“Not until a month ago. I looked up pictures of Rachel Boyle’s associates online, and recognized Madelyn as the woman who brought me to Nightingale House.”
Nightingale House. Jesus. No question that this demon either was Madelyn or connected to her.
When Nicholas had been a boy, she’d had his father committed to Nightingale House—and it had destroyed his business, his reputation, his life. It had been Madelyn’s first step in driving him toward suicide.
Fucking demons. His finger tightened on the crossbow trigger. As if she heard the movement, her gaze fell to his hand.
“I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t,” she said. “I’d rather not die.” Bullshit. She didn’t sound grateful or concerned.
“What happens if you die?” He let curiosity lighten his tone, as if he was considering pulling the trigger just to find out. Let her sweat. “Do you return to Hell?”
“I don’t know.” She watched him steadily. No sweating. Dammit. “Nicholas, I need your help. Somehow, I’m connected to Madelyn St. Croix, just as Rachel was. And your mother—”
“She’s not my mother,” he stated flatly. The idea sent fury through his veins, but he wouldn’t let her see that.
Her brows rose. “Then who is she?”
“A demon.”
“A demon,” she echoed. Something sparked in her eyes. Excitement ? Whatever it was, the emotion quickly vanished. “Is that what I am?”
“Yes.”
“And you are, too? You seem to suffer the same lack of affect that I do.”
The demon probably intended that observation to hurt him, to make him question his humanity, but to Nicholas, it only showed that she couldn’t read his emotions. Good. Rosalia’s tutelage had paid off there, too. She’d taught him to guard his mind—and obviously she’d done it well enough, as this demon couldn’t sense anything that he didn’t want to give her.
“I’m human,” he said.
“How can you tell?” Her gaze searched his face, as if looking for the differences. When he didn’t answer, she asked, “Was Rachel a demon, too?”
Oh, that was clever. Introduce doubt about Rachel, throw him off-kilter. Too bad Nicholas had already considered the possibility that Rachel had been Madelyn’s lackey all along.
Considered the possibility and discarded it. He’d been skinto-skin with her too many times. She’d been human—and the only reason the idea had ever occurred to him was because it could assuage his guilt. If she’d been a demon and her death had been a setup designed by Madelyn, then Nicholas had nothing to be sorry for. An attractive thought, but not true. He preferred to live with his regret rather than blame Rachel.
“Try again,” he said.
She didn’t. Almost dismissively, she looked away from Nicholas and scanned the room. “Are any of Rachel’s things still here?”
“No.” He had a few items, including the overnight bag she’d packed for the weekend they’d intended to spend together—Madelyn had shot her before they’d left town. The rest of Rachel’s belongings had been returned to her family. “Her parents took them back to the States. Why?”
“If you can’t help me, perhaps they can.” She touched the steel collar. “So let me go, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Not a fucking chance, especially if she truly meant to see Rachel’s parents. Goddamned demons. If this was a threat, she’d chosen the perfect one.
Unlike the police and the press, Rachel’s parents had believed Nicholas. When he’d told them that Rachel had thrown herself in front of him, they hadn’t asked what Nicholas had done to deserve such a sacrifice; they’d only said Rachel’s selfless act was exactly what they’d have expected from her. And though they hadn’t understood how her body had disappeared any better than Nicholas had, they’d believed that, too.
And they were still looking for her. If this demon showed up at their home, no doubt they’d welcome her with open arms and call it a miracle.
The Boyles didn’t deserve that. They’d suffered enough. No way in hell would Nicholas let a demon arrive at their house wearing their dead daughter’s face. But he couldn’t let her know that he felt the need to protect Rachel’s family from her, because she’d use it against him.
Nicholas focused on how he intended to use the demon, instead. “So you want me to just let you walk away?” He shook his head. “The way I see it, you’re the last person to have contact with Madelyn. That means you’re my best chance of finding her. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
And he wouldn’t get anywhere as long as she kept lying. All right, then. He’d call her bluff. She wanted to know who she really was? He’d discover how much she’d risk to find out.
