Read Hollywood Demon (The Collegium Book 6) for Free Online Page B

evidence of its presence? Wouldn’t it want to take you out of the picture?”
    “It’s enjoying the game.” Mark’s voice was rough with anger. “We’ll see if it likes my next move.”

Chapter 3
     
    Mark didn’t speak on the drive home, and Clancy was completely okay with the silence. He’d scared her with his determination to fight a demon. What was the wretched thing’s name? Faust.
    Her thoughts were a random, jumbled mess. She was also thinking how much she wanted a bath. She’d showered on the road trip from New York, halting at truck stops, but she wanted to wallow in a jasmine-scented bath. With bubbles. She longed to wash off her fear and the wrongness of contact with a demon.
    Her skin crawled. It had been a demon looking at her through Bryce’s blue eyes. She ought to have paid attention to the weird way he’d held the coffee mug although it must have been burning his skin. Demons didn’t care if they hurt a host body—actually, they reveled in hurting people.
    The Rocinante turned off the street into the private road of the Yarren Estate. Passing through the old ward that kept the place safe lifted a weight of tension from Clancy that she hadn’t realized she carried.
    She’d been subconsciously braced for another demonic attack.
    Mark showed no reaction. The gate opened and he drove through, but not to the garage. He drove around it and on to the housekeeper’s cottage, to Doris’s home. “I’ll bring your bag over.”
    “I can get it.” She didn’t question why he’d brought her to the cottage and not the house. She was just grateful he had. The old stone building was square and solid, with the deep front porch shaded by the silk tree beside it, its leaves falling in welcome to winter. Clancy’s ancestors had built the cottage during the nineteenth century gold rush, but her ancestors had been there before then. Tongva, then Spanish, with a Mayan line added, travelling up from Mexico. Then had come the Irish, Welsh and Icelandic people from over the seas. All of them had connected with this earth.
    The geo-power below the cottage hummed steadily. If she reached for it, it would cradle around her as it had in childhood. But California was her brother’s territory. She flinched from the power. If she wanted to stay here, at home, then she had to prove that she wouldn’t disturb the balance he maintained.
    Which reminded her of the Collegium. She stood with the passenger door open and leaned back in to meet Mark’s eyes as he brooded in the driver’s seat. “We need to tell the Collegium about Bryce’s possession. They’ll send someone to exorcise him.”
    “The demon will have already gone.” He stared straight ahead, although it didn’t seem that he saw the pretty garden with its late-blooming roses, windflowers and spires of snapdragons.
    “Then the Collegium will ensure it can’t return.” She didn’t want to contact the Collegium, either, but it had to be done—for Bryce’s sake. “I’ll phone them.”
    “I will.” He looked at her then.
    Her heart stuttered at the bleak anger in his eyes.
    Then even that emotion was gone. A small smile curved his mouth, apparently meant to reassure her. “Clancy, go in. Have a hot chocolate or something. I’ll tell Doris what happened and she’ll be over. Forget about this. You came back to Los Angeles for your own reasons. Live your life.”
    “That’s all well and good…but your wretched demon knows me.”
    “Don’t worry about it.” Mark put the Rocinante in reverse. “I’ll keep Faust busy.”
    She slammed the passenger door shut, since he obviously wasn’t about to listen to reason, and climbed the couple of steps to the front porch, hearing the engine growl the short distance to the garage and stop. At least he hadn’t driven off to do something reckless.
    “Bath first. Worry later.”
    In fact, aware that Doris would be instantly at the cottage when Mark told her of their encounter with Faust, Clancy grabbed