Bone Lantern Witch

by Kat Simons

  “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who isn’t practicing.”

  “Because I haven’t needed to,” she said, her voice rising. “You brought me into this again. I was quietly living my life without any demon trouble at all. You’re back for one day and it’s all demons all the time again.”

  Her anger rose with her voice. There was a reason they hadn’t spoken in so long, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t want to be part of the demon hunting world anymore. It was because they couldn’t be together without fighting about it all. About the demons. About what she did and didn’t tell him. About how she used her skills. Or didn’t. About how she wanted to live and how he had to live.

  They’d loved. But they’d fought. And Angie didn’t want to spend her life fighting with the man she loved.

  Unfortunately, since she was still in love with Sebastian, it looked like that might just be her fate.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’re only yelling at me now because you’re scared,” Sebastian said, his voice lowering even as hers had risen. “I won’t be blamed for your fear.”

  “I wouldn’t be experiencing this fear right now if it weren’t for you.”

  Even the usually calming patchouli scent of Dana’s and the gentle trickling sound of the water fountain couldn’t calm Angie’s anger. Not even the soothing darkness inside the closed store. She wanted to throw something, break something, smash her hands through the glass counter behind her until the fear and rage subsided. And because the urge was so strong, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

  Sebastian opened his mouth to say more. She prepared to lash out at whatever he had to say…

  And then her stomach growled.

  The sound was loud and very obvious in the quiet store.

  His lips twitched. She tried to keep scowling but his expression made her tension break, and she ended up rolling her eyes.

  “It’s been too long since I ate,” she said, almost defensively. And even then, shoving a sandwich into her mouth on the subway uptown barely counted.

  “And I promised to feed you and then didn’t.” He shook his head, a smile breaking over his gorgeous face and loosening all the tightness in his shoulders. “Ah, Ang. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Her heart tightened. “Even this? Even all the fighting.”

  “Everything.” He raised his hand as if he’d touch her but stopped himself, fisting and relaxing his hand at his side instead. “But I’ve especially missed your appetite.”

  She snorted.

  “You need food. And we need a break.”

  “There’s still a demon on the loose.”

  “We’ll track him down better if you aren’t passing out from hunger.”

  “We?”

  “We?” he asked as well.

  She sighed. She was already in this time, and they both knew it. One way or the other, and despite her continued resistance. She was with him until this demon was stopped.

  “If you feed me, I’ll probably be less annoyed by all this,” she said on a sigh.

  “Not likely,” he said, though he smiled when he did. “But you’ll be less likely to take my head off if you’re not hungry.”

  “True enough.”

  “And maybe some tea? Or better yet…Tequila?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Stop showing off that you know me so well.”

  This time his smile made her pulse thump. He’d always done that to her and the bastard knew it.

  “You’re sure the demon can wait?” she asked, because she needed to look away from the heat simmering in his gaze.

  He paused and she knew he was… Well, he called it listening. Aidan always called it sensing. They knew when they were needed, an instinct that came with the job. They knew when they were imminently required and when the fight could wait. The instinct came, and they went into a hunt. Sometimes, they had time to research their subjects, learn a bit about what the dumb bastard summoning the demons was up to. Sometimes, they had to jump right into the fight.

  Sebastian couldn’t explain the instinct exactly, any more than she could explain how she felt magic flowing, or the way her touch psychic sense worked in detail. She could get close with vague comparisons. So could he. But in the end, those explanations couldn’t ever really convey the feel.

  The fact that she didn’t sense when a demon was about to break free had always been the confirmation for her that she wasn’t meant to be part of the demon hunting world. She was no hunter.

  His gaze refocused and he said, “Everything is safe. For now.” He gestured toward the door. “Let’s go find you some food.”

  “This late, where?” she asked as she headed out.

  “This is New York. Someplace will be open.”

  They found a late-night diner only a few blocks from Dana’s.

  The bright lights made Angie squint as a professionally stoic server showed them to a small booth at the back of the long, narrow restaurant. There were only two other people in the diner, each sitting by themselves in the small two person booths. One, a man reading the newspaper and picking at a plate of eggs. Another, a tired looking woman stirring a cup of coffee as her waffles went ignored. The scent of coffee and French fries made Angie’s stomach rumble again.

  She slipped out of her coat, hanging it on the tall hook next to her seat, tossed her purse onto the inside of the seat, and slipped into the booth with a sigh. She waved away the menu when offered and said, “Tea, very hot, please. A Spanish omelet. And a very large plate of fries.”

  The waiter didn’t bat an eye at the order. “And for you, sir?” he asked Sebastian, who’d taken the menu.

  “Tea as well. And a regular soda.”

  “Will that be all?”

  “For now,” Seb said, handing the menu back.

  “Anticipating a fight later?” Angie asked once the waiter was out of ear shot. If he was, he wouldn’t want to eat and risk having something in his stomach to throw up.

  “In the next twenty-four hours,” he said. “I can eat now. I’m just deciding between a burger or something with pasta in it.”