“Okay.” He lowered the crossbow. “Then I propose a bargain: You help me track Madelyn down, and I’ll help you discover who you are.”
She hesitated. Damn right she did. A bargain was the most dangerous agreement a demon could make. Any party to a bargain that didn’t follow through on the terms would find their soul trapped in Hell’s frozen field when they died, tortured for eternity. A human who didn’t fulfill the terms would be trapped, too, but Nicholas was willing to take that risk to find Madelyn.
An emotion that might have been wariness entered her voice. “What would the bargain entail, exactly?”
“As I said. You use the knowledge you have to help me find the demon who impersonated my mother. And no lying to me for as long as we’re bound together—that’s part of this bargain. You can’t conceal information about the demon who pretended to be Madelyn, or anything that might lead me to her. Every relevant bit of info, no matter how trivial, you give to me the moment you think of it. In return, I’ll help you discover who you are.”
“I won’t be of use to you. I don’t know where Madelyn is,” she said.
Hedging, delaying. Nicholas hadn’t expected anything different. He raised the crossbow again. “So that’s a no.”
“No, I didn’t say that.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, as if forcing herself to think. Rachel used to do the same, but her eyes had never begun turning crimson as this demon’s eyes were. “I just . . . I’ve entered into a bargain before. I don’t know what. But I know that it’s not something I should do quickly. So I’m telling you now that you’ll be disappointed, because I don’t have answers for you.”
No. She was telling him now because if she entered into the bargain, she couldn’t lie.
“I don’t care,” Nicholas said. “If you don’t know where she is now, you can still agree to help. And I’ll help you in return.”
“What if we don’t find Madelyn or discover who I am?”
“It only matters that we help each other, not that we succeed. It only matters that you don’t conceal information or lie.”
She nodded. God, what a terrible bargainer she was. She hadn’t asked the same from him—probably because finding out who she was didn’t really matter.
It mattered to him. If she was telling the truth and didn’t know who Madelyn was, then tracing this demon’s history might lead him to Madelyn, anyway. They were obviously connected.
The glow receded from her eyes, leaving them clear and blue. “And if we fail, are we stuck together for the rest of our lives?”
“If we exhaust every possibility, we’ll agree to release each other from the bargain,” he said. Even if they never did, her life would be much longer than his. Surely her immortality was a detail that every demon couldn’t forget. “So, you help me, and I’ll help you. Are we agreed? You have to say it.”
She took a deep breath before slowly nodding. “Yes. We have a bargain.”
She’d actually agreed? Nicholas stared at her, replaying each step, making certain he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t expected that she’d go through with it. But she’d said it clearly: Yes.
Surprise shifted to triumph. He had her.
“Are you Madelyn?” But no, that was the wrong question. She might not be able to lie, but technicall
y, the demon he sought had never been Madelyn St. Croix; she’d just stolen a human woman’s identity. He clarified, “Are you the demon who impersonated my mother?”
“What do you mean, am I your moth—” She broke off. “Can’t you tell by looking?”
“I know demons can shape-shift.” How ignorant did she think he was?
She blinked. “We can?”
Jesus, even a bargain didn’t stop her from playing stupid. A direct question, then. She couldn’t evade that.
“Are you that demon?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Her lips pursed briefly. “I don’t know who I am, so if I can shape-shift, I suppose that means I could be anyone. But I saw Madelyn St. Croix, or someone who could have been her twin, and she wasn’t me.”
Whoever she saw could have been any demon shape-shifted—but most likely, the other demon had been Madelyn. So Nicholas had to accept that this wasn’t Madelyn . . . and that she truly didn’t know who she was.
He fought his disappointment. Even if this demon didn’t remember who she was, that didn’t mean she had no other useful knowledge.
