I tapped my pen, perusing the list of victims: Ellen Chen, 40, mystery author, found at home, Davide Garza, 21, a student at Simon Fraser University also found at home, Max Bader, 30, a stockbroker, at a club, Jakayla Malhotra, 35, a mature student, found in her teaching assistant office, Reuben Epstein, 29, discovered after-hours at the restaurant where he worked as a pastry chef, and a Jane Doe about 23 or 24, in a low rent hotel, found yesterday morning. “You wouldn’t happen to know the T.A., would you? Malhotra? She goes to UBC.”
Ari was on summer vacation halfway through his chem major–with a biology minor–at the University of British Columbia where our mom, Shana, taught history and our dad, Dov, taught law. Me and university, on the other hand, were on a time-out to review our relationship.
He polished off his turkey sandwich. “Considering UBC has like fifty thousand students? Nope.”
I rubbed the kinks out of my neck with fingers stiff from typing on my laptop. “There’s no common factor in these deaths.”
“There’s one. The deaths themselves.”
I stood up, pacing long lengths along the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and masculine groupings of furniture. “How? There’s nothing to help us identify how they were killed.”
“Exactly.” Ari pushed our lunch plates aside to fan out photos of the victims showing various angles of their bodies in the positions they were found. I no longer marveled at the information the Brotherhood was able to access. Having been around since King David’s time, they’d entrenched themselves into all kinds of places. “The lack of wounds are the common factor. What demons kill without leaving a trace?”
I narrowed my eyes at him but he was already checking the online database in answer to his question. It hadn’t been a test for me alone. I dropped back into my seat, pulling a fat tome towards me. Even with their database there was no beating the details found in the books the Brotherhood had amassed. “The felan do. If I hadn’t had the antidote, I’d have left a beautiful unblemished corpse in that alley.”
“Except for the patch of back hair you shave,” he said dryly.
“One time when I was twelve.” I jutted my chin up. “I outgrew my Sasquatch soul strip years ago thank you very much, and even if I hadn’t, no shaming the Jewess for minor beauty flaws. Unlike some with their ‘dry hands’ requiring Vaseline kept under the bed.”
“I have sensitive skin,” he said.
The index didn’t yield any entries for my searches related to “lack of a trace when killing” so I ploughed in to the book proper to check the demon entries one-by-one. “Blame circumcision.”
His shuddered “ew” and punch to my arm was our reset to normal. I pushed my anger down with the silent vow that I’d gloat like crazy once I had proof that the witches weren’t to blame for the gogota.
And when I cracked our assignment and destroyed this demonic serial killer first.
“I’d lose the poison demons,” he said. “Or ones that freeze or strangle the life out of their victims.”
“Why?”
He studied the victims’ photos. “The vics look too peaceful. Before you took the antidote, you looked like you were trying to shit boulders.”
“Lovely.” But I deleted those demon types from our list.
Hours passed in which we narrowed down the list further.
I thunked my head on the table, my eyes achy and throbbing from print that now swum before me. Darkness pressed in against the windows and I’d missed a meal somewhere in there. “Have mercy.”
Ari folded a piece of paper into an airplane. “It’s down to soul suckers or energy leeches.” He compared the wing sizes with mathematical precision. “Still leaves more possibilities than I’d like.”
“Something’s bugging me. Rasha are concerned with keeping demons a secret. Demons don’t care. Not that they’re hell-bent on outing themselves, but both soul suckers and energy leeches could kill a victim in the middle of a packed dance floor with no one the wiser. So why the discretion to isolate these people?” I cross-checked the revised demon list against the overview page. “Even the deaths in public places were done in shadowy corners: an empty office, a closed restaurant with the other staff gone. So what if the demon got caught in the act? Most would just kill whoever caught him as well.”
“Unless the demon is vulnerable in that moment?”
I drummed my fingers on the table, watching the curser pulse. “Like an incubus or succubus? Feeding off sexual energy can kill, but won’t leave a trace. And when those demons climax, they’d be wide open.”
