Hollywood Demon (The Collegium Book 6) (6 page)

“It’s geology, Grandma,” Jeremy burst out. “It doesn’t ‘talk’.” He air-quoted the word, loading it with scorn. “You did Clancy no favors in allowing her to imagine that her magic made the Earth sentient.”

“I knew it never really spoke to me,” Clancy defended herself. She didn’t go on to add how reassuring the grumbling power of the Earth had been when she’d connected with it via the chamber during a childhood in which she’d often been scared. Not as scared, and not as brave as Jeremy undergoing treatment for his leukemia, but she’d been scared he’d die, and scared by her parents’ fear and preoccupation. Aware that her small interests and adventures weren’t important in comparison to Jeremy’s battle that had naturally absorbed her parents’ energy, she’d found comfort in her magic. Unlike most magic talents, her magic hadn’t increased substantially at puberty. Her low level abilities, her sensitivity to the Earth’s moods, had always existed.

“Are you staying for lunch, Jeremy?” Doris asked.

He immediately got out his phone, checked it, and entered something. “No.” Tap, tap, tap, head bent over the screen. “I can’t, today, Grandma. Too busy.” Then, belatedly, with a swift smile that showed his white teeth. “But soon. Maybe this weekend. I’ll call you.”

It was Tuesday. Doris watched him leave, noncommittal through the good-byes.

Since she was listening for it, Clancy heard his car start up and purr away. It was quiet, probably an ecologically-conscious choice.

“He won’t phone,” Doris said.

Clancy tried to smile. Somehow, after talking with Jeremy, smiling wasn’t so easy. However, he hadn’t set rules for her staying in California. Perhaps he believed she could suppress her magic.
And I will.
“He’s busy. There’s his work at the university, research, teaching, and work for the Collegium. It’s active country, here.”

“I know.” And by her tone, Doris wasn’t convinced or impressed. “Lunch in an hour. Come over to the house. You and I need to talk with Mark.”

Clancy rolled her shoulders, stretched, but had to agree. She laughed, ruefully. “I thought coming home would be peaceful.”

Doris kissed her forehead. “Peace or trouble, being home is what matters. I’m glad you’re here, honey, and I want you to stay. Settle into your room and don’t be in a hurry to move out.”

The gesture and words warmed Clancy, and when her grandma bustled out the door, muttering something about window washers who needed watching, Clancy climbed the stairs up to her room.

The cottage had a simple layout: a kitchen and living room downstairs with a laundry/mudroom, and upstairs Doris’s large bedroom with a smaller bedroom that had been Clancy’s, and a bathroom. The deep front porch, partly screened, added living space.

She unpacked her clothes and few belongings, stowing them in the wardrobe and dressing table, and remembering the special twist the wardrobe door handle needed to close securely. She carried an armful of clothes into the laundry and put them into the machine to wash. Beside the machine, unhidden, was the trapdoor that led to the chamber beneath the cottage. The natural passage descended to a cavern that hummed with geo-power. It was the reason the cottage was built where it was. Responsibility for the chamber and its power had been her family’s inherited duty for generations. Doris mightn’t be a Collegium-trained geomage, but no one disputed that she was the chamber’s custodian.

Clancy stared at the worn old wood of the trapdoor and felt the power of the chamber through the soles of sneakers. She sent back to it the tiniest thread of acknowledgement, an “I’m here”, before hurrying away from temptation and out to the porch. Sitting in the sunshine for a few moments to gather her thoughts would be a good move. She needed to decide her own priorities before she talked with Mark and Doris.

Even with the demon around, her priorities had to be finding a job and a place to live. The place to live was sorted for the moment, but to get a job, she needed a car. Public transport didn’t run past the Yarren Estate.

So, car first. Doris would offer to lend hers, but a car represented more than transport. It meant independence.

I’ll get a car this afternoon.

A raven distracted her, swooping down to stalk across the grass, intent on a hunt. It ignored her presence, its black feathers gleaming in the sun. Its confident strut made her fingers itch with the need to sketch it.

After she bought a car, she’d hit an arts supplies store.

And before she did any of those things…the knowledge of what she had to do had been waiting to sandbag her. Mark had said he’d phone the Collegium. Grandma had said she’d ask her friend the priest to check on Bryce. But with a demon possibly loose in Los Angeles, Clancy had a responsibility to use her contacts, too.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through till she found the name of a guy she’d dated briefly, back when they were both new trainees at the Collegium. He worked on its reception desk, now. Thomas would know who to tell about the demon she’d encountered today. She’d just have to put up with his carefully hidden pity for her failure.

