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If she takes the bra off, I just quit.
But she didn t. She put her finger to the little bit of lace above her cleavage, smiling
sadly at her reflection in the mirror. Even without color, Paul could see the shades of
regret and self-reproach in that smile. He would recognize those emotions at a hundred
yards. He d lived with them for a hundred years.
As he watched, Kate s smile melted and her eyes froze into a thousand yard stare.
Reflected in black and white, she looked like a classical statue, a study in marble. Then
her chest heaved. A fire flared behind her eyes. Her fingers closed around his wristwatch
on the dresser and she flung it against the mirror. The glass cracked, and she screamed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
The demon recoiled under the bed. Glass broke against the wall. Red wine splattered
on the floor.
Why-why-why-why-why would you do that? Her voice rose up into a screech.
Why?
The plug of the bedside lamp jerked from the socket and whipped over the floor like
a snake. The lamp crashed against the far wall. The demon scuttled back into the corner,
pressing its liquid body against the wallpaper.
What am I supposed to do? Kate fell to her knees, her head bowed and her fingers
clenched in her curls. What am I supposed to do?
Her forehead came to rest against the mattress as her words dissolved into heaving
sobs.
Inside his prison, Paul watched in shock. What had happened with her client?
Something very, very bad. He couldn t ask, couldn t find out, until dawn gave him his
voice back. He couldn t even hold her while she cried.
The demon raised its arm. Slowly, the limb stretched and thinned, reaching out
across the rumpled bedclothes.
Paul s frustration turned to terror. No, no, no, no&
The demon s inky fingertips hovered above Kate s curls.
No, no, no. Stop!
One finger extended. Paul watched it thin into a tentative point at the tip. He looked
down the unnatural length of the demon s arm and saw its finger slide gently into one
erratic corkscrew curl.
Kate gasped. Her head jerked up. The demon s arm snapped back. Paul stared into
Kate s face for an instant, the tears glistening on the skin of her cheeks.
She pitched backwards, her heels coming out from under her, her arms windmilling.
Like a crab she scuttled away. Her high, shrill gasps sliced through the room.
The demon flowed from under the bed. It reformed in front of the bedroom door,
pushing it closed and blocking Kate s escape.
Holy fucking shit & shit& Kate scrunched against the far wall, crouched over her
knees, stuttering through exclamations. Jesus God & holy & shit.
Paul floated in a vacuum of shock, watching as the demon took the last good thing in
his life and drove it into a brick wall.
Kate came to her feet.
The demon lengthened itself to keep them eye to eye.
Shit. Kate covered her mouth with one hand. The other hand flexed in and out of a
fist. Her breaths, ragged, fast, filled the room.
Then she gasped once. Silence.
Her eyes closed. Her hand dropped. It s you, isn t it?
Bodiless, Paul hung in his prison. Me?
Slowly, Kate slid down the wall to rest on her heels. I couldn t help you before you
shot yourself. Why are bothering me now?
Without the distraction of physical sensation, Paul s floating mind put it together
instantly. Her client committed suicide. Everything made sense. The violent rage had
been her coming back from the shock, the sobbing a release of grief. She thought the
demon was the ghost of her dead client.
What else could she think?
Kate picked up a shard of the broken lamp base. She came to her feet and threw it at
the demon.
Paul experienced the impact as a far away ripple.
Leave me alone! Kate sank down again, plopping into a cross-legged heap of tears
and curls and soft, lost sounds.
The demon looked down. Paul looked with it. At the center of its body, the black
surface puckered. The porcelain shard pushed through, inch by inch, and came loose with
a sucking plop. It shattered against the floor.
The demon looked back at Kate. She stared, revulsion on her face.
Just leave her alone. Please.
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