by Holley Trent
Claude sighed and joined the trio. “You keeping secrets from me?”
“Not on purpose.” He relayed the address to John, and moments later, the three had teleported into Charles’s Philadelphia apartment.
He took a step back from his brothers, jamming his hands into his pockets as John and Claude turned slowly, taking in their surroundings.
“Mon dieu.” Claude’s eyes narrowed as his gaze landed on Charles. “How do you afford this? You’ve never taken on side jobs like me, and you never take victims’ money.”
The “this” in question was the top unit of a nineteenth-century walk-up. It was barely furnished, but comfortable enough for a man who spent most of his days stalking women at truck stops.
“Are you on the dole from Papa?”
“Fuck no.” At the very mention of their father, the skin of Charles’s left palm burned with a white hot intensity made him suck in air involuntarily. He closed his hand into a fist, covering his demonic mark, and gritted his teeth, riding out the pain.
Claude wrapped his hands around Charles’s fist and pried his fingers open. “Let me see it.”
“Why?” he said through his chattering teeth. Just because he was immortal didn’t mean he couldn’t feel pain. Pop usually didn’t resort to communicating through his mark, but he’d been ignoring summonses again—been blocking out his telepathic discourse. Pop did what he could to get attention when he wanted it, and if that meant having his children wish for dismemberment to ease the pain, so be it.
“Just open them. I can fix it.”
Slowly, Charles uncurled his fingers and Claude traced the tip of his index fingers over the burning blue mark.
The pain intensified, sending crackling heat up his arm, and Charles tried to draw back his hand.
“Hold him,” Claude said to John, and without hesitation, John gripped Charles’s forearm.
“Trai-traitor,” Charles accused through chattering teeth.
Claude muttered some words under his breath, and slowly, the lava in Charles’s veins cooled, the glowing blue mark dimmed. Claude wasn’t so much pushing the pain back as absorbing it, judging by the bead of sweat over his brow and the blood red cast of his eyes.
He dropped Charles’s hand and closed his eyes, still muttering.
Charles rubbed his palm over his pants leg, abrading the flesh against the rough fabric as Claude closed his eyes and whispered some incantation.
He’d seen Claude do a lot of magic before, but nothing like this.
Maybe they were both keeping secrets—or maybe they just hadn’t had reasons to share.
“You all right?” Charles asked when Claude wove a meandering path to the sofa.
Eyes closed again, Claude nodded. “He used to try that shit with me, right around the time I was with Laurette and didn’t heed his summons. I learned how to send him a reply in kind.”
“So, he’ll know you two are together at the moment,” John said. He perched on the chair arm near Claude and eyed his big brother, apprehension clear in his features. “That you did it.”
Claude shrugged, and then rolled his shoulders as if to loosen major kinks from his spine. “What’s a bit more trouble? So, Charles, why are we here?”
“Two reasons. I need to get some paperwork for my accountant, and—”
John snorted. “You have an accountant?”
“Calvin recommended him. Don’t interrupt. I’m scatterbrained enough as it is with everything going on.” He raked his fingers through his loose hair and paced in front of the empty bookcase. “I inherited a lot of money from my mother. It’s always made me uncomfortable given the circumstances of her death, so I never brought it up. I didn’t go to Princeton on a scholarship, you know?”
“All these years, and I thought you had women buying things for you like some sort of demonic gigolo,” Claude said, and his former good humor returned in the form of a churlish grin.
“No. The reason I’m telling you this now is because that expansion on Clarissa’s house needs to happen sooner rather than later, and you’re not going to be able to do it alone, John.”
“Right. I’ll outsource all the labor to the very first supernatural construction company I can find.”
“No need to be cheeky. Regular workers can do the job just fine and I’ll spend whatever it takes to get them done and off the property quickly.”
“Why?” Claude asked. “Why is that a priority?”
“I’m not going to beat around the bush. That bounty-hunting demon got too close to Marion last week after her blood draw, and I couldn’t sleep for two days after finding out.”
