Chapter One

 

I thought all the weirdness of last week was behind me.

I was wrong.

Early afternoon sun was streaming through the windows of the print shop. I was back at work, cutting mat board for a huge order, enjoying the normalcy of it all: my job, my life, everything.

The bell over the shop door jangled; I looked up, and Emma Foster walked in.

Ordinarily, I’d have been happy to see her—someone I’d hit it off with in a friendly way, especially after we’d figured out that we worked in related fields. Emma was in sales at a high-end art gallery downtown; galleries and print shops work very closely together.

But more than the professional connection, she’d been just plain fun. We’d met at a costume party at an eccentric—but charming—woman’s giant mansion in the hills, just last week. Emma had been Catwoman and I’d gone as Wonder Woman: point two in her favor, she was clearly a geek like me. We’d chatted a ton, exchanged contact info, and agreed to get together for lunch very soon…but then things had gotten strange.

I still wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly. I just knew that I was missing a chunk of time…and that Emma Foster seemed to be somehow at the center of it.

The party had been great, at least what I could remember of it. After Emma had gotten swept onto the dance floor by a hunky guy dressed as some sort of medieval charmer, a sexy ‘vampire’ had invited me to dance. He’d been amazing, and there had been a lot of champagne. I know we danced a long time…I don’t really know what happened next. I never even got his real name.

The party was Sunday night—eight days ago. The next clear thing I remembered, after dancing the night away with Count Dracula, was waking up at home on Thursday morning, sick and exhausted. I was as weak as if I’d had the flu, though I couldn’t remember anything with any confidence—just a bunch of weird images, scary ones. Of being attacked, of people gathering to do…something, something very strange, even ritualistic. I could have sworn that Emma was in the middle of it, but that didn’t make much sense. Was it just fever dreams?

I’d called work in a panic, but my boss assured me that she had my shifts covered, and she hoped I’d stay in bed and rest, and feel better soon, take care, the flu was a very bad one this year, blah blah.

So…somebody had called in sick for me.

I knew it hadn’t been me. Even feverish, I’d have remembered that.

I’d taken the rest of the week and the weekend to recover. Now I was back at work, feeling close to normal, though still a little weak. And here was Emma, walking in the door of the shop, a big smile on her face.

“Grace! I was hoping I’d catch you here. Do you have time for coffee?”

“Um…” I glanced over at my boss, Monique; having just missed a week of work, I was leery about asking for any more time off.

But Monique just nodded and gave me a warm smile. “Go ahead! It’s slow right now, I’ve got it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. Have fun.”

I grabbed my purse and followed Emma out, to a coffee shop at the corner. Once we’d gotten our mochas, we sat at a table by the window. She sipped hers, studying me over the rim of her mug. “How are you feeling?” she asked, after a minute.

I watched her carefully, unsure how to answer, how much she knew of what was going on with me. She looked good, though, I have to say. Not that I knew her at all—last week was the first and only time I’d ever met her—but I could swear she had even more of a sparkle now than she did when she was dressed in a skin-tight catsuit and clearly headed for a night of bliss with Mr. Hot Medieval Man. “I’m…okay,” I said. “I seem to have had a horrible flu last week or something. I was pretty out of it. I’m slowly rebuilding my strength, though.”

“That’s good. Yes, I can see.” She gave me a warm smile as she nodded to herself, as if she was confirming something in her own mind.

I took a big sip of my own mocha, savoring the caffeine and chocolate rush. We were quiet a minute, until I reminded myself that normal people make normal conversation when they go out for coffee with each other. “How are things at the gallery?” I asked her.

Her smile widened, turning into something almost smug, but in a friendly way, if that makes any sense. Not that she had something over me—more like she had something wonderful that she wanted to share with me.

Oh, if only I’d known how true that was.

“Actually, I’ve quit the gallery,” she said. “Something much more interesting has come along. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Her smile was now luminescent. “I’m so glad to see you’ve recovered from…the unpleasantness of last week.”

My heart pounded—and it was not just the mocha. I leaned forward, holding her gaze. “Last week? What do you mean?”

She bit her lip, now looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Grace, I need to tell you something. It’s going to sound crazy, but I need you to believe me. Can you do that?”

I stared back at her. I barely knew this woman, but we’d hit it off so well last week. I had seen no indication that she was…odd. I slowly nodded, just to hear what she was going to say next. “Okay.”

“I mean it.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Will you believe me?”

I huffed out a frustrated breath. “How can I promise that? I have no idea what you’re going to ask me to believe.”

“Can you promise to try, at least?”

She looked so serious, and so sincere. And yet, underneath that, still so happy. “Okay. I can try.”

“Good.” She looked down at the table, then back up at me. “Last week, you were almost killed by a demon.”

“What?” I dropped my coffee mug on the table. Hot sweet liquid splashed everywhere. Emma was up in a flash, grabbing napkins from the counter and mopping up. She dabbed my shirt, and the edge of my jaw.

