Page 39 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

i was drinking with him the night he died and i almost went with him, he made a lot of sense even on the drugs. he was the kind of person who made sense at the time even when he didn’t later. he was this little guy with hair that kept gettingin his eyes and i tried to kiss him when we were both drunk, and he said no, he needed his blood and his will to be pure, and i asked how the cocaine fit into that plan.

he got mad and said i didn’t understand and i said i understood he was scared and hiding behind bullshit, and i walked out, and the next time i saw him it was like that big Monty Python foot had stepped on his head. the police had to pick skull fragments out of the carpet in his apartment. they didn’t suspect me because they didn’t suspect anybody, they didn’t know how anybody could have done it, and he was just a weird little punk, so they never knew and i never knew, not really.

sometimes i dream about him. I’m giant and i’m squeezing his head between my hands,

Hazel read with fascinated horror. She’d just gotten to the end of that line when a black hole appeared in the middle of her screen.

The void expanded, or the rest of the display fell down it, until the silver frame of the laptop surrounded pure blackness. It only took half a minute, and just as Hazel was getting her head around that, it changed again.

Now it showed an image like the one she’d glimpsed in Clarence’s room. Glowing orbs, moving slowly, hung like jewels in a stretch of silver-blue that swirled as Hazel watched it. Patterns on the closest one suggested continents, but Hazel only half saw those. The immense face between the spheres was what really got her attention.

It was a necrotic-looking mottled gray and elongated so that the eyes were pits and the mouth was a silent scream. Hazel didn’t think it was in pain, though. She would never have claimed to read its expression really accurately, would never even have wanted to try,but the impression she got from that open maw was a shriek of rage. Some of the orbs floated behind it, only faintly visible.

Hazel shrank back, shielding her face with one hand out of pure instinct, desperate for those empty eyes not to see her. She glimpsed the view between her fingers for a few more seconds.

Then her laptop screen exploded.

Chapter 20

At the edge of the ethereal, where the blue haze of the unformed faded into stars and shadows, paths to other worlds flickered in and out of existence. A man sat at the entrance to one of those trails, playing a zither and staying in tune about half the time. He set it aside as Ligat approached and stood up with a nimbleness that would have been remarkable, had anything been remarkable out there.

“I hope you’re not expecting to go any farther, friend,” he said.

“Not a step,” said Ligat. He doubted that he could, even if the road had been unguarded. Beyond was one of the worlds in the Deep Astral, a perilous place for visitors. Only his dual nature had let him get as far as he’d done: An immortal would have drawn predators or other guardians, while a mortal would have been lost and probably shredded on the star-winds. “I came to speak with you.”

The guard grinned, exposing small fangs. “And here you are. All wishes should be so easily granted.”

He looked like a Chinese man in most respects. In addition to the teeth, though, his pupils glowed golden and a prehensile tail twitched behind him. He wore a rich orange brocade robe and a black hat, the sort of clothing that Ligat had mostly seen as bad caricatures in storybooks before his service to Perthrux.

That memory hadn’t arisen on his last errand to this place. Hefrowned. “I have a request.”

“You’re in good and substantial company, friend. But you know I won’t deal with your master. I don’t associate with demons anymore. Must I refresh your memory?”

“No.” Ligat held up his hands hastily. He knew himself outmatched—even Perthrux would be. “This is my errand, not its.”

The gold pupils flamed as the guard turned his full attention on Ligat. He cocked his head, and the tail twitched again. “Hm. Hmmm.” The man set his hands on his hips. “Interesting developments afoot. You won’t get the uncut version, of course.”

“I wouldn’t presume,” Ligat replied, bowing his head and letting himself feel just a touch of relief.

“Oh, you would and you do, friend, but that’s fine. That’s fine. And what do you offer in return?”

Ligat smiled and reached for the bag at his side. He’d done many errands for Perthrux over the decades, not to mention a fair amount of exploring on his own initiative, and frequently indulged himself in a bit of scavenging. After all, one never knew what might come in handy. “Let’s talk,” he said.

* * *

Hazel hadn’t given the laptop enough credit.

When the screen exploded, after she’d stopped freaking out and confirmed that she wasn’t hurt, she’d been mostly annoyed about the loss. It made both work and research wildly inconvenient. She hadn’t realized just how used to watching movies before bed she was, or having music on while she did chores, or how quiet the house was without them. By day, working, it was only a small change.

The forest pressed closer at sunset. Washing up the supper dishes, Hazel glanced out the window and watched the light turn from gold to gray as a bird called out from nearby. Maxwell wouldhave known what it was. She just listened and shivered, not reacting to the bird itself—which was probably the size of her hand and ate mostly seeds—but to the clear, isolated notes of its song.

Without her laptop, reluctant to use her phone casually in case it broke too, she had no human contact at all. She couldn’t even see the lights from other houses when darkness fell.

Hazel had never minded her own company, but that had been with other people maybe a block away and with all the distractions of modern life around her. Now she’d lost human voices, even recorded ones, and any link to the outside world that didn’t take half an hour or more. The conduit had pared her world back again, peeled off another layer of normal life and left her exposed to the cold, titanic universe.

It didn’t help that she had to constantly keep some part of her mind alert, constantly on guard for the next ethereal incursion or the next attack by Ligat’s master. Her knife reassured her a little, and so did the small packet of herbs and blessed salt that she always kept in a pocket these days, but they also reminded her of her situation—of a life under siege, with no sign of it ending well.

Tea and cookies gave her a small refuge, a Len Deighton novel another, and retreating to her bedroom likely helped most of all. It didn’t bring her life back or the rest of the world closer, but she felt much more secure behind her wards and in a room with only one small window.