a joke. She didn’t honestly believe that Demian was capable of something as human as … humor.
Could it be a wood elf, wearing a glamour? They’d done that before, with Navin, but surely it wouldn’t have quite so much personality.
The being wearing Navin’s form did a slow circle, head tilted back as he scanned the sky and took a deep breath of frigid air.
“It’s good to be alive, little alchemist,” he said.
Donna paused for a stunned second. “Newton,” she whispered.
“Ding-ding-ding! You have won a prize,” the demon declared, opening his arms wide and grinning at her. “It is I, Newton: summoned by the Dragon Magus, entrapped by sheer bloody fluke on his part—appallingly bad luck I was having that day, I might add.”
Donna thought she was going to throw up. She swallowed and rubbed her hand across her mouth, only half aware of what she was doing.
Newton-Navin raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter, princess? Didn’t you like my moves? Should I have gone with some tongue? I wondered about that, but you seemed to like the whole shy, romantic shtick … ”
“Shut up!” Donna gritted her teeth against a scream of frustration, of rage, and felt a visceral urge to punch something. “How dare you!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Newton said, not sounding even re-motely apologetic. “Did I hurt your feelings? Did you wish it really was sappy Navin delivering the kiss of your dreams? Did—”
“I said, Shut. Up.” Donna fixed him with a murderous expression. “What did you do to my friend?”
Newton/Navin made a big show of looking all around. “What friend? Where?” He pulled the waistband of his jeans away from his slim belly and looked down them. “Nope, not much here.”
She just stared at him, willing reality to change and for Navin to be there with her. Where he belonged. She remembered the kiss and pushed the still-vivid feeling away. It had just been one of those things. A crazy moment of relief.
And it hadn’t even been Navin.
Newton touched his toes a couple of times, twisting his body from side to side and then started jogging on the spot.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? What are they teaching children these days? I’m exercising, duh. You have no idea what it’s been like all these years. Trapped. Inanimate. In constant agony.” He sounded out of breath, but he kept jogging. “Wow, this is tough. Does Sharma actually do any exercise? He’s kind of filled out lately, now I come to think about it, so maybe he’s been working out.”
“You can’t stay in his body,” Donna said, her voice shaking.
Newton-Navin put his hands on his hips and stared at her as though she were the one who’d lost her mind. “Why not?”
“You just can’t!”
“That ain’t no good reason, baby,” he said. “I was Simon Gaunt’s bitch, and now I’m not.”
Donna let out an angry breath. “I realize that must have been hard for you. But taking someone else’s body isn’t—”
“You realize nothing,” Newton snapped. He stopped moving and glared at her from Navin’s eyes—only they weren’t Nav’s eyes. She’d known there had been something wrong. She should have trusted her instincts. Instead she’d allowed him to kiss her and now, here they were, in a cemetery in Ironbridge. Navin was … who knows where, and a demon was running around (literally) in his body.
Her whole world was falling apart.
“Newton,” she said, trying to get his attention. “You have to give him back. Please. I’m asking you. Begging you. Let him go and I’ll help you find another body. I’ll help you find your own body—wherever it is.” She frowned. “If you have one. Do you have a body of your own?”
He ignored her, jogging a few steps and then throwing what was presumably meant to be an invisible ball. “Howzat!”
Donna buried her face in her hands. Could this get any worse? She peeked between her fingers at the person who used to be her best friend.
“Newton … ”
“It’s alive!” he yelled to the skies, delight radiating from him. “Aliiive!”
“Newton!”
“No, no, no. Don’t call me that anymore.”
“You’re going to tell me your real name?”
“No. I changed my name. You can call me the Artist Formally Known As Navin. Get it?”
Donna suspected that Nav was still in there somewhere, what with the wacky humor and all. She simply had to hang on to the hope that he was okay—but that hope was a slippery thing, and it was fading fast.
As she stood shivering in the chill air, and the