Page 5 of Craving Demons

“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to figure out if I could get around him to the door. Had the elevator moved at all? Was I still on the top floor? I’d lost track.

He shook his head. “Whatever you are, your aspect is… powerful. I can’t imagine you haven’t noticed men falling at your feet all your life.”

Men wanting to get me into bed, yes, falling at my feet, no.

“Not really, no.”

The door dinged and slid open. I didn’t care what floor I was on, I bolted past this crazy man and out onto the ground floor. Thank God!

“Wait, you can’t run around like this, you need to…” The man was yelling behind me as I bolted through the lobby and out onto the street.

I hurried along the bustling sidewalk for a while, just needing to get away from that place and that guy. He may have been jaw-droppingly handsome, but he was also completely wack-nuts!

I hailed a cab to take me home and spent the entire ride second guessing this new job.

Would all the guys there be as deranged as that one? I knew the rich were eccentric and all, but… demons… really?

The cab stopped at my brownstone on the West Side. By then, I’d mostly calmed myself and written off the incident as one of those strange moments in life.

Shoving that thought to the back of my mind, I ran up the steps to the door and unlocked it, entering to find Reia, my sixteen-year-old daughter playing chess in the front room with my Uncle Don.

Both of them were… odd. Of my three kids, Reia was the least like me. She was quiet and reserved, analytical and observant and that completely baffled me. Caia, the oldest, had my fire and drive. She, however, had actually put it to good use and was off at university with a double major in business and medicine.

And then there was Eva, my middle child. She looked the most like me and she certainly acted like me: just as rebellious and torturous on me as I’d been on my parents. At eighteen she’d already moved out and was shacked up with her most recent fling.

Then there was Uncle Don. He’d made a killing in finance: hedge-funding or day trading or something. But the last ten years hadn’t been kind to him. Now in his sixties, his memory was going. He could still calculate figures like a fiend, but most days couldn’t remember where the fridge was. He also had a quirky way of speaking, only half finishing his sentences and while he understood what he was saying, the rest of us were often left in the dark.

Don looked up at me with a brilliant smile. “Oh, hi Ana. How did… you know… with the thing?”

“I got the job,” I said, returning the smile.

“Oh, that’s…” he said, still beaming, “…something.”

“It certainly is,” I said. I wandered over to the chess board to observe the game. I knew nothing about chess, but there were more of Don’s black pieces than Reia’s white pieces. “Who’s winning?” I asked.

Reia gave me a look of tired exasperation, saying nothing. I felt like a child, interrupting adults. My daughter had perfect waves of soft brown hair and her father’s brilliant blue eyes. I couldn’t remember the man’s name, but I remembered those eyes. There had been a ruggedly handsome face to go with those stunning blue eyes and a one-night stand that had led to my third child.

“Reia is… ah… she’s doing… something,” Don said enthusiastically.

“You should really learn the game,Mom,” Reia said in her usual I-know-more-than-you, tone.

The trouble was she probably did. I’d barely finished high school and I’d missed most of my last year being pregnant and having a kid. I’d gone back later to finish only because Uncle Don had money enough to pay for an in-home nanny for Caia. But after that, I didn’t want to depend on his kindness, so I tried to work, which meant I’d never gone to college.

I also hadn’t been particularly studious in high school either. I’d been more interested in boys than books, and boys had been very interested in me. It had driven my adopted parents into an early grave. My mom had always had migraines but had never thought to get them checked. She’d died of a brain aneurysm when I was sixteen. Then, a year later, I’d told my father I was pregnant and he’d had a heart attack.

Yeah… I know. How fucked up was that?

Caia, my first, had been an accident. I’d been young and stupid and not on the pill yet. Although even once I was on birth-control, Eva and Reia had still come along.

They say the pill is ninety-nine percent effective. Well, apparently, I’m thatonein one hundred women for whom it hadn’t been so effective…twice!

Because of course, the rebellious rogues I liked weren’t the type to wear condoms.

Now, after three kids, I insisted and was now a strict adherent to theno-glove-no-lovepolicy.

So yeah, perfect little Reia probably did know a lot more than I did. She was stoic and far too wise for her age.

It was unnerving.

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