After an hour of studying the pictures, notes, and interviews, Dexx pushed away from the table with a flaming headache. He reached into his bag for his bottle of peppermint oil. He released a few drops into the palm of his hands, rubbed them around and then brought cupped hands to his nose and mouth.
“What are you doing?” the chief asked, looking as worn out as Dexx felt.
“Dealing with a headache.”
“I have ibuprofen. I even have the good kind.”
Dexx breathed deep, though the fumes attacked his eyes. “Rather do this. Hate pills.”
Brian sniffed with a wry smile and tipped back in his chair, crossing his thick arms over his chest. “So what’s the verdict? Are we in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Is she in danger?”
He wished she wasn’t. “Yes.” Dexx sighed and let his hands fall. “I don’t know how they found out about her gift, but someone did. The murders, the inane symbols? They were the bait. I’ve seen these symbols before on a past case. I doubt the sacrifices did much of anything. Whoever is behind this killed those three people to lure her out. The mandala was a test.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Leslie needs to hurry up. We need Alma.”
“It’s a good day’s drive from Dallas.”
“I know. They should be here any minute now, but with Leslie being so pregnant, they’re probably stopping every ten miles so she can pee.”
Brian frowned at the table, his gaze unfocused. “What’s the deal with these Whiskey Witches anyway? There are entire forums dedicated to them like they’re heroes or something.”
Dexx fell against the back of his chair. “It’s largely due to the fact they don’t hide. Alma served in the military as an active, casting witch. Then when she got out, she was very vocal about supporting the pagan community and fighting back against the paranormal.”
“She sounds like a real trooper.”
“She’s more like a general.” Dexx scraped his top lip with his teeth. “Paige and Leslie are her granddaughters. She raised them after their mother abandoned them, taking only their brother.”
“Why?”
“Because Paige is a demon summoner and Leslie is a medium. Rachel didn’t want to deal with the dead or with demons.”
“So, what’s she?”
“She summons angels.” Dexx groaned as he recalled how he’d been accepted into her home as family, how she’d encouraged him to fight demons after his brother. “She took Paige’s younger brother with her when she left. He’s an empath, so she deemed him safe, I guess.”
“Brutal. So how’d you meet them?”
“Through Nick, their brother. Him and Rachel lived in New York, right down the street from me. He . . .” Dexx paused as he recalled the state Nick had found him in. He’d just lost his father, blamed his mother, couldn’t rely on his brother. Nick and Jackie were the only two things that kept him together. “ . . . just found me one day and kinda took me in.”
Brian tipped his head to the side. “How’d you become a demon hunter?”
Dexx dropped his gaze to the floor. “One possessed my brother. He went insane, got locked up and drugged. I didn’t believe him when he said he was possessed, of course. No one did, but after he killed himself, I started digging.”
“And you wound up here. Huh.”
“Yeah. Huh.”
They sat in companionable silence for a long moment.
“What about you?” Dexx asked. “How’d you end up as a civil servant?”
Brian smiled, his eyebrows raised. “I followed my dad, my two brothers, my cousin, and my sister.”
“So there’s a whole family of you protecting the streets. Must run in the blood.”
“Yeah.”
Dexx ran his hands across his scalp and stood. “Well, I’m bushed and calling it a night.”
“I thought you said she was in danger, that we all were.”
“She is and you are. However, I can’t save anyone if I’m too tired to think straight. Trust me. He’s out there somewhere, watching, waiting.”
“And what’s he going to do with her?”
Dexx turned to the bed. “Use her. But I’m hoping Alma comes up with a plan that’ll ensure he can’t.”
“Hope?” Brian rose from his chair, grabbing his jacket off the chair. “I’ll have someone guard her door.”
“And alert our position? Or that we know?”
“So you’re setting up a trap and she’s the bait?”
Dexx smiled at him, a frown furrowing his brow. “You know, for a cop, I like the way you think.”
Brian shook his head and walked to the door. “I’ll stay in the next room then, keep watch while you sleep.”
Bullets against demons. Oh, what a cute mundane. “Okay. Sure. Sounds great. Wake me in four.”
He nodded dully. He paused at the door, his eyes glued to the Sharpie sigils on the door jam. “These really going to help?”
“They really can’t hurt.”
“Right.” He closed the door behind him.
Dexx pushed the papers around on the table without really seeing them. He reviewed his sleeping options. There was the window bench, which seemed like a good idea if he was a kid, but he wasn’t and his old bones had been broken way too many times to appreciate sleeping in that position.
There was the floor, but again, his bones. He could sleep in the chair.
Oh, no. No. His body ached from just sitting in it.
He could—
Paige jerked upright in bed, her brown eyes open. She turned to him. “The key is calling.”
FIRST THING FIRST. Demon or Paige?
He grabbed the holy water, then thought better of it. He might need it later. He looked down at the rune. Black.
It was Paige.
A different Paige. The old Paige. The one that he’d met years ago. Tough. Callused. Rough-ridden. Weathered.
She blinked and her shoulders slumped. “How long have I been asleep?”
He stared at her, his eyes narrowed. “A day.” He looked around at the dim room. “Maybe one and a half. How are you feeling? I gave you enough sedatives to take down an elephant.”
“Good thing I’m not an elephant.”
He expelled a short breath, the corner of his lips rising in a grimace. If she was joking around that had to be good. “You said the key was calling.”
“I did.” Her battered gaze flitting around the room.
“Is the demon still trying to get in?”
“No.” She rubbed her arms. “I stopped him.”
She stopped him. Well, was that good or bad or really, really bad? He bit off that thought with a flattening of his lips. Wasn’t he the one who had been hoping to see Paige the demon summoner back just a few hours ago? Yeah. This had to be good then.
She stood up and wrapped her arms around her abdomen like she was cold. “It’s all true. I keep trying to make it go away again, but I can’t.”
He wanted to yell at her to stop running, but that wasn’t what she needed. She looked broken. She needed built back up. “Yeah. Um, I’m real sorry about that.”
“About which part? The part where I lost my daughter and am living in Hell, or the part where I actually remember it?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
The room filled with silence.
What could he do to help her? She needed to get up. She needed to fight.
“It’s like I woke up, you know? From a really bad dream. One of those ones you can’t wake up from where evil things are chasing you and you can’t get away no matter where you go.”
“I can’t—” He rubbed his ear uncomfortable. Women didn’t confide in him, generally. When he was in a room with a woman, he was either having sex or working a case, not listening while she unburied her heart. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s like I just lost her. Like it was yesterday.” She took a step toward the win
dow. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You have an investigation.” He had nothing more to offer. Well, he could offer to have sex with her. Sex fixed everything, but the mood was too somber and it didn’t feel right. So, maybe it didn’t solve everything. “There’s some dumb freak out there killing people.”
She was so still. “I don’t care.”
“Hey, look.” Dexx walked up to her in three quick strides and gripped her shoulders. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, really I do. You just—” He stopped. You just what? What wonderful advice could he offer?
She didn’t even look up at him.
“You just—you live each day, you know, moment to moment. And it kinda gets better.” He let his hands slip off her shoulders. “Kind of. I mean, you get numb after a while and it becomes easier to do the job.”
She stared at him with vacant eyes. “How do you live like this?” Her eyes closed and her head fell back slightly as tears studded her eyelashes. “There’s nothing. I feel . . . nothing.”
“You’re lying, Pea. You’re feeling more than you can handle right.” He’d lost a brother. She’d had her daughter ripped away from her and years erased from her life. How could he compare the two? “It gets . . . better.”
“Just do the job.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You just do the job.”
She opened her flooded, chocolate eyes.
He tipped his head at her apologetically. “I know there isn’t much I can do, but if you need to talk . . .” He shrugged with his hands deep enough in his pockets to keep himself from grabbing hold of her again.
An almost visible wall slammed across her features as she brushed past him. “We’re dealing with a killer trying to raise a demon.”
He almost wished she’d go back to the weepy Paige. A thread of fear wormed through him. Whiskey women were crazy scary when they put those walls over their emotions. “Mostly, I think they’re after you.”
“To raise a demon.”
He followed her to the table and pulled out the wooden chair. “Your gift, you know, talking to demons and stuff, do you know how to use it?”
She gave him a deadly serious look.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Then maybe you know which demon they’re trying to raise now that you remember and all.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea, but we all thought he was dead.”
“How dead? Like bounced back to Hell kind of dead, or dead like you’re never going to return kind of dead?”
“Even demons have souls, Dexx,” Paige knelt beside her bag lying on the floor and dug through it. “I’m pretty sure his soul came back somehow. Reborn somewhere.”
“Rebirth,” he said, blinking at her in disbelief. “A demon. You’re serious.”
She walked to the dresser with a black candle and an incense burner. “I can’t be positive, but it would make sense. If we’re reborn, why can’t demons be?”
“What would that look like exactly?” Unease burned through Dexx’s gut as the black candle stared at him from across the room. He knew black candles could be used to bring about good magick, but it could also bring about the bad. He wasn’t a complete fool. “Would he come back as a serial killer? Are we looking at this all wrong?”
“No. We’re not. Demons aren’t what you think. They’re not what the Bible and the Koran tells us they are. Not entirely anyway. They’re fighting for us.” Her matter-of-fact tone grew gravelly. “Unlike the angels.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I think you need to seriously get your head realigned, Pea. I’ve seen demons. I’ve dealt with them. They’re bad news.”
“You don’t understand them.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “And why would you? You see a demon and the only thing you think is to get rid of them. Like Hitler with the Jews.”
“Jesus, Paige. I’m a demon hunter and trust me. Demons aren’t a soft, go-to-work Jew. A Jew is a living, breathing human. A demon? Demons want to wreak havoc. They think nothing about killing innocent people.”
She snorted. “Innocent people. Is there such a thing?’
“Don’t let Rachel taint you.”
“Too late.”
“Pea, don’t go like this. There must be some part of you that sees how wrong this line of thinking is.”
