He’d sure as hell feel better after she’d been slain, though. And if this demon—Ash—screwed up any opportunity to destroy Madelyn, he’d take her down, too.
Though he let that determination shine through his emotional shields like a beacon, Ash didn’t look away from him. She didn’t even blink. Christ. Didn’t a demon’s eyes get dry?
Apparently not. She held his gaze until he was practically on top of her, and when she did glance away, he didn’t think it had a thing to do with intimidation, with winning or losing. She simply decided to observe someone else.
He didn’t look around to see who. And though he’d intended to drive the remainder of the distance to Duluth, he couldn’t tolerate the thought of her watching him all that way—maybe learning too much about him. Better that she focused on the road. Taking her hand, he pressed the keys into her palm.
Her fingers twitched, her gaze snapping back to meet his. Startled? So was Nicholas. But she didn’t pull away, and he didn’t let go. He should have let go—and a demon’s touch should have been repulsive, but the warmth of her skin seemed to soak into his. He held on, letting the heat sink into him. Enjoying the feel of it.
Until her eyes began to glow. Jesus. He dropped her hand, pulled away. The cold air must have left him more chilled than he’d realized if the heat of a demon’s skin felt that good. Time to invest in a pair of gloves.
“Your eyes,” he warned her, and within a blink they were blue again. Shaking his head, he started around the vehicle to the passenger side. At this rate, she’d have the Guardians on them by nightfall. Or with Rachel’s face, a few humans.
He waited until she was in her seat. “You need to shape-shift.”
“All right. How?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “No lying. Just answer me directly: Can you shape-shift?”
“I don’t know if I can. But even if I can, I don’t know how.”
Shit. They’d reach Duluth a little before midnight, and she might go unrecognized in the sleeping city. Not so the next morning, when they drove to the Boyles’s house. He could make the trip by himself, leave her at the hotel, but he didn’t trust her that far. Not alone, not where he couldn’t keep an eye on her.
“Rachel lived in a small town,” he said. “You’d be recognized.”
Her eyes seemed to light. Not with crimson, but with anticipation. “Someone might know me.”
“They’d know Rachel, not you. And word would reach her parents that someone had seen her.” Fucked up he might be, but Nicholas wouldn’t do that to them. “They’d try to find you.”
“I want to meet them,” she said slowly, as if just realizing it—and as if she were surprised by the realization. “I want to.”
“Don’t even think it. You can’t. Not looking like that.”
The anticipation in her eyes faded. Anyone else, Nicholas might have felt like he’d kicked a kitten. With this demon, he thought the emotion would have quickly vanished, anyway. No disappointment replaced it.
She studied his face, then looked away to stick the key into the ignition. Over the quiet start of the engine, she said, “They wouldn’t believe I’m not their daughter, is that right?”
“Yes.”
Her amnesia would only make it more difficult to convince them, especially since she couldn’t shape-shift at will—and he’d end up staring down the barrels of Frank Boyle’s shotgun if he electrocuted her in front of them. Seeing the wings and horns might not matter, regardless. If they wanted to believe this was Rachel badly enough, nothing would stop them from doing so.
So why hadn’t this demon taken advantage of that before now? For someone who claimed to be searching for answers, she’d been slow to seek information from the likeliest source.
“Why didn’t you contact Rachel’s parents?”
“What purpose would it serve? They don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re certain of that.”
“If they had any idea that someone who looked like Rachel was alive, they’d have come for me. Nothing would have stopped them. But they didn’t come, so obviously they don’t even know I exist, let alone know who I am.”
She was right. But it didn’t explain how she’d learned that about the Boyles. “You read that on the Internet, too?”
“No. I just know it. It’s like . . . remembering a fact. I don’t realize the knowledge is there until I think about it, but when I do, I’m certain that it’s true.”
