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“The wolfsbane potion? Yes, I’ve already made some up.”
“Thanks Theo, you’re the best. What’s that noise? Is it Mozz? Is she singing? It’s so cute.”
“Yes, very cute,” he says dryly. “Speaking of Mozz, did you see if she got into the store room again today?”
“I didn’t notice it. I thought you had put up a guard spell to keep her out?”
He sighs. “She’s always finding a way to slip past them.”
“Why? Did she get her hands on something she shouldn’t?”
“Oh just a few more things gone astray is all. I was a bit worried about a couple of crystals from the inventory. I’m sure I’ll find them. Were you looking up demonic possessions again?”
“Why?” I ask, suddenly wary.
“You left the book on the counter. Is your friend having any trouble with the amulet I provided?”
I wince when he says ‘friend’. I suspect Theo full well knows the friend I had claimed to be trying to help is none other than myself. I have no friends, unless you count Storm and Remi, who probably think of me just as a colleague. I would have said Deepika and Aisling, fellow waitresses at Luca’s restaurant where I still work the occasional shift, but I never see them outside the restaurant. Theo doesn’t need to know that.
“Er, no, the amulet’s fine, I think.”
“You should ask her to come and see me. If it really is a spiritual possession I am sure I can do something to remove the spirit. Most of the weaker spirits aren’t terribly complicated to remove, and if it’s the pain that she’s worried about—”
“Thanks, Theo, but it’s not the pain. Really. I appreciate your concern though.”
It is best to cut Theo off before he demands outright whether it is me who is having the problem. I’d told the lie before I really knew him, and now that we are friends it has been bothering me immensely. I don’t want to lie to him. If only it had been a simple possession I would have gone to him in a heartbeat. But how can I tell him that I’ve got a murderous little entity inside my head that calls herself Nemesis, who may or may not be the Angel of Death?
A car crash at age fifteen had left me with amnesia and no memory of my life before that. All I know is that since I was fifteen I have had a little voice in my head that had protected me from dangers I’d been too scared to face alone. She’d told me I was the Angel of Death, and I hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry about it. I’d just accepted it as the truth.
It hadn’t been so bad. I was human and ‘Angel of Death’ had just been meaningless words to me. So I had a weird navelstone. So my wounds healed overnight in my sleep. It meant nothing. I’d gotten used to thinking of the little voice as my angry little friend. But that was before she’d taken over my body three weeks ago and attempted to murder someone.
The amulet Theo had given me had had the blessed effect of shutting her up for good. I haven’t heard a peep out of her these past three weeks. It has been such a relief to no longer worry about her taking over my body when I am too tired or emotionally overwrought to stop her.
The only problem is that Theo’s amulet seems to have cut off my psychic powers too. It can’t be a coincidence. It has to be the amulet. And I need those psychic powers back.
“Where are you?” Theo asks suddenly.
“Walking home.”
“And talking on the phone at the same time?” His voice has risen an octave in dismay. “You’d better get off and keep your wits about you.”
Chapter 3
STORM
Special Agent Constantine Storm crouches over the dismembered hand, scrutinizing the cut marks at the severed wrist. He is in a narrow road, little more than an alleyway, off a main commercial street in Shoreditch, a stone’s throw from the city’s banking and financial district. The alleyway stinks of urine from late-night drunkards staggering home after a night out.
It is Sunday evening and this part of the city is like a ghost town on the weekends. Come Monday the main roads will be thriving again. The cleaning crew that had arrived to clean up the streets today before the weekly influx of the working population tomorrow had made the gruesome find.
The hand is small. Storm judges it belonged to a young female going by the smoothness of the skin and the shimmering gold polish on the freshly manicured nails.
Agent Leo Kane, a member of Storm’s team, is standing next to him. “Smells like it was dismembered a couple of days ago,” Leo says.
“The coroner needs to confirm that,” says Detective Inspector Brynden Zael somewhat tetchi
ly.
Ten minutes ago DI Zael of the London Metropolitan Police had been the Senior Investigation Officer in charge of this new case. That had changed the minute Storm arrived at the scene. Zael did not seem to be taking the shift in authority kindly, particularly since Storm is clearly the younger of the two by several years.
