The pentagram didn’t hold her. He’d wondered about that. Evan’s mother had been human, and so his flesh was of this world. He’d thought it might not have worked the other way, but apparently it had.
“Hurts,” she said, and opened her small brown fingers to show him the mark of the lock that had bound her mother to Donne’s box.
He cringed a little when she wiped her nose on the back of her good hand, wasn’t at all affected by the tears running down her cheeks. But he wondered what she could do, so he took the tiny injured hand and held the fingers open, let the blue fire of Ariton flicker in his eyes, and said, “You can fix it if you want.”
Three years old. He wondered if she could.
But she said, “How?” and he said, “Let me show you,” and laid her damaged hand against his palm. He took the unmarked one gingerly between the fingertips of his free hand, turned it over so both lay palm up. “You just have to make the hurt one look like the other one.”
She searched his face—trying, he figured, to find the joke—and he didn’t move. Let her look, decide for herself.
“Okay,” she said, and pinched up her face in a display of concentration too huge for her small body. But the red was fading, the marks growing paler. Not scarring, he could see the mending below the surface. Burned skin sloughed away until the damaged hand was as pink and fresh as the other one. Fresher, since she hadn’t been wiping her nose with it.
“Very good,” he said, and wished that Evan would wake up, because if he called the police to take her away, Ellen Li would show up, probably with Mike Jaworski in tow, and she’d want to know why they were in the business office instead of the house, letting the kid sleep on their nice, clean couch. And he didn’t want to explain Evan lying unconscious and bleeding on his own—expensive—carpet again.
Apparently, at least part of that wouldn’t be a problem. Evan stirred, moaned, and realized that he no longer had the girl tucked safely near.
“Katey!” He sat up, grunted and made a grab for his alarmingly swollen arm. Then he screamed, as much in surprise as from the pain itself, Brad thought.
Katey scrambled back off her chair. Standing, she was able to stare right into Evan’s glazed eyes, and she did, her own expression solemn and a little anxious. “You can fix it,” she said, “I’ll show you.”
“Jesus,” he said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m right here.” She patted his good shoulder, leaned in so close that her forehead rested against his.
Brad watched as the fight went out of Evan and he opened up completely to the child. She wasn’t Ariton, and no one of his Prince should ever let down their guard so thoroughly in the presence of any manifestation of another host. Brad wondered if he should stop it, if Paimon meant them harm with this child. But he knew that arm had to hurt, and that for the moment, Evan didn’t feel it at all. He’d have to do something if Evan couldn’t, but for the moment he let it go, and wondered what Evan meant by it when he said, “Thank God, thank God.”
“She has a point,” he said, “If you don’t patch yourself up, you’ll be explaining your condition to the police and Jefferson Hospital’s finest trauma surgeons.” He didn’t have to mention that it was a little soon after the last time. Questions would doubtless be raised.
Evan shook his head. “I took care of the internal stuff, and patched my back while we were in transit.” Bodies were more mutable in the second celestial sphere, where they existed only by the will of the wearer, and Evan had healed soft tissue before. “I’ll live, but bone’s more difficult. The arm’s gonna need a cast.”
Which was maybe true, and maybe not, but Brad didn’t feel helpful, and the child didn’t know how to heal bone either. “What do you plan to do with her?”
“Call Carlos Sanchez. His cell’s in the file. Make sure they made it out alive and tell them where to find her.” He staggered to his feet, and paled under the dawn light coming in through the office window. Brad hadn’t noticed when daylight had happened. Evan still hadn’t, he thought.
“Damn, Lily, can you get me something to wrap this arm? It hurts like a bitch.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, and snaked an arm around his neck, pulled him in, and kissed him hard, leaving a single drop of blood marking the bite on his lower lip. “That hurts like a bitch.” She laughed, and kissed him again. “I’m going home,” she said. “I’m going home.”
