“You can’t be anywhere near his death.” Drio was dead serious. “Not even a hint of it. The media will be asking enough questions about the mystery women in those photos and we don’t want you caught up in the scandal.”
I opened my mouth to protest but Drio stopped me. “Don’t give Mandelbaum more ammunition.”
Him having my back like this was a huge step forward between us.
The cab pulled up to the hotel. I pulled out my wallet to pay but Drio waved me off, so I got out. “Thank you. For everything.” I shut the door.
Drio immediately rolled down the window. “Rohan had to get drunk tonight. He knew Samson would show up.”
“Part of his performance. Big deal.”
Drio shook his head. “The only way he’d be able to behave like his old self again.”
“Really? Seemed like he fell right into it.” I dropped my eyes under the chastising look Drio shot me.
He was quieter when he spoke this time. Musing. “I think it was also the only way he could pretend he wasn’t attached.”
When I looked up with a harsh laugh, Drio was watching me, his steady green-eyed gaze unnerving. “It’s not attachment.” I fiddled with my clutch. “It’s chemistry and fucked-up power games.”
“He has your back.”
“I know, but that’s not the same.” Not like he meant.
“Okay.” He rolled up the window, capitulating so easily that I knew he was humoring me.
Chapter 17
Lack of a full night’s sleep plus emotional fuckery led to me crashing the second my head hit the pillow.
Waking up on Sunday morning having had more of an extended nap than a proper rest was all sorts of hideous. Groaning, I cracked an eye open, blinking through the glueyness. I stumbled into the bathroom, cranked the shower to frigid, and scrunching up my face, hopped in.
I yelped at the tiny needles of ice pounding down my back but it did the trick. I was fully awake. Samson was out of town shooting for the next couple of days and time off from Lolita, if only in my wardrobe choices, was welcome. I slid into my modest A-line skirt, thick tights and a pretty pale pink cashmere sweater paired with black boots. At the sight of me as me and not her, my entire body relaxed.
My phone rang as I was shrugging into my coat.
“Those photos gave Mom and Dad a coronary,” Ari said, skipping hello.
I laughed. “Document it.”
“Way ahead of you. I have a pic of Mom gnashing her teeth that should sustain you for weeks.”
“My hero. In case you think my life is all jet set and dazzle, I have a meeting tomorrow that I feel very hopeful about.” Checking to make sure I had my keycard, I slung my laptop bag across my chest, and left my room, jogging to catch the elevator that was, for a change, present and open on my floor. “How’s Kane?”
“Haven’t seen him since the airport run,” Ari said.
I crossed the lobby into the restaurant. The mouth-watering breakfast spread of fruit platters and baked goods would normally have tempted me but all my belly room was reserved for sampling every flavor of Trdelnik at the bakery down the road. “If you’re being coy, I approve. If you’re being stupid, stop right now.”
The waiter at the espresso station gave me my to-go latte and I charged it to my hotel room.
“I’m not the one groping famous celebs,” my brother said. “Mom and Dad are freaking out that someone is going to recognize their wayward daughter.”
Just as I was about to step back into the lobby, I heard Rohan’s voice. I pressed back, peeking out at him standing less than ten feet away.
Oh good, he looked like death warmed over: unshaven, red-eyed, kind of nauseous, with his hands bundled into his camel trench coat. A little balloon of joy danced its way through me seeing him in the seventh circle of hangover hell.
Ari continued listing our parents’ litany of gripes with me. I only half-listened, busy spying.
Lily walked toward Rohan from where she’d been seated at one of the lobby’s sofas, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand which she forced on him. Rohan groaned. She zipped up her coat. “You bitch now, but you’ll love me in about twenty minutes.”
He opened the lid, sniffing at the brew. “I always love you.” He kissed the side of her head.
I gripped my own cup so hard the lid popped off.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lily teased. “Me and every other breathing female you want to charm.”
“You still there?” my brother asked.
“Sorry, yes.” I pulled a tissue out of my pocket to wipe coffee off of my fingers.