“Where is Madelyn now?”
“I don’t know.”
For God’s sake. With effort, Nicholas concealed his frustration. “Who gave you the code to the house?”
“I don’t know. The pattern was familiar, and I just . . . entered it.” She demonstrated in the air, as if inputting a number into a keypad, then spread her hands. “But I don’t remember where I learned the code.”
Nicholas frowned. The bargain bound her to the truth. But how could she have no memory, yet know something as specific as a numerical code? “Did you come to this house in the past month?”
“No.”
Then Madelyn had. “When was the last time you were in contact with her?”
“Almost three years ago, when she left me at Nightingale House.”
Exactly as she’d claimed earlier. Nothing she’d said contradicted anything from before the bargain. Nicholas hadn’t expected that. Either she was manipulating him in some brilliant way that he couldn’t comprehend . . . or she had been telling the truth all along.
He didn’t know what to think of that. So he could only press on, and try to figure out her game after he found Madelyn.
“How did Madelyn escape from Hell?”
After breaking the Rules and killing a human, Madelyn should have been punished by Lucifer, and either tortured or slain. Six years wouldn’t have been long enough of a punishment—let alone three years, if this demon spoke the truth about when Madelyn had left her at Nightingale House.
She should have been punished in Hell . . . and even if she had escaped the Pit, Madelyn shouldn’t have been able to leave the realm. Almost three years ago, Lucifer had lost a wager with a Guardian, and every portal between Earth and Hell had been closed. They wouldn’t reopen for another five hundred years, and every demon who’d been in Hell would remain in that realm until the Gates opened again.
Almost three years . . .
Shit. The timing was exactly right. Somehow, Madelyn had escaped from Hell just before the Gates closed.
Had she brought this demon with her?
The demon shook her head. “I don’t know how she escaped Hell. I didn’t even know that Hell is a real place.”
How could that be true? “Then where were you before Nightingale House?”
Demons were creatures of habit. If Madelyn had hidden in a specific location between the time she escaped from Hell and left this demon at the psychiatric hospital, she might return there to conceal herself again.
“I don’t remember. Before Nightingale House, I don’t remember anything clearly. Only that Madelyn and I were . . . somewhere. I don’t know where. There was someone else with us. He cut these marks into me. His voice was so big—more painful than the knife.” She closed her eyes. “And I was frightened.”
For the first time, strong emotion came through in the tremble of her voice, in the clenching of her hands. But by the time she looked at him again, he couldn’t see any fear. Only expectation. Perhaps a faint hope.
And for an instant, he believed it was hope. As if she wasn’t acting, but truly thought he had answers for her.
God, he was in over his head. He didn’t even know if this memory loss she claimed was possible. Maybe none of this was true. Maybe she’d already broken a bargain with someone else and had nothing to lose by lying to him now. Before he went any further, he had to find out.
He set the crossbow on the mattress and retrieved his mobile phone. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t talk.”
She only lifted her eyebrows as if to ask where she would go, and watched from the edge of the bed as he found Rosalia’s number in his list of contacts.
The Guardian didn’t like him, but she’d answer any questions he had—and she was one of the few people he trusted to be honest with him. Three hundred years ago, her father had also been replaced by a demon; she understood his quest for vengeance better than anyone else could. She’d taught him how to search for Madelyn, to distinguish demons from humans, and which weapons would be most effective against one of their kind. Most demons and Guardians fought with swords, but in a physical match, pitting a demon against a human was no contest at all. Nicholas wasn’t fast or strong enough to pose a threat. Knowing the Rules—that a demon couldn’t fight him or hurt him—evened the odds. So did knowing their susceptibility to electric shock, and how to kill or slow them down.
Rosalia answered on the third ring, her rich Italian accent rolling over his name. “Nicholas.”
No need to ask why he was calling. He only contacted her when she was useful to him—when he had a question for her.
“Have you ever heard of a demon with amnesia?”