She’d picked her moment well, because Evan wasn’t tracking, and didn’t know that she’d briefly been stripped of her power to move in the second sphere at all, or that he’d won them release from their Prince’s command to watch him that had bound them here since the first time Brad had refused to kill him. Not trust, exactly. The Princes would never trust him, but they’d won. Evan was no longer a prisoner. Could become one fast enough, but for the moment, they were all free, no longer bound to his half- human monster or the little ball of dirt he called home. He didn’t think Evan would appreciate the honor, but by the time it came to counting up losses, it would all be old news.
In the meantime, they had Paimon’s own monster to contend with, and he didn’t think Evan was going to do the sensible thing and kill it. “You passed through the spheres with her, and she’s healed her own hand just by wanting to. What will the Sanchez family do when she goes for a stroll between the spheres on her own? What will the Princes do?”
Chapter 79
EVAN KNEW ALL THAT, ran his good hand over the top of his head, wished he hadn’t, then wished he still had his hair to hide his nerves in. “I thought he’d come back for her.”
“Matt Shields? What made you think he cared?” Brad asked, and Lily added, more mystified than his father, “He’s free now. He’s gone. Why would he come back?”
Shields had cared. He’d come as close to defying his Prince over her as he possibly could. “Caring doesn’t mean able,” Evan pointed out. “Maybe he can’t get back.”
“We couldn’t.”
Come back, his father meant, and Evan wondered if he realized the admission he’d just made. He was tracking through the pain in his arm, a little slow, but he got there. Years ago. War between the Princes had swept Brad and Lily both up and Evan had brought them out again, invoked a binding he’d meant to protect them. It had, that time.
Figured what he had to do. The oath Parmatus had sworn didn’t bind him to anything but the promise to do no harm, but it left traces. He wouldn’t tell his father that. Didn’t want to find out where the thought might lead, if he wasn’t careful, didn’t even know if he could do it. His arm hurt like a stone cold—
“Lily, could you—” She’d relented, drifted silk around his neck, and he cradled the broken arm in the vee of blue the color of her eyes that crossed his chest. “Thank you,” he breathed, “but I meant, will you call Sanchez? In case we need him?”
“Ingrate.” But she went to the desk, turned on the computer, and picked up the phone.
“Katey, I’m going to need your help again,” he said, soft as he could. She was half asleep, curled in the guest chair, but she raised her head, considered the option. “Will it hurt?” she whispered back, like they shared a secret. The question broke his heart.
“It shouldn’t,” he said. “We’re going to find your papi.” She thought about it a minute, then nodded solemnly, scrambled up on her chair, and reached out for him to pick her up.
“I can hold her, but I can’t lift her, and I’ll need that.” He flicked a glance at his father, asking for help with the look. Brad wasn’t happy about it, but he came around the desk and picked her up.
She reached for Evan, wrapped herself around him like a blanket when he held out his arm. His father turned away, but not before he caught something a little terrifying in his eyes. He’d think about that later, when he had a cast on his arm and maybe one for his head as well. Katey settled and he looked up, at the design worked into the ceiling.
“Good a place as any,” he said, and began the summoning spell.
>
“With a tranquil heart, and trusting in the Living and Only God, omnipotent and all-powerful, all-seeing and all-knowing, I conjure you, Parmatus of the host of Paimon, to appear before me . . . Appear before me now, for the greater glory of all creation both in the physical sphere and in the second sphere.”
“You know you’re a damned fool.” Shields appeared inside the circle, which he would, Evan figured—he hadn’t specified, and Shields had been here before.
“Been told that.” So, all right, maybe he should have stood outside it when he’d made the call, but he hoped to keep this friendly. Shields was looking dangerous, though. He was back in a flannel shirt and jeans, with his steel-toed boots on. Probably a good sign, all in all, but conflicted, which was never a good look on a daemon lord. And Katey was reaching for him, making grabby hands and whimpering for her papi. Which he wasn’t.
“Am I going to have to kill you?”
“Hope not. I didn’t summon you to bind you here.”