“How’s it going otherwise?” Ari asked.
“Oh you know. Living the dream.” Escaping unnoticed was not an option. Even if it had been, I couldn’t stop watching them. Couldn’t stop wondering where I fit in the spectrum between “always love you” and “every other breathing female.”
Rohan pushed Lily’s glasses back up her nose. “That’s it. We’re getting these tightened so you don’t embarrass yourself yet again when a pair slips off your face and breaks.”
She nudged him with her shoulder. “One time, buddy. You have the memory of an elephant.”
“Only when it comes to your most embarrassing moments.”
She laughed. “Those would be the Rohan years.”
He pressed his hand to his heart with a gasp.
I needed all my awareness to keep stalking so I cut my brother off mid-sentence. “Ace, I gotta run. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Later.”
I pressed farther behind the leaves of the plant at the restaurant’s entrance, peering out to watch Rohan drink, tracking the line of his neck with every swallow.
“Happy?” he asked Lily.
“Ecstatic,” she replied dryly. “Now how about some toast?”
Rohan shuddered. “No food.” He shifted from foot-to-foot. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Without eating first?” She sighed, stroking his back. “Calm down, Ro.”
“Then come with me and calm me down. You’re best at that anyway.” He turned puppy dog eyes on her and I almost stepped forward offering to help with a frying pan to the head.
“Gawd, you’re in giant baby mode,” Lily said.
Okay, I wasn’t as nice as Lily. That much was clear from the quiet care she took of him: from the extra sugar packets she’d known to hand over without him asking to the resettling of his scarf now as it slipped from his neck.
Poppy would never have engaged in those small considerate gestures, which didn’t make me her either, or a groupie. I was trying to prove myself as Rasha. I was my own category.
I blinked at the button I’d worried loose on my coat and sighed.
I gave them a moment once they’d left so that I wouldn’t run into them outside before going to have breakfast all by my lonesome. Which turned out to be awesome when the sexy baker spent the next half hour flirting and plying me with pastry. By the time Drio texted me to come meet him and Rohan, my mood had improved considerably.
Rohan answered the door to his suite. His walk with Lily must have helped because he no longer looked like crap, the cuffs of his white shirt folded crisply back, with two undone buttons showing a V of dark skin. His worn jeans molded to the long lines of his legs. The sight of him in top form once more sent my blood frothing and churning, dark tentacles lashing hot inside me.
Stripping off my coat, I pulled a sketch of Louis XIV’s sunburst that I’d printed out in the tiny hotel business center from a folder in my laptop bag. “If you recall,” I said, handing it to Drio, “this was our first break. Samson King. Sun King. Just like Louis XIV. A possible connection.”
“The snitch,” Rohan said, not outing Leo as my source. “He’d heard a rumor that Samson had spent time in France. It was a potential link.”
“Yes. Since some demons have long lifespans.” Rohan was being civil, I could, too. “I wondered if maybe Samson had hung out with Louis. Picked up some tips. But I got it all wrong.” I pick
ed up the next printout. This one of the black sun. “As you can see–”
Rohan snatched the paper out of my fingers.
“Gee, Mr. Mitra, I was doing my best clipboard impression and everything. Should I be more actual furniture, less office supply?” Nope. Apparently no civility on the menu today.
“Black sun. Occult symbol.” He exhaled, a slow controlled breath. “I’m sorry for the furniture crack.”
I waited but he didn’t add any other items to that apology. I sat on the couch with an unhappy thump. “I don’t buy your sincerity. Apology not accepted.”
“What’s it gonna take?”
I tapped my finger against my lip, thinking. “Get on your knees and grovel.”
Drio smothered a laugh.
Rohan narrowed his eyes. “Never gonna happen.”
“Fine. Forget it. Drio, tell Mr. Mitra that the black sun–”
“Nazi’s co-opted it.” Ignoring us both, Drio grabbed my laptop and started typing. “It was on that castle floor in,” he peered at the screen, “Wewelsburg.”