“I’m so sorry!” she said, looking like she meant it. “I didn’t to mean to startle you, but there’s really no way to ease into such a thing.” She grabbed a few more napkins and wiped the table. “Let me get you another mocha.” And then she was back at the cashier before I’d had a chance to say a word.

She returned a minute later and set a fresh mug before me. “There you go. Extra whip.”

I picked up the coffee and took a big gulp of it, then licked the whipped cream off my upper lip. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I must have misheard you. It sounded like you said…demon.”

Emma’s expression was now very serious. She bit her lip, and slowly nodded. “Lady Periwinkle did say that you would forget, though I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. Do you truly remember nothing at all, then?”

I looked back at her, trying to decide how much to tell her. Why not everything? I thought. Such as it was. She couldn’t possibly think me any crazier than I now thought her. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I was out of it last week,” I said. “I have a big blank spot in my memory.” It still freaked me out, and what she was saying wasn’t helping. “I woke up at home on Thursday morning feeling like I’d been run over by a truck.”

She nodded. “That’s not a bad way of putting it.”

“I lost days, Emma. I don’t remember a thing after meeting you at Lady Periwinkle’s party, and dancing with a hot vampire.” I gave her the most determined look I could muster. “What should I remember? Are you trying to tell me that demons and vampires are real?”

She glanced around the café. Being as how it was the middle of the afternoon in the heart of the industrial district, it was not very crowded. No danger of us being overheard.

Even so, she leaned in and lowered her voice. “Finley is not a vampire. That was just his costume.” Her voice dropped even further. “Demons, however, are very real. And one just about killed you last week.”

~*~*~*~

So I guess my brain did that thing where it goes away for a few minutes again. Just too much insanity to take in; it shut down. When I found my way back to the conversation, Emma was watching me with considerably less alarm than she probably should have.

And my mocha was gone. Apparently, I drank it.

“Ready for me to go on?” she asked, giving me a kind smile.

I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Tell me more about the demons.” I tried to give her a smile back, but it was weak and raggedy. “Did the Easter Bunny save me from the demon?”

“No. I did.”

“You did.”

She nodded, and now a different kind of smile played with the edges of her lips. “Along with my cohort.”

“Your cohort.” Great, now I was just repeating her words back to her. Well, shock will do that to you.

Emma leaned forward again, holding my eyes with hers. She was a pretty woman—I remember thinking that the night I met her—but she was absolutely stunning now. Dark, lustrous hair twining halfway down her back; luminous chocolate-brown eyes, shining like the very stars lived in them. If we could get past this demon nonsense, I had to ask her what cosmetics she used, and how she got her hair to do that.

“Grace, I’m going to explain everything to you, in a way it was not explained to me. I had to learn all this piecemeal—and after I was already more than halfway committed to it, too. I was deceived and tricked and led by the nose, with information doled out to me by people who thought they knew what was best for me. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, no matter how happy I am with the ultimate result. When I finally did learn the whole story, I swore I would do it differently when it was my turn.”

I nodded, as if I had any idea what in the world she was talking about.

“I am the center of a cohort, me and several men,” she went on. “They’re like my harem—a harem of men.”

I blinked. “Okay.”

“This is almost as new to me as it is to you,” she said, and here was that small, enigmatic smile again. “When we met, I had no idea of any of this. I probably had an even more interesting week last week than you did.”

“Well, it looks like it might have been more fun, anyway.”

She startled me—and the baristas behind the counter, all the way across the room—by laughing out loud, a big bold belly laugh. “Yes!” she said, when she’d recovered. “I’ll say.” Then she grew a little more serious. “What nobody explained to me at the outset was that I’m a sorceress. I have magic inside me.” She folded up her right hand in a fist and touched herself gently at her breastbone. “Lady Periwinkle is a sorceress—the one who started this all. And you, Grace French, are a sorceress too.”

I just stared back at her.

“I know this seems crazy,” Emma went on, when I didn’t say anything. “I’m still wrapping my head around it myself. But—well, I’ve seen things, experienced things, which have convinced me it’s true.” She frowned slightly. “I don’t know how the particular enchantment the lady put on your memory works, though. It would help if you could somehow regain access to the memories.”

“I told you, I don’t remember a thing. Maybe some weird fever dreams…”

She leaned forward, her eyes avid. “Fever dreams?”

I squirmed in my chair and wished I hadn’t finished that second mocha. Well, first-and-a-half. I could use some right now. At the very least. “I have…some weird memories, that I can’t quite bring into my mind. Like a dream you can almost remember—that you can still feel, just at the edge of memory. There was something dangerous and scary, and, and…I do think you were there. But I don’t know what it was.”

“The demon Mundon struck you down. He was riding the body of his human servant Edwin. I believe he was draining you of power, because he knew you had magic in you. He was trying to both steal your power for his own, and to disable you. Kill you.” She gave that frown again. “Do you remember any of this? Not even Edwin?”