Katey squirmed to get free and Evan almost fainted. His father, he noticed, had put his feet up on the desk and was watching with some wary interest and a great deal of amusement.
“Then what am I doing here?” Shields took the girl from him in disgust and snugged her up under his arm, muttered, “Mi nena,”—my little girl—into her hair to quiet her. Evan thought, You’re here for exactly that, but he kept it to himself.
“Think of it as an interdimensional phone call. You’re free to go whenever you want, usual rates apply.”
Lily hung up the phone, and Evan wondered if she’d picked her moment for dramatic effect. “The Sanchezes lost the house in New Jersey, but they made it out alive,” she said. “They’ll be here in an hour.”
Evan gave a quick nod, hadn’t thought how it would pull on the muscles around his broken arm to do that, but managed to stay on his feet. Never show weakness to a daemon lord, but he figured he wasn’t hiding anything. “I thought you’d want to know that. You can wait, or go back to the second celestial sphere, whatever you want.” He didn’t mention Katey. Didn’t think he had to.
Shields nodded once, accepting what he said, then looked out into the distance for a minute, as if he were doing some complex calculation in his head. “It never was Marina,” he said. “You asked about that once, if I had slept with Marina. But she and Grey belonged to each other. I was never a part of that. Alba . . .” he kissed Katey absently on the top of her head. “Carlos didn’t know, but I think Cyril Van Der Graf figured it out. That’s why he took her.”
Alba. Shit. Evan sank into a chair, jostled his arm, and the world went white for a while. When the room came back into focus, Matt Shields was there, and so was Mike Jaworski, staring down at him.
“Got a call on the radio,” Jaworski said, exasperated. “What have you done to yourself now?”
“Forest fire in New Jersey,” Brad said, “Managed to walk out, but he broke his arm in the process, and I think he hit his head. Again. Someone picked him up on the highway and gave him a ride home. Didn’t do his arm any good.”
“Head neither, I’d guess. You really need to get him into another line of work.” Jaworski pulled up a lid to check Evan’s pupils, and Evan bleared back at him. “It was an accident.”
“Always is, with you. But this time looks like you bought yourself a three-month vacation. Who’s the kid?”
“That is Carlos Sanchez’s secret.” Evan smiled in triumph, mostly because it jogged Jaworski off the topic of Evan’s arm. And his head.
“Marina Sanchez and Grey Donne, the son, had a kid?”
“There’s no will, they don’t want the money. But, yeah.” As lies went, this one rolled easy.
“Hunh.” Jaworski didn’t seem surprised. In fact, he seemed pleased. “Sid Valentine owes me twenty bucks.”
“You knew?”
“Could have been murder. There was plenty of that going around. But we knew they’d had an affair, and Cyril Van Der Graf was looking for something. If he’d found the kid, he could have used her to claim Donne’s estate. He’d have had the whole thing, including the house and the graveyard, and it wouldn’t have cost him a thing.” Close enough, and the truth wasn’t an option. But Van Der Graf had known. Donne had already set it up. Then Donne was dead and there was no child. Damned right he’d been looking.
It wasn’t over yet. “The FBI want Carlos Sanchez for questioning, and New York will probably want to try him as an accessory. No way he didn’t know about the bodies in Donne’s woods, and he looks good for planting them. But the old man died of a bad heart—kind of a miracle he lived as long as he did according to the ME—so he doesn’t look good for a murder charge.”
“The whole town knew what Grayson Donne was doing in that house and looked the other way,” Evan pointed out.
The police had plenty of evidence of what happened to people who crossed Grayson Donne—a whole graveyard of bodies torn to pieces. Matt Shields didn’t say it, not in front of Katey. Not when he’d put them there. He kept the amber light in his eyes to a low smolder that didn’t attract attention.
Jaworski had a hand under the elbow of Evan’s good arm, guiding him to his feet, and there were EMTs crowding the office. He heard Jaworski say, “Is that all Evan’s blood, or is the little girl hurt too?”
His father answered for him, “It’s all Evan’s. The girl is tired, but otherwise fine.”
