Nicholas closed his eyes. He seemed to choke out his reply. “I don’t.”
“So you say, but it’s difficult to trust humans who aren’t bound by a demonic bargain to tell the truth.”
He gave a short laugh and opened his eyes. “So noted.”
She couldn’t detect a hint of coldness in his amusement. Good enough for now.
She turned away to collect her shirt, aware that he still watched her. Aware that her body reacted to that look.
Porno time, then. She could have a fresh memory of both responses, and better compare them.
He still watched her as she retrieved a recently laundered blanket from the closet and spread it over the love seat facing the television. She sat and picked up the remote.
“My chair?” Nicholas asked.
She didn’t look around. “You’ll notice I didn’t sit with you during dinner.”
He joined her on the love seat a moment later, newspaper in hand. He read steadily through the opening credits, but by the time the grunting and ass slapping began, his fingers had crumpled the paper’s edges. Not even once did he glance at Ash.
A round of perfunctory sucking and moaning finally pushed him over the edge. With a muttered “Fuck,” he rose and stalked into the connecting room. Shortly afterward came the sound of undressing and the spray of the shower. Ash would have bet anything that he’d turned the temperature to cold.
She switched off the video. Her test hadn’t worked well; she still didn’t know if the movie aroused her, or if her sexual tension had been created because she’d imagined doing everything she watched with Nicholas.
She liked to think that he’d been imagining the same. If so, her plot had worked, somewhat. She didn’t see him naked, but she’d learned that he’d walk away from a sexual situation with her . . . which meant that despite his upper hand, she affected him more than he could tolerate.
That knowledge could be useful. So she’d had a productive evening, if a little evil.
And she’d enjoyed the hell out of it.
CHAPTER 8
Until Nicholas stopped at a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Duluth, Ash forgot about his plan to mislead the Guardians by abandoning everything in the hotel room and remaining checked-in. When he’d mentioned paying for the new room in cash, she’d expected them to pull up to a flea-bitten motel, but the converted Georgian Revival mansion sat on two picturesque acres of snow-covered fields surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.
Maybe Nicholas saved the flea-biters for when he was truly desperate, and not just hiding from angelic warriors who’d cut off Ash’s head the moment they saw her.
She waited in the rented SUV while he went inside, and listened to him spin a tale about hotel bed bugs, stolen credit cards, and lost luggage, charming the innkeeper into a quickie reservation. As it was winter, and a slow period for tourists, he might have gotten a room anyway, but the week he paid in advance probably helped his cause.
To pass the time, Ash counted the money left in his briefcase. It took her longer than she’d expected. No wonder he’d willingly abandoned a few thousand-dollar suits at the hotel. With this stash, he could buy and abandon them several times over.
Strange that she felt no urge to steal the cash. Once again, her demonic nature failed her. Now she only had to decide whether her impatience to travel north and meet Rachel’s parents was rooted in some demonic need, too . . . or a human one.
Finally, Nicholas returned to the SUV. His gaze dropped to the open briefcase. Ash lifted her brows, inviting him to accuse her, but he only said, “There’s always more.”
Dammit. If he cared so little, she should have taken some. Next time.
Just north of Duluth, Ash tried to shape-shift again. When her face remained the same, she admitted defeat and climbed into the back, mentally urging Nicholas to drive faster. Perhaps it was best that he didn’t, though. Even a Minnesotan deputy might question the number of weapons in the long black duffel on the backseat. Ash shared space with it, hunkered down below the windows.
Nicholas was probably right that she’d be easily recognized when they neared Rachel’s home. The township numbered only a little over two thousand residents, the population distributed along four rural roads. Rachel’s parents lived a few miles past the center of the township. Ash held her breath as they drove through, her heart pounding with anticipation, her throat tight and chest full.
She knew these roads. Outside the window, she only had a view of the pointed tops of pine trees, their limbs drooping beneath a heavy blanket of snow, but she could picture the two-lane stretch of pavement. She could almost see the dirty snow pushed to the side by the plows. And even before Nicholas began to slow, she knew that the turn onto the lane shared by the Boyles and their neighbors was coming up. When he did turn, she anticipated the crunch of gravel beneath the tires, because she knew the Boyles and their neighbors paid a private contractor to plow and sand the driveways after each heavy snowfall.
Her gut-deep excitement boiled over. “We’re almost there.”
Nicholas threw a glance over his shoulder—probably to check that she was still hidden. “How do you know?”
“It’s familiar. It’s all so familiar.” She had to force herself to stay down. In just a few moments, the Boyles would be able to look out of their living room windows and see the vehicle approaching. She still couldn’t picture their faces, but she could visualize the house. “It’s the Craftsman with the red door. The driveway is marked with a gated entrance between two brick columns—but the gate is always open, and there’s a concrete garden gnome on top of each column, because . . . because . . .”
“Because?”
Disappointment pierced her excitement. “I can’t remember why. They mean something, but I don’t know what. Will you ask them?”
He didn’t answer for a moment . . . and then several moments. Ash tried to recapture her anticipation. They were driving closer, closer—but no, something was wrong. Something was unfamiliar.