Mark put down the phone, replacing the handset silently in the cradle, moving with the control of true anger. He’d done his duty. He’d informed the Collegium—again—about the demon in Los Angeles. If they refused to act, that was their decision. He would set his own plans in motion.

“Lunch!” Clancy called.

He glanced across the width of his study to where she hovered in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt.” She gave an uncertain smile. “Grandma insisted I call you. She thinks we should talk, the three of us.”

He found he didn’t much like Clancy looking uncertain. She’d been a quiet kid, not shy, but reserved. He’d liked her then, and he thought she’d become an interesting woman. But he didn’t like her acting unsure of her welcome. So, although he wanted to push her and Doris out of the demon’s path, he stood. He could talk, eat, and evade committing himself to anything that involved the two women and the hellspawn.

It would also be prudent to learn what they intended doing, if anything, about the demon.

“Great. I’m hungry.” He smiled, and watched Clancy’s smile widen and become genuine. “Did Doris feel adventurous regarding the lunch menu?”

She laughed. “No. It’s sandwiches. Chicken and avocado, smoked salmon, ham and pickle. I helped make them.”

Ordinary conversation. And now that she was relaxed, she was looking around his study, taking it all in, while he walked toward her. “That’s a lot of computers.”

He had a bank of them against one wall with a couple of over-sized screens. “Yeah,” he said vaguely, more interested in the pinkness he’d noticed around her eyes and the tip of her nose. Had she been crying. Anger twisted his gut. The demon caused unbelievable trouble—heartache. “Have you been crying?” Sure, the question was rude, but he needed her answer.

“No!” She pulled a face of indignant disgust, and started walking fast back to the kitchen. “I phoned the Collegium—I know you said you would, but I thought two of us reporting Bryce’s possession would be better, have more of an impact. Anyway, I phoned a guy I know. Thomas. He’s on reception at the Collegium, a general trouble assessor. He knows exactly who to inform of what. He put me straight through to Neville!” Her voice went up an octave on the name.

“Who is Neville?” Mark matched her pace easily. They reached the kitchen, the entrance wide enough for them and two more people to enter together.

She strode straight to the counter where Doris had just put down a platter of sandwiches. “Dr. Neville Schuster is the chief geomage at the Collegium.”

He frowned. “I think Jeremy mentioned him. He’s the one who signed off Jeremy’s responsibility for California, right?”

“Right,” Clancy said.

Doris snorted. “Neither the Collegium nor anyone else can ‘assign’ territory. Either you can control it, or you can’t.”

“Grandma, that’s not how it works. The old tradition used to destabilize things.” Clancy glanced at Mark. “Geomages would challenge each other for territory. When they did…” She clapped her hands together in a crashing motion, violently bouncing them off one another. “Boom.”

“That rarely happened.” Doris brought three mugs of coffee to the table. They all sat. “Geomages can tell who is stronger. That person kept the territory.”

“I didn’t realize you were so territorial.” Mark bit into a ham sandwich.

“I’m not.” Clancy scowled at her grandma.

Who scowled right back. “You should be.”

He got the impression the two women were arguing out an issue, with him in the middle: either as buffer or roadkill. Clancy didn’t seem sure of her strength, but Doris was a powerful woman. Her magic was only slightly stronger than his, but she was confident in herself and in her opinions.

Clancy picked up an alfalfa sprout spilling out of her chicken sandwich. “Holding territory has never been important to me. Geomages do so to forge a connection and use the Earth’s power to supplement their own. It’s how Jeremy healed himself of leukemia. He connected to the land here. Kennett, who held the territory then, gave him permission.”

“I keep telling you. No one
gives
you permission,” Doris said.

“Well, I can’t just take it,” Clancy snapped at her. “The trouble I caused in Iceland—” She broke off, abruptly concentrating on her sandwich.

Doris’s eyes narrowed as she studied her granddaughter, then she and Mark exchanged a thoughtful look. Clancy hadn’t simply come home. She’d run away from something.

The woman in question glanced up, her face flushed. “Mark, when you offered me a job earlier, did you mean it?”

“Yes.” He was startled, but hid the fact. Growing up as the son of a top Hollywood director and a famous actress, he’d learned early to disguise his emotions. People and paparazzi (the latter didn’t always behave as humans, hence the distinction) were constantly scrutinizing him for his reactions. Especially after Phoebe’s death, he’d learned to protect his emotions. To distance himself. But he didn’t need to protect himself from Clancy. He smiled. “You’d help Doris with her work here, anyway, so yeah, I should pay you.”

“For a fortnight,” she specified. “While I look around and find a real job. Sorry! A
different
job.”

“I know, in retail.” He grinned to show that he was teasing.

Some of the tension in her posture relaxed. Her shoulders lowered. “Exactly. And, we need to deal with the demon.”

It was his turn to tense. He put down the second sandwich he’d picked up. “No. Faust is not your problem.”

“We can’t ignore the thing’s existence,” Doris said. “It wanted to steal Clancy’s soul.”

“That’s not possible. Not without her consent,” he responded steadily.

“Which doesn’t mean the demon won’t try.” Doris glared at him.

He swallowed some coffee. At least its bitterness was welcome. The bitterness of his thoughts was less so. “I know all about what Faust will try.”

Doris glanced away. She, along with everyone else, had criticized his pursuit of the demon; had thought it a figment of survivor’s guilt from the car crash and Phoebe’s death.

“So what do we do to stop Faust?” Clancy broke the tension with her question.

He looked at her. “You don’t do anything.”

“We can’t just wait for the Collegium. Thomas wasn’t even interested in recording my report. All he wanted was to put me through to Neville for him to lecture me. Apparently, it was ‘orders’.” Clancy crammed a too-large, final bite of sandwich into her mouth as if to stop further words spilling out.

Already, Doris’s face had reddened with anger. The grim line of her mouth indicated her desire to give someone a piece of her mind. This Neville, for instance.

“I have no intention of waiting for the Collegium,” Mark said.

Clancy curled her fingers around her mug of coffee. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, this afternoon.” He stonewalled, picking up his sandwich. “I have to go into work. I have a meeting I can’t cancel.”

“You work?” She stared at him, wide-eyed and dumb-founded.

He stared back, equally shocked, finished chewing, and swallowed bread and salmon. “Of course I work.”

Then they both stared at Doris. She studied her sandwich options. “It’s not my job to keep you two up to date on each other’s activities.”

“What do you work at?” Clancy seemed to have forgotten the demon and her annoyance with the Collegium.

“I produce games. Multiplayer, immersive worlds. We’re working on one set in another galaxy. The meeting this afternoon is with NASA.”

“Wow.”

He shrugged. “Like most government agencies, they have a media department. We have some questions for them.” He was keeping it casual, but working with NASA could be huge.

He genuinely loved the world of gaming. It was a method of storytelling that fully engaged people. It could change lives. People were able to “try on” different personas, enter new worlds, and unleash their own curiosity and ingenuity.

“That’s awesome.” Clancy’s brown eyes sparkled with interest. “I love the graphics in games. They’re so real. Lush. Are you doing anything in 3D?”

“We’re considering it.” His vice-president for marketing was pushing for it. 3D was one of the many issues to be addressed in the meeting
after
the meeting with NASA that afternoon. This internal, executive-level session had been delayed too many times. “I need to go if I’m to make the meeting.” He took another sandwich to eat on the way, and if he was escaping further discussion concerning Clancy and Doris involving themselves in the pursuit of Faust, well, he expected he wouldn’t escape it for long.

Clancy gulped some coffee. “Where’s your office?”

“Sherman Oaks.”

“Can I hitch a ride? I need to buy a car to get around. If you drop me at a car yard, that would be great. Please?”

He bit back his automatic offer that she borrow whatever was in the garage. Cars had collected at the estate over the years, abandoned by his dad and grandfather and himself. But Clancy didn’t want to borrow a car. She’d lowered her pride enough to accept a job from him for a couple of weeks. He had to respect her need for independence. It mightn’t matter to him if she borrowed a car, but it mattered to her.

“I can give you a lift. But I’m leaving, now.”

“No problem.” She gave him a tight smile. “I’ll dash back to the cottage and grab my purse. I’ll meet you at the garage.” She was out the door on the last word.

Doris regarded him directly. “Look out for her.”

He nodded as he grabbed keys from the drawer—not the ones for the Rocinante. “I will.”