“You mean that appointment Julia couldn’t go to?”
“Yeah. Clarissa sniffed the guy out and took care of him without Marion being wise to it, but if he can find her, then I know others will, too. She needs to stay on Clarissa’s property, and we’ll have to figure something else out for her prenatal care.”
Claude made a chuffing noise and leaned back against the sofa, crossing his legs at the ankles atop the coffee table. “You gonna tell that girl she can’t even leave the house for doctor’s appointments? You done lost your mind.”
“Maybe I’ll have you tell her.”
“Squash that noise. Your woman, your problem.”
“I’ll remember that. But look, the other thing is Ross is becoming increasingly erratic, and he’s dropped his psychic shield against me. I don’t think he realizes he’s done it. He’s a far weaker psychic than any of us are, so he probably doesn’t know he’s transmitting on all frequencies.”
“What’s he up to?” John asked, squinting out the window at the busy street below.
“He’s got a one-track mind. He’s only interested in pleasing Pop, and he’d do anything to gain his favor.”
“The favor none of us reasonable sorts want anymore,” Claude said.
“He doesn’t dwell much on Marion, but he’s trailing her parents. Got close a couple of times. I can sense his emotions. They oscillate so violently, the highs and lows. Marion doesn’t seem to be so important to him yet, but I don’t know how long that’ll last, especially if that hunter shared info with others. Word will get around that she’s alive, and any demon worth his salt will sniff around Clarissa’s area.”
“It’s the obvious place to look,” John said.
“Just tell us what you need to do, and we’ll work it out.” Claude stretched out on the sofa, cradling his head atop entwined fingers. He closed his eyes and added on the tail of a yawn, “Better hurry up and get what you came here for. We ain’t that hard to find right now given the magic I just played with. I’m not really in the mood to have a pissing contest with Papa, so let’s go before he gets out of whatever woman he’s taken for the day.”
Charles grunted and turned on his heel toward the bedroom. Claude was right. The last thing they needed was a confrontation, but as he turned the doorknob he wondered if pitted against each other, whether Pop would be more formidable, or Charles’s cunning half-witch brother.
He hoped he never had to find out.
• • •
Marion’s plan had been to give her baby daddy a swift kick to one of his shins, but before she could clear the ten feet between the front door and the kitchen archway, John picked her up under her arms as if she weighed nothing and plopped her onto a chair.
“Chill out, sissy,” he said. “You said you’d be cool.” He kept his hands planted atop her shoulders as if she were going to bolt.
Well. Yeah. She would have if she thought she’d get very far.
“I am cool,” she lied through clenched teeth.
“That’s usually what Ariel says when she means the exact opposite.”
She opened her mouth to protest the comparison, but closed it, figuring it’d be a case of the lady protesting too much. While she and Ariel had wholly different personalities, they did share enough traits to know that some quirks were just genetic.
She closed her eyes and took a deep, calmi
ng breath. Opening them again, she forced her gaze toward Charles and said in the calmest voice she could manage, “You cancelled my appointments. I got the letter yesterday, and I’m betting you’re to blame.”
He didn’t so much as flinch or even blink. “Yes, I did.”
“Why? And how? You had no right.”
“Why? Because you’re in danger. How?” One of his dark eyebrows inched up. “I think I’ve already explained that I don’t generally have difficulties convincing people to do things for me.”
“Oh, I see.” She didn’t want to think about that—what he’d had to do or say to bend that appointment clerk to his will. She just bet the poor woman damn near melted in her cheap swivel chair under the influence of that sensuous baritone voice. The woman might have even felt a surge of heat spreading from her heart down to things much lower. Her breath might have caught, and perhaps she’d fanned herself with her hand until he went away.
Marion jammed her hands into the pockets of her bathrobe upon realizing she was doing the exact same thing right then. Damned pregnancy hot flashes.
She sucked in some air, and this time kept her eyes closed. “I was looking forward to my four-month appointment. I was getting an ultrasound. An ultrasound would assuage my paranoia.”
“Paranoia about what?” he asked.
Momma chuckled and shuffled past, hauling a half-bushel of potatoes. She dropped them near John’s feet and handed him a paring knife.
He groaned. “Damn. Again?”
“She’s been watching too many old science fiction flicks," Momma said, ignoring John’s distress. “I’m not sure what she thinks is going to come out of her. The baby is more than half human, isn’t she, Charles?”
He blinked and dragged his gaze from Marion to Momma. His jaw tensed at the hinges, and Marion figured he wasn’t going to answer.
Typical.
“More than half. Yes.”
“So what comprises the rest?” Marion hooked her thumbs beneath her bathrobe tie and rocked on her heels. “I think I have the right to know.”
“You’re asking how human I am?”
“Yep.”
“I can’t give you a finite answer.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s not important,” Momma said.
“No, no.” He put up his hands. “It’s fine that she asks, but I’m certain that no matter what answer I give, it won’t be the one she wants to hear.”
“How about trying honesty for a change?” Marion said.
“If you’d like.” He bowed sarcastically and swept an arm toward the hallway. “We can use the bedroom, and I can give you all the honesty you can stomach.”
“Nope.” Marion shook her head rapidly. “How about right here?”
“You’re being difficult.”
She shrugged.
Maybe she was being difficult, but she knew one thing for sure. Every time she was alone in a room with the man, they either fought or she got mind-fucked. Sometimes both. She didn’t have the energy for either at the moment. And also, she wasn’t completely sure she’d stop him if he tried to seduce her. She wanted to believe she was stronger than that, but the man obviously had some magic over her. She knew what his touch would do to her, yet somehow she didn’t fear it. She missed it, though she’d only had it for a day.
“Marion, please. You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.”
He had to be out of his mind. She was the one making it difficult? Maybe he needed to clean out his ears, or what was between them.
“Is there a precedent for this? Most women don’t get knocked up by incubi and then get told they can’t leave their grandmothers’ houses because scary people want to turn her into a pile of ash.”
“We could get a midwife to—”
“To come tend to me here. Right. I get that, and that’s just hunky-dory for super-baby, but where are you going to be while I’m serving my time here in this inadequate little house?”
“I’ll pretend not to be offended,” Momma muttered from the sink.
Marion felt like shit for saying it, but she couldn’t hold it in anymore. It wasn’t Momma’s fault they’d been poor, but this wasn’t how Marion pictured her future home life. Living in cramped quarters with her sister and grandmother and soon-to-be brother-in-law with various supernatural beings using the place as a rest stop? She’d been more comfortable living in her truck.
“I’m trying to take care of you,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I don’t want to be taken care of. I can take care of myself and always have. You want to do me a favor? Conscript me an angel like Mark to follow me around if it’ll make you feel better.”
“That’s not possible, sweetheart.”
She rolled her eyes at the pet name. How fucking dare he? She crossed her arms over her nauseated belly and swallowed. “We don’t really have anything to talk about if you can’t do anything for me. Why don’t you just go? You always seem to have better things to do, anyway. The baby’s going to grow up thinking your name is Bye-bye.”
She expected her sharp barbs to propel him across the room, but she didn’t expect that no one would stop him. She thought Momma or John would get between them, but neither did. Charles got close, maybe three inches from her face. He was close enough for her to inhale his musk and salt air scent.
She’d know that smell anywhere, and even then craved it. She wanted to press her palms to his chest and lay her cheek against him, feeling him, inhaling him. Being held by him.
Snapping brought her back to reality, and her vision focused on Momma’s fingers popping in front of her face, between her and Charles.
“Quit it, you two. If y’all can’t communicate face to face, try sending text messages like the rest of young America does. As ridiculous as the idea is, maybe reading would be better than talking.”
Marion swallowed and willed herself not to fall into the trance cast by those ocean blue eyes.
Why was he looking at her like that? So softly, as if he wanted her—even after everything.
