Book 2 - Daemons Are Forever Read Free

Taking sideways journeys through adjoining dimensions is always dangerous. You can never tell what might notice you, and decide to follow you home. I got out of the car on only slightly unsteady legs and checked the car over carefully, to make sure we hadn’t picked up any unwanted hitchhikers. Paying special attention to the undercarriage.
    Molly was already out of the car and dancing around it, punching the air with her fist. “That was fantastic! Let’s do it again! What
was
that?”
    “A shortcut,” I said, peering suspiciously under a front bumper.
    “You take me on the best rides, Eddie!”
    I straightened up, and she threw her arms around me and hugged me. I let her.
    “Welcome to my garage,” I said. “It’s small, but pokey. Now come on up and see my flat. Try not to be too underwhelmed. We can’t all live in a forest.”
     
    I studied the door to my flat carefully. Everything seemed normal, nothing out of place, but the door wasn’t locked. I could tell. And I always lock the door behind me when I leave. Secret agents really can’t afford to forget things like that. So I stood a safe distance away from my door and looked at it thoughtfully, while Molly looked at me.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Someone’s been here.”
    “Your enemies?”
    “More likely my family. As soon as I was declared rogue, the Matriarch would have sent a team here to turn my flat over, looking for evidence she could use against me. And my family is never subtle about such things.”
    “You think they left a booby trap behind?”
    “No. I’d See a trap. More likely they just trashed the place, to leave a message. It’s what I would have done, when I was a field agent.”
    I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went in. They’d trashed my home, and been very thorough about it. All the furniture had been overturned, where it hadn’t been smashed. They’d torn up the carpeting to lever up the floorboards. My possessions had been tossed all over the place, all the drawers pulled out and emptied, their contents scattered everywhere. My computer had been torn apart to get at the hard drive, and the monitor had been smashed.
    They’d even ripped the posters off the wall and torn them up.
    Every room was the same. Nothing had been spared. They’d even dragged the covers off my bed and cut open the mattress, to search inside it. And on the bedroom wall, above the headboard, someone had spray-painted the word traitor. The word hit me like a punch in the gut. A cold fist closed around my heart, and it was all I could do to get my breath. Molly came in beside me and saw the word on the wall. She slipped an arm through mine and hugged it to her side.
    “Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry. I’m sure this was a lovely place before…”
    “I was never a traitor,” I said. I didn’t recognise my own voice. “I was the only one who stayed true to what the family was supposed to be.”
    “I know, Eddie. Come away.”
    “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”
    It wasn’t, but I let her lead me away.
     
    Back in the living room, I looked around me, trying to make some sense of the mess. They hadn’t actually broken much. Probably didn’t have the time.
    “They really did a job on you,” said Molly. She was trying hard not to step on things, but it was impossible. I loved her for making the effort, though.
    “It’s what I expected,” I said. “I did worse, in my time, when I was a field agent. Turning over some villain’s lair in the search for clues, or evidence. Or just because I could. It was all part of the game, then. But…cosmic payback’s a bitch. Do you believe in karma, Molly?”
    “My karma ran over my dogma,” Molly said briskly. “Didn’t you think to put any protections around your home?”
    I snorted. “Tons of the bloody things. You’d have a better chance of breaking into Bill Gates’s private porn stash. But nothing my family couldn’t get through. I never thought I’d need to