She shook her head, catching his gaze in the mirror. “Why would I see that? When we’re born, we’re guaranteed one thing in life. Just one. Death. Why would we hide from that? Why would we fear it?”
“Because we were also given life.” He took a step toward her. “And that’s worth fighting for.”
“Maybe yours is.”
His eyebrows leapt into his hairline. “Yours is, too.”
She narrowed her gaze as she dropped it to the candle. “Then why is there a hole in my soul?”
“We talked about that.”
She flattened her lips then smiled slightly.
Shit.
“Yes. It’ll get better, you said. Concentrate on the job, you said.”
“Don’t side with the demons. Did I miss saying that part?”
“They’re trying to build us stronger, to make us better able to accept the responsibilities of life.”
He sucked the corners of his mouth together, his jaw wide, making a popping sound as he released them. “They’re regular saviors.”
She watched his reflection. “What are you doing here, Dexx?”
“Keeping an eye on you,” he said a little hotter than he probably should have. “You’re head’s not exactly in the game here, Pea.”
She spun on him. “Where is it exactly, do you think?”
Alarms rang in the back of his head. He ignored them. “I don’t know, but you’re getting dangerous. Let’s talk about this, get you back to normal.”
“Let’s talk about normal, shall we.” Her voice low and dangerous as she stalked toward him like a wolf. “My mother took away my child. Why? To protect my daughter from my gift. Hell, for that matter, my sister moved out of the house to protect her daughter. And my grandmother? What did she do? She told me to stop using my gift. But do you know what I do with it?”
He took a half step backwards. “Summon demons?”
“I watch them. I call them when they’re needed and I send them back when they’re not.” She lowered her voice to a bare murmur. “I protect the human race from the things that are hell bent to ‘save’ them, and they took my daughter.”
“Paige.” Dexx reached out a hand, not knowing what he planned to do with it.
“And after Leah—” She closed her eyes and turned away, silent for a moment. “And after they took her from me, instead of helping me—”
Dexx bit his lip in the ensuing silence. “Yeah, about that. I told them to stop. So, don’t go sending any demons after me, all right?”
Paige’s face lost all color as a sickly smile slithered onto her face. She straightened. Her shoulders slid back. Her neck lengthened slightly as she marched to the dresser.
The candle shot with flame.
Holy fuck!
A tendril of smoke rose from the flame, permeating the room with a heady, earthy scent. Sandalwood.
“Pea.” Dexx searched for his bag of demon-killing gear without moving. He did not want to tip her off and force her hand. “What are you doing?”
“Summoning.”
DEXX LAUNCHED HIMSELF at his bag, then dumped the contents on the bed.
In her reflection, the brown of her eyes receded to a near total black, her eyes fully dilated like she’d just come back from the optometrist. “Balnore, I need you.”
Dexx grabbed his sawed-off shotgun—which was absolutely useless but might buy a few seconds to do . . . something—and his dagger consecrated in holy water.
A cloud of smoke formed in the middle of the room as the demon took the shape of a man. He had black hair feathered back from his soft, boyish face, but his stance held power. His blue, button-up shirt was open and loose.
Dexx ra
ised his shotgun with one hand, his lips flat. Balnore. He’d seen the demon around back in Texas before everything had gone to shit. While he’d never seen this demon actually do anything bad, he did have Paige’s ear. She trusted him. It. Whatever. Maybe this demon was the reason Paige had decided to summon demons to kill her mother in the first place.
Or, maybe, Rachel was the reason Paige had tried to kill her.
The demon studied Dexx, a slight frown furrowing across his brow. “Peanut? Why is there a strange man in your room, and why is that man Dexx Colt?”
“You know him?” she asked. Her eyes had returned to normal again, at some point.
“He’s a reputable demon hunter,” Balnore said, his tone inferring that should have occurred to her. “I didn’t piss you off when you dream-called, did I?”
Dexx stepped forward. “Stop where—”
“I really don’t have the patience for you.” Balnore swept his hand nonchalantly.
Dexx raised one sigil-protected arm to deflect the demon magick, and stood his ground through sheer force of will. The sigil took the brunt of the blow, but Balnore’s magick was strong and came at him like a hammer.
The demon quirked an impressed eyebrow at him. “Seriously, Peanut, what is he doing here? Did you call him, or did your family?”
“He’s a friend, Balnore.”
“He’s a demon hunter who befriended a summoner only after her gift had been banished.”
A frown flickered across her brow.
Dexx fought the invisible force and gritted out, “I didn’t know you, not really, until you came to New York. That’s when I became your friend. He’s trying to manipulate you. Don’t let him.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I distinctly recall you threatening me.”
“If you lost control of your gift again. Pea, I had to try.” Even if he couldn’t actually follow through with it.
She flexed her fingers.
Dexx shoved the knife in his belt and held the gun with two hands. “You’re here for information. Nothing more. Just tell us what she needs to know so she can send you back.” He glanced at Paige before returning his gaze to the demon. “Before I do.”
The demon tipped his head toward Dexx. “This should be fun.”
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