Hollywood Demon (The Collegium Book 6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

glowing orange, and then, it grew larger and larger, till it was man-height and man-shaped. It stopped glowing—except for its eyes.”
    He stopped for another red light. They were nearly at Hollywood Boulevard, the exclusive wealth of Beverly Hills giving way to gritty real life.
    “‘I have come for my soul,’ the demon said.” Mark stared straight ahead at the rusting, white delivery van in front of them. “It stretched out its hand to Phoebe and she said, ‘Take Mark’s.’ The demon laughed. It shrank down to gnome-sized again, sat on the wrecked hood, and laughed while I listened to Phoebe’s bubbling breathing, and tried not to believe any of it was happening.”
    Around them, people did the ordinary things people did when stuck in traffic. They talked on their phones, bopped their heads to music, applied make-up.
    He squeezed the steering wheel. “When the demon stopped laughing, it said, ‘Phoebe Shannon, you are a hellish delight. I’m glad we made our contract.’ Then its arm extended like stretched toffee and it put its hand to her throat. She managed one word.”
    The traffic surged forward as the lights went green.
    “What did she say?”
    “She said its name. Faust.”
     
     
    Mark parked a block away from Hollywood Boulevard where secure parking would keep the Rocinante safe. After naming the demon, he and Clancy hadn’t said anything more. For himself, he needed the silence to force the lid back on the volatile mix of old emotions of anger, betrayal and fear. They were the raw mix that distilled into the determination that drove him.
    He got out of the car and walked around it to meet her. “My great-grandfather Edgar bound the demons so that they couldn’t enter our world via cameras.”
    “I remember the story.”
    Of course she did. Growing up at the Yarren Estate, she would have heard it enough times. How his great-grandfather had survived the First World War and become one of the founding members of the Collegium—the group of magic users who protected mundanes and magicals alike from rogue mages and magical attacks, such as those that killed so many in the Great War. The first major act of the new Collegium had been to seal all cameras against demons using them as portals into this world.
    “There was a reason photographs used to be developed using a silver wash,” Mark said as they strolled out of the car park. “Silver protects against evil. Edgar used that in the Collegium spell. People no longer had to fear the possibility that the camera would truly steal their souls.”
    Clancy shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. “The thought of my soul being stolen always gave me the heebie-jeebies when I heard that story.”
    “And it happened—until Edgar and the others prevented it with their master spell in Paris in 1920. Once he’d set it, Edgar came here to California to join the emerging movie industry, secure in the knowledge that demons couldn’t contact people through the new moving images. But he couldn’t have anticipated digital photography.”
    She rocked to a stop on the sidewalk. “No silver.”
    “Precisely.” He was pleased that she was thinking and not merely humoring him in what others considered his delusion. “The Collegium believes that Edgar’s spell holds against demons entering all images regardless of the silver content in their processing. They point to the fact that no demonic possession happened via a painting after Edgar’s spell sealed all cameras.”
    “But you disagree?”
    “Demons play a long game. I think they’ve been waiting for a chance to exploit a hole in Edgar’s spell and Faust found it with digital photography. He doesn’t contact his victims via their image, but buries the invitation in the code that writes the software.” They stood in the shadow of one of the tall apartment blocks, in the grimy rear of it with the stink of discarded cigarettes and trash. “You see, demons never simply stole a person’s