Candy could barely hold a cup of tea without spilling it everywhere, her hand was shaking so violently. She was white as a sheet, muttering to herself, and jerked away from me whenever I caught her eye. Humans were never meant to learn the truth—that demons walked among them, that monsters were real, and that they were right to fear things that went bump in the dark.

“We have to get out of here,” Candy said, raspy-voiced. “We can’t—we can’t—”

“Candy,” I replied softly. “Do you know where you are?”

I had wrapped her in my arms and carried her out of the shop over an hour ago. She was sitting in one of the few safe places in the city, Ginger’s Diner. I brought all my strays to Ginger, and she took care of them. When I needed my space, she never asked questions, and since I never had answers, it was a perfect arrangement.

I bought Candy a plate of waffles, and the butter and whipped cream melted off of the top of it as it went unattended. She did take a sip of black tea, her favorite, but that was all I could muster from her without force-feeding her. I wasn’t a hospice nurse.

“Hell,” she whispered, finally finding my eyes. “I’m in Hell. We’re all in Hell…and there are demons.”

I clasped her hands together inside of mine. “I know there are, sweetheart, and I really need your help finding the one who did this to your people.”

“H-h-h-how?” She said, blinking wildly, fighting to come out of her trance. “How do you know?”

I sighed. “Cuz I work with them, honey. I see them all the time.” I pulled off my sunglasses, showing my blue and red eye, each swirling independently of the other. “I need you to look at me so I can help you. Can you do that?”

If I could get to her broken mind quickly, I could seal the fissures and repair it, but I needed them to have a flicker or consciousness in order to do it, and Candy hadn’t been lucid since we sat down at the diner. Every second I waited, she slipped further and further from me.

Candy pulled her hands back and went back to her tea, staring into her cup. Her breath had been erratic since I found her, vacillating between hyperventilation and a slow heave that spasmed her stomach, and she hadn’t stopped crying since we sat down. Staring into that cup, suddenly she seemed to snap back. Her pupils undilated, her jaw tensed, and her breathing returned to normal.

“Candy?” I whispered to her.

When she looked up at me, more tears spilled down her face, but she was resolute in a way I hadn’t seen her all night.

“How can you just work with demons?” she said through gritted teeth.

“I will tell you.” My voice was calm and steady. “But while you’re lucid, I need you to look at my eyes. Otherwise, you’ll be broken forever, okay?” She nodded and turned her attention to my eyes. I hated for people to stare at me too deeply, and an odd chill slid down my back when she did, causing it to arch slightly, but I fought the natural distaste for eye contact. “Good. Now, follow my voice, not with your eyes, but with your mind.”

I needed to maintain complete concentration, or I could lose the thread of her consciousness forever. I couldn’t quite explain how I was able to see into her, past her eyes, into the neural network that made up her brain, but then I couldn’t explain much about magic. I tried to keep myself to asking “how” questions instead of “why” questions. If I didn’t think too deeply about it, things almost ended up okay most of the time.

“You’re doing great, Candy.” I took a deep breath, and I was able to mentally project myself onto the surface of her mind—not her physical brain, which had not changed shape in the past day, but the consciousness of her mind, which was fracturing.

Inside her mind, hundreds of fragments of glittering rock floated free in the black abyss, held together by nothing, as if a giant rock collided with it and broke the whole thing apart. An intact mind looked like a singular, perfectly smooth mirror ball. Her condition was more advanced than I thought. I had to move fast.

“Candy!” I screamed into the ether. The first step was finding her projection of self. It was her sense of self that held the rest of her mind together. Without a strong sense of it, she would drift through the mental void forever, catching reality only in fits and starts. “Candy!”

I hopped across the fissures of her mind, one to another, searching for any projection of Candy. All animals had a mind, but few had a sense of self, which was what separated humans from most other life forms.

“Candy!” I screamed, seeing the outline of a woman. I leaped forward, past the shattered pieces that reflected myself back to me until I reached Candy. She let out a lethargic groan, slumped over like she was floating face down in a pool…but she was not dead. I saw her struggling to move.

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I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her to me. When she fell into my arms, I brushed the black hair from her head so I could see her eyes. She smiled at me, a tepid, tired smile.

“Ollie? What are you—” Her eyes went wide. “Demons. Demons are real. You have to—”

I pressed my finger on her lips. “I know. I know. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Candy craned her neck around to see the fragments floating around her. “How? This place—What is—How is Eddie? And Tina? And Janet? And…” Her voice trailed off.

Those must have been the people that worked with her, and the last thing I wanted was to bring up that piece of trauma. “Listen to me, Candy. I need you to pull it together. Quite literally.”

“Your eyes—” Candy. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. How—how are you here?”

“Don’t think too much about it, okay?” Groans came from the distance, in the dark. Her mind was trying to fight off invaders. It thought I was the enemy. If I lost her, then she would be gone into the darkness forever. If I wasn’t careful, I would follow her into the abyss.

“Candy,” I said. “We don’t have much time. I need you to think about somebody you love dearly.”

“Janet…” She rolled her head from side to side. “She was smooth.”

Janet was dead, so that wasn’t going to work. I needed her to run toward the memory, not escape from it.

“How about your mother?” I said.

“I hate her.”

“I hate mine, too, but, but…just go with me, here.” I knew better than most you could hate somebody and love them at the same time, especially a mother. “What was your mother like, back when you were a kid?”

“Loud, so loud. She never wanted me to start working on cars. Said it was undignified. She worked as a maid and told me that what I wanted to do was undignified. How funny.”

“What do you remember about her, physically? What did she look like?”

“Her hands,” she said. “They were so rough. It prickled when she touched me.” She twitched. “So, she never did. She didn’t want to hurt me, but she didn’t touch me ever, and that hurt me more.”

The groans were getting louder, and I saw the darkness shift around me as wisps began to form around us. Something else was happening, too. The glass-like pieces around us started to sway and move, too, as they collapsed back together. It was working.

“What was your favorite thing she cooked?”

“Orange chicken,” Candy said with a little more energy. “She hated it. She said it wasn’t real Chinese food, but I didn’t care, and she was so good at it. She also knew how to cook fish better than anyone I’ve ever met. I didn’t like when she ate the eyes, but she gave me the best piece, always, and she made this sauce, oh my god, that sauce. My sister used to—”

I could feel the pain coming again as the screams around us rose to a nearly deafening level. “What about a good memory?” Memories pulled the brain together, and I watched as the little pieces of her mind coalesced again into a mirror ball.

“She did tai chi every morning, and she would shout so loud it would wake every other apartment that lived around us. They yelled and hollered through the walls, but every weekend she would make pork buns and bring them around the complex. I went with her, and I saw how you could get away with just about anything if you brought food.” She looked at me in the eyes for the first time. “I’m so sorry about what I did to you. I’m so sorry.”

I stood up and helped her to her feet. The mirror ball of her mind had been repaired, but the screams weren’t quieting. I took her hand and pulled her along until I saw a little hatch. I slid it open and led her toward it. “It’s going to be okay.”

She nodded and crawled down the ladder. When she was gone, I spun the latch closed. The monsters of the mind were on top of me now, ready to pounce, and I needed to leave. I closed my eyes, and a moment later, I was back in the diner.

I opened my eyes and watched the spark come back to Candy’s face. “Ollie?”

“It’s me.”

“I just had the craziest dream.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” I said, sliding the lukewarm waffles over to her. “Eat. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She took the fork and looked down at her plate. She thought for a moment and then took a bite. A contented moan escaped her lips when she chewed. After she swallowed, she stuck the fork in the waffles again and looked up at me.

“I don’t deserve this,” she said, disgusted. “I haven’t been honest with you.”

“I know,” I replied. “I know everything.”

“That car you’re looking for—Lily. I did take it from them. I had no idea it was your car until they drove off. I swear.”

I bit my lip, trying to stifle my anger. “I know you’ve been through a lot tonight, but don’t lie to me. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“You’re right.” She nodded. “I knew exactly what I was doing, you’re right.”

“How long were you under their thumb?”

“It wasn’t their thumb. It was their boss’s.”

“So, you met him?”

She shook her head. “Never in person, but he always paid and paid well. He needed clean titles, and then after a job was done, they would bring it to me for detailing and modifications. It was so much business, so much money, I couldn’t say no, and that night…I couldn’t say no to them, even though I knew exactly what I was doing. I’m sorry, Ollie. I’m so sorry.”

My eyes narrowed. “Finish your food, and then you’re going to take me to where you dropped off their cars.”

“I don’t—”

I held up my hand. “That wasn’t a question. I’m in a forgiving mood right now, especially given what you just went through, but don’t test me.”

“You don’t understand. They brought the cars to us or picked it up—” A flash of a thought ran through her mind. “Actually, there was one time—” She faltered.

“One time is all you need. Do you remember the place?”

“Yes.”

“Then, finish your food and take me there.”

“All right.” She knew she didn’t have any choice in the matter, and for somebody as proud as Candy, that was hard to swallow. Still, it was a far easier pill to swallow than her death.

“One more thing,” I added, leaning forward. “Was there a wand in the car when you got it?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Drats.