Ari shook his head. “Except we’ve got men and women dead. That would mean an incubus and a succubus working together. Never heard of that happening.”
“Before me, you’d never heard of a female Rasha, either.”
“You were an anomaly.”
“Or the Brotherhood was short-sighted. Like you’re being now. Way to endanger the mission right out of the gate.”
“Don’t like it? I can find someone else to work this with me.”
Rabbi Mandelbaum popped his head in. “Off to a good start?”
My eyes darted to Ari, only half-certain he wouldn’t get me booted.
“We’ve got some promising leads,” he assured the rabbi.
Rabbi Mandelbaum nodded. “Good,” he said, and left.
Ari fired the paper airplane, bonking me on the side of my head. “You’re such an idiot.”
I retrieved the airplane, placing it on the table. “Long day, little sleep. I’m getting testy.”
With pouty lip and faux-concerned voice he asked, “Does Nava need a snack?”
“Like you need a shower, buddy. What’s that cologne? Eau du glory hole?”
He pulled out his phone, waving it at me. “I’m telling Mom you’re not following the ‘if you can’t say something nice’ rule.”
I scratched my cheek with my middle finger.
“If Nava had to follow that rule, people would think she was mute,” a voice said from the doorway.
“Only mostly mute.” Despite my “couldn’t care less” intentions, my head whipped toward the speaker.
Rohan was back.
5
Rohan Mitra was 6’2” of broad shoulders, lean muscled torso, and a swagger to his hips as they propped against the doorframe. His dark brown hair curled in thick, sexy locks around his ears. It was almost as striking as the combo of his gold eyes and brown skin from his East Indian/Jewish heritage. Less appealing was the enough-arrogance-per-square-inch that left me amazed there was any room for his internal organs.
Thankfully, he wasn’t in full rock god mode, like eyeliner and a smile dripping with killer lyrics and promises he’d be only too happy to keep. No, his quirked lips, worn jeans, and untucked white shirt with its cuffs rolled up to expose strong forearms were more rock god casual Friday. That meant a sliver of my brain was able to keep functioning even if most of it was busy envisioning ripping his clothes off.
Or figuring out the most painful use of my magic on his person.
“You’re sputtering, Nava,” he said.
“It’s just… Did anyone else feel that disturbance?” I jumped to my feet, making a big show of looking around the room, brows knit together. “Like something just showed up where it wasn’t supposed to.” My gaze landed on Rohan. “If this was a movie, this would totally be the point where reality jumped the tracks into a horrible alternate universe and the main character, her hot not-boyfriend, and her dog had to go back in time and fix the original mistake that loosed this irritant upon our world.”
“Too bad you don’t have a dog,” Rohan said.
“That’s easily remedied,” I replied. “But good of you to assume I’ve acquired a hot not-boyfriend.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Ari scraped his chair back. “Hey, Ro. Welcome back.” He stood up and pushed me closer to Rohan. “Here. She’s all yours.”
“Hardly,” I said.
Rohan looked at me thoughtfully. “Can I do whatever I want to he
r?”
I glared at him with narrowed eyes. “Try it.”
“Define ‘whatever,’” Ari said.
“Geneva convention? Ish?” Rohan rolled his shoulder, stretched out his neck, and generally acted like he’d been upstairs for a couple of hours instead of gone for a month having kissed me, ditched me, then been all famous and not even texted me. On top of that, I blamed his existence for my kiboshed hook-up.
“Works for me. Eat then we’ll resume,” Ari said to me as he left. I’d time machine his ungrateful ass too, if I could.
“Go find someone else to play with. I’m done.” I rapped my fist twice against the table.
Rohan pushed off the doorframe. “You think that’s what I came here for?”
“I don’t presume to think anything about you anymore. I have better things to do with my time.”
“Right. What with the dog and the boyfriend.” Rohan’s voice was quiet. Upon closer inspection, which I couldn’t exactly help since he was only about five feet away, he had purple smudges under his eyes.
My heart gave the pained “awww” indicative of level one stupid girl. I hated myself for caring one way or the other about his well-being. Because more than I’d replayed the kiss this past month I’d replayed the look on his face right after it.
