Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  She got in the car and rolled the passenger-side window down just a hair to say to Shaun, “Lose my numbers and stay away from my family.”

  Something not-so-innocent flitted in Shaun’s eyes, and Gail amended, “You know. Don’t call my friends. Don’t call my grandmother to see if I’m well, okay? There’s no need for you to worry about me. At all.”

  She rolled the window up, and didn’t care that Shaun didn’t move as Scott pulled out of the spot. Maybe a little part of her would revel a bit in him having his loafers ran over.

  Finally, she allowed herself a deep breath, but it didn’t seem like enough. Her chest was tight, and now that all the adrenaline was wearing off from the encounter, she wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing. Maybe she’d made things worse for all of them. She hadn’t been able to help herself.

  She pulled up her text message screen, and it took her three tries to get one simple little word out.

  Done.

  Claude responded in under ten seconds. You okay, chéri?

  Scott turned onto the main road and put his own phone to his ear.

  Gail checked the rearview mirror on her side. Shaun was leaning into the trunk of the convertible. Did he think she’d planted a bomb in it or something?

  I was okay, but I’m not now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  They didn’t get five miles before Claude called Scott and demanded he pass Gail off to him. The plan had been to get farther outside the city limits—off Shaun’s turf—before she switched vehicles, but he could sense her stress and wanted to do what he could to relieve it.

  Even if it was just a hug. There was no magic required for that.

  Gail climbed up into the Jeep, trembling, and Claude pulled her across the bench as close to him as he could and put his arm around her shoulders.

  They didn’t speak, because he suspected she wouldn’t want to. She’d likely dusted up some unresolved feelings during the meeting and didn’t know how to process them.

  He couldn’t help with that, though if he could take all that regret away from her, he would.

  His phone rang. He slid his thumb across the screen and put Scott on speaker. “Yes?”

  “Hey. Ben’s got a good tail on Shaun. The lady he was with parted ways and headed downtown. Looks like Shaun’s heading toward I-85. We’ll check in when we find anything out. Don’t wait up. Might be a while. Once we sniff out a lead, we keep following it until there ain’t nothing left to uncover.”

  “Do what you must.”

  Claude ended the call and stuffed his phone into his shirt pocket. Once he was out of the congested Triangle, he settled in at a comfortable speed heading toward the coast and stole a glance at Gail.

  She was already asleep, or at least pretending to be. She either needed the sleep or needed for her thoughts to be her own for the moment, so he let just drove and kept his words to himself.

  • • •

  Claude pulled Gail through the front door of Clarissa’s house, and gave Ellery a nod in greeting.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but then took one look at Gail, and clamped her lips.

  “Who all is here?” he asked.

  “Clarissa’s here. Last time I saw her, she and your father were going at it about Kelly, and each of them were trying to have the last word. They’re probably still out back arguing. Mark’s in the kitchen. Agatha’s still at work. Everyone else is at home, waiting on information from you.”

  “Well, they’ll be waiting for a while. Scott and Ben will let us know when they hear anything.”

  She nodded and fiddled with the remote control in her hands. “Gail, I locked Candy Corn inside Claude’s room. She and Pumpkin Pie got their fur twisted over a mouse. They needed a time-out.”

  Gail sighed. “That cat is mental.”

  Claude pulled her on, and had gotten her as far as the stairwell when Mark poked his head through the kitchen door.

  “Hey,” he said. He nudged his horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and wrung the bottom of his plaid shirt. “You saw Scott and Ben, huh? Did they tell you how Sweetie was?”

  “I—”

  He shook his head. “Gail cringed. I saw her, so just tell me whatever it is.”

  “It’s … not great.”

  Mark gently thumped the door molding with his fist, and uttered, “Damn. I told her not to wait so long. She’s so picky.”

  “No pickier than her brother,” Gail said, sounding slightly chagrined. “Why was it okay for him to go practically feral, but not her? It’s her choice not to take a wolf mate.”

  “Yes, it’s her choice.” Mark seemed completely unbothered by the edge in Gail’s voice, but then again, he’d been working with Agatha for ages. A bit of feminine snark was probably par for the course for him. “But she knows what she is, and she’s known since she was a child that this day would come. They’re trained to start looking early. You can’t buck biology.”

  “Says the angel who can shape-shift at will.”

  “That’s different. Besides, I’m not bound by laws of science. My issues are …” He pushed off the door frame he’d been holding up and walked toward the kitchen.

  “Your issues are what?” Gail called after him.

  Claude didn’t think he was going to answer. Plates clattered in the cabinet as Mark pulled down a dish. He slammed the cabinet door. “Different,” he answered. “Just different.”

  Claude pulled Gail onward up the stairs. He knew that Mark was like Papa in many ways. Many of their abilities on Earth were possible because of choices they’d made. Papa had chosen to fall, and perverted his heavenly gift of providing love and comfort into baser things: lust and self-preservation. Mark hadn’t fallen. He’d had no desire to fall, but he enjoyed being amongst mankind perhaps a bit more than he should.

  And anyone with eyes would know that one particular member of mankind aroused his attention more than others. He loved Sweetie, and not in the way angels are supposed to love the people they’re charged to protect. He’d never lead her on, though. He wouldn’t flirt back because he knew he couldn’t have her.

  Just once, Claude wanted someone he knew to experience a simple love. Love that didn’t start with upheaval or tragedy. Love that wasn’t forbidden. Who’d decided that love was only for certain people, anyway?

  Candy Corn darted out of his room when he pushed the door open, and he immediately closed and locked it behind her. She could go terrorize Pumpkin Pie for a while. He was long overdue to utilize his own bed for a while without a furry plus-one.

  He made Gail sit on the bed, and knelt next to the nightstand to dig through his bag. He knew just the thing to pick up her mood. He’d wanted to share this with her for a while, in fact, but simply hadn’t had the opportunity. There was also the slight fear she wouldn’t be interested in what he had to show her.

  He pulled out his laptop and pushed the power button before taking the seat beside her.

  “I always keep my promises,” he said when her brows knit at him. He clicked through the menu hierarchy, entered his password, and opened the encrypted documents folder.

  “What’s that?” she asked quietly.

  “This is where I keep all the information I don’t want anyone accidentally stumbling into. It’s private, so no one’s ever seen it all but me. There are photos, legal documents, client information, and all kinds of stuff. I even have some scans of my mother’s old books and her handwritten notes. My journal is in one of those folders, too.”

  “You keep a journal?”

  He’d had to. He’d needed a way to confess, and as he’d trusted no one in his early years as an incubus, he’d turned to his little leather book. Through the years, he’d filled enough little leather books to fill Clarissa’s linen closet.

  “I don’t get to update it much nowadays, but yes. I have entries going back to my twenty-third birthday. I jotted down things that stood out to me, new people I encountered, spells that went badly. Things that … weighed heavy
on me.”

  The souls he’d marred.

  He wished he could take it all back and give those women a second chance. Maybe they weren’t all good women, but if there were a few that would have been heaven-bound otherwise, he’d want them to go.

  He’d spent years trying to figure out how to undo what he’d done. That was mentioned in some of those journal entries, too.

  “It’s nice to have it all electronic now because I can just search the entire document for keywords if I need to refer back to something,” he said.

  “You have everything in here? All those years?”

  “No, chéri. It’s patchy—a work in progress. Whenever I get back to my cabin, I spend a few hours here and there scanning loose papers and organizing information. I’ll be happy when it’s all done.”

  He set the computer onto her lap and tilted the screen to suit her height. “There you go.”

  “W-what do you want me to do with it?” She tried to hand the computer back to him.

  He nudged it to her and eased back farther onto the bed. He lay on his left side and heeled off his shoes. “Everything about me that matters is in that computer. If you idle too long and get logged out, the password is my mother’s name backward and your six-digit birthdate. I change it every three months or so, but I’ll let you know what it is whenever I do.” He closed his eyes. “The wedding pictures should be clearly marked. There’s a folder for Charles’s wedding, one for John’s, and one for Julia’s. Feel free to click around.”

  “I…” Whatever she was going to say, she let fall off. She sighed.

  He opened his eyes, and watched her shoulders relax and her head lower over the computer.

  Good.

  They both needed this now. She needed to know that his knowledge and experience—his control of his craft—had come at a cost. She needed to read about his missteps and his uncertainty as a young witch. He hadn’t always channeled his gifts with such masterful restraint.

  There’d been days he’d failed and couldn’t fix the messes he’d made.

  There were days he’d thought no one would ever want to love him again.

  The best person for her to learn about him was him, and if he detached himself from the storytelling, she could process it all at her own speed. She could learn what she wanted and leave all the rest. It was up to her if she wanted to know it, whether it be now or in the future. She had to know he hadn’t been an angel in the past couple of centuries, but what she didn’t know was how much inner turmoil that had caused him.

  He was a powerful witch, but a broken man.

  Her clicks were slow, and with her back in the way of the screen, he didn’t know what she was looking at. Maybe that was for the best. He listened to the sound of the keys and trackpad, assessing their timing. She studied some things longer than others. Lowered her head for closer examination of some, and hurried through others.

  Probably those pictures from John’s bachelor party. The photos made the scene look much worse than the celebration actually was. Once incubi got settled down, they actually didn’t party all that hard. It had been John’s construction worker buddies making most of the mess.

  He closed his eyes once more and tuned out the clicks.

  What must’ve Scott and Ben been up to? Had they sniffed out a lead on Ross? Before he’d started hanging out with his brothers, Claude was used to working on his own. Teamwork wasn’t an item in his repertoire, and he’d certainly never had to outsource his sensitive investigations.

  Being with Gail had taught him that sometimes he had to give up control on some things in order to reap future rewards.

