Sheryl’s house was actually cute. On the smallish side, but it looked nicely upgraded. The lawn was perfectly manicured, the trees pruned to perfection, and I wondered if she had somebody out in the yard with a level, making sure all the grass blades were the same height. The house itself showed no wear and tear. But then again, given what she must be making off of Majikoil, she could afford to have her house painted a dozen times over.
Ari walked up the steps. She pressed the bell as I joined her. The door opened immediately and there was Sheryl, wearing a lace and burnt velvet kimono over a maxi skirt and a camisole. She opened the door and ushered us in.
I found myself in a beige wonderland. The walls were painted muddy taupe, the lampshades were cream, the furniture was pale tan. Everything looked new to the point of being right out of the delivery box.
As I looked closely, the books on the shelves caught my attention. They were evenly spaced, in alphabetical order, and none of them looked like they’d been touched. Everything was precise and perfect, like in a magazine. The carpeting was stain-free, and there was no real smell in the air—not dust, not food, no perfumes of any kind—not even the scent of any of Majikoil’s oils. Nothing to indicate that Sheryl actually lived here.
“Very nice,” I said. “Is this your home, or is it Majikoil’s storefront?”
“Oh,” Sheryl said. “I run my business out of my home. I thought about renting a space but I’m not ready to do that yet. Oh, once I have more representatives, that will change. Why don’t you drop your coats on the sofa, and come with me.”
We did as she asked, following her into a large room that looked like it might be a master bedroom. Now, it was filled with shelves on which magical oils rested, and there was a table that looked a lot like a vanity table that a manicurist might use. To one side was a chair that seemed to be hooked up to some sort of device.
I pointed to the chair. “Not going to electrocute us, are you?” I smiled to show that I was joking.
Sheryl laughed, her eyes flashing in an unsettling way. “Now, I wouldn’t do that to new recruits, would I? Make yourselves comfortable on the loveseat. I’m going to prepare your paperwork.” She walked over to a desk in a corner of the room, sat down, and pulled out two file folders.
“Do you have an online database for your reps?” Ari asked. Her mind was running along the same paths as mine. “So many places use electronic forms now.”
Sheryl shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t trust people not to hack my system. Majikoil is on its way to exploding in popularity, and at some point, we’re going to attract knockoffs and clones. I want as little out there as possible for them to get their hands on. Now, if you could fill out the following forms for me, we can get started.” She held out two clipboards. “Fill out the top sheet, initial the second and third, and then sign the fourth.”
I took the clipboards from her, handing one to Ari.
“Give us a moment to get these filled out,” I said. I was very aware of the wire in my bra, and I was wearing an almost invisible earpiece. Since Ari’s hair was short, they chosen to fit me with the headgear. It was hiding beneath my hair, which I had pulled out of the ponytail and arranged to fall over my shoulders.
“Why don’t I get us some refreshments while you fill out the forms?” Sheryl stood, heading to the door. As she left the room, Ari started to stand but I tapped her on the leg and gave her a warning look. Sheryl probably had the place wired and rigged with cameras. The last thing we wanted to do was start snooping and have her catch us. Ari paused, glancing back at me, and then she stretched and yawned, slowly sitting down again.
“Boy, am I tired,” she said.
“I know.” I faked a yawn too. “It’s been that kind of a week. I can hardly wait until Thanksgiving. I’m so ready to sit down and relax and enjoy the big game.” I was bluffing, given I couldn’t stand sports. At least, most sports. But Sheryl wouldn’t know that.
The forms asked for names and addresses, along with our Social Security numbers, and a few disturbing oddities. For instance, it asked for our blood types. That made me nervous. It also asked for an employment history, and I wondered what that had to do with anything. Probably so she could check up on us, but I scribbled down some nonsense about working freelance for the past twenty years, and supporting myself with magazine articles. With a little luck, she wouldn’t ever have a chance to catch me in a lie.
After we had filled out all the details, including bank account numbers—which were fake, provided by the Court Magika along with the checks—I carried the clipboards back over to the desk and set them down. I returned to the loveseat and leaned against the arm, looking around the room. I didn’t want to say anything because I knew we were being spied on. I yawned again—this time for real.
A few moments later, Sheryl returned. She was carrying a tray with cookies and mugs of hot cocoa. Ari and I had taken the potions to protect us from the energy drain, but as I stared at the food, the cocoa caught my attention.
There was something about it—I could feel it even from where I was sitting. She had put something in it. A sedative, maybe? Or perhaps a conduit to help the energy flow more smoothly into her, or maybe… Could she be on to us?
“Do you have a restroom I could use?” I asked. “I’ve drunk a lot of coffee today.”
Sheryl gazed at me for a moment. “To your right, second door down.”
I hustled out of the room, hoping Ari could feel the same peculiar vibe off of the cocoa. As I stepped into the bathroom, I closed the door and pulled out my phone. I quickly texted Rowan. i think something’s wrong with the cocoa. i’m not sure whether we should drink it or not. can it negate the potion?
i don’t know if it can, came the immediate reply. it depends on what she put in it. is there a graceful way you can bow out of drinking any?
i don’t know. i’m not sure if ari knows about it. what if she’s on to us and it’s some sort of poison?
My imagination was running away with me. Surely Sheryl wouldn’t try to poison us? She wouldn’t be able to drain our life energy if we were dead. And if she suspected we were from the Court Magika, wouldn’t she just tear up the forms and tell us that she had changed her mind?
My grandmother texted me again. use your best judgment. try to get the information we need. but if something happens, yell and we’ll come in, aborting the mission.
I flushed the toilet and ran water in the sink, in case Sheryl was listening. I hurried back down the hall. She glanced up as I entered, and I quickly looked at Ari. It didn’t look like she picked up the cocoa yet, and I had an epiphany. As I walked back to my place, I deliberately tripped and knocked over the cookies and both mugs of cocoa all over the floor.
“Oh no, your carpet!” I looked around frantically. “Paper towels?”
Sheryl looked annoyed but she jumped up and ran out the door again. As I bent to pick up cookies, Ari did the same and I whispered in her ear, “The cocoa was doctored.”
As I tossed cookies back onto the plate, Sheryl returned with a roll of paper towels. I took them from her and quickly began mopping up the cocoa. The stain was obvious on the carpet, and I affected a flustered, apologetic tone.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’ll pay for the cleaning.” I glanced over at Ari and she gave me a slight nod.
“Well, shall we get started here, then?” Sheryl said. Unruffled, she carried the tray over to a sideboard and set it atop the console. Then she turned back to us, giving me a long look. I decided it was time to drop the bait and opened my purse, pulling out my checkbook.
“I have to admit, I’m so excited! You really think we can make a lot of money? And…I noticed the part about the energy exchange. That means we’ll have more oomph in our day,” I said as enthusiastically as I could muster.
Sheryl’s eyes lit up when she saw the checks. “Yes, you will.”
“But we have to recruit more reps in order to get back our energy, right?” Ari sa
id, hesitating with her pen over her check. “And we get financial bonuses for that, as well?”
Sheryl paused, then said, “Right. But you’re going to find that recruiting others will boost your income so much that you won’t miss the little bit of energy I’m going to draw off of you today. You’ll be rolling in money and health within a couple of weeks. The oils sell themselves, and your friends will be begging you to onboard them. I guarantee it!”
“Well, my wife wasn’t sure about this,” Ari said, still poised with her pen over the check.
“Once you start bringing home massive amounts of money, she’ll change her mind.” The irritation in Sheryl’s eyes had faded. In fact, she was looking relieved, like she had been afraid we’d back out.
I wondered if that was enough for the Court Magika to make their move, but before I could say anything else, a movement directly behind Sheryl caught my attention. I blinked and glanced again, out of the side of my eye.