  “I love New York diners,” Angie said with a smile. And she did. The variety always made her happy.

  Silence descended as the waiter returned with their heavy porcelain mugs of hot water and a small, rectangular metal carrier stuffed with tea bags. There was already a little pot on the table with sweeteners and a miniature jug of milk.

  When the waiter left, Sebastian sighed as he pulled out one of the sealed tea bags. The particular brand wasn’t to his taste. She grinned at his resigned dunking of the bag.

  “You want better tea, you’ll need to bring your own. Or go someplace that caters to your snobby British taste buds.”

  He chuckled. “I really should carry a few packets around with me, shouldn’t I?”

  “I’ve been telling you that for years.” She stopped shortly and swallowed hard. She didn’t want to talk about their past. She hadn’t meant to bring it up.

  He held her gaze. “You can stop now,” he said. “Go home, go to sleep. Leave the rest to me. You’ve helped me with what I needed you for—finding Mara.”

  “And uncovered a lot more complicated situation than you thought it was,” she reminded him. “Or did you know all along this would tie into a fight from your past?”

  “I thought it was simply a matter of finding Mara and fighting off the demon Grant had summoned.” He shrugged as he kept his gaze on his steadily darkening tea.

  Angie noticed he didn’t directly answer her question. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You knew Grant had killed the last hunter who’d come after him, though. You knew Grant was a problem.”

  “Aidan told me. After we’d come for Grant’s demon. I didn’t know ahead of time.”

  “Just coincidence then that you were in the area when instinct sent you to Grant?” Angie didn’t believe in coincidences where the hunters were concerned. They worked off instincts—to find the fig
ht, to know when it would happen, the actually fight itself—and will. Not coincidences.

  He sighed. “You know there aren’t any coincidences with us.”

  She tried not to roll her eyes or scowl that he’d echoed her thoughts so precisely.

  “I felt the draw to New York, but I was in Kansas at the time. I assumed the others were busy elsewhere and I was the closest one free.”

  Well, that did happen. There just weren’t enough hunters in the world to cover all areas, and sometimes the jolt that told them they had to be somewhere for a fight came while they were pretty far away. She remembered Sebastian once having to go directly from a fight in California all the way across the country to one in South Carolina because he’d been the only hunter available for it.

  They went where the instincts told them to go.

  “I didn’t make the connection between Grant and Ellen until we were standing outside Ellen’s apartment building,” he said quietly. “Even then, until we saw her, I wasn’t positive this linked to her, and that the ex-husband she’d told me about all those years ago was Grant.” He pulled his tea bag out of his mug, concentrating on the moves instead of looking up at her as he murmured, “I wondered why Aidan joined me for this fight. And encouraged me to contact you.”

  “That was Aidan’s idea? Of course, it was her idea. I owe her one for that.” She didn’t mean that in a good way.

  Sebastian’s lips lifted in a soft smile.

  “How did she know there was a connection if you didn’t?” Angie asked.

  “Even after all these years, some of the things Aidan knows surprises me.” He shrugged. “We all knew that a demon hunter had been killed in a fight here twelve years ago. It happened…” He paused. “Two days before I fought Ellen’s demon.”

  Angie didn’t comment. They lost hunters. That was part of the job. But there were few enough spread around the world that they knew pretty quickly when one of their own died. Most tried not to think about it—at least according to Sebastian. They had history keepers to record it, to disseminate the story. The hunters tried to learn what went wrong and ensure the mistakes weren’t made again, but they didn’t dwell on the death. It might weaken their will if they did.

  “I didn’t know that fight had involved Grant until Aidan told me a few days ago,” he said quietly.

  “Why didn’t someone else go after Grant and his demon? Why was he left to just continue summoning demons for years if your people knew about him?” Angie couldn’t blame Ellen for asking this, for blaming the hunters for this. She could have kept her daughter, ensured her safely, if the hunters had stopped Grant before now.

  “We don’t go in until the demon is about to break free,” he reminded her. “There aren’t enough of us to prevent stupid humans from summoning demons. The best we can do is intervene to prevent the demon from escaping. Or go after them once they do escape.”

  His tone had taken on that professorial lilt that made her teeth hurt—just a touch too much condescension for her. He was telling her things she knew, but telling her again because she’d asked a question she should have known the answer to. That didn’t make his tone any less irritating.

  “So you’re telling me that even though a hunter died going after Grant’s demon—who was obviously on the edge of escaping—” she threw him a look that said did I get that right, professor? He ignored her expression completely. “—that no one went after his escaped demon?”

  “The demon didn’t escape,” Sebastian said bluntly.

  She straightened. “But if the hunter died…” That’s what happened. Hunter dies. Demon escapes… Demon usually kills the person who’d called it.

  But Grant was still alive.

  That was the strange part in all this. The timeline. Grant should have been killed twelve years ago. First, when he tried to offer a sacrifice that wasn’t what he’d agreed to. Then when the hunter had gone in and been killed by the demon. The demon should have escaped at either of those times. The fact that Grant hadn’t been killed during any of that was… Not normal.

