“She’s not even going to be able to make a picture on the wall,” Ku’Sox predicted.

Al stood, nervous. “Shut up, Ku’Sox, or I’ll close your throat for you.”

Ku’Sox grinned, pointing to the camels groaning at the outskirts. “Would you like to step outside, old man? I beat your sorry ass before, and I can do it again.”

“Ku’Sox, shut up,” I said, not liking anyone talking to Al that way, then wondered where my loyalty had come from. But a thread of fear was in Al’s motions, so subtle that I didn’t know if anyone but perhaps Newt and Dali had noticed.

“He has a right to be afraid,” Newt said, leaning forward to whisper in my ear, and I shivered, hardly breathing. “If you can’t do this, then you will be a familiar and I will buy you from Al. But I think you can.”

“No pressure,” I grumbled, and her fingers touching my forehead lifted briefly as she laughed. It sounded weird, her laugh, and I saw more than a few demons grimace.

“Close your eyes, tap a line, and find the collective,” Newt said gently.

I took a last look at the faces ringing me, Al with his false confidence, Dali busy calculating the odds, the expressions of hope and doubt on demons I’d never met. I didn’t know why they cared one way or the other. Maybe they had a bet going. Maybe they were bored.

“I said,” Newt prompted, mildly ticked, “close your eyes.”

I closed them, immediately feeling claustrophobic. I tapped a line, wondering what demon had made it, and if he was watching me or dead and turned to dust. I settled myself, plunging into the thick morass of collective thoughts, reeling when I found no one there.

Well, almost no one.

I kicked them out, Newt thought, and I gasped, almost flinging myself out again, but she grabbed my consciousness with a soft thought and hauled me back. You don’t want them here, seeing your soul, she explained, and I got the impression of her swimming naked in a sea of stars, enjoying the solitude of a moment alone in her infinity.

My soul? I mused, alarmed, but she only seemed to twine her consciousness around mine, keeping us separate but close, rubbing her energies across me, old and jumbled, like a West Coast ley line.

You don’t want the entire collective to see you helpless and vulnerable, she explained, giving me the impression of half-lidded eyes and a sultry whisper. Having Gally see you as such will be punishment enough for almost killing him, I imagine.

Whoa, Al? I thought, worried, and she swam closer, making me nervous as I remembered him pinning me to the bookcase and spilling ley-line energy into me. And then me, slamming his theoretical dick in a drawer. Why him?

Al, she reiterated, seeming bothered she’d forgotten his name again. You want Dali to peel the memory from your thoughts instead? He’s likely more skilled at it, and it’s often easier for strangers to see us naked than…just what is Gally to you, anyway?