So her screwed-up memory treated the Boyles’ love for their daughter as a fact. Knowing the Boyles, Nicholas couldn’t argue that it wasn’t. And since neither Nicholas nor the demon had any idea about how she knew that fact, he dropped the issue.
So did Ash. She sat, looking into the rearview mirror—as she had been for some time, he realized. She’d moved the transmission into reverse, but held her foot on the brake.
“Why are we waiting here?”
She lifted her brows at the image in the mirror. Nicholas turned, looked through the back window. Not much to see. Big rigs idling. Empty vehicles in the parking lot, and others at the station fueling up.
“There’s a dog lying on the seat of that car,” she said. “I’ve noticed that a lot more people in America keep one as a pet. If I got one, I’d seem more normal.”
A dog? Rage blasted through him, so hot and viscous it felt like vomit. This demon thought he’d get her a dog? He’d cut off his legs before putting an animal in her care. Stomach roiling at the thought, he faced forward, jaw clenched. He wouldn’t let her see how her comment affected him. Fuck. Maybe she already knew. Maybe Madelyn had told her.
And she wouldn’t shut up about it. Wouldn’t stop looking at the mirror. “Do you think the family will mind if we take it? They left it in a cold car while they eat. They can’t care too much.”
Nicholas forced himself to speak, and kept his voice even. He wouldn’t give the demon this part of him. “A cold car isn’t going to hurt the dog.”
“Not physically. It’s lonely, though. I can hear it whimpering.”
And he could still hear the pained yip after his mother had cuddled the terrier that had scampered at Nicholas’s heels since he’d learned to walk. He could still see the surprise and horror in her expression when she’d called to him.
Nicky, love, come quickly! Something’s happened to Ringo!
Even as a boy, part of him had understood what she’d done. He simply hadn’t believed it, not for years. Now he knew that even though a demon couldn’t hurt a human, animals didn’t have the same protection—and if a demon could hurt a human by hurting something that he loved, she would.
“Get the idea out of your head and start driving, demon, or I’ll contact the Guardians and have them come for you now.” Their bargain and his soul be damned.
Ash didn’t respond. Nicholas thought she was still looking at the mirror, but no. She was watching him. Probably assessing everything he’d said, cataloguing his weaknesses. Fuck this.
“Drive,” he repeated. “Now.”
With a shrug, she reversed out of their spot. “Did your dog know what she was?”
“What?”
“Did he sense that Madelyn was a demon? Is that why she killed him?” She flicked on the radio and adjusted the heat, turning the temperature all the way to high. “She did, didn’t she?”
Goddammit. It was his fault, though. He had to do a better job of guarding his responses. “Yes.”
“She killed more than one?”
“No.”
Not that he knew of. One had been enough—and she’d milked it for years. I don’t think it’s a good idea to buy another pet, love, until I’m certain you’ve learned to care for your furry friends a little better. You don’t want him to end up like poor Ringo, do you?
“Was she afraid it would reveal her true nature? Did he bark at her, like in Terminator?” Ash frowned. “They don’t bark at me.”
“That’s because you’re a demon, not a killer robot.” Though Nicholas had
to admit he’d once wondered the same thing. He wouldn’t have ever used a dog to help him find Madelyn, not after what she’d done—but he’d wondered why animals didn’t know. He’d only learned the answer after Rosalia had told him. “What is a dog supposed to sense? They don’t have psychic abilities. And you don’t even have an odor, nothing to warn them.”
So they’d come up to her, lick her, and look for love until she broke their necks. Humans didn’t fare much better when they trusted demons, but at least their bones remained intact. Nicholas assumed that the only reason demons didn’t go around killing animals for the fun of it was because they needed to do the same thing Ash wanted to do: appear normal. Too many dead animals would raise suspicions.
That point apparently swept right past the demon. She looked down at herself, as if in confusion. “I don’t have an odor?”
“No.”