  Well, as normal as anything could be when dealing with demons.

  It was possible the demon had occupied Grant’s body, taken it over and moved through this realm inside the human host. But demons of any strength at all couldn’t occupy a human for long without the process killing the human. That was the tricky bit for a demon wanting to hold onto its powers.

  Breaking free of a confinement circle and the human who’d summoned it, breaking free into the human realm, cost a demon some of its strength and power. While inside the circle, they were still linked with their own realm, and therefore at full power. Once free of their realm, cut off from their origins, they lost something.

  Many demons didn’t care because either they weren’t strong enough to begin with to worry about the sacrifice—they’d still be dangerous in this realm even weaker than they’d been in theirs—or they were desperate enough to get here to accept the loss. The stronger the demon, the more power they lost.

  A demon might get around that by grooming and then taking over the body of a human host. They could keep most of their power that way, using the host to move through this realm at almost full strength. But the demons strong enough to do that were too strong for their hosts and the humans died pretty quickly.

  Grant was still alive.

  Twelve years later, he was still alive.

  “I was told the demon didn’t escape,” Sebastian added, his frown deepening.

  “None of this makes sense,” Angie said. After removing her tea bag from the mug, she dumped enough sugar into her tea to make Sebastian wince. She ignored him and added some milk. “Grant should have been killed a long time ago. His demon is obviously one of the scary powerful ones. Strong enough to kill a hunter. But then it didn’t bother to escape after that? And then, Grant waited out twelve years before looking to sacrifice Mara or figuring out where his ex-wife was to sacrifice her?”

  “Demon timelines aren’t the same as ours,” he reminded her.

  “The demon might be patient, but from everything we’ve learned, Grant is not. Why did he wait so long? And then why now? What’s changed? You’re here because Grant’s demon has escaped or is on the verge of escaping again. Otherwise, none of the hunters would be here right now.”

  He didn’t comment.

  “The Molder demon got at me through my psychic senses. That shouldn’t happen if it’s in another realm. They can’t attack me if I don’t open a breach.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She paused. She wasn’t absolutely certain. Mostly because… “It’s never happened before.”

  “You haven’t dealt with a Molder demon before.”

  He didn’t have to ask. He knew almost all of her demon past. He’d been involved in some of it directly. She’d told him the rest. And anything she’d been too young to remember, or had purposefully blocked, she was certain Aidan had told him.

  “But the demon walked into Dana’s Cauldron and talked to Laura,” she continued. “That wasn’t just a psychic connection. She called, worried about it. It happened in this realm. The demon has to have escaped. And it has to be strong enough to get around the wards and protections erected around Dana’s.” The wards wouldn’t have necessarily kept the demon out, but they would have made coming in extremely uncomfortable for it if its intent was harm.

  And demons always intended harm.

  “A demon went looking for you at Dana’s,” Sebastian said. “It wasn’t necessarily the same Molder demon who attacked you through the book. For that matter, it didn’t have to be a Molder demon in the book at all. We don’t actually know what kind of demon we’re facing. Not for sure.”

  That was a scary realization. Knowing what kind of demon they faced helped them know how to fight it. It wasn’t absolutely necessary. The hunters didn’t always know. But it helped.

  She shook off the fear to return to her main point. “Whatever it is, it’s free. And a freed demon looking
for me right, after I get involved in a hunt again, is too coincidental. It’s all connected. Whether it was a Molder demon or not, a freed one walked into my place of work. It wanted to find me badly enough, it found a way past the protective circle around the place that should have made going inside very difficult for it. A freed one must have been responsible for the attack through the book, because I can’t breach realms without a living tree, and I didn’t summon a demon in any other way.”

  They fell silent as the waiter brought her food. Sebastian looked at the fries and sighed, then ordered a burger and fries of his own.

  “Can I have some of your burger?” she asked.

  “If you share your eggs.”

  She grinned, but her pleasure in their old habits died fast.

  “This situation is really wrong, Sebastian. Something isn’t adding up.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re missing something.”

  “We are.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  He held her gaze this time, silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, “We eat. Then you go home to sleep.”

  “And tomorrow?"

  “Tomorrow, you’ll go back to work. I’ll…talk to some people. I’ll stop the demon.”

  “I’ve already said I’m in this. I’m not leaving you to fight alone. Not like this.”

  “I didn’t bring you back in to fight demons again, Ang. I really didn’t.”

  She hadn’t believed that earlier in the night. Now, though, she could read his sincerity. Oh, he could be fooling her. His will was strong enough to make her believe what he wanted her to believe. But he’d never used his will on her that way. She didn’t think he was now, either. She believed him.

  “I won’t leave you to fight this demon on your own,” she repeated after a moment. “I know I should. It’s not my job. Hasn’t been for a while now.”

  “Until I pulled you back in. Again.”

  She ignored that because it just sparked her anger and she didn’t want to argue again. “I may even distract you,” she said instead.