“Amnesia? No.”
That’s all he wanted to know. “All right—”
“But I’ve heard of those with their memories stripped away.”
He frowned. On the bed, the demon had straightened, her gaze locked on the phone. She could hear everything they both said, and there was probably no point speaking in Italian rather than English. He’d never heard of a demon who hadn’t lived on Earth long enough to pick up almost every human language.
But then, he’d never heard of a demon with her memories stripped, either.
“Why would that happen?” He switched to Italian and watched the demon’s brow furrow with confusion. Maybe an act . . . but he didn’t think so.
“As punishment, if they’d upset Lucifer—or just because he didn’t want the demon to know something.”
Perhaps that was what had happened to this demon. It didn’t explain how or why she resembled Rachel, but he found punishment easier to believe than a demon breaking a bargain.
“Just tell me, Rosalia: Even if the demon had no memory, would you still slay them?”
“Of course, unless it was more useful at the time to keep them alive. But I’d slay them eventually—and I’d be wary all the while it was alive. A demon’s nature doesn’t change, even if its memories do. The rebel angels who followed Lucifer were physically transformed into demons, but their new forms only revealed what they were inside. So never forget that they are evil, Nicholas. Every single one of them.”
He eyed the demon. “I suppose a former nun doesn’t call someone ‘evil’ lightly.”
To his surprise, Rosalia laughed. “No, I don’t.”
“What are you saying?” The demon got to her feet and started toward him. She froze when Nicholas showed her the remote device again. Her fingers curled at her thighs. Frustration? If so, good. She ought to feel a little of what Nicholas had, talking to her and receiving no answers at all.
She looked to the phone. “This woman knows more about demons than you? Who is she? Can I speak with her?”
Rosalia’s voice sounded sharply in his ear, her laughter gone. “Who is that, Nicholas? If a demon is there, don’t trust—”
Nicholas hung up, cutting her off. No, h
e couldn’t trust the demon. But she might be his only way to find Madelyn, so he’d take the risk.
If they were going to risk anything, though, they had to do it quickly. Rosalia wouldn’t wait around for him to call her back. She was probably heading to London right now—either flying with her wings or using her Guardian power to gather the darkness around her and speed through the night. If she found them, this demon would be dead within seconds.
Knowing Rosalia’s skill with a sword, perhaps she’d be dead in less than a second.
He tossed the remote to the bed. “We need to go. Now, before the Guardians catch up to us.”
She stood still as he reached for her neck. “Who are the Guardians?”
Whether she played stupid or just didn’t know, he didn’t have time to explain it. The heat of her body had warmed the steel collar. He unlocked it, tossed it aside.
“All you need to know right now is that the Guardians will kill you. So let’s head out.”
She nodded and started for the door. “Where to?”
The demon didn’t know how to find Madelyn, so they’d try to find Madelyn through her connection to Rachel . . . and get as far from London as they could.
“The States,” he said. “We’ll fly there tonight.”
“I can’t. I don’t have any ID.”
“And I wasn’t thinking of a plane.” When she looked at him blankly, Nicholas clenched his teeth and counted to three. “I know you can fly.”
Her eyes widened and she looked down at her hands. “I can shape-shift into a bird? How?”
Jesus H. Christ. The next time he made a bargain, Nicholas would damn well make certain the demon knew more than a bag of bricks.
“You can’t turn into a bird. You can only form wings—” Oh, fuck it. He turned for the door. “I have Rachel’s passport. I’ll charter a jet.”
“That’s good. It’s probably less likely to crash into the Atlantic than I am.” She hurried into the hallway after him. “Why do you have Rachel’s passport? Did you kill her?”
Even if this demon truly didn’t know that Madelyn had done it, why would she care? Perhaps she was just testing him to see if he’d break down into some guilt-induced confession. To see if Nicholas secretly felt that he was to blame, that his actions had killed her, boohoo.
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