Why I hadn’t noticed it before, I didn’t know. A shadow that shouldn’t have been there was right behind Sheryl. But now, it was as plain as day. A cold shiver ran up my back. There was something malignant about it.
Goose bumps rose along my arm. And then, the shadow turned toward me and I knew that it knew I was watching it.
Nauseated, I wanted to run. I tried to move but couldn’t shake off the fear.
Sheryl stepped forward, looming over me. “Why don’t we get this started with the energy exchange? You first, January,” she said, only her voice was an octave deeper.
I wanted to scoot away from her, but I couldn’t. This close to her, the full force of whatever it was that was shadowing her swept over me.
What the hell? Where had this come from? Why hadn’t we sensed it before?
Ari, who was at the other end of the sofa, jumped up. “January, get out of there!” Her eyes were wide as she circled away from Sheryl, trying to get behind her and closer to the door.
I willed myself to move, trying to force my frozen muscles to unlock so I could defend myself. A cold feeling of dread paralyzed my muscles and all I could think was, I’m not going to make it out of here alive.
Ari held out her hands and closed her eyes. The next moment, a gust of wind blasted through the room, jolting Sheryl to the right. As soon as her focus was off of me, I could move. I leapt up, sidestepping to the left.
Ari turned to me. “It’s a shadow person, it’s attached to her!”
At that moment, Sheryl turned back toward Ari and lunged. In that fraction of a second, I could clearly see the shadow person latched onto Sheryl. A cord bound them, burrowing directly into Sheryl’s crown.
The shadow person was dark as night, black as jet. While I had occasionally dealt with shadow people, I wasn’t prepared for one this strong. I knew how to exorcise a regular spirit from a person, but breaking the link between a shadow person and their host wasn’t the same thing—and it was far harder.
In my ear, from the hidden earpiece, I could hear Rowan shouting, asking what was wrong. I had forgotten all about the wire during Sheryl’s attack. Now, I scrambled to alert them.
“We need help! A shadow person’s attached to Sheryl!”
The line went dead. We would have to fend for ourselves until they got here. The van was parked two houses away, which meant we had to manage for at least several minutes.
I held up my hands, trying to deflect the shadow person’s attention away from Ari. “Hey, over here. Attack somebody your own size.”
Sheryl turned, a calculating look on her face. “It will be much easier if you submit.”
I started to back away. “Why are you doing this? Why are you possessing Sheryl?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but if we could keep the creature busy until Rowan got here, we might make it through this.
“Hold still,” Sheryl said, panting hard.
The shadow person was taxing her body. Possession was a very delicate balance. Sheryl’s body wasn’t meant to withstand the onslaught of the extreme energy a shadow person contained. I could feel a crack in the bond forming. Behind it I could see a very frightened young woman. That was enough to tell me there was still a chance to save Sheryl from the shadow person.
“If you can still hear me, the walk-in hasn’t fully possessed her. She’s still in there,” I said, hoping that Rowan heard me. Usually, when a shadow person had been attached to a human or one of the witchblood for a long period of time, they eventually eliminated every drop of the original personality and the host had to be put down.
“Why this sort of scam? Why don’t you just feed on people like most of your kind?” I was still trying to stall her, to give the others time to get here.
“Shut up,” Sheryl said.
No wonder Sheryl hadn’t paid attention to the Court Magika’s rules about draining life energy. The shadow person probably didn’t know about them. Or didn’t care. But I still wondered why it had gone to all this trouble—why it hadn’t settled into her body and fed off of people right and left.
I managed to dive over the sofa, putting it between me and Sheryl. Ari had found a large heavy vase and was holding it in front of her like a shield.
“When Sheryl disappeared, that’s when you found her, wasn’t it?” The month that Sheryl had been gone—that she had been missing. That must have been when the shadow person first connected to her. It wasn’t until after she had reappeared that she had quit her job and started the Magikoil business.
There was pounding on the front door, and I could hear Rowan’s voice outside. Damn, the door must be locked. I turned to Ari, who was closest to the archway of the living room. “Unlock the door!”
