As I tried to psychoanalyze myself, I noticed something odd. Val’s house is old and creaky. You can hear every step anyone takes. I’d heard her mount the steps to the second floor, and I’d heard her moving around upstairs. Now I heard nothing at all.

I stopped pacing as the inexplicable panic reached a crescendo.

Not knowing why I was doing it, I turned and faced the stairwell. And suddenly, there she was.

I hadn’t heard a single creak out of the stairs. That’s because she’d been sneaking. If it hadn’t been for the creeping panic that made me look, I never would have gotten out of the way in time.

There was a loud pop, and I threw myself to the floor.

Taser probes rocketed through the space I’d just vacated, embedding themselves harmlessly into the back of a chair. Val cursed softly and ejected the spent cartridge.

I didn’t have time for shock, or outrage, or even pain. She reloaded, and I snatched a cushion off the sofa. I ducked behind it just as the Taser popped again. I felt the impact of the probes hitting the cushion, but — thank you, Jesus — it was thick enough to insulate me.

I peeked over the top of the cushion to see Val closing in on me, Taser still at the ready. She was going to try to take me down in hand-to-hand combat.

It was a tactical error on her part. One, I’m six inches taller than her and I work out. Two, if your family is Spirit Society, you either learn to fight at a young age, or you spend your entire childhood getting the shit beat out of you. I’d opted for fighting.

Val jabbed the Taser in my direction, trying to sneak it in around the edge of my shield — er, sofa cushion. I blocked her easily but didn’t notice her foot until it was too late.

Her heel made contact with my shin, and if she’d been wearing hard-soled shoes, I’d have been in trouble.

As it was, she was wearing sneakers, and she didn’t do any serious damage.

“Ow!” I yelled. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Val?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fierce and focused on her goal. I’d never seen her look like that before. She grabbed the sofa cushion and tried to rip it out of my hands. Since I had two hands on it, and she had only one, I had a heavy advantage in our game of tug-of-war. I gave a particularly hard tug to wrest the cushion from her grip, and she let go.

I cursed as my own momentum felled me.

The impact with the floor knocked the cushion from my hands, and the breath whooshed out of my lungs. Val hurled herself on top of me, throwing an awkward punch with her left hand. The punch was just a diversion, though, as she tried to ram the Taser into my ribs.

I ignored her left hook and latched onto her right wrist with both my hands. I didn’t let go when her fist contacted my face.

The blow might have been awkward, but it sure hurt.

I was seriously pissed now, and I let instinct take over. I rolled hard to my left. Val was too small and light to pin me, so I ended up on top, with her Taser trapped between our bodies so she couldn’t zap me without zapping herself as well.

My punch was not awkward, and Val’s body went limp. I almost hit her again, but stopped myself.

Panting, hurting, wondering what the hell was going on, I rolled off her inert body. I pried the Taser from her unresisting fingers and checked the battery indicator. Still plenty of juice left. I patted her down as she slowly came to, but didn’t find any more weapons.

I stood up and moved away from her. My cheek ached where she’d hit it, and there was another ache, too. A deeper one. My eyes burned, and for a moment I thought I was going to cry. Val had been my best friend since high school. The only person I trusted enough to talk to about my mysterious problem. And she’d attacked me!

Val moaned softly, then opened her eyes to see me pointing her own Taser at her.

“Sister, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” I growled. Anger and indignation helped quell the hurt.

Val looked up at me with wide, astonished-looking eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Not what I’d been expecting. About thirty seconds ago, she’d been at my throat like a rabid dog. Now she was apologizing?

She sat up slowly, eyeing the Taser. “I thought you really were possessed.”

“What?” I cried. This had to be some weird-ass dream, right? I mean, come on! “The whole point of this exercise was for you to check my aura.”

She didn’t try to get up. I guess I looked like I had an itchy trigger finger, and she couldn’t be sure I hadn’t reloaded the Taser while she was out.

“And if you really were hosting an illegal demon, then that would have been the perfect moment to attack me.”

“You have got to be kidding me. If I was possessed by a homicidal demon, what makes you think I’d need to wait for the perfect moment?” I shook my head in disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” Val said again. “You were acting strange. Like you were hosting a demon who didn’t quite know how to pass for you yet.” She reached up and touched the bruise that was swelling along her jawline as I watched. “But if you really were hosting a demon and out to get me, you’d have hit me a lot harder.” She gave me pathetic doe eyes. “I’m really, really sorry.”

The doe eyes weren’t doing much for me. Too much adrenaline still pumping through my system, I guess. Also, though I supposed what she was saying made a sort of sense, I wasn’t sure I believed her.

Had I really been acting that strange? Strange enough to make her think it wasn’t really me talking to her but a demon pretending to be me? Before I’d shown her the note, she’d even remarked on the fact that I didn’t act like a demon.

Problem was, I couldn’t think of any other reason she’d have come at me like that. This was Val, my best friend, my confidante. Why would she want to hurt me?

“I know you’ve got to be pretty mad at me right now,” Val said, “but I was just doing what I thought was right. I had to subdue you so I could exorcize the demon.” She laughed nervously. “Would have worked better if you actually were hosting one, you know?”

My hand was beginning to ache from clutching the Taser too tightly. I lowered it, but didn’t lower my guard. I felt ridiculous suspecting Val, but it wasn’t like I could just forget what she’d tried to do. And it wasn’t like I could dismiss the creeping sensation that her story made no sense. The best thing I could do was get the fuck out of there and do some serious thinking.

Val let out a sigh of relief and started to stand when I lowered the Taser.

“Don’t get up,” I warned her, pointing the Taser once more. I wanted to put some distance between us. She sat back on her rump and held her hands up in surrender.

I backed toward the door. I don’t know what I thought she could do to me as long as I had her Taser, but at that moment I didn’t want her at my back.

“I’ll leave your Taser in the doorway,” I told her when I reached her front door.

“Okay,” she said, still sitting on the floor, looking a lot calmer than I felt. “If you want to talk later, give me a call. I know you must think I’m the worst kind of bitch right now.”

I shook my head at her in disbelief. “Val, telling me I dress like a biker slut would be bitchy. Trying to Taser me goes so far beyond bitchy I don’t have a word for it yet.”

She hung her head in shame. “I know.” When she looked up at me again, there were tears in her eyes. “Please tell me I didn’t flush twelve years of friendship down the toilet because of my stupid mistake.”

But, of course, I couldn’t tell her that, and the tears didn’t particularly move me. I put the Taser down in the entryway, then stepped out the door.

The place between my shoulder blades twitched the whole time I walked from her house to my office.