Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,107

are you going to do?"

"What can we do? We wait."

"You can wait," a third voice rose out of the tumult, "but Lexi boots the statue and screams, 'Ashwarn, Ashwarn, Ashwarn, you give him back!' at the top of her lungs."

Henry paused, hand on the door. There were six lives in the room and no feel of a demonic presence. What was going on?

"Nothing happens."

"What do you mean, nothing?"

"Just what I said, nothing." The young woman sitting at the head of the table spotted Henry standing, blinking on the threshold and smiled. "Hi. You look lost."

They were playing a game. That much was obvious from the piles of brightly colored dice. But a game that called on demons? "I'm looking for student records... "

"Boy are you in the wrong place." A tall young man scratched at dark stubble. "You need the WOB." At Henry's blank look, he grinned and continued. "The West Office Building, WOB, that's where all that shit is."

"Yeah, but the WOB closes down at five." Carefully placing the little lead figure she'd been holding on the table, one of the other players checked her watch. "It's eight minutes after eleven. There won't be anyone there."

Eight after eleven. More time wasted on fruitless searching.

"Hey, don't look so upset, man, maybe we can help?"

"Maybe we can play?" muttered one of the others. The rest ignored her.

Why not? After all, he was looking for a man who called up demons. The connection was there, however tenuous. "I'm looking for Norman Birdwell."

The young woman at the head of the table curled her lip. "Why?" she asked. "Does he owe you money."

"You know him?"

"Unfortunately." The group drawled out the word in unison.

They would have laughed, but Henry was at the table before the first sound escaped. They looked at one another in nervous silence instead and Henry could see memories of nine bodies, throats ripped out, rising in their expressions. He couldn't compel a group this large, he could only hope they were still young enough to respond to authority.

"I need his address."

"We, uh, played at his place once. Grace, didn't you write it down?"

They all watched while Grace, the young woman at the head of the table, searched through her papers. She appeared to have written everything down. Henry fought the urge to help her search.

"Is Norman in trouble?"

Henry kept his eyes on the papers, willing the one he needed to be found. "Yes."

The players closest to him edged away, recognizing the hunter. A second later, with the arrogance of youth, they decided they couldn't possibly be the prey and edged back.

"We, uh, stopped gaming with him 'cause he took the whole thing too seriously."

"Yeah, he started acting like all this stuff was real. Like he was bumping into wizards and warriors and long legged beasties on every street corner."

"He's such a dork."

"It's just a game."

"It's a game we're not playing," someone pointed out.

"Is Norman in bad trouble?"

"Yes."

They stopped talking after that. They didn't have the concepts to deal with the tone of Henry's voice.

Grace handed him the paper tentatively, although not entirely certain she'd keep her fingers in the deal.

"Wait a minute," the tall young man protested. "I don't like Norman either, but should we be giving out his... " Henry turned to look full at him. He paled and closed his eyes.

As he slammed his car into gear and burned rubber the length of the parking lot, Henry checked his watch. 11:36. So little time.

"... and one final join here." Norman straightened up and beamed proudly down at his apartment floor. The white outline of the pentagram had almost been obscured by the red and yellow symbols surrounding it. He caressed the open page of the grimoire, tracing with his fingertips the diagram he'd just finished reproducing. "Soon," he told it. "Soon."

The smell of the acrylic paint so close to Yield's face added to the nausea and made her eyes sting and itch. She no longer had the strength to ignore it, so she endured it instead. Scrubbing out a bit of the pentagram before it dried had seemed like a good idea until she realized that it would only release the Demon Lord to the slaughter that much sooner. But there had to be something she could do. She would not, could not, admit Norman Birdwell had won.

Coreen stared from the pentagram to Norman and back to the drying paint. It was real, all of it, and while she'd always believed, now she began to believe. Her mouth suddenly