by Stacia Kane
Brian wouldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t have understood what she was doing and why. Wouldn’t have hung back and only offered advice when she asked for it or held his tongue when she did things he didn’t agree with—which was often.
So no. A relationship with Brian couldn’t have worked. But, as always, she was glad for his friendship. In fact—she’d forgotten. “Oh, hey. Come with me.”
“What?”
He followed her into her small kitchen and waited while she opened the fridge and took out a Tupperware container.
“Here.” She handed it to him. “I made peanut-butter cake yesterday. Two of them.”
His eyes lit up. “For me?”
“Yes, for you. Just bring back my Tupperware when you’re done.”
“And this is why I help you,” he said, lifting the lid of the container and reaching in. “You bake.”
“Such journalistic integrity.”
“Hey, I’m like any other guy. I can be bought.”
“No, you can’t.”
“No, I can’t,” he agreed through a mouthful of cake. “But it’s tempting when you make me stuff like this.”
“Just save some for Julie,” she said, ignoring the little twinge that ran through her at the mention of Brian’s girlfriend. Brian’s girlfriend, who was currently assisting an investigation that could conceivably put Megan’s boyfriend—for lack of a better term—in prison.
She didn’t think it would actually happen. But she didn’t want to think about it anyway.
What she did want to think about was the packing she had to do and the week ahead. And a bit about Reverend Walther. So she closed the door behind the still-chewing Brian and headed for her bedroom.
She was still thinking about all of those things an hour later when she loaded her luggage for the next week into the car. The July night smothered her like a hot blanket; the air barely moved. A week and a half into a heat wave and no relief in sight.
She slammed the trunk down on her suitcases and turned back toward the house, only to have her blood run cold.
It was some relief from the heat but not the kind she was looking for. Someone was out there. No, not someone. A demon. She felt it, those shivers up her spine like when Roc fed off her. But it didn’t feel like Roc. Wasn’t Roc.
Who, then? Who was out there, reaching out to her but not speaking? Tasting her, reading her?
Trees lined her street. Silent cars hunkered like bugs in driveways. So many hiding places, and suddenly she was aware of them all, aware of the road stretching before her eyes and the houses full of people. People living their own lives, watching TV or having dinner, or whatever it was they were doing as the sky faded above them. Darkness came late this time of year, but even with the sun barely set, the shadows were long and deep.
Reflexively she lowered her shields. Yes, lots of people in their houses; she felt them all, saw what they saw, a flood of information easier than it should have been to control. Psyche demons—which the demon inside her now was, fully and completely—assimilated that information without hesitating, without thinking, and so did she.
But none of these people were responsible for that shivery feeling. Something else was out there, watching her, and threat hung heavy in the still air. It quivered against her skin. This was not just a visit. Whatever was out there wanted to harm her; it felt malevolent. Wrong.
It took every bit of strength she had to lift her foot and take one step toward the front door. Not all demons were visible all the time. Was it standing right beside her? Right behind her? She spun around, her breath loud and harsh in her own ears, searing her lungs. She couldn’t get enough oxygen from the hot, thick air. It choked her.
The soft dusk light blinded her, turned everything gray in a way she normally loved. Now it was as though the street, her house, everything around her was wrapped in dusty shrouds. She wanted to see and couldn’t. Wanted more light, but the sun was rapidly setting, and she was alone.
And only fifteen feet from her house. This was silliness. Summoning as much courage as she could, girded by the glow of her own windows, she took another step, trying to look unconcerned.
Another shiver up her spine. Stronger this time. Her casual act was only giving her tormentor—or whatever it was—confidence; it was getting closer to her.
Her front door was unlocked. She couldn’t just get into the car and go. Even if she sent Malleus, Maleficarum, or Spud—Greyson’s guards—back to lock it up, it would still be open for close to an hour. An hour in which her unknown lurker would have full access to her home. Her belongings. Everything.
A scrape, the faint tinge of metal against pavement. Again she spun around. Again she saw nothing. Her head pounded almost as hard as her heart. Whoever—whatever—it was out there had to know she knew it was there. And it hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t stepped forward, even though she knew her fear was strong enough to taste, to feel. Her watcher knew she was afraid and wanted her that way.
Which pissed her off, and that was a good thing. Someone wanted to lurk in the shadows as the sun went down and intimidate her? Fuck that. She straightened her spine, forced her head high. The simple act of looking unafraid grounded her.
One step toward the house, and another. The air around her thickened, pressing like a hot iron against her skin. Danger. Danger. The word echoed in her head, vibrated through her body.
Her flip-flops slapped impossibly loudly on the sidewalk, announcing every step she took. She tried to ignore it, just as she ignored the sweat trickling down her spine and temple. It didn’t work. Hidden in that hollow flapping sound, in the too-loud beat of her heart, were whispers and giggles, the sound of her watcher’s footsteps or breath.
She stopped, spun around again. A flicker of movement this time. A shape? Or her panicked imagination? She had no idea which. All she knew was at any moment a hand would close over her arm or her mouth; any moment someone would grab her and drag her down.
