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.
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?