“I … I’m done. I don’t have anything to say to him.” She pushed away from the counter and hurried toward the bathroom or bedroom or anywhere with a door that locked. She needed some space.
No—she needed to get out of this place. If she did that, even for a day, she could show that she could take care of herself, demons or no demons. Except for that one time back in Idaho, her street smarts had never steered her wrong.
She didn’t need some demon to take care of her. Especially not when he was the cause of half her problems in the first place.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Not what I had in mind.
Marion had watched and plotted for three months, yearning for a small taste of freedom, even through her fears of what was out there. She’d vacillated between wanting to stay put at Momma’s, and spreading her wings. Scared as she was, she’d had to get out. At least for a little while. She’d had to recruit some accomplices to make it happen, and now she wondered why she’d bothered. She regretted dragging Ariel and Julia into this.
Marion wriggled her bare toes against the sandy deck flooring and sighed as the waiter set down yet another plate of fried clam strips. She hadn’t thought she was hungry, given her stomach was located somewhere around her knees, but her appetite came back in full force once Ariel dropped the menu onto her lap.
Fifty shades of greasy, and all-you-can-eat. Hello.
It should have been a day filled with happy chattering, but Marion couldn’t help but notice how Ariel couldn’t stop scanning the area for trouble.
Julia, however, seemed perfectly calm. She dragged a clam strip through her trough of cocktail sauce as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe she was too glad to be out and about herself to feel tentative about it.
Marion sighed and reached for a lemon wedge. “Your agitation is affecting my digestion, sis. Mellow out. We’re at the beach.”
A l
ump moved down Ariel’s throat and her eyes bulged. “Call me a punk if you’d like, but I only tagged along because if anything happened to you I wouldn’t forgive myself. Just to be clear, I’m not condoning this outing.”
“I’m beginning not to myself.”
“Shit. Two years ago, I didn’t know anything about demons and witches and whatnot. I was in the dark until I—” Her eyes went wide as she pressed her lips together in a flat line.
Marion pushed her bowl of hush puppies back, chuckling. “I heard the story from Agatha. You picked up a hitchhiker and brought him home to Momma.”
“It’s not exactly sane and reasonable behavior for an upright woman, so I tell most folks I met him on one of those online dating sites.”
Marion huffed. Now, that was an idea. A dating website for the supernatural? Beneath the profile pictures in addition to height, body type, and eye color, would there be a listing for paranormal gifts? Charles’s would probably be panty-dropping.
She yelped at the painful pinch to her right arm and glowered at Julia. “What?”
Julia blinked. “You were growling. I’m married to a werewolf, and I know you’re not one, so what’s buggin’ ya all of a sudden?”
Marion tracked her gaze back to her sister. As if she’d touch that question with a ten-foot pole. “Picking up a hitchhiking incubus isn’t worse than what I did. I’m usually more discriminating.”
Ariel leaned her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Would you want him if he wasn’t what he is?”
Marion opened her mouth to say no, but somehow squashed the reflex. Looking down at the dregs of her chowder, she counted pepper specks and tried to ignore the sudden thickness in her throat.
“Look,” Ariel said in a soft voice. “He’s worried about you, and he should be. The demons give me a wide berth now because Mark’s tuned into my well being, but I’m ashamed to admit that when Big Daddy G grabbed me last year, I didn’t respond well. I could barely muster up the sense to fight back, and by the time I did, I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t rescue myself. In the end, John bartered for me, Mark whisked me away, and Momma put the freeze on Gulielmus. I was weak and powerless. I wasn’t equipped to fight back, and if it were to happen now, I probably still wouldn’t be able to because the boys coddle me so much. Maybe you’d be different.” She reached across the table and nudged Marion’s hand. “Maybe you could fight them because you’ve got Momma’s spunk, but it’s not worth the risk to you or the baby. I know being rescued by a man is kind of out of style right now, but even if I did have the guts, John wouldn’t let me so much as swat a fly on my own.”
