Life didn’t work that way. One of the ways she was able to reconcile what she did for a living with what she did as Gretneg of House Io Adflicta was that without the negative emotions, people couldn’t appreciate the positive. Someone who never made a mistake, never put a foot wrong or did something he or she was ashamed of or regretted later, wasn’t emotionally healthy so much as sociopathic or a chronic shut-in.

People made mistakes; they erred in their judgment or acted rashly or whatever. Coping with and learning from those mistakes was what made them stronger and healthier. Blaming all of those mistakes on circumstances beyond one’s control . . . well, it might be all the rage, but Megan found it very difficult to approve.

Not to mention that she had no idea how much Walther was charging these people. And quite a few of them looked as if they had to sell plasma in order to eat. Painfully thin arms stuck out from beneath threadbare thrift-store shirts with missing buttons. Too-short pants rode up to expose pale ankles, incongruous against arms so deeply tanned they looked as if they’d been imported from other bodies. Vinyl shoes covered feet, cheap polyester covered legs, sunburned skin covered shoulders.

Not all of them, of course. Scattered through the crowd were a fair number of people who looked as if they could buy and sell the others. No, there was really no way to stereotype the crowd, only a way to pity them.

She and the others found a place against the back wall, not far from the door, to settle. A chair would have been nice, but she couldn’t have everything, and she didn’t dare mention it. One of the brothers would have attempted to make her sit on his back; it had happened before. Being in the room with a gang of demons was bad enough. Having one of them drop to all fours so she could use him as a bench would be unthinkable.

To take her mind off both the anger building in her stomach at the crowd being taken advantage of and the absurd desire to start giggling from the memory of the demon-bench incident, she settled herself against Greyson and said, “Is everything okay? Did something happen with you and Win? Something I should know about, I mean.”

He shrugged, his gaze still wandering restlessly over the crowd of obedient heads before them. “He wants me to do something for him, and I don’t particularly want to, and he’s being rather adamant. Not a problem, simply an irritation.”

“Anything I can do?”

He smiled and looked at her, the worry gone from his face. “I can think of a few things, yes, but nothing that would be appropriate here.”

Her reply was lost in the general uproar as Reverend Walther entered.

The meek, pajama-clad man she’d seen the night before had disappeared. Instead Megan stared at a man who looked like a cross between Liberace and Wyatt Earp. He wore a black broadcloth suit, and his hair swooped up in a pompadour to rival the highest horn-hiding demon hairdo. It gleamed with oil or shellac or whatever the hell he used to keep it in place. Instead of a white shirt he wore a hot pink one, with a black string tie in an enormous bow at his throat; it was tied so tightly his collar wrinkled. His head appeared to erupt from the bright fabric like a mushroom from the mud.

Most different of all was his aura, his energy. It waved around him, so thick Megan felt it whisper over her skin and so strong she shivered. It wasn’t drugs or alcohol or anything like that, turning him from a man into something like a high-powered light. It was his fervor, his fanaticism.

The crowd, perhaps too awed to continue speaking after their first enthusiastic burst of welcome, hushed almost immediately. The atmosphere in the room changed. It was as if Walther’s energy filled it, and the audience’s answered, as if he’d pulled something vital out of them to flavor the air.

But along with that flavor was fear and sadness. Emotions Megan recognized and forced herself not to want to absorb. Roc, of course, had no such compunction; she saw his beady little eyes darken.

Did Walther’s do the same? Did he somehow—no. No, he didn’t. The man was nothing if not human.

Greyson must have been thinking the same thing. “He’s certainly an energetic little cur, isn’t he?”

“I didn’t think he’d feel anywhere near that powerful,” she agreed. “He certainly didn’t last night.”

“Hmm. He apparently wasn’t as powerful as this, even a few months ago. Basically came out of nowhere back in June. He’d been doing the exorcisms and dabbling in some faith healing, if you can believe the ridiculousness of that, but in June he started to catch on. Attendance at his bizarre little church rose, donations jumped up, that sort of thing. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged and settled himself more comfortably against the wall. “I looked him up online after you fell asleep last night. And made a few phone calls.”

“You didn’t sleep?”

He shook his head.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Eventually. Don’t worry about me, darling. The point is, he was a quiet, dull little nobody until recently. Now he’s filling the ballrooms of horrible budget motels. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Did he make a deal with the devil?” she asked, only half joking.

He smiled, squeezed her hand. “Not with any I know. But . . . hmm.”

“What?”

“No, nothing. I just wonder . . . no. There has to be some other explanation.”

“But what were you thinking?”

“I’ll tell you later. I think he’s about to start banishing demons to Hell or whatever silliness. As if he could do anything of the kind.”

Megan looked back toward the front of the room. Greyson was right. Walther was preparing to begin; at the same moment she looked up, the rest of the room bowed their heads, and Walther began intoning a long, wordy prayer so histrionic it made Megan nervous. He was a true believer, she knew he was, but the speech was so devout it felt fake.

She let her mind drift and the words turn into nothing more than a rush of sound in the background, rising and lowering in volume and pitch like a song on a far-away radio. She’d been so busy trying to settle herself to wonder if anyone in the room was readable, or if they all had that horrible emptiness the hotel employees had had the night before. She hadn’t thought to check if any of her demons were in attendance either.

Roc still sat on Maleficarum’s shoulder, having a whispered and, Megan imagined, highly amusing conversation. Certainly the two of them looked as if they were about to burst into hysterics. She’d never seen Maleficarum’s eyes so bright.

“Roc,” she said, “ask them to show themselves. I want to keep an eye on them and make sure everything is okay.”

Actually, she wanted to see if perhaps some of the people in the room were without Yezer. As far as she knew, every human being in the world had one; she’d killed hers at sixteen and had thus been without one for fifteen years, but although Roc didn’t attempt to lead her astray, he was technically hers.

But being without one had made her an anomaly. She wondered if somehow Walther really was banishing Yezer, and the hotel employees the night before had been without them, and that’s why they’d felt so bizarre.

If her Yezer—those in her Meegra—had been banished somehow, she would know about it. But they weren’t all hers.

Those who were began appearing, exploding into existence like bizarre and incredibly unattractive popcorn popping. Okay. Most of the people in the room appeared to be local, and their Yezer were hers.

“Good idea,” Greyson murmured. “Gives us a better idea what’s happening.”

She smiled again, pleased, but the smile faded when Walther finished his prayer and, without warning, yanked a man out of his chair and dragged him to the front of the room.

“You! I can see the demon at work in you! What is your name, and what has been done to you?”