“Edwin?”

“He was a little grey aardvark at the costume party. He sat at our table.”

“Oh! Yeah, I do remember him.” I smiled, relieved to have at least some brain at my disposal. “He…was a demon host?” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. But, here we were.

“He was. My cohort and I defeated him, a few days after the party. When he attacked you.” She looked sad, and a little sick. “We banished the demon back to his realm, and…killed Edwin in the process.”

“Oh.” I studied the table before me. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It was kind of ugly.” She smiled. “But empowering. And…other things too.”

“Oh?”

“I’m telling this all backwards,” she said, huffing out a frustrated breath. “I’m sorry, this isn’t at all how I thought this would go. I had it all rehearsed, believe it or not. But even I can hear how crazy it sounds.”

I shrugged again. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to pretend to believe it?”

She barked out a laugh again, and this time, I laughed with her. “Oh, Grace. No, I just want you to be you. But most importantly, I want you to know everything you need to know at the outset, so you’re not stumbling along in the dark like I was.”

“Thank you.” I studied her a moment. She really did seem like she believed what she was saying. Crazy though it was. “So tell me everything I need to know, then, and we can go from there.”

Not that I was believing her.

“Perfect.” She flashed me a gorgeous smile. “There are many kinds of magic in the world. Our particular form of magic is expressed best when exercised by bound cohorts of one woman and several men.”

“I already have a question,” I said.

She nodded at me to go on.

“You said harem of men before. So your bound cohort is…you’ve got more than one boyfriend?”

Her smile widened. “Four.”

I shook my head. “That would incinerate me. I can barely handle one guy.”

“Oh, I hear you, girlfriend. That was me, as recently as a week ago. But the magic—you’ll see. It’s truly…expanding, might be the best word for it. You have no idea what you might be capable of until you actually go there.”

“I don’t believe I will be going there.” Understatement of the year! I tried to soften it with a smile. “I mean, I’m all for other folks being polyamorous or kinky or whatever, that’s great, but me—I’m just not wired that way. And I could never share a guy, either. I’m too insecure.”

Emma reached across the table and patted my hand. I felt something in her touch, a certain…energy? It wasn’t attraction—I’m not into girls, and I didn’t think she was either—but there was a little spark of electricity. Magic, whispered my mind.

I ignored it.

“Again, I won’t try to convince you, because I don’t think I’ll have to. Once you experience what I’m talking about, it will all just sort of come together.” She grinned. “No pun intended.”

My cheeks reddened. I didn’t think she was flirting with me…probably. “Okay, so. You have four boyfriends. That’s great. What does this all mean for me?”

“It’s not just four boyfriends—though that’s an integral part of it. It’s the magical power that we generate together, as a cohort. That power is huge, and it’s like a battery of sorts. Lady Periwinkle can draw on that battery to defend herself—and the rest of the world—from demons.”

“I thought you defeated the demon?”

She shook her head. “We banished Mundon, temporarily. All he needs to do is find another human vessel, and he’ll be back, and likely more powerful than before.” She paused, biting her lip again, not saying something she’d clearly planned to say. “The lady needs our help to fight him again—and she needs yours too. We need more cohorts, and fast.” She leaned forward again, holding my gaze. “She needs you to build a cohort, Grace.”

I shrank back. “Why me?”

“Besides me, you’re the only other woman she’s found in over a year of hunting who has the magic required for this. And my cohort is not enough.” Her eyes gleamed. “We’ve identified four men with magic that’s compatible—it’s much easier to find it in men than in women. Let me introduce you to the first one—Stefano.” I was already shaking my head. “Just give it a try, just talk to him. If you don’t like him, you don’t have to do anything with him. We can find you someone else.”

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. It was too absurd. I snuck a glance at the time on my phone. “Hey—I’ve got to get back to work, this is way longer a break than I should have taken. And I was out all last week. My boss is gonna be pissed.”

She gave me a fierce, agonized look. Again I felt the electricity from her, only this time it was less pleasant. But then she dropped her gaze, and the sensation stopped. She huffed out a sigh again. “You really don’t believe any of this, do you?”

“Emma, I don’t know—I don’t know what to believe.”

She was already rolling her eyes at herself. “I should have known. Maybe they were right. I just thought…” She broke off. “I’m sorry to throw all this at you like this. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“That’s all right.” I felt for her, even as I also felt that this was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me…well, the weirdest thing that I could remember, anyway. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” I got up and picked up my coffee mug.

She got up as well with a sigh of resignation. “You’ve still got my card, right?”

“Yes.”

“Call me if you change your mind—no, call me if you have questions or anything.” She gave a rueful smile. “Or even if you want to have coffee again, and talk.”

“Yeah, sure.” Not a tiny chance, I thought.

We parted at the café door. I walked slowly back to the print shop, not turning around to see where she went. Trying not to think about it—any of it.

I’d been sick, and I was clearly not entirely well yet. And I had a job to pay attention to.