I had to hide. I knew being Above would make it harder for him to find me, so I hitched a ride on the first summoning I heard, and I've been here ever since. But I was laying low! I was staying in the Others. I wasn't making waves, I swear. If it hadn't been for those lousy riots, no one would ever have known I was here. I promise!”
Rule didn't think the figure had drawn breath during that entire speech. It spoke so fast, Rule was amazed it didn't trip on its borrowed tongue. When it finally skidded to a stop, Rule felt almost dizzy from the speed.
The uneasiness he felt came from something entirely different.
Behind him, Rafael stepped forward, casting a long shadow across Rule, the chair, and the
panting, quaking fiend curled up inside Abby Baker's contorted form.
"Did any of that make sense to you?" the Felix asked softly.
Rule looked up into glittering green eyes and jerked his head once in affirmation. "Unfortunately,
yes."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abby struggled back to awareness through a layer of dense, sticky confusion, as if whatever wasinside her had filled her head with warm caramel while she'd been someplace else. It wasn't painful, but itwasn't very pleasant, either. She forced her eyelids open against the weight that seemed to have them
glued in place and frowned up at the circle of faces peering down on her.
"What happened?" she croaked, frown deepening. And why did she sound like Tom Waits after
a bad case of laryngitis? "Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
She watched while Rafael De Santos switched his gaze from her face to Rule's and back again. "I think the answer to that may turn out to be rather subjective, my dear.”
"What do you mean?”
"In his mysterious feline way," Tess said, "my husband is trying to say that we got answers to a bunch of questions and had time to hash them out while you were unconscious. But I'm not sure anyone actually likes those answers.”
Abby felt her stomach clench. "So you were right. I really am possessed.”
Carly nodded vigorously. "That's a big ten-four.”
The clenching turned into something resembling what happened at a taffy pull. It pulled and
twisted and folded and then started the process all over again. Abby's skin, too, felt different. Tight, buzzing. Oversensitive, as if something had been crawling on it and the sensory memory still lingered behind.
Her hand went instinctively to her throat and grasped her cross. The warmth of the metal andstone, the familiar weight and shape of the necklace, comforted her, just like it always had.
She frowned. Exactly like it always had. It didn't burn or scar her. It didn't feel any different thanit had on the first day she'd clasped it around her neck. Even that vague feeling of being watched she'dhad earlier had settled down. Maybe this demonic possession thing was just a mistake.
"I wonder if it could have been a kind of hypnotic suggestion thing," she ventured, her voicehopeful in her own ears. "You know, I bought into the possession story, so when you all started
Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin