"I'm sorry, what?" I blinked hard, wondering if I was still hallucinating. "Lady, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm neither of those things. I'm just a guy who apparently had way too much to drink last night."
She didn't respond immediately, just continued to study me with those unnerving eyes. The lotus pattern spun lazily, drawing my gaze despite my best efforts to look away.
"Interesting," she finally said. "Most would immediately deny being a Demon. The fact that you treat both options as equally absurd suggests you truly don't know." She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, bringing her face closer to mine. "Or you're an exceptional liar."
I pulled against my restraints again, the rope digging into my wrists. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you want, but this is insane. You can't just kidnap people and tie them up in your weird-ass room covered in—" I glanced at the walls, the symbols seeming to writhe at the edge of my vision, "—whatever the hell this is."
She laughed again, the sound making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "Kidnap? Is that what you think happened?" She stood and walked a slow circle around my chair, her fingertips trailing across my shoulders. "Tell me what you remember from last night, Isaiah."
The way she said my name sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. Not entirely unpleasant, which disturbed me even more.
"I was at a club," I said cautiously. "I had some drinks. There was a fight—"
"And after the fight?" she prompted when I hesitated.
The fragmented memories flashed through my mind again. Blood. Screams. Inhuman faces. The woman with horns licking my wounds.
"Nothing," I lied. "It's all blank after that."
She completed her circle and stopped in front of me, bending down so her face was level with mine.
"You're lying," she said softly. Her hand shot out, gripping my chin with surprising strength. "You saw them, didn't you? The Phantoms."
I tried to pull away, but her grip was like iron. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"And the woman with the horns? The one who tasted your blood?" Her thumb brushed across my lower lip. "Did you like it when she touched you?"
My heart hammered in my chest. How did she know about that? Had she been there? Or was she reading my mind somehow?
"It wasn't real," I insisted, as much to myself as to her. "I was drunk, maybe someone slipped something in my drink—"
"Oh, it was very real." She released my chin and straightened. "Just as real as this moment, with you tied to a chair in a warded room, talking to a woman you don't know." She smiled. "Though I suppose we should remedy the 'don't know' part. You can call me Lotus."
"Is that your real name?"
"Didn't your foster mother teach you that names have power?" She returned to her chair, resuming her previous position with her legs slightly parted. "Isaiah—'salvation of the Lord.' A prophet's name. Did she hope you'd have visions? Or did she simply like the sound of it?"
The mention of my mother sent a chill through me. "How do you know about my foster mother?"
"I know many things about you. Isaiah Angelo. Eighteen years old. Raised by a single foster mother who died when you were sixteen. No known biological mother or father. Currently working as a bartender at The Rusty Nail while taking night classes at the community college." She recited these facts with the casual air of someone reading a grocery list. "You live alone in a one-bedroom apartment on Westlake Avenue. You have a cat named Freddie. You're allergic to shellfish. And you have a rather unusual medical history—you've never been sick. Not once in your entire life."
"Who the fuck are you?" I demanded, fear giving way to anger. "Are you stalking me?"
"I told you, I'm Lotus. And no, I'm not stalking you." She sighed, as if disappointed by my reaction. "I've been watching you, yes, but only since the incident at the club. Before that, you were just a name on a list. A potential."
"A potential what?"
"That's what I'm trying to determine." She gestured to the symbols on the walls. "These wards will contain either Shamanic energy or Demonic essence, depending on which you possess. But so far, they're not reacting to you at all, which is... puzzling."
I stared at her, wondering if I'd somehow been kidnapped by an escaped mental patient. "Lady—Lotus—whatever. I'm not a shaman or a demon. I'm just a normal guy who wants to go home and forget this ever happened."
"Normal?" She laughed, the sound sharp and sudden. "Normal people don't walk away from demon attacks without a scratch." She leaned forward, her eyes intense. "Where are your wounds, Isaiah? The ones she gave you when she clawed open your chest?"
I glanced down as best I could from my restrained position. My shirt was torn, revealing several long, parallel tears across my chest. But beneath the ripped fabric, my skin was unmarked.
"That's not..." I trailed off, confusion clouding my thoughts. I remembered the pain vividly, the warm trickle of blood. How could there be no wounds?
"Not possible?" Lotus finished for me. "And yet, here we are." She stood and approached me again, this time pulling a small knife from somewhere behind her. "Let's try something."
Before I could protest, she pressed the blade to my forearm and made a quick, shallow cut. I hissed in pain, watching as blood welled up from the wound.
"Normal so far," she murmured, eyes fixed on the cut.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the edges of the wound began to knit together before my eyes. In less than a minute, the cut had closed completely, leaving only a thin line of blood on unmarked skin.
"What the fuck?" I whispered, staring at my arm in disbelief.
Lotus wiped away the blood with her thumb, then brought it to her nose. Her eyes widened as she smelled it, the lotus pattern spinning faster.
"Oh," she breathed, her pupils dilating. "Oh, that's... unexpected."