Bring it On

The demon in her kitchen was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "How the hell did things get so bad, so fast?" Wren asked him, staring down at the sheets of paper on the table in front of her. Nothing to make her break into a cold sweat, on first or even second glance. It was just paper. Nice paper, but nothing expensive. Three double-spaced sheets, neatly typewritten, with decent margins. It had arrived in a manila envelope with her name written on the front in dark blue ink, carried in a courier bag slung over the shoulder of the demon, who had handed it to her wordlessly and then gone to investigate the innards of her refrigerator. "Do you really want me to answer that?" the demon asked now, curious. The butter knife looked odd in his clawed paw, as though he should not be able to handle it, but he wielded the dull blade with surprising dexterity. "Only if you're going to reassure me that everything's peaches, and the city's about to break out into spontaneous song and dance," she said. "And I don't mean West Side Story kind of dancing, either." She forced her eyes away from the letter, and looked at her companion. There was a smear of jelly on the counter, and another one in his coarse white fur. And he had used the last of the peanut butter. So much for a midday snack. She sighed, and looked away again. Other than that, it was the kind of late autumn day that Wren Valere loved the most: cool and crisp, the sky a bright blue, what little of it she could see out her kitchen window and past the neighboring buildings. Almost like Mother Nature was apologizing for the hell she had put everyone through over the summer. And, as always, thoughts of that summer made Wren close her eyes and take a moment to center and ground, emotionally. The entire summer had sucked. The deal with the devil that her business partner Sergei had made with his former employers to keep her safe when the Council of Mages had threatened her and her livelihood had come back to haunt them -- literally. The Silence -- a group of mysterious dogooders with a sizable checkbook -- had offered what had seemed like a lifesaver of a job, but -- Her grounding faltered, then came back. Lee's death during that job hadn't been her fault, no. But it was her responsibility. And the simple fact of it made her core -- the inner storehouse of magic that every Talent carried within them, like a power pack -- seethe under the weight of the guilt she carried. It felt like snakes in her gut, tendrils in her brain. It felt like -- "Ow!" A furry, leather-palmed paw struck the side of her face, not as hard as it might have, but harder than a love tap. "What the hell was that for?" she asked, her hand going to her face as though expecting to feel blood, or at least heat rising from the skin. Thankfully, he'd kept his long, curved black claws away from delicate human flesh. "Self-pity." The demon climbed back onto his chair, bringing his sandwich with him and watching her with those dark red eyes that were the mark of his breed. "Doesn't look good on you." "Great. The entire lonejack community is freaking out over what might or might not be Council-directed attacks on them, the fatae are claiming that humans are targeting them, my love life is going seriously weird, and I'm getting slapped for self-pity by a four foot tall polar bear with attitude. Who has jelly in his fur." P.B. took a bite out of his lunch, and swallowed, ignoring her last crack. "You're wallowing, Valere. Lee's dead. He's gone. Move on, or you're going to be distracted at the wrong time, and get yourself dead, too." He relented, only a little bit. "Damn it, I liked him, too. I trusted him." "You didn't get him killed." "Didn't I?" That made her look up and meet his gaze. She had known the demon presently sitting in her kitchen for years. Almost ten, in fact. In all that time, he had been effective in his jobGilman, Laura Anne is the author of 'Bring it On', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373802401 and ISBN 0373802404.