Demonhead
an excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Most of the unfortunate events in my life have begun with a phone call from my mother, and today was no exception.
My cell phone was giving out the special ring tone I’d come up with for her—Chopin’s “Funeral March.” I sighed, and left it in my pocket as I walked down the crowded sidewalk. It was a bright sunny day on Telegraph Avenue, and I was headed to the Caffe Med for a double-shot mocha. Oh and to meet up with Scott and Gia. I was currently late, but not by much.
It’s your mother, Cleone said, an intimate whisper in my ear.
“I know.” Still, I didn’t answer it.
She’s going to have your hide if you don’t answer...
“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?" I growled. He didn’t answer, and the music continued. Finally, it stopped, then restarted almost immediately.
I dug the phone out of my jeans pocket before Cleone could nag at me again. “Hi, Mom.”
“Sybil,” she breathed into the phone, stretching out the ess. “You must come home right away. Something horrible has happened.”
Red light, Cleone murmured. I stopped short on the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding stepping into traffic. Caffe Med was a half a block away now, I could see the sign. I could already smell the coffee.
“I can’t,” I said. The light turned green and all us pedestrians surged into the street. Cleone kept whispering directions, which my mind obeyed almost without listening any more, keeping me from running into people or tripping over my own feet. “I’m heading to an appointment, I’m late already. I’ll be home in a couple of hours, okay?”
“No!” The urgency in her voice was nothing new, but I thought maybe I did hear something else underneath it. I immediately discounted it. My mother was quite the drama queen, but then again, most queens are. “You have to come home right now! I need your help!”
I arrived at the cafe. As I had figured, Scott and Gia were already there. They’d snagged a small round table near the front door—not our favorite, but maybe our second or third favorite. “Strong work,” I whispered, holding the phone between shoulder and ear as I grabbed the chair they’d left me. It left me with my back facing the room, which I used to hate a lot more before I got Cleone.
Gia nodded to me, then lifted her mocha with a question in her eyes. I nodded back, gratefully, and she slithered to her feet and got in line at the counter.
“I can’t, seriously, Mom,” I said into the phone, giving Scott a rolled-eyes look. “Listen, I’ll call you in an hour, okay?” Then I snapped the phone shut before she could answer. I didn’t even get it back into my pocket before it started ringing again.
It’s your mother again, Cleone said.
I know, I thought back to him. I know her ring tone, silly. I programmed it myself.
Scott watched my eyes move, and waited patiently for me to finish. He knew what was going on, although he didn’t have a Shen in his head. Or a demon, as most humans call them, though not to our faces.
And Cleone isn’t a demon at all. Shen are perfectly natural creatures, that just happen to be able to exist symbiotically with human beings. They’re tiny, and can’t have much of a life outside a human. They mostly just float around in Petri dishes and wait to be implanted into one of our heads. And before that—before global warming, and the Great Shift—a bunch of them were frozen in the polar ice caps, plus some others buried at the bottom of the oceans. Long story, and not important here, really. Anyway, I got Cleone at eighteen. I can’t imagine how I ever lived without him.
I opened the phone. “Yes?”
“Now!” Then she hung up on me. Royalty, I swear.
Gia returned to the table with my mocha. “Oh god thanks,” I said, and took a frothy sip, licking the whipped cream off my lips. “Yum.” I dug into my other pocket for a few bucks, but she waved it away.
“My treat,” she said, leveling her pale eyes on me. “You bought last time.”
I took another sip as Cleone said, I think she means it, we should go home. I ignored him.
“So what’s new?” Scott asked, as soon as he could see I was finished communicating with Cleone.
“Nothing much.” I blew on the drink and took a bigger gulp.
“Slow down,” Gia said. “You just got here.”
“I know—but that was my mom,” I nodded to my phone. “She’s got her tiara in a twist about something, I don’t know what’s going on there. But I should get home before she freaks out even more. It’s not good for her blood pressure.” I tried to give a casual smirk, but there was still something about Mom’s urgency that was bugging me. I took another gulp of my mocha and almost burned my tongue. Cleone immediately went to work ratcheting down the pain response in my brain as I sucked cool air over my tongue.
Scott just nodded at the mention of my mother, but Gia gave a theatrical sigh. “Girl, you got to move out of that house. She’s got you by the short and curlies.”
I snickered. “And move where? And pay for it with what?”
“Move in with me. I’ve got that extra room. I’ll make you a real deal.”
Scott chuckled and said, “And you can have all the rats and rabbits you want to eat.”
Gia turned and glared at him. “Not funny, mister.”
I put my hands up. “Whoa, whoa, you two. Down, girl.”
Gia was already starting to stretch, and her eyes faded even more. Then she got hold of herself and grinned at Scott. “One of these days, fellow, you’re going to regret your sense of humor.”
“I already do.”
I polished off my mocha and stood to leave. “Sorry, gang, but I better go see what Her Majesty wants.”
“Wait a second,” Gia said, as Scott also started to open his mouth.