  He gave up a little control of his magic every time she drew on it, but that had boosted her confidence in her gifts. She’d needed that confidence badly. He gave up a little control every time they left Clarissa’s house on some small mission, because he knew it wasn’t only up to him to protect her. He had to give her a chance to take care of herself, but he also had family and friends who’d unflinchingly put themselves in harm’s way to guard her. They’d all earned her valuable trust because of that, and it’d been trust she’d been hesitant to give after being so thoroughly fucked over by Shaun.

  Claude may have been an old dog, but he was constantly learning things from her.

  Gail shifted on the bed, and he opened his eyes again when her hair tickled his face.

  She lay beside him and turned onto her side so they were eye to eye. At first she didn’t talk. She just looked at him with a furrowed brow. After what seemed like ten minutes, she said, “I think part of the reason I married Shaun was because I wouldn’t have to compete with him the way witches sometimes do within families. I didn’t want to be the lesser witch of a pair.”

  “You’d never be the lesser of anyone. You’re unparalleled.”

  “That’s flattering. You’re always flattering me, but you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about Shaun.”

  “Don’t, then. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, but of course, I’d prefer if you didn’t bear your burdens alone. I did that for too long, and it … eats away at a person.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She tossed her leg over his and snuggled her face against his chest. “Claude?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The incubus thing. I … I don’t feel it anymore. Why is that?”

  “Do you miss it?”

  He felt her lips twitch against his chest, perhaps in a grin.

  “No, I just worry it’ll come back with a vengeance.”

  “It won’t come back, ma reine. I believe it was my fault it ignited the way it did. I came on to you strong, and then I gave you all my magic that day you were away from me. It made the incubus part of me flare, and with us being linked by the ring, you were excessively affected by it.”

  “Why’d it stop?”

  He chuckled and rubbed her back. “Your own defensive magic, I’d guess. Like I told you before, you don’t know what gifts you have until you’re forced to use them. You let that wild magic out, girl.”

  “I’m so getting disowned. Probably Ellery, too.”

  “Pity if it happens, but we’d take care of you both.”

  “I know. Claude?”

  “Hmm?”

  “W-what does your mother think of me?”

  Of all the things she could ask, she was worried about that? “Why do you care?”

  “Because I can’t stand the idea of yet another person thinking I’m not in control of my faculties and that I’m weak. She probably wanted better for you.”

  If that wasn’t a bag of worms to be opening, he didn’t know what was. Sighing, he chafed her back in small, gentle circles. “I don’t know what my mother thinks of you personally or even what she thought of Laurette. Maman was like my father. She played the supernatural chess game and sometimes, relationships were just things she needed to further her agenda. Now I know she couldn’t help it. That’s just the way she was wired.”

  “I imagine you have to get your compassion from someone. If not your father, then from whom?”

  “I’m not sure that’s an inheritable thing.”

  “Of course it is. Everything is, at least according to Ellery. She blames everything on genetics. Nature instead of nurture.”

  “Oh. Well, if that’s true, I don’t know who I get it from. I’m not much like either of my parents.”

  “You sure?”

  He opened his mouth to give her a quick yes, but something stopped him. No, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what Papa was like before he fell, and he hadn’t known his maternal grandparents all that well. Maybe Maman had been different at some point, too—before she’d mastered magic most mortal women had no business dabbling with.

  “No. I guess I’m not sure.”

  “Can I ask you something serious?”

  Did she mean more serious? His gut clenched at what she’d possibly
come up with. His worst fear was that she’d ask him to drive her home and to leave her there—that she’d tell him she was through. He’d laid all his cards on the table for her, told her he loved her, and while he hadn’t expected her to say it back, he still worried she’d had enough. He could force her to stay, but if he did, that meant she wasn’t meant to be his in the first place. “Anything you’d like.” He took a deep breath and waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “If I hadn’t been … well, Laurette—if I’d been any other woman the Fates had tossed at you, would you want me as much?”

  Was that all? “That’s an interesting question.”

  “I hope the answer isn’t too interesting.”

  “I’d like to say I’d want you just as much because you’re incredible, but I can’t say for sure. Part of my love for you is wrapped up in the knowledge that we’ve been going at it together for so long. Souls don’t stick it out like that unless they’re supposed to navigate this existence together. Knowing what I know, of course I’d want my partner back. That’s an amazing thing, having such a long bond with someone both in this world and out. I’m just lucky that you’re you.”

  The answer seemed to placate her, because she tipped her head back and stretched for a kiss he happily gave.

  He’d give her anything he had and would struggle for the rest of his life to give her more if she wanted it. He tried to put all those hopes and emotions into his kiss so she’d understand that she was well and truly treasured, and if this was going to be their last go at it, he wanted them to have their best odds.

  She needed to know she was in possession of his unmitigated support and be confident enough to fight when the time came. She had to fight not just for them, but for her own life. Just because she wasn’t in mortal peril didn’t mean she wouldn’t be due for an irreparable upset to her life.

  That’s what Shaun would have, if he could take her back. He’d turn her life upside down again so she was going through the motions of life without doing any actual living.