Personal Demon
Page 101

I flew to my feet and ran at him. I saw the gun. An explosion of terror, almost knocking me off my feet.
Beautiful terror. Sweet and pure chaos. So perfect…
He raised the gun.
No!
I clamped down on my lip and the burst of pain wrenched my thoughts free. I threw myself at Jaz. I hit him.
The gun fired. And then, as we hit the floor, I felt it. A second chaos blast, this one so strong I blacked out.
The waves rocked me and that was all I could think about, all I could feel. And that was okay, because as long as I felt them everything was fine. Everything was—
The waves began to ebb. No! I clung to them, holding tight, but they were slipping away now, gentler, rolling over me, the edge of terror and pain gone, only the blissful aftermath remaining.
I lifted my head. Struggled to focus. Everything in me pleaded with me to relax, just lie back and enjoy it.
Don’t spoil—
I saw Paige. Crumpled against the wall. Her pretty face twisted with horror. A bullet hole through her forehead.
I screamed. As the sound ripped from my throat, it changed into a roar, the chaos bliss hardening into something that filled me, burned me, seared my eyes, my brain, my gut. Through the blaze, I saw Jaz. Only Jaz. On his feet. Coming toward me.
I lunged at him, kicking, clawing, screaming in a voice I didn’t recognize as human. I smelled blood. I felt its heat. I tasted its sweetness.
Something jabbed my arm. The prick of pain only spurred me on, but Jaz had wrenched from my grasp. I wheeled. Through the blood haze, I spotted his dark form, and I tried to launch myself at him, but I just kept turning.
Turning. Turning. My knees gave way and I spiraled to the ground.
The last thing I saw was Paige’s dead eyes, staring at me.
 
HOPE: CRASH AND BURN
 
 
Twice before, I’d watched my life crash and burn.
The first time had been my last year of high school. In the midst of SATs, training for a regatta and struggling through the first serious fight with my high school sweetheart, I’d started seeing visions. Convinced it was stress, I’d been furious with myself for showing such weakness and determined to “fix” myself before anyone found out and shipped me off to therapy. I’d fought it so hard that I had a breakdown, I lost it all—the SATs, the regatta, my boyfriend—and spent my prom night in a private mental hospital.
It took years to recover from that, but I did. I learned what I was. I established contacts in the supernatural world. I graduated from college. I found the “council” and got my job with True News. From debutante to tabloid-reporting, gun-toting, chaos demon spy girl. Not exactly what my mother had in mind, but I’d been pleased with myself. It was like going to bed an ordinary girl and waking up a superhero.
More like super-chump. I’d discovered that my new life was built on a lie. I wasn’t protecting the innocent; I was delivering them to the Cortez Cabal. My self-confidence took a beating that it still hadn’t recovered from. But with Karl’s help I’d bounced back and became exactly what I thought I’d been before—a council operative.
Now, with a single bullet, my world had shattered again. This time it wouldn’t heal.
Paige had believed me. I said I’d needed her help and she’d taken me at my word. How many times had I heard the council tease Paige about her impetuousness? They told stories of her running headlong into danger, mind fixed on a soul that needed saving. But such tales were rooted in the past, and even Paige laughed at them. She was older now. More experienced. More cautious.
Yet hadn’t I seen the worry in Lucas’s eyes when she set out on a dangerous assignment? I’d always told myself he was just concerned for his wife. Now I realized that Paige was, at heart, the same person she’d always been, one who’d throw herself into a bullet’s path to save a friend.
I’d called for help. She’d listened.
I’d begged her to tell no one. She’d listened.
After arriving, she’d had misgivings, but I’d played it so cool she’d told herself she was wrong. And followed me to her death.
She’d trusted me. She was dead. It was my fault.
Benicio Cortez would chase me to the ends of the earth, now, convinced I’d been part of the conspiracy against his family. Who would I turn to? For justice? For mercy? Lucas? The council? I’d killed Paige. No one would help me now.
I would not recover from this. Could not.
And yet, even as I thought the words, they were only words. I didn’t care what happened to me. All I could see was Paige’s face. Her dead eyes staring at me.
My greatest fear had been that, faced with the death of a friend, I’d be so overcome by the chaos that I’d stand by and watch. Now I knew I’d been wrong. I’d faced the chaos and overcome it. I’d tried to stop Jaz. Tried to save Paige. Did it matter? No. Because I’d still been responsible for her death…and I didn’t even have the demon to blame.
 
I LAY IN the back of a car. I had no idea how long I’d been there, trapped in my thoughts, smelling vinyl and vomit, feeling the rumble of the tires, hearing the sharp words of an argument. It all washed over me, muddled by whatever drug sloshed through my veins.
Even when the voices became coherent, I listened, aware that what I was hearing was important, connected to me, but unable to make that connection. Just disembodied voices floating through the ether.
“You have to do something about her.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Fine? Look in the mirror and tell me everything’s fine, Jaz. She attacked you—”
“I shot someone she liked. What’s she supposed to do? Run over and kiss me?”
“Kill you more like.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“No? Well, judging by those scratches, she sure as hell tried. I hate to see what you’d look like if you hadn’t shot her with the sedative.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, Jaz, I don’t.”
Silence.
“I need her, Sonny.”
“Need? You met her a few days ago. Days! And now, all of a sudden, you can’t live without her. I’m starting to wonder where that leaves me.”
“Right where you’ve always been. My brother. Nothing is more important to me.”
“Nothing?”