“What?” I stood by my chair. My phone started to ring again: Death march, of course. “Coming,” I barked into it, then flipped it shut again.
“I meant it,” Gia said. “I’m serious—move in with me. You’ll never be happy living with that woman.”
I sat back down and met Gia’s eyes. They were pretty, even if they were so freaking weird they always made me shiver a little. Especially when she had been so close to going into were mode. “Thank you, Gia,” I started. “You’re an awesome friend, and I know you care about me. I know you mean well.”
“I’m with her,” Scott added, patting my hand.
“But you know I can’t live in San Francisco.”
Gia rolled those weird eyes. “Oh, come on, we can get an exemption or something. Kreskill’s really mellowed out in the last few months, especially since he appointed that new mayor. He’s talking about all the creatures living together, in harmony. He’s really changed.”
Scott smiled, and said, “I don’t think it was the new mayor. I think it was Victoria.”
I shook my head. “Whoever it is, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. Maybe another Darshen could live in the Arcane Empire,” I said. “But not the daughter of the Queen.”
They both looked back at me sadly. I felt bad as well, but what could I do?
“Then I’ll move to Berkeley,” Gia said. “We’ll get a big place together over here. Scott can move in too.”
Now both Scott and I shook our heads. “Come on—Mom has a hard enough time just knowing we’re friends,” I said to her.
Gia looked stubborn, but finally lowered her eyes. Whew. “Well, I still think you need to move out.”
I got up once more, before my phone could start screaming at me again. “It wouldn’t matter. I’d still be at her beck and call.” Scott looked up at me sympathetically, but Gia started looking ready to go werepython all over again. “Until I’m twenty-five, I don’t really have a lot of choice,” I added.
“That’s only a year away!” Gia said.
“Year and a half,” I muttered, as Cleone chimed in with One year, four months, and seventeen days.
“So you should start asserting your independence now,” she went on. “Get her used to the idea.”
I laughed. “No, it’s more like, she’s getting all the mileage out of me now, while she can. I’m surprised she didn’t have more daughters, all lined up after me.” Then I paused. “Although it’s probably not too late,” I said, half to myself.
“Yeah, but she and Kelvin better get busy if she’s going to,” Scott said. “She’s no spring chicken.”
“She’s only fifty,” I said. Fifty years, three months, and a day, Cleone clarified.
My phone rang again. “Okay—I’m outa here,” I said to my friends, and darted for the door. “Thanks for the mocha!”
“Think about what we said!” Gia’s voice sang after me.

I walked back up Telegraph Avenue, turning right on Durant. Barely half an hour ago, after cruising around for street parking for way too long, I’d finally given up and parked in a pay lot. Of course, I didn’t have to pay—I had the Queen’s sticker on my bumper—but I didn’t like to take advantage of my position.
Although, I mused as I backed my burnt-orange Miata out of the parking space, my friends were right. My “position,” indeed. What little advantages being Queen Marguerite’s daughter conferred on me were well outweighed by the onerous burden of serving her every whim—reasonable or not. Oh well. Just a year and a half to go. “I know, I know,” I said out loud to Cleone before he could correct my math again.
I sped up Euclid Avenue, easing the little car around tight corners, enjoying as ever the sense of freedom that driving gave me. All too soon, I pulled up at the massive structure we called home. I whipped the car into the arched driveway and screeched to a stop right before the front door, then left the engine idling and the car door open for Jeeves to put it away.
That’s right, Mother called the manservant Jeeves. So she lacked imagination. His real name was Walter, but she didn’t let any of us call him that, even in our own heads. Which is one of the few downsides of having a Shen: they can, and do, talk to one another telepathically. I mean, Cleone is mine, and I know he’s on my side and everything. He doesn’t have a lot of choice, living in my head as he does. But when push came to shove—and Mom’s Shen, Lula, can really put on the old shove—well, suffice it to say, I didn’t want to put Cleone in any uncomfortable positions.
So I called the butler Jeeves. No harm done.
I left the front door of the mansion open as well, calling out, “I’m home!” as I hurried towards the first-floor study where Cleone had told me Mother was. As I went by, I said, “Hi, Leo,” to a large white Persian cat who was sitting on the entry hall table. The cat meowed and gave me a look.
Gerard says you can greet him as well, Cleone pointed out.
“Hi, Gerard,” I said, not slowing down. It was a cruel thing to have done, putting a Shen in a cat. Some of our predecessors certainly had a mean streak. I understood scientific experimentation, sure, but first they should have figured out how to get it out of there again. It was no life for the super-intelligent creatures, stuck in a furry animal with a brain the size of a golf ball.
I knocked softly on the door to Mom’s study.
“Come in,” she said, so I pushed the door open.
I stopped short the moment I saw her. She wasn’t sitting behind her desk, as I’d expected; instead, she was slumped in her easy chair in the corner. Her hair was matted and tangled, she was wearing blue jeans and a torn t-shirt, and there was a huge bruise under her left eye. Plus, she’d clearly been crying. I gasped and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Kelvin! They took him!”