Demon Bound

trip to Oz,” Drifter said quietly. “Is it going to hang on you?”
    Drifter knew that Jake had grown up in Kansas, and it probably wasn’t a stretch to guess he’d landed somewhere familiar. But as long as Jake wouldn’t let it affect him out in the field, he knew Drifter wouldn’t pry any deeper.
    “Nope.”
    “All right, then.” Drifter stood as Old Matthew returned, and Charlie began to clean up.
    Jake headed back to the table, took the seat facing Alice. His eyes narrowed.
    The dresses were different. Earlier, she’d been wearing a long black thing with tiny buttons up the front. On her current long black thing, the buttons went from her right shoulder up the side of her neck. The sleeves hugged her arms to just below her knuckles, and more buttons ran from her wrists to her pointy elbows. The top might have fit like a second skin, but all of those vertical seams made it look as rigid as body armor.
    So it was still like something from a Victorian funeral parlor. And Jake was sure that her spider was hiding somewhere in those loose skirts.
    Charlie leaned over the table in front of him. “Irena—your water. Food is coming up. Alice.” Charlie set a glass of wine in front of her. “This is on Jake.”
    “On Jake—?” A startled look passed over her features before she met his gaze. “Oh. Thank you.”
    He shrugged.
    Irena pointed at him. “I need someone to please explain this wicked witch. They will not.”
    A man didn’t argue with a woman who smelled like blood. Or one who wore a poncho made out of fur that she probably wrestled off a polar bear.
    Most Guardians created their clothes just by thinking of them—but Jake wouldn’t have bet against Irena’s being real. “If you open up a little, I’ll project it to you.”
    She hesitated before nodding. Jake focused on a few remembered images from the movie. After a second, Irena looked to Alice. “Flying monkeys?”
    This time, it was Alice who shrugged. “That seems accurate.”
    “We need to have a movie night,” Charlie said as she took the seat next to Drifter. “We’ll set it up at my place.” She glanced at Jake. “Maybe Pim and Becca would like to come up from San Francisco.”
    “Yeah. They probably would.” The movie wouldn’t be a novelty for the other novices, but going anywhere but Caelum or the Special Investigations warehouse would be.
    He looked up, spotted the bronzed-skinned Guardian walking into the lounge wearing a pair of loose pants and a button-down shirt, his black hair shorn almost as short as Jake’s. The Doyen. Jake nodded a greeting, got a nod in return.
    Charlie went over to Michael with a wide smile before going up on her toes to kiss his cheek. The Guardian had to bend down—though not as much as when Charlie kissed Drifter. “Michael.”
    Alice paused for an infinitesimal second with her wineglass at her lips. No wonder. The Doyen was even less sociable than the Black Widow was; but considering that Michael and Charlie had had some connection when they’d jumped to Hell the last spring, Jake wasn’t completely surprised.
    He was surprised by the way Michael seemed to avoid looking at Alice. Not ignoring her, exactly—but when he said his greetings, he moved a little faster past her than he did everyone else.
    Finally, he looked at Charlie again. “Your sister is well?”
    It wasn’t, Jake knew, just a polite question. Charlie’s sister, Jane, was engaged to the demon Sammael. No one at the table had slain him yet—and thanks to a bargain, Drifter couldn’t slay him—primarily because the demon was also bound to leave any Guardians that Charlie cared about alone.
    But since Sammael also headed Legion Laboratories, and the organization protected and employed many of Belial’s demons, Michael kept tabs on Jane.
    Charlie gave a half smile, and shrugged. “She’s all right. You know.”
    Yeah. Way to bring a girl down at her party. At least he wasn’t the only dick, then.
    Michael smiled slightly. “I do. I’ve brought this for you.”
    At first Jake thought it was a Scroll—one of the texts from the Caelum archives. But it was a rolled-up sheet of music, instead. An original composition of some kind—and by a guy Jake hadn’t heard of but who was apparently good enough that Charlie was half in tears.
    Okay, so he was still the only dick.
    Alice was smiling, too, until she looked from Charlie to the Doyen. “Michael,” she said, and her lips firmed, her spine stiffened. “I