Like he wished he could take the kiss back.
He took a step closer, and I braced myself for his touch, but he didn’t close the distance between us to lay his palm tenderly on my cheek.
I didn’t trail my fingers along the ridge of his abs, feeling them clench under my touch.
He didn’t clasp my arms to pull my hands away from my body, holding them fast as he propelled me backward, up against the bookshelf.
I didn’t feel the edge of the shelf grind into my shoulder blades as he pressed me into the bookcase, his body fitted in a hard, long line against mine. He didn’t inch one calloused palm along the delicate skin on the inside of my wrist to interlace his fingers with mine and I wasn’t enveloped in the scent of spicy cologne with an underbite of iron that was pure Rohan.
He didn’t nip the hollow of my collarbone. Didn’t slide his hand along my hip, dragging up my shirt for the heated glide of his skin on mine. And he didn’t kiss me hot and rough, his stubble rasping my skin, his mouth demanding, almost cruel.
I snatched up the paper airplane and winged it at him. It hit Rohan square in the chest before fluttering to the ground. “What are you waiting for? Official orders? We’re over. Finished.” I mimed breaking a stick in half and tossing the pieces away.
The summer Ari and I were thirteen, we’d been on this beach vacation, body surfing, when something soft had brushed across my chest, along the edge of my bikini top. A jellyfish. The coolness of the waves had ratcheted into a burning pain.
My first love bailing on me when my tap dance dreams had blown up had brought that same pain with it. Except more an incessant stabbing than a brief sting. A ten to the jellyfish’s six.
Neither a sting nor a stabbing, that look from Rohan after our kiss had smashed the relativity scale to smithereens.
To be fair, that expression had flashed across his face really fast, and I’d still been in shock from the kiss itself, so I could have been wrong, but the fact that he wasn’t arguing with me now about us being done? That he merely pushed away from me, his steady gait nothing like the whoosh that rocked me as he removed his presence from mine, leaving me bereft?
Score one, for me. It was too bad I was only right about shitty things, but a point was a point.
As soon as he was out of the room, I collapsed against the table, pressing my forehead into the cool wood. I dragged in a deep breath, but couldn’t get the air deep enough into my constricted chest to fill my lungs.
The antique clock mounted on the library wall ticked off the seconds. Saddle the fuck up, Nava.
Why kiss a person if you were going to regret it? Especially given how pushy and cranky he’d been about not getting to kiss me in the first place. And hello? How was kissing me regrettable? I was an amazing kisser.
I yanked the pen out of the mahogany table where I’d jammed in the tip like Excalibur. Even if he did regret it, basic etiquette demanded that he fake an expression of delight after his lips touched mine.
Now he’d returned and there’d been no “I’m back” hug, an “I missed you,” or the grabbing of my hand, dragging of me to his bedroom and banging of my brains out. Which I would not have allowed to happen but damn, watching him beg for it would have rocked. Nope, all that time apart and not even a handshake.
Or a “sorry.”
Had Lily met up with him in London? Were they finally back together?
Scorched, melted pen shards fell to the ground. I kicked them into a pile.
Rohan had found a crack in my highly-fortified shields and wormed his way in, eroding them with our growing connection, then blowing the rubble away with that kiss. He’d capped it all off by giving me the look of regret, effectively turning me into the fallout from his scorched earth policy. I’d spent the past month attempting to put out the fires and salve my emotional third degree burn.
No more.
I gathered up my folder and left, just in time to witness Rabbi Mandelbaum clasp a hand to the side of Rohan’s head. Seriously, was the rabbi staging our encounters for maximum annoyance? “Excellent work in Pakistan.” His eyes narrowed. “We’ll forgive your unauthorized playtime, yes?”
My foot squeaked on the floorboard.
Rohan glanced past the rabbi at me. He didn’t offer an excuse for his side trip. Not to the rabbi and certainly not to me. No, in his unrepentant gaze was the death of my faint hope that the sole reason Rohan had been in London was as some sort of mