Nothing.

No, worse than nothing. Tera’s damned spell, which was supposed to be so helpful, interfered with what Megan actually felt, the kind of emptiness she usually associated with demons but something stronger, more sinister. Something that didn’t feel like demon but didn’t not feel like demon either, and it certainly didn’t feel like witch. Tera practically vibrated in Megan’s mind. Elizabeth did not.

She felt human. Just unreadable. Just with something extra around her, something soft and solid that resisted Megan’s attempts to see it. She tried using her power as a weapon, tried pulling whatever it was back to herself. It stung where she touched it, but she felt humanity behind it, hiding there. If she could somehow push through whatever it was, past it, she could find out what was really going on.

Something screamed in her head when Tera bumped into her, hard enough to make it obvious she’d done it deliberately. “Are you okay?”

“What?” Megan looked around. Nick was sitting in one of the small bucket chairs by the room’s little desk, with Elizabeth on the bed. They looked settled, as though they’d been there for a few minutes already.

The door was closed behind her. How long had she been standing there, trying to fight her way through that thick dull veil surrounding Elizabeth?

Tera inspected her from head to foot, which made Megan want to slap her more than she had before from the stupid bickering in the hall. “Did you get anything?”

Megan glanced at Elizabeth, then realized it didn’t matter. Tera was going to remove the entire incident anyway. They could speak as freely as they wanted.

“No. It’s like there’s some kind of cloth or barrier wrapped around her. Maybe it’s a spell or something. Could he have cast a spell that deadened people? Hid them behind a psychic or magical shield?”

Tera shrugged. “Of course. If it was a witch. I don’t think a demon could do something like that.”

“What in the world are you people talking about?” Elizabeth wasn’t completely gone after all. She’d half risen from her perch on the sage-green patterned bedspread and assumed a defensive stance, ready to fight.

Tera waved her hand. Elizabeth subsided.

Nick glanced at her. “A psyche demon might be able to do something like that, but not that strong.”

“Can you feel it, Nick?”

He nodded, with his eyes on the floor. Nick’s father had been part psyche demon, she knew, but only because Nick had used the bit of power his heredity had given him to help her back at Christmas. Aside from that she knew nothing about his family, except that both of his parents were dead. He never spoke of them.

She knew there was a reason for his reticence. She didn’t know what it was, but every once in a while something would happen, she’d feel his energy just a little too strongly, and it would blow her away with the injury of it, the anger and pain and fear lurking beneath everything else. It didn’t scare her. But she was aware of it, always.

So she didn’t press him. “I don’t know, Tera. I’ve never felt or seen anything like it before. I can’t get anything from her at all.”

“So you can’t see what she saw, what attacked her.”

Megan shook her head.

Tera sighed. “Okay, well, look. I’ll see if I can get anything from her, but the longer we let these memories sit around in her head the stronger they get, as you know. And the longer she holds on to a false memory the more she’ll come to believe it. So every minute that goes by . . .”

Megan nodded. It was pretty basic knowledge, how memories were created and the difference between short-term and long-term. Someone who’d suffered a head injury and been knocked unconscious wouldn’t remember how it happened; the brain wouldn’t be able to “set” those memories.

Tera took a deep breath, shooting a glance at Nick. Megan caught his eye and jerked her head to the right; he got up.

That was the last thing that seemed clear in what happened next: the image of Nick, his body strong and graceful, lifting from the chair and moving silently to the left. A shaft of light caught his black hair and gleamed like the wing of a raven. Tera said something under her breath at the same time, and a cool wave of energy hit Megan, rocked her gently.

Then it exploded.

Megan fell, down to the carpet, through the carpet. The air left her lungs as if a giant hand had wrapped around her chest and squeezed, an iron band that refused to yield. Pain, pain so sharp and fierce it blinded her, tore into her chest, into her head, bright white and terrifying.

She tried to scream but nothing came out; she had no air to scream with. She was going to die. She was going to die here, on the floor of a nice hotel room, and she would never even know why or what killed her.

The thought sent a wave of rage all the way to her toes. That was bullshit, utter bullshit. It was almost her goddamn birthday, for fuck’s sake, and— She reached for her demons, needing their strength, knowing that if she had it she might be able to fight back, to push at whatever it was that squeezed the life out of her on the carpet.

The Yezer were attached to her by an invisible thread, one she saw in her mind’s eye but not with her physical ones. She grabbed the thread with every bit of strength and will she had left, sent her panic and fear along it.

A second to send it out. A second of waiting. And back it came, thick, strong power, filling her up. She was air; she was lighter than that. She’d never taken this much from them, not even the awful day of her father’s funeral when she hadn’t realized they were feeding her. She’d been high then. Now she was somewhere in the stratosphere.

Without her consciously doing anything about it, the band around her chest eased, then disappeared completely. She was left alone on the floor, with energy still coursing through her body and her hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks in sweaty, itchy tendrils. She wanted to scratch them but didn’t dare move, afraid that if she did, she would either fly off the floor and into the sky or collapse in a sobbing heap.

It took a second for the spinning room to stop. When it did, she saw Tera leaning against the wall, her face pale but composed. Nick hunched on the floor a few feet away, eyes wide, but also alive, which was Megan’s chief concern.

It wasn’t until Tera took a step toward her that Megan realized how shaken she was; the hand she wiped her forehead with trembled. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I— What the hell was that? Nick, are you okay?”

His face shone with sweat. “Okay,” he said, but Megan didn’t like the weakness in his voice. He sounded as if he was very far away, rather than a few feet across the pale green carpet.

“Whatever it is that’s got her, it resisted me.” Tera jerked her head toward Elizabeth Reid, who still sat on the bed as if nothing at all had happened.

Okay, that was weird. Well, obviously, it was all weird— it had been some months since life had been as bizarre and full of attempted murder as this, and Megan could honestly say she hadn’t missed it a bit—but it seemed especially weird, particularly weird, that any person, much less an FBI agent, would watch someone else have a fit on the floor and still be sitting there, smiling faintly. Which was exactly what Elizabeth Reid was doing.

“How? I mean, how did it resist you?” Her legs felt rubbery. She forced them to move, pushing herself off the floor.

“I don’t know. It was stronger than me. Or whatever the spell is around her, or the aura or whatever, I didn’t have the right way to break through it.”

“So she remembers everything. She knows we were here, she heard you, everything.”

Tera raised her eyebrows. “Does she look like she cares?”

“Good point.” Okay, her legs really would support her. They didn’t want to, but they would. If she couldn’t control her own legs, things were at a pretty sad pass. She used them to cross the room to Nick, then let them collapse beneath her again to join him against the wall.