“Samson recently got that sun inked as a tattoo. He showed it to me the other night in response to seeing my sunburst. I said it looked like a swastika with too many arms. He didn’t seem to care much for Nazis.” I gnawed on my fingernail. “Something about his response bothered me. It wasn’t a general dislike with their ideology. More deep-seated, intimate hate.”
“Like they’d pissed him off. Personally,” Rohan said.
I didn’t want to acknowledge him but Drio looked like he’d brain me with the laptop if I kept this Kindergarten shit up. “Yeah.”
“If Samson does have ties to both Versailles and the Nazis, it could be as more than a spectator,” Drio said.
Rohan pointed at him. “Hitler and King Louis. Both with delusions of grandeur and plans of world domination.” He went over to the mini bar and pulled three bottles of water out of the fridge, handing one to each of us.
I riffled through my notes. “Did you know that at the Palace of Versailles, aristocrats were expected to compete for the privilege of watching the king wake up, eat meals, and prepare for bed? Sound familiar?”
This was the type of envy-inducing humiliation King foisted on contestants on his reality show Live Like A King. All for the dubious honor of winning a position in his entourage. Bad enough contestants so willingly debased themselves, Rohan and Drio had tracked players and crew and found that they were exceedingly accident-prone. Fatally so.
“Samson mentored Louis,” Rohan said. “We’ve been assuming the wrong way round.”
Drio was already looking something up. “Louis chose the sun as his emblem to cultivate the image of an omniscient and infallible sun-king around whom the entire realm orbited. I’d say this is more than a potential link.”
“I don’t know if he tried this with any other empire builders.” I unscrewed the water bottle cap. “Napoleon or Genghis Khan or Hannibal or whoever.” The cold liquid eased the dryness in my throat.
“That brings us back to who Samson actually is.” Drio typed as he spoke. “If Louis was his first attempt to control someone and be the power behind the throne, it might have taken him time to get strong enough to position himself.”
“Where’s he been since Hitler?” I asked.
“Defeat takes a toll,” Rohan said, peering over Drio’s shoulder at the screen, water bottle in hand, forgotten. “If Samson was behind the Nazi fascination with the occult, tying his own power to theirs, then the end of World War II would have been a huge blow. It might have taken him this long to bounce back.”
I shrugged. “He’s still not as strong as he once was if he went from partnering with Hitler to being an actor.”
Rohan sputtered a laugh as he drank.
“I wasn’t being funny.”
He wiped a hand across his mouth. “Do you understand how famous Samson is?”
“Yes,” I snapped.
He shook his head. “You don’t. Not really. You’ve never experienced it. That level of fame, you’re treated like a god. Anything, anyone you want?” He snapped his fingers. “Yours. There’s no door barred to you.”
“You’d know.”
“I didn’t want it,” Rohan said.
“What about tasting it again now?”
“I want it even less.”
“Even if it gets you your heart’s desire?” I asked softly.
Rohan hesitated, his eyes darting away from me for a fraction of a second before he answered. “World domination is not my heart’s desire.”
Slick avoidance of answering. “No. It’s not.” Lily was. Maybe I’d arrange for Poppy to meet the good physicist and let her see what she was really up against. I bricked up my sorrow, adding it to the pile of emotions I had no desire to examine or experience.
“There was one last thing I found,” I said. “The symbol of the Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash had four straight and four wavy rays. Louis’ has both, too. Could Samson be Mesopotamian?”
“Shamash was a god, not a demon. But that sun symbol was present in Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.” Drio chugged half his water back in one go.
“That might explain Samson’s preference for Semitic-looking women. Personal attraction stemming from point of origin,” I said.
“Bhenchod!” Rohan swore, grabbing the laptop away from Drio. The anticipation in the room was palpable as he looked something up. With a shout of victory, Rohan turned the screen around for us to see it.
“Adramelech,” I read. “Sun-demon. Is Adramelech his name or his type?”