Pain erupted in the back of her calf, a stinging horrible pain. She stumbled. Shit, what was that? No time to look. She kept going, but her next step felt as if it was taken through seaweed, and her hands and feet tingled in a way she didn’t like.
The door in front of her wavered, tilted at an odd angle. Why wasn’t it upright?
Another sharp pain in her leg. She opened her mouth to try to scream, but she couldn’t seem to make any sound come out except for a queer, muted gurgle.
Panic started taking over. She could feel her blood racing through her veins, faster and faster. Could feel her palms hit the hot sidewalk. She’d fallen. She’d fallen and her sweaty hair clung to her neck and her mouth wouldn’t close and something icy touched her leg where it hurt. The last thing she saw was a flash of impossibly bright light bleaching the front of her house.
Chapter 4
Why did she always have to throw up?
It seemed as though in every time of stress, every time of worry or fear, Megan’s overly sensitive stomach was the first thing to rebel, spilling its contents into or onto whatever happened to be handy.
Worse than that, these days it seemed as if she always had a fucking audience. And worst of all, yet again it was Greyson.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked. Sweat still dripped from her hair and into the toilet bowl, but not from the heat. At least not from the heat outside; they were safely insulated from that by the walls of her house and the low whirring of the air conditioning. No, this was from her internal temperature: boiling hot yet freezing, while her muscles quaked and her head threatened to split open. Why not? Her stomach already had. She would have been thankful it was empty if it had mattered even the tiniest bit.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Greyson wiped at her forehead with the cool washcloth again; it felt so good she sighed. “Litobora venom is horribly poisonous. Anyone would be sick. If they survived.”
“If this is surviving . . .” she started, then stopped when the corner of his mouth turned down. Right. This was something to be t
aken very seriously. And she intended to, as soon as she was able. At that particular moment she was too busy and semidelirious to focus on anything.
The cloth moved around to the back of her neck. “Want to try getting in bed?”
It took her a few seconds to answer. “I’d nod, but I’m afraid to move my head too much.”
His soft laugh comforted her. So did the heat of his body as he gently helped her up off the floor—her stomach gave a warning twist but held—and back into her room. Her legs felt rubbery beneath her.
“How about if I carry you?”
“No. No, I can make it.”
She did, barely, and collapsed onto the bed with piteous gratitude. But the sheets were icy. The whole room was suddenly frigid, worse than standing outside in a swimsuit in the middle of winter.
“I’m cold.”
A few seconds of silence, just enough time for her to wonder what he was doing, and then his bare skin pressed against hers, bringing with it the faint scent of smoke and his aftershave. Oh, that was good, both the heat and the smell. As a vregonis demon—a fire demon—he had a body temperature that was perpetually elevated. It had made the summer interesting and accounted at least in part for the meat-locker-esque temperatures at which she usually kept her house. She’d gotten into the habit of cranking the air up half an hour or so before she expected him to arrive, and at that moment, sick or not, she half expected to see ice crystals forming in the untouched glass of Sprite that Greyson’s guard Malleus had set by her bed.
But as much as Greyson’s overly warm body had to be worked around and compensated for in summer, at that moment she was eternally and ridiculously grateful for it. She almost thought she heard her own skin sizzle when it came into contact with his; some of the cramping in her muscles relaxed.
Only to tense up again when she saw, through her half-closed eyes, Greyson’s second guard and Malleus’s brother, Maleficarum, advancing on her with a hypodermic needle. Something clear squirted ominously from its sharp silver tip.
“Oh, no,” she managed. “You are not giving me a shot.”
“’Sonly under the skin, m’lady. You’ll barely even feel it, honest.” Maleficarum’s features did not do “innocent” well; he looked like a serial killer trying to hide a severed head behind his back. Not his fault. It was simply the way he was made. Bald head, horns, large frame, beady eyes. It was a good thing he was a guard demon, because his appearance would have been an issue in most professions. Megan couldn’t imagine, for example, Maleficarum as a pediatrician. Or either of his brothers. Spud, the third brother, was probably prowling around outside.
“I don’t want—”
“Let him.” Greyson rubbed her arm. “It’s basically just an antivenom. And something for the pain.”
“And that’s why I don’t want it. I need to tell you what happened today.”
“It won’t put you to sleep. Just let him give you the shot. Please?”
She hesitated. On the one hand, she wasn’t at all sure she believed him when he said it wouldn’t put her to sleep. On the other, something to kill the tremendous crashing ache in her head and the stabbing pains in the rest of her body sounded good.
Finally she nodded. “Go ahead, then. But if I fall asleep, I’m blaming you.”
“And your vengeance will be terrible indeed, I imagine.”
“Yes, it will.” She squeezed her eyes shut as Maleficarum wiped at her arm with an alcohol pad and slid the needle in. It didn’t really hurt—she wasn’t bothered by needles much anyway—but the necessity of it . . . that, she didn’t want to face.
A demon attack. A litobora demon, a poisonous psyche demon. Had Greyson and Malleus not shown up when they did—had they not been on their way to her place already—she would have died. As the pain in her body eased, that simple fact drilled itself into her head, crashing through every other thought and leaving her with nothing else.
