Page 3 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

This was Clarence’s true home. Consciously or not, he’d molded the ethereal to his deepest impulses over the years, and what he’d shaped was decay and carnage. Hazel turned to stare at the man who’d hired her. “Whatareyou?”

Her voice came out in a whisper. He didn’t respond.

Across the room, the air began to squirm.

Empty space writhed before Hazel. Her eyes stopped focusing for a second, her brain’s desperate effort to save itself, but that didn’t spare her completely. Space tore itself apart around two figures. The one on her right was tall and lean, wearing a black robe fastened with brass buckles that shone slickly in the room’s uncertain light. The robe’s hood shadowed its face except for a pair of glowing red eyes.

The figure on the left, by Clarence’s bed, sent panic surging up Hazel’s stomach and into her throat.

A headless figure covered in bubbling red skin nearly scraped the ceiling with the top of its torso. It was almost as skeletal as Clarence, but with none of his fragility—its spindly arms and legs were clearly very solid, and its feet and hands had talons like razor blades. A pair of very human-shaped eyes, completely white except for the pupil, stared at Hazel out of the middle of its chest.

Two mouths lay below the eyes. The bottom one was expressionless as far as Hazel could tell, a lipless gash with fangs. The top one, unnervingly toothless, was smiling triumphantly.

Clarence smiled almost exactly the same way.

Chapter 2

“Clarence,” Hazel said, while the deep-space cold of the room seemed to fill her mind. “There’s still time to take back whatever deal you made.”

The candles flickered around her, the demons’ presence devouring their protective radiance every second. She didn’t have long.

As Clarence hacked laughter, she subtly shifted her weight forward. “I don’t know what they’ve promised you,” she said. In a desperate burst of motion, she darted downward and scooped up the jar of oil. “ButIpromise it’s not worth the price.”

The candle behind her blinked out. Then the one to the west.

“Price?” Clarence snorted. “Stupid girl.”

The red demon leaned forward, both mouths gaping, its breath filling the room with the stench of rotten meat. One candle went out immediately, and the other wavered. Hazel clutched the jar, trying to mentally map the room without taking her eyes off either of the intruders.

“You’rethe price,” said Clarence, and the last candle died.

* * *

The demon lunged first. Hazel hadn’t been expecting that—the cloaked figure was closest—and her dash backward was clumsier than she’d hoped.

Her aim was still decent. She flung the jar of banishing oil as hard as she could, not at the demon itself but at the wall, behind the new arrivals, calling on the very rusty skills she’d developed in junior varsity softball. Hazel hadn’t lost them completely over fifteen years, and fear helped; the full jar hit the wall hard enough to shatter it, splashing the oil over the demon.

It roared, though she couldn’t tell whether that was pain or anger or both, and stopped in its tracks long enough for Hazel to keep scrambling away. The floor squelched beneath her, a new development that she would have liked to ignore if it hadn’t also clung to her feet.

Great. Two outsiders against one medium weren’t bad enough odds.

Hazel took another step back, holding her knife in front of her, and risked a glance over her shoulder as the demon barked words in a twisting, clotted language.

Sure enough, blood soaked the previously yellow carpet, and more hands pressed at the walls. The TV made a weirdly modern touch in the middle of them, even though the frame had become leathery and stitched, and the door had turned into leather as well, with a wooden handle shaped like a curved human tongue. It would still work, though, even if Hazel had to persuade it, and she had a clear path there. She turned to run.

A gloved hand grabbed her shoulder. Hazel tried to yank away, but the cloaked figure held on with impossible strength, turning her back around as the demon shambled toward her. Clarence started laughing again, wheezing, choking, but unmistakably gleeful.

She shrieked, forcing her lungs free of the terror that had half calcified them, and shoved herself at the figure knife-first. It was a totally clumsy blow, but the figure had been expecting her to throw her weight in the other direction. The knife sank into its robes just about where the collarbone would be on a human, and the cloaked being hissed with pain. It almost sounded like a person.

Then it shoved Hazel away, eyes flaring beneath its cloak. Theforce sent her stumbling again, nearly tripping, until she smacked the back of her head into the TV, and the screen came to life as she shook herself. Light of a sort filled the room again, along with the crackling of static.

Hazel could only half see the TV in the mirror, which totally distorted whatever image might have appeared, and barely made out a brightly colored moving oval as the static resolved. The others clearly saw more. Both the red demon and the hooded figure stopped, attention drawn to the picture on the screen, and Clarence’s laughter cut off abruptly. The image shifted again and became falling white lines.

Footsteps on the soggy carpet gave Hazel a second of warning. She spun around, holding her knife out, and saw the demon lurching in her direction again. It was between Hazel and the door before she could take a step.

The creature in the hood stood behind her right side. It wasn’t moving yet, still staring at the TV, but running back in their direction didn’t seem like a bright idea. That left the other side of the bed and the narrow passage between the wall and the armchair.

Hazel leaped onto the bed like a ten-year-old in a hotel room. The mattress bounced beneath her, and Clarence gave a faint, angry cry that didn’t inspire much sympathy under the circumstances. She jumped off again onto the other side and grabbed the lamp from the bedside table in her free hand, then ran for the door, keeping the makeshift shield on her side.