“Name,” Rohan said. “As a sun-demon, he’s a Unique.” He frowned. “Which means the Brotherhood may not have info on his kill spot. I’ll get on that.”
Drio leaned back in his chair, nodding. “Babylonian. Nasty bastard. Known for his ambition. Maybe the fact he got burned with politics is influencing his choices now. Like initially he meant to draw power from these charismatic figureheads. When it failed with Louis, Samson tried again with Hitler. Another fail and a new strategy needed.”
“Cross-platform.” I swirled the plastic bottle, watching the little eddy of water inside while filling them in on my suspicions around why Samson had founded the record label and management company. “Build up. Tear down. With all these available platforms only adding to his power. Social media crosses all national borders and language barriers. For the first time in history, he doesn’t require a military leader to allow him to rule the world. He can do it exactly as he is and do it with more reach than any of those rulers ever did. Celebrity trumps politics.”
“He’s the biggest star with the most reach,” Rohan said. “He’s in the perfect position to establish himself as an entertainment conglomerate and push his agenda indefinitely.” He nodded. “Good work.”
Generally his praise warmed me enough to push aside any bullshit between us, but not today. “To figuring it out,” I said, hoisting my bottle, and pushing aside my unhappiness.
“To destroying that bastard.” Drio clinked his bottle against mine. We looked at Rohan who didn’t join in.
“What’s wrong? We’ve got him,” I said.
“We’ve got a name that might be his,” Rohan corrected.
“Oh, you mean more conjecture?”
“You were right. Actually,” he amended, “I was right in the first place but I had an off day yesterday. No assuming anything until we do the ritual.”
“You mean we could still do the ritual and be wrong?”
“Yeah.” Rohan closed the laptop which had defaulted into my annoying screensaver of frogs plummeting to the ground. “Though I doubt it.”
Drio clapped Rohan on the back. “Playing it smart.” The smile he saved for torturing demons bloomed wide. “Then having fun playing.”
“Are you still planning to go to set on Tuesday?” Rohan asked.
Off my nod, Drio told me that once I got there, I should arrange a Wednesday meeting with the demon. “I’ll give you a time and place as soon as
I’ve made all the arrangements for the ritual.”
“How will you get him away from the bodyguards?” I asked.
“We’ll take care of them. Piece of cake.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “You’ll kill them?”
Drio looked at me like I’d been dropped on my head.
“Like murder is an unreasonable assumption with you.”
“They’re human,” he said. “We won’t hurt them.” He stood, stretching his arms over his head and causing his shirt to ride up, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of olive skin and six-pack. “I think a little subtle interrogation is in order today. In case we’ve missed anything.”
“Why get subtle now?” Rohan joked. “Amp up the fact finding. By any means necessary.”
Drio snapped off a salute, clearly happy to have free reign. “Ciao, ragazzi.” He grabbed his jacket and left.
I stuffed my laptop back into my bag.
Rohan rolled his neck out a couple of times. The corded muscles across his shoulder rippled with the movement. “Nava?”
“What?” I zipped up the bag.
He caught my hand, forcing me to turn toward him. “I’m sorry. There is no universe in which I think you’re furniture. I meant the role. And I appreciate you’re facing a double standard that sucks balls. That’s why I fought Mandelbaum to keep you.”
Rasha, rabbis, and Executive alike worshipped Rohan. Him going to bat for me was worth a lot. I focused on that and not the damage he’d done last night. “Accepted and appreciated.” I flicked the zipper. “I wish I didn’t need anyone to stick up for me.”
“I know.” He paused. “Anything else you wish?”
“If we weren’t committed Rasha doing whatever the mission demands, then that would be quite the loaded question.”
I’d made it to the second chorus of “I Will Survive” in my head before he answered. “Is that what we are?”
Now it was my turn to remain silent.
He rubbed a knuckle over his forehead.
“You look tired,” I said. He gave me a wan smile. “Do you want a massage?”
A teasing glint lit his eyes. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 44
