"You are deluding yourselves," Ku'Sox said, frowning. "I am your rebirth."
"My dame's ashes," Al muttered. "The poor boy is going to go off now to brood about world domination."
A few of the demons sliding back to their tables laughed, and Ku'Sox flushed in anger.
"Something is wrong with you, my lovely little boy," Newt continued, the silver goblet of wine in her hand as demons drifted away and the tension eased. "In your head. Even demons do not eat souls. Is it because you're worried that you don't have one?"
"I have a soul," Ku'Sox said with a scowl, but I wondered.
"Of course you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't have an aura," Newt said brightly. "Come sit with us."
Oh, there's a good idea, I thought, sitting down between Al and Newt, leaving Ku'Sox to stand by himself.
"That," he said, pointing at me again, "isn't a demon. I need proof. We all do." He looked over the assembled demons. There were more people now than there were tables. They must have been coming in all this time, filling the Mesopotamian darkness with soft mutters and speculation. "It takes more than being able to invoke demon magic to be one," Ku'Sox said. "Do something demonic."
This last had been aimed at me, and my hands clenched in my lap. "Like rip your heart out? Come a little closer."
"Rachel...," Al said as he reached across the table and patted my shoulder a little too hard. God, I felt like I was one of two little kids on a playground.
From her cushion, Newt cleared her throat. "Rachel should make us a new memory."
The surrounding demons exhaled, the sound rising like a sigh of excitement. I turned to her, surprised. You want me to do what?
"Be reasonable, Newt," Al protested, his face suddenly pale. "She's only a few hours old. I haven't had time to teach her anything yet."
"Doesn't matter," Newt said as she ate a grape with an odd precision. "If she's a demon, she can do it."
Al looked deathly worried, and I watched Dali energetically stride to the jukebox and press his hands to it, invoking who knew what as it glowed a hazed black. "Splendid idea," he was muttering. "Rachel, what do you want to call it?"
"Call it?" At a loss, I looked around the table, seeing worry on Al's face and satisfaction on Ku'Sox's. "Call what?"
"Give us a memory," Newt prompted, the beads in her hair clicking. "Only a demon has the mental fortitude to channel enough energy to make a tulpa construct this size. One that anyone can share."
Oh. My. God. I looked at the fake restaurant, the fire, the stars, the smells. "You want me to make something like this?" I squeaked. "Are you nuts? I don't know how to do that!"
"She admits she's not a demon," Ku'Sox proclaimed, and Al's grip on his wineglass became white-knuckled as he hunched against the raised voices around us.
"Lacking a skill doesn't translate into a lack of ability," he growled, but the demons were rearranging the tables, making an open space of sorts, wanting me to try.
Newt's eyes narrowed. "Only a demoness can make a free-existing tulpa, and only a male demon can fix it into reality. I say it's a fair test. Al, put your money where your mouth is. Or should I say where your student is."
I looked wildly from one end of the midnight Mesopotamia to the other, despairing as I realized why Newt had "apologized." She had killed everyone who could do this-except herself. I could not make this! It was immense!
"Of course you can," Newt said as she leaned toward me, almost as if having read my mind. "Making a construct is easy. Every one in that box there was made by my sisters, and they weren't nearly as clever as you." Newt raised her goblet in salute. "That's why I could kill them, you see."
My heart pounded and I sat down before I passed out. "Uh, maybe I shouldn't do it then."
Ku'Sox laughed, but Newt poured her wine into my glass. "That's not why I killed them. But that's why Ku'Sox tricked me into it. To make a lasting tulpa, one that can be stored and lived in, one must have the ability to safely hold more than one's own soul. Demons can't do it. A demoness can. It's on that little extra bit of X gene that they don't have."
I listened to crickets that had turned to dust thousands of years ago on a continent I'd never set foot on. "You're able to hold a soul so you can gestate a baby," I guessed, and she nodded, solemn.
"Ku'Sox is a fool, but he's right. You need to prove yourself, and now is as good a time as any. I will not have your standing in doubt. Don't you agree, Al?" she added lightly.
Al looked sick. "She's rather stupid yet."
"I am not!" I exclaimed, and he pointed at me.
"There, see? She is."
Newt waved a hand at Dali, still standing by the jukebox. "Even a dunce can have a baby. All it needs is stamina and a little imagination. Rachel?"
"I am not stupid!" I said again.
"Shut up," Al hissed as Ku'Sox gleefully ate someone else's cheese. "You don't know what you're doing."
"So teach me," I hissed right back. "Thanks to you, I can't be a witch anymore. I may as well be a demon."
My heart was pounding. God, what was I doing? I only knew that I had to be somewhere, and right now, this was it.
Al stared at me, hope dying in his eyes. "I can't teach you this."
"I can," Newt said, and my breath came fast.
Crap on toast.
"I will," she added, and I swallowed hard. "I will teach you, you will make one, and Al will fix it to reality. I don't have the balls to do that part. Literally."
No one was even whispering. All eyes were on me, the tables full of demons in robes and a small crowd bunched outside, trying to listen in. I hadn't counted on this. I mean, Al I sort of trusted. At least I trusted that he needed me alive and reasonably well. But Newt? She looked sane, and that was worrisome.
"Come here," she prompted. "You want to do this, yes?"
Not really. Taking a slow breath, I stood, feeling weird in these clothes with the green rocks sewn into them. They clinked as I came around the table, Ku'Sox moving in agitation as he stood, looking young next to Dali's tired jadedness. Al's hands were in fists on the table. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck.
"Sit before me, Rachel," Newt prompted, her voice oily, and I wondered if this was how she'd killed her sisters, lulling them. She shifted on her cushion to sit cross-legged, pointing for me to take the tiny bit of padding right in front of her. "Back to me."
Better and better.
My gut was so tight I thought I was going to vomit, and my arms felt like sticks. Everyone was watching as I gingerly sat, pebbles clinking as I tugged a bit of cloth to cover my bare legs. "That's a love," she murmured, and I jumped when she touched my hair.
Someone laughed, and I whipped my head around to see who it had been, but Newt was there, rubbing my forehead from behind, trying to be soothing but only making it worse.
"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.