Nicholas began to slow. Ash shook her head.
“No, this is wrong. You’ve passed the house—”
“On purpose. Now sit up and take a look before it’s out of sight.”
Ash turned in the seat. Through the back window, everything appeared as she’d expected: the columns flanking the driveway and the snow piled around them, the gnomes, and farther back from the lane, the house and the red door.
A red door cordoned off with yellow police tape.
Her fingers tightened on the back of the seat. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” His voice had lowered to a murmur. As soon as the house was hidden behind a stand of pine trees, he stopped in the lane and cut the engine. “Can you hear anything?”
Only his heartbeat and hers and the ticking of the motor and a few winter birds and the cracking of branches beneath the ice and snow and the wind through the pine needles and the snuffling of some animal out in the woods and a neighbor’s dog scratching at a door and the tumbling of an electric clothes dryer—
No. She could focus. She had to focus on the Boyles’ house.
She recognized the sounds a moment later. “Two people are inside the house, talking,” she said softly. “I can’t make out what they are saying, but it’s definitely a man and a woman.”
“The Boyles?”
A man and a woman . . . maybe they were the Boyles. If so, they weren’t familiar.
The realization brought an unexpected lump to her throat. Their voices weren’t familiar.
“Ash?”
“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “They are—Wait.”
She frowned, listening. Had they gone so silent? Why couldn’t she hear anything at all from the house now?
Why didn’t she feel anything?
“They’re gone,” she whispered. “They’ve left.”
“In a car? There wasn’t one in the drive.”
No, there hadn’t been—and she hadn’t heard the garage door ope
n, or an engine start. What the hell?
Frowning, she glanced back at Nicholas. “They’re simply gone. And there’s something more I just realized: I couldn’t sense them at all. Their emotions were blocked, like yours are. Actually, more than yours. I can feel the barrier you put up. I couldn’t feel theirs.”
“Fuck.” His heart sped up. “Guardians. We’ve got to go.”
“No!” Ash scrambled into the front seat, snatching the keys from the ignition before he could turn them. She didn’t give him time to become angry. Before he’d had more than a second to stare at the empty keyhole, she said, “Nicholas, something happened in that house. I need to know what.”
“The Boyles aren’t there.”
“No, because something happened. I have to know.” When he hesitated, she added, “Please.”
“The Guardians might come back. If they do, you’re dead.”
She didn’t care. “I need to look. Please.”
It didn’t matter if he agreed. In another second, she’d jump out into the snow and go, anyway. But he set his jaw and nodded, holding his hand out for the keys.
He needed to know, too, she realized. Discovery by the Guardians could jeopardize their bargain and his search for Madelyn, yet he’d agreed to go back to the house, anyway. Ash wished she could kiss him for that, but she settled for shutting up and letting him concentrate on reversing the SUV down the icy lane. He backed into the driveway, as if preparing for a quick getaway. Perhaps he was.
She leapt out before he cut the engine. Cold air bit into her face, her lungs. Her heel skidded out from under her, and the world seemed to twist, icy and dark and erupting with screams all around her, the dark tower spearing up into the red sky, not trees but worse, Lucifer looking down at them all, but he’d let her free and the agony would be over, and the screaming pain, her body gone, gone—
No. Ash planted her feet, stayed upright. Her stomach heaved up a scream, but it couldn’t get past the dread tightening her throat. The house was too still, too cold.
And she could smell the blood from here.
“Come on.” Nicholas caught her elbow, pulled her forward. He carried a crossbow, the bolt already loaded and ready.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She followed him to the porch, up the stairs. Nicholas swore at the locked front door. Ash found the key exactly where it should have been, beneath the blue cushion on the front porch swing. He took it from her without question, studying her face.
“Are you sure you want to go in?”
Ash couldn’t imagine what she looked like, that he had to ask that. “Yes.”
“You stay here until I’ve cleared the rooms, made sure no one is waiting.”
“No.”
He shook his head, but didn’t argue. The police tape ripped away easily. Opening the door, he took a step inside—and stopped. Though his shields, she sensed the hot burst of rage, the hard bitterness of grief.
No, no, no.
Nicholas backed up, began to turn. “Let’s go out—”
Ash ducked under his arm, was through the doorway before he could touch her, before he could stop her. Oh, God, she knew this house. The wooden floors polished to a high shine, the coatrack that looked like a bowling pin with arms, the pine chest beside it that was the perfect place to sit and remove a pair of boots. Emotions flooded her, so many things that she knew but couldn’t remember. She couldn’t breathe.
Then she did breathe, and smelled the blood again. She turned toward the living room and saw it.
The cornflower blue rug that should have been in the center of the living room was missing, and she knew, she knew that somewhere that rug had a huge, irregular stain on it. Because the rest of the blood was splattered and dried against the walls, across the marble fireplace, in handprints on the floor.
The scene blurred, and she suddenly wanted to stop feeling anything, wanted to go back to the way life had been at Nightingale House, where every emotion skimmed along the surface. Because now the emotions stabbed, and stabbed, and even though she held her stomach and tried to keep her guts in, she could feel how they ripped and tore with every drop of blood she saw in that room.
With her demon vision, she saw them all.
Then Nicholas was in front of her, holding her face, forcing her to see him. “Ash. We don’t know what happened here. Who it happened to. And whatever happened, they might have survived.”
She knew who it had happened to. She knew who’d been in this room. The knitting basket set beside the armchair and the haphazard tangle of a partially finished scarf told her that Rachel’s mother had been here. The tray tipped over next to the recliner, the scattered pieces of a model train said that Rachel’s father had been here, too.
“Ash.” He shook her a little, and with effort, she focused on him again. “I’m leaving you here to check the rest of the house. All right?”
No. But she nodded.
As the sound of his footsteps moved down the hallway, she entered the living room. A framed photo sat on the fireplace mantel. Taken during the summer in the house’s backyard, it depicted a smiling Rachel flanked by a middle-aged man and woman. Her parents.
They didn’t look any more familiar than Nicholas had the first time Ash saw his picture. How could that be? How could she feel this much fear and dread, this terror that they’d been hurt—or worse—and yet have no memory of them at all? How could she recognize the location where the picture had been taken, but have no memory of being there?
“There’s no one here,” Nicholas said from behind her. “Ash, we have to go now.”
Yes, they did. She joined him in the hallway. “We need to find out what happened.”
“We will.” His gaze dropped to the photo she still held, but he didn’t tell her to put it back. Perhaps he realized she wouldn’t have. “Who would have put that tape across the door?”
The township didn’t have a police force. “The county sheriff. His office is in Duluth.”
“We’ll head back, then. Look, you can’t go with me. There might be family, friends at the sheriff’s or the hospital. People who’d recognize Rachel. So I’ll take you to the bed-and-breakfast. I have to leave you there alone. Do you have any weapons in your cache?”
That mental storage space. “If I do, I don’t know how to get to them.”
“I’ll give you some, then. What can you use?” He lifted his crossbow. “This?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“A sword? I have one in the car.”
She glanced down at her hands. Could she use a sword? “I don’t know that, either.”
His mouth tightened. “Can you fight hand-to-hand?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Because if the Guardians were here, they are obviously looking for you.”
“And if they knew exactly where I was, they’d already be on me. Wouldn’t they?” When he nodded, she said, “So chances are, they don’t know I’ll be at the B and B, either.”
He must have agreed. With a nod, he said, “All right. I’ll drop you off, and you stay in our room.”
Easy enough. “And if they do come?”
Nicholas started for the door, his expression grim. “Can you run?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d better run faster than they do.”
The crime scene photos were worse than the house had been.
Taylor closed the Boyles’ murder file and passed it to Revoire. No longer the farmer, he’d changed into the same “federal agent” suit that she wore. Appearance was always important. Not many of the smaller law enforcement agencies had heard of Special Investigations, even though they were a legitimate division within the Homeland Security Department.
“They aren’t pretty,” Sheriff Brand said, nodding at the photos. He was the kind of cop Taylor liked: professional, courteous, damn sure of his job and how to do it. He hadn’t put up a fuss when they’d arrived and asked to look
at the Boyle case, claiming that the MO matched that of a serial killer they’d been tracking. He’d simply taken a look at their credentials, checked them out, and invited them into his office.
“No, they aren’t,” Taylor agreed. Horrific—and she knew Brand felt the same. He wasn’t interested in getting involved in a pissing contest with the feds. He reserved his anger for the man who’d done it, and his pity for the couple killed. “Did you know them?”
Brand shook his head. “I talked with them a few times after their girl, Rachel, went missing six years back. But she was working over in London at the time, so there wasn’t much to do. A shame. Pretty girl, sharp as a tack. We looked at Steve Johnson then, just routine—she’d had some trouble with him—but they hadn’t seen each other since she left that school in Chicago.”
Rachel Boyle. Why did that name sound familiar? Taylor couldn’t immediately recall, but she remembered the photo on the fireplace mantel at the Boyles’ house. Just the three of them.
“No other family?”
“Nope. It was a neighbor who spotted Steve Johnson sitting on their front porch swing holding that butcher knife. No coat, no shoes, all cleaned up and just staring off into space. She didn’t recognize him, so she called it in.” Brand shook his head. “That part of the county, we get a hunting accident now and then. A few meth heads, a few missing hikers. Nothing like this. Sick.”
So they had Steve Johnson pretty much red-handed, and with a confession on top of it. Case closed for the locals. Taylor and Revoire wouldn’t be able to do the same so easily. They wouldn’t pursue Steve Johnson. The courts could take care of him, and influenced by a demon or not, the man had made a choice. Free will mattered. He’d made a choice to seek out the Boyles. He’d made a choice to pick up a knife. He’d made a choice to murder them. At any point, he could have chosen differently, and there was nothing the demon could have done to force him.
But Johnson hadn’t resisted, and his actions had served the demon well. The choice Johnson had made would probably send him to Hell, too.
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