“They’ll take her to CHOP—Children’s Hospital—to be on the safe side, have her checked out. You a relative?” Jaworski asked, but he was looking at Matt Shields.
“Her father, since Grey died. Not blood, but . . . Her mother is on the way.”
Irony there, Evan thought. Not blood, no, but Matt Shields was related on her daemon side and the Sanchezes weren’t blood relations at all. He figured his father could show them how to fix that. Worked for him, at any rate, but in the meantime, Jaworski accepted the story. “Good enough. You can ride along—they’ll want you there to keep her calm.”
“Evan will be at Jeff,” he added, “They’ve got a bed with his name on it at Emergency, and this will give the docs a chance to see how he’s doing from the last time.”
“Three months,” Brad answered the accusation. “He’ll be on the desk for the next three months. Don’t count him out, though. He could still catch his hand in a paper shredder.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
Then there was a gurney that Evan resisted. Jaworski said “Cuts four hours off the wait,” and so he let them push him down.
“No drugs,” he heard Jaworski tell the the EMTs, hadn’t thought of it himself, but he was glad Mike had. Then he was out anyway, didn’t need the God-damned drugs, he was that tired.
Matt Shields was free. Last thought before he let the world fade away, just too damned tired to keep his eyes open. Matt Shields was free and in love with Alba Sanchez. He would have laughed except it hurt too much.
Lily had said good-bye.
Epilogue
EVAN FUMBLED THE PHONE, his head still deep in a provenance search for an art dealer in Melbourne. In three more days the cast came off. He’d figured out bone sometime in the third week, gave the arm a little boost just to make sure things were healing all right, but otherwise left it to a natural progression that wouldn’t leave red flags in his medical records. Not that kind, at least, though the whole “accident prone” excuse was wearing thin at Jefferson, where he was on first-name terms with the triage nurse on the eleven-to-seven shift.
But by next week, he’d mostly have his life back. He had an appointment for physical therapy and another to see a private collector in Chicago about a Brancusi that had gone missing without raising a blip on the state- of-the-art security system. Life would be great just as soon as he learned how to breathe again.
Lily was gone. He’d known it would hurt, but damn. At least, with Cyril Van Der Graf, he’d gotten the good drugs. Which was just plain stupid, that he’d gladly offer up a cup of his own blood to feel the drugs hit
his veins again. Maybe this time—
Stupid, stupid, and he had a client waiting for him on the phone.
“Evan?” Carlos Sanchez. Not a client, then. Sanchez was out on bail.
“Yeah, it’s me. What can I do for you?”
“To begin, you can accept my thanks. The state’s attorney is not happy, but it appears he will drop the charges in the next day or two.”
“No thanks are necessary, but I’m glad to hear it.” Khadijah Flint had recommended a lawyer in New York who was, she said, almost as good as she was. But in the two months since they arrested Donne’s cabal, the FBI had found no hard evidence that Sanchez had been involved at all. So the state might have made a case that he’d known about Donne’s activities, but so did the whole town, going back more than a century. They’d kept quiet or died in Grayson Dunne’s secret room—Donne had held Marina Sanchez prisoner in a hole in the ground under his house for seven months, clear evidence of duress. Thanks to Khadijah Flint, the court had seen the sense in that as well.
They had plenty of evidence against the cabal. The FBI had uncovered connections that went higher than anyone wanted to bring to an open courtroom. He expected the whole case to disappear any day now.
“Are you still there, Evan?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Is Katey okay?”
“She’s fine. Made a picture for your refrigerator. You can pick it up when you come—”
“I can’t—” No explaining to the man the relationships between hosts of different Princes, but he had no intention of visiting Katey Sanchez. Paimon still wanted them both dead.
“The house is up for auction. Matt thought you’d want to know.”
And wasn’t that a kick in the head. Matt Shields had stayed, for Alba Sanchez and a little girl who had his eyes. But the house—
A Legacy of Daemons Page 31
