyak.

“Megan, are you sitting down?”

It was so much like Roc’s question the night before that she shivered and gripped the phone more tightly. “Yes.”

“Gerald Caroll died.”

Megan bit her lip. She almost said “I know” before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to know. “Gerald?”

“Yes, your client Gerald.” Althea Sprite’s voice, full of compassion, made Megan want to cry. Althea was, at this point, the only one of her practice partners—except Neil Fawkes, and that was simply because Neil didn’t have an opinion about anything—who didn’t turn away from her in disgust when she spoke up at their weekly meetings. Her radio show had not made her popular with them.

Megan knew she was holding on to her membership in the group by a thread and that one of these days it would likely break.

So why not just leave? a voice said in her head. It sounded suspiciously like a certain demon she knew.

Because I don’t want to leave, because I worked hard to build that practice, because it’s something I’m good at…

“Megan, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just—how? Who told you?”

“The police called the service; they found an appointment in his diary but it didn’t have your name on it. The service called me and I said I’d call you.”

“Did they say how…it happened?”

“Heart attack, looked like,” Althea said. “They can’t be sure, of course, until the autopsy. The police want to meet you at the office tomorrow morning, to get a look at his file.”

“But they know I can’t just show anybody those records, it’s—”

“They’re bringing his next of kin. So technically you’re not.”

“That’s fine.” Her voice shook a little. Next of kin. Gerald had a sister, she remembered.

“Are you going to be okay? Do you want some company?”

Althea, despite being the closest thing Megan had had to a friend until Tera entered her life, had never offered to come to Megan’s house before.

Then again, Megan had never had a patient die on her before, had she?

“I think I’ll be all right. I just…” She took a deep breath. “I feel like it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault, honey. It was just his time to go. Sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it takes a long time, but when it’s your time to go there’s nothing anyone can do.”

Megan tried to take comfort in this, but somehow the idea that Gerald’s end via demonic possession—whether it had caused a heart attack or had taken his life in some other, more sinister fashion—had been written in the stars just didn’t hold true for her.

“Yeah. Well. Thanks for calling me, Althea. Did the police say when they’d be there tomorrow?” With her luck it would probably be the same ones who’d busted her on Friday.

“They asked if nine was okay, but I told them eight’s better, that way there aren’t any clients in the office.”

“Great.”

“And, honey…I feel just awful springing this on you at a time like this, but…”

“Just say it, Althea. Don’t worry.”

“The partners…that is, some of us…”

“Which means everyone but you, right?”

Althea cleared her throat. “Some of us want to talk to you. About what happened Friday.”

“Do you mean my interrupting a session?” Did Althea’s refusal to answer mean she was included in this group this time? When the partners had suspended her three months before, Althea had been the holdout. She’d been the only one purely on Megan’s side. Was she not any more?

“Well, yes. And the, ah, arrest.”

“Jesus, does everyone in the city know about that?”

“Someone called us.”

“Someone?”

“She didn’t give a name. Just said you were in jail. By the time I got there, though, you’d been let go.”

“Nobody pressed charges,” Megan said. “It was a mistake.” Who the hell had called her office to tell them she’d been arrested? Nobody knew about that. Nobody but the arresting officers, Greyson, Hunter Kyle, and…

And whoever it was who’d made that phone call about the supposed body and tipped the cops off to begin with.

Not to mention probably all of Vergadering, but the chances they would have involved themselves in something as mundane as this were slim to none. Tera said they weren’t investigating, so the idea that they would have been responsible for an anonymous phone call to get Megan in trouble at work was really stretching it.

“Honey, I just want to warn you. I’m sure the police thing was just a big misunderstanding. But you know one of the things that makes our practice different is the way we organize things and, well, ever since you started that radio show you haven’t been very organized. We had to suspend you for that one week, then you took two weeks off, and now it seems you’re taking long weekends almost every month…we just don’t feel like your heart’s in the practice anymore.”

“Are you…” Her throat felt like someone had filled it with glue. “Am I being asked to leave?”

Pause. “We just want you to think about whether you really want to stay. If you still want to make that kind of commitment to us.”