“Somebody sent it, right?” she asked, dreading the answer. “I mean, that demon didn’t just show up here by chance.”
Damn him, and damn Maleficarum too, now sneaking out of the room. Her eyelids were getting heavy; whatever was in that shot was most certainly going to put her to sleep. But along with that came an easing of her nausea and the relaxation of her muscles, so she really couldn’t complain too much.
“I would think so, yes.” He snuggled her more closely to his chest. “A lion doesn’t just show up on your doorstep without help. Neither do litobora.”
“So somebody is specifically trying to kill me?”
Pause. Long pause, while his body tensed against hers. “I would think so, yes.”
“Shit.” Once again she knew she should care. Once again she couldn’t quite bring herself to; whatever was in that syringe was powerful. “Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ll find out, right?”
His lips on her forehead felt like a kiss through cotton. “I’ll certainly try.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that ‘try.’ ”
He sighed. “I’m not either.”
“Why would someone want to kill me?”
“Do you really want to discuss this now?”
No, she didn’t. But there didn’t seem to be much choice. Despite the gentle tugging of sleep, despite the peace finally settled in her limbs and stomach, she still felt the faint sting on the back of her calf. Still couldn’t quite forget the terror of those few minutes standing outside, alone but not at all alone.
“I don’t. But I’m kind of thinking we should.”
He helped her shift around to face him; the world spun for a second when she rolled over but settled again when her gaze found his face. Those sharp features, that dark hair and deep brown eyes, so familiar now, calmed her, but the look in those eyes didn’t. He was worried, and seeing him worried shook her.
He waited for her to settle comfortably before he spoke. “I suppose there are lots of reasons someone might want to kill you. Anyone in a position of power is also in a position of vulnerability. As you know.”
Yes, she knew. This was an old, old discussion. Her job—seeing patients and, to a lesser extent, the radio show—put her at risk. But what was she supposed to do?
Three choices, none of them appealing. The first was to take a piece of the undoubtedly crime-filled action the other Gretnegs offered her. Lucrative, but she had to be able to face herself in the mirror every day. The second was to let Greyson support her. Keep her. She didn’t even want to think about how she would face herself if she did that, let alone how she would fill her days.
The last was doing more with the radio show. Taking speaking engagements. Appearing on television. She didn’t want to do it, and she was pretty sure Greyson would practically have a heart attack if she suggested it. The semipublic nature of the show already made him antsy, she knew, although thankfully the media blitz the station orchestrated when the show first aired had died down. Going on TV, well, things didn’t get much more public. And there was that whole pesky public-image-dating-criminal issue.
Three choices. None of which she wanted to make. But at some point she would have to make one, especially now. That the attack had occurred at her home didn’t matter much. Neither did the fact that it was demon-related. She was vulnerable, and she knew she was, and she’d been hoping to put off having to do something about it, but it looked as though her days of putting it off were coming to a close.
But first things first. The knock at the door gave her the opportunity to veer off subject, and she was glad for it. “Come in,” she said, and was not remotely surprised when Rocturnus slunk sheepishly through the door.
“Megan, I’m sorry.” If he’d possessed a hat, she had little doubt he would have been turning it in his anxious fists at that very moment. As it was, he twisted his long-fingered hands together and stared at the carpet. “I should have been here.”
“It’s okay, Roc. You didn’t know.”
“Y
ou didn’t call me.”
“I thought it might—oh, never mind. It’s not like you would have been able to do anything about it if you had been here anyway.”
He straightened up, insult written all over his face. At least so she assumed. Her vision was a little bleary, haloed around the edges. “I could have helped. I could have done something.”
She sighed. “Right. Of course you could have. I’m sorry, Roc.”
“Do you think it’s to do with the FBI?”
“No, they wouldn’t—” she started, but Greyson cut her off.
“FBI?”
Oh, right. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him yet. “They came to see me today.”
“What, the entire Bureau?”
She would have laughed, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of it. She settled for a sleepy smile. “No, just one agent. She came about the Bellreive. Offered me immunity.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Testimony. About what happens at the meeting, I guess.”
“What was her name?”
She told him. “Oh, and one of my patients quit because he’s going to have an exorcism instead.”
“What?”
She repeated it, or at least started to. Halfway through the story she had to stop; he was laughing too hard for her to continue, and Roc was practically falling on the floor.
“Stop, it’s not funny. Well, maybe it’s funny. But no, don’t laugh, you’re shaking the bed.”
That plea, at least, had an effect. With obvious difficulty Greyson got himself under control; she didn’t think she’d ever seen him laugh that hard. Roc continued to giggle, a subtle, bizarre backdrop as she shut her eyes again.
“Exorcism? Darling, your patients never cease to amaze me. Exorcism, of all things.”
“Ted could really get hurt.”
“And that’s the choice Ted made. He’s a grown man. If he wants to do something incredibly stupid, that’s his prerogative. I somehow think we have more important things to worry about right now, don’t you?”
She opened one eye—opening both seemed like too much effort—and glared at him. As much as she could with one eye anyway. “I’m trying not to think about it.”