She didn’t take his word for it. Tugging out the front of her hooded sweatshirt, she dipped her nose beneath the neckline and sniffed. Jesus Christ. Suddenly, Nicholas didn’t know whether to laugh or to go for some pansy-ass, horrified reaction. What the hell was that? If she wanted to appear normal, sniffing herself in public wouldn’t help her cause.
She didn’t seem to notice his struggle any more than she’d been aware of her gaffe. “I do have an odor,” she said. “But I can barely smell it. It’s nothing like yours.”
His odor? God. He wouldn’t ask. She didn’t give him a chance to, anyway.
“Are all demons that obvious, then?”
He didn’t follow. “What?”
“Killing dogs. It seems cliché.”
“Tell that to an eight-year-old boy, and see how much a cliché matters. They do what works—and they do it again and again.”
And he’d said “they,” as if Ash wasn’t included in their number. Maybe that was her game: making him believe that she was different, putting him off guard.
It wouldn’t happen.
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be effective. It’s just not original. And if I think it’s cliché, when my only experience with demons is what seems familiar from books and movies, then the whole ‘killing a boy’s dog’ thing must be really tired.”
An odd way to come around to it, but she wasn’t wrong. “So it is,” he agreed.
“I’d rather be a clever demon. Perhaps that’s why it is taking me so long to come up with a plot against you. My standards are too high.”
Nicholas bit back his laugh. Damn it. How did she turn his anger and suspicion around so easily? In all probability, she was plotting to destroy him. He ought to be preparing for it, not finding humor in it.
“Have you been trying to think up many plots?”
“Not really.” She gave him a sideways glance. “It ought to be simpler now, knowing that I should think of something cliché. And you never answered me: Are demons all so obvious?”
“It’s not so obvious,” he said. “Not when there are so many humans doing the same things that you demons do.”
“Oh. So what’s one more bit of evil here and there?”
“Yes. They hide in plain sight.”
“Then how will we find Madelyn? How can you tell demons from humans unless they give themselves away?” She paused. “How did you realize she was a demon in the first place? You didn’t know it when she killed Rachel, and you haven’t seen her since that night.”
No, he hadn’t. “I spent a lot of money.”
“Oh, really? How did that help? Is there a code printed on the back of a thousand-dollar bill, like something out of a Dan Brown novel?”
Was she irritated? He couldn’t be certain. She didn’t show enough emotion to categorize her response as snippy, but with just a little more heat he might have. A little drier, and it might have been sarcasm. Either way, she obviously didn’t appreciate indirect answers—or attempts to evade an answer.
Interesting. Demons were all about wordplay and obfuscation. They loved to twist words or give them double meanings. Ash didn’t. At least, not in any way that Nicholas recognized. Every word from Madelyn’s tongue had dripped with sweet poison, killing his father before she’d turned it on Nicholas. Yet even now, when he thought Ash might be irritated, she didn’t attack him. Had she forgotten how to do that, too?
He could easily find out. “She and Rachel vanished. Poof! Gone. For a while, I’d wondered if I’d snapped. Even my therapist thought I might have had a psychotic break—”
“You have a therapist?”
And she’d jumped right on it. What would come next? Telling him that he possessed a weak mind and spirit? That he wasn’t a real man?
He hoped she’d try. He’d better know how to deal with her if she began responding like every other demon.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “With a mother like Madelyn, I needed one.”
“For how long?”
“Since I came to the States at fifteen.”
Thanks to his father, he’d had dual citizenship and enough money to escape Madelyn’s influence. He wouldn’t take the same way out his father had, however—and from the moment he’d stepped off the plane, he’d been planning how to return and destroy her. But Nicholas had also known that Madelyn had already managed to poison him with her words and her neglect, and that if he didn’t seek help digging out the rot, he’d end up like his father, anyway.
Madelyn would have called his reliance on a therapist weak; he saw it as defiance and another form of vengeance. Despite everything she’d done, Madelyn wouldn’t break him.
“You’ve had the same therapist for twenty years?”
“Yes.”
“And he—Or is it she?”
“She.”
Only by mistake. At fifteen, he hadn’t wanted a thing to do with women, especially not someone the same age as his mother. So he’d picked Leslie Sinclair out of a directory, but when the appointment came, had discovered a woman with a man’s name. Good manners had kept him on the couch, but by the end of the session, she hadn’t had to twist his arm to return.
Now, Nicholas believed that Leslie hadn’t just saved his life—she’d probably nipped some nascent misogyny in the bud. Just as well. According to many people he’d worked with or whose companies he’d ripped apart, Nicholas was already enough of a dick. No need to add woman hating to his list of sins.
“Does she know you’re obsessed with revenge?”
“Of course.”
Although the reason behind that revenge had changed over time. As a fifteen-year-old boy, it had been born from a sense of betrayal. His mother had forsaken him. Madelyn hadn’t even attempted to stop him from leaving England, and he’d wanted her to regret that, and to regret every careless or razor-edged remark she’d ever made.
After months of talking to Leslie, he’d recognized exactly why he’d wanted revenge so badly: He’d wanted Madelyn to feel sorry, dammit. He’d wanted her to notice her son, to acknowledge the pain she’d caused him.
Within a year, he no longer cared whether Madelyn regretted anything, but he hadn’t lost the desire to ruin her. Recounting every detail of his childhood to Leslie had shown him that his mother wasn’t just thoughtless and neglectful—he’d realized that she was a sadistic, evil bitch who’d destroyed his father and tried to do the same to him. He’d been determined to destroy her in return by taking away the only thing she’d ever nurtured: her business. Nicholas had formed Reticle with that single goal in mind, putting Wells-Down and his mother in the crosshairs, and he hadn’t let anyone stand in his way.
Then he’d discovered that Madelyn was a demon, that she’d likely killed his true mother and murdered Rachel, and everything had changed. He’d been driven by revenge before, but that was nothing compared to the need to destroy Madelyn now.
“And in twenty years, your therapist hasn’t tried to redirect your hostility?”
“She tried. It didn’t take. Now she just keeps me honest about what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.”
“You don’t lie to
her, then? You don’t avoid her questions?”
At Ash’s narrowed look, Nicholas couldn’t stop his laugh. So that did irritate her. But as much as the demon wanted answers from him, she was also easily distracted by new information. “I tell her everything.”
“Then I want to be your therapist.” She huffed out a breath. “You even told her that Madelyn is a demon?”
“Yes.”
“And she believed you?”
“No. But I don’t pay her to believe me. I pay her to treat me, to force me to acknowledge my motivations and to challenge my assumptions. So far, I’ve met every challenge to my satisfaction—and although she might think I’m delusional, I know I’m not.”
Ash didn’t respond, but her brows lifted and a smile quickly touched her mouth.
“Why is that funny?” Nothing else had amused her, but that did?
“Not funny. It just finally makes sense. I wondered if you were lying about the therapist because you’re too arrogant and certain of yourself to have one. But now that I hear ‘I met every challenge’ and ‘I know I’m not crazy,’ it finally fits what I already knew of you.”
Nicholas wished that something about her would fit. Her assessment of his personality was spot on, but he couldn’t hear any judgment in it. A man as driven as he was required a certain level of self-confidence, but usually people who called him “arrogant” used the word like a curse . . . and followed it up with “son of a bitch.” Ash didn’t, and it threw him off.
“I focus on what I want,” he said. “And I don’t allow anything to get in my way.”
“I noticed. And in any case, you didn’t have a psychotic break. Rachel and Madelyn did disappear. How?”
Back around to that, then? So she allowed distractions, but was tenacious about following through. He’d remember that. She could be diverted from her course for only a short time.
“A demon can make some things vanish—I think that’s what happened to Rachel’s body. Madelyn took it, and then ran off so quickly that it appeared as if she’d vanished, too.”
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