Page 44 of Hexbound

The cowled head turned her way. "What have we here?" it asked, but this time she was certain the words weren't memory. It seemed to step outside its body, the way she had. Then the image seemed to jerk toward her, and the hood fell back, and—

"Noah!" Verity sat upright with a scream, her heart racing as she tried to translocate.

"Stop!" Lady Eberhardt cried, and Verity slammed back into her body as a golden net of pure light hauled her back in, collapsing her back on the daybed.

She felt like she'd plummeted off a building and smashed into hard cobbles. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Surprisingly strong hands caught her by the shoulders and rolled her to her side, where Verity's lungs finally opened up with a sucking heave. Dizziness swam through her vision.

"Just breathe," Lady Eberhardt told her gruffly, rubbing her between the shoulder blades. "That was poorly done by me. I should have let you go. My apologies."

Verity shuddered. Her entire body ached. "W-what happened?"

"You tell me. Who's Noah?"

Noah.Verity squeezed her eyelids shut. "It was Noah Guthrie, a young curser who used to run with the One-Eyed Crows until Murphy threw him out of the gang. But at the same time, it wasn't Noah at all. It was...." She tried to drag herself upright, to recover her composure. It was long gone. All she could see was that horrible face leering at her, superimposed over Noah's, and when she tried to put it into words, she struggled to describe it. "What was it? A monster?"

"Monsters don't exist," Lady Eberhardt replied, turning to pour her a cup of tea from a setting that had appeared out of nowhere. "It could have been something straight out of the Shadow Dimensions. Sometimes they slip through and colonize a person."

"It saw me," she blurted, taking the cup gratefully and draining her tea in one large gulp.

Lady Eberhardt frowned. "What do you mean?"

"It looked right at me and asked me what I was doing there. It was as though it stepped outside of its body, the same way I did." Panic lit through her. "How could it do that? How could it know I was in some sort of trance, watching the scene? That would require slipping through time itself!"

"Not slipping through time," Lady Eberhardt corrected. "But there is one sort of creature who can see through it. Sometimes."

"What?" She felt like she knew the answer.

"A demon."

All of the blood drained from her face. Verity set down her teacup and hurried to the window, driving the sash up to let in some fresh air. She swallowed hard, just as she realized that the sun had reached its zenith and was beginning to head toward the horizon. "What time is it?"

"Late afternoon."

"We've been here for hours?"

"At least three." Lady Eberhardt sipped her tea, watching as Verity tried to compose herself. "And we were speaking of demons, not the time."

"I know." She closed her eyes. Demons were well outside her repertoire. She knew danger; she'd stared into its face far too many times. But a demon could steal your soul from your body and destroy the very essence of a person. That was an entirely different matter. "Just what have you gotten me involved in?"

"Me?" Lady Eberhardt pointed out, with one meticulous eyebrow. "Or your dear friend Murphy?"

Fair point.Verity looked away. "I cannot fight a demon."

"I can."

Verity stared at the old harridan. "You can?"

"The demon is in our world, not its own," Lady Eberhardt said with a shrug, as though she wasn't speaking of a hell dimension. "It needs permission to be in this Guthrie boy's body, and its powers are tied directly to his. Was he a talented sorcerer?"

"Noah?" Verity saw him again, laughing at her as he showed her some sleight-of-hand trick from years ago. "Noah was talented, but he struggled with opium. He began by smoking it in the opium dens, and then after a while he began to eat it. It destroyed him from within."

"Hmm." Lady Eberhardt's eyes grew distant. "That would explain how a demon managed to trick him into playing its host. It would look for weak-natured hosts, or those who had nothing to live for. It needs to make its offer sound appealing." She set down her tea with a sigh. "Well, at least I've solved the problem of the memory hex."

Verity touched her temples. "I cannot recall anything still."

"You most likely won't. It's meticulous work, and it might take more than one session to break through it."

"You recognize the work?"