Ari lobbed the vase at Sheryl. For her size, Ari was fit and strong. The vase went hurtling head over heels toward Sheryl, but she managed to dart out of the way as it crashed against the wall. Sheryl turned toward Ari, her eyes narrowing.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
Ari dashed toward the front door and Sheryl hesitated, then turned back toward me as I edged my way around the room. She looked vaguely confused, as though she wasn’t sure what to do next.
Rowan burst in just then, along with a couple of men. Sheryl collapsed as the shadow person raced toward me. I screamed as it slammed into me, knocking me to the ground.
If the shadow person was strong enough, they could take on physical form, and this one definitely had the power. It closed its inky fingers around my throat, and leaned down, the smooth black void of its face staring at me. A cord tentacled out, latching onto my crown chakra, and it began draining my energy.
I tried to scream but I couldn’t. The next moment, Rowan was there, along with a man I didn’t recognize. They joined hands, and reached toward the shadow figure as I began to lose consciousness.
A thousand live wires ricocheted through me, driving me awake again. The shadow figure lit up, sparks flying off of it as it convulsed. But it was still holding me, in an embrace surrounded by lightning. Once again, I was unable to move as the shock waves rippled through me, and then for a second, my heart convulsed and I thought I was going to die. But the shadow figure stumbled backward, letting go of my throat as it gripped the sides of its head. The lightning drained out of me as the shadow person stumbled away.
I sat up, dizzy. Every fiber of my being ached as though I had stuck my finger in a light socket. I groaned, then leaned forward to rest my head on my knees. If a tsunami had been bearing down on us, I couldn’t have moved to run, I was so exhausted and in pain.
The shadow figure thrashed, but Rowan and her companion kept driving the lightning out through their fingertips. With a final sizzle, the creature vanished and the room was silent.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rowan and Ari scrambled to kneel by my side.
“Are you all right?” Ari asked, stroking my frizzed out hair back from my face. It crackled under her fingers, and I reached up, realizing I was surrounded by a two-foot long afro. It was going to take some
doing to get my hair back to normal.
My throat was dry, sore from screaming. I hadn’t even realized that I had been screaming. My pulse raced and I felt like I’d been the recipient of a full-body cleansing, the lightning had coursed so thoroughly through every cell of my system. I leaned on one hand, not even trying to stand up. Across the room, I noticed Sheryl, lying on the floor.
“How is she?” I managed a faint wave in her direction.
Two of the men who had come in with Rowan were examining her. One glanced over at us and shook his head, looking grim. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.” And then he placed her hand gently back on the floor and hung his head. “She’s gone. She was too attached to the shadow figure to make it on her own.”
“Is there any way to draw her spirit back into her body?” I asked. As I stared at Sheryl’s prone figure, I noticed the spirit standing beside it. It looked exactly like her. I motioned for Rowan to help me up. Between her and Ari, they got me on my feet and I approached Sheryl’s spirit.
“Are you all right?” I asked, looking for the shadow figure. But it was nowhere to be seen. And then I saw the silver cord that attaches souls to their bodies. It was still intact—fraying quickly, but still connecting Sheryl to her body.
“Who are you talking to?” Ari asked.
“Sheryl. Her spirit’s right here. Is there any way we can help her back into her body? She’s not fully cut off from it yet.” I knelt by Sheryl’s side, starting compressions on her chest. “Ari, give her mouth-to-mouth.”
Ari didn’t question me, just began to work. Rowan and the others began to pour healing energy toward Sheryl’s body. I glanced up at the spirit, who was kneeling near me, watching me work on her corpse.
“Do you want to come back?” I asked her. I should have asked her that in the first place.
She paused, then looked at me. I remember everything I did while that creature had control of me. I don’t know if I can live with some of those things.
“We can help you,” I said aloud, hoping the others would get the drift. “What you did was out of your control, and we can help you live with the memories.”
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