The Demon Signet Read Free Page A

him.”
    The man pauses, stunned. “ Him ? You don’t mean—”
    “Yes.”
    “Surely, you can’t trust him.”
    “Of course not. But his ability may be the only resource available to us. We will worry about what to do with Jonathan after he has found the ring.”
    “I don’t need to tell you of the mess he could create for us once he has it.”
    “What else would you have us do, Stephen? Give up on the Master’s plan? Surrender thousands of years of orchestration to the wind?”
    Stephen hesitates. “Perhaps it is not the only way to bring the vision about. Maybe the rings present just one of many opportunities by which we might bring it to pass.”
    Jacob steps forward. “And it is precisely this one ‘opportunity’ that has been entrusted to us . If it doesn’t work, its failure will not be due to our lack of trying.”
    “I understand, Jacob. It will be done.” He bows his head and steps backward, disappearing into the darkness of the corridor.
    Jacob turns his face back to the window and whispers into the night, “Come now, Jonathan, let us use you one last time, will you?”

One
     
    She could feel it all closing in on her as each encroaching inch swung an ice pick into the frozen walls of her resolve, chipping away at the fortification she had erected around her delicate psyche. But she knew a breach was inevitable, and she squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation. For a moment she tried imagining herself in an endless field, exchanging the stuffed, cylindrical cell for open freedom. She knew it was all in her head, so if she could just get herself to—
    “You okay?”
    Ian’s voice came as a beacon, a guiding light sweeping back and forth through the fog, searching for her. But light wouldn’t help. She couldn’t grasp light, couldn’t relax as it physically pulled her ashore. “I need to get off,” she whispered, eyes still closed.
    “Hey, is she all right?” Marcus’ deep voice drifted over from the row behind.
    Ian shook his head while looking up and down the aisle for some sign of help, though he wasn’t sure what it would look like if he even found it. Other than an open door leading to a gleeful sprint across the open tarmac, there wasn’t really much that could be done.
    “It’s gonna be okay, Heather. Shouldn’t be too much longer.” Ashley was leaning forward and over the chair, rubbing her sister’s shoulders. It was a practice she’d been repeating for many years now, dating back to when she was just a scrappy thirteen-year-old not knowing how else to relieve her big sister’s pain. There was no evidence that the technique actually worked, but she continued trying, as if in hope that someday she might succeed in exorcizing the poison from Heather’s mind once and for all, drawing it into herself like some sin eater so that she could spit the black stuff—it had to be black, right?—onto the ground and watch satisfied as many a passerby trampled the evil underfoot.
    Marcus leaned over from the seat beside her and with his lips mouthed, the accident?
    Ashley nodded and began moving her fingers soothingly through Heather’s straight, golden hair. “It’s okay,” she repeated.
    The Accident.
    It was something Heather never talked about, but situations like this one made it impossible to keep a complete secret. Her closest friends knew most of the details, but not all. Not even Ashley knew them all.
    “Excuse me,” Ian called out to a passing stewardess.
    The woman stopped, and it took a second for her tired eyes to find him. “Yes?”
    “Any idea how much longer this is gonna take? A question you’ve been answering for the last hour, I’m sure, but my fiancée here has a bit of claustrophobia, and we’re just trying to gauge how much more of this she can take before…” He made his eyes into saucers and filled his cheeks with air, then made an exploding motion with his hands while blowing the air from his mouth.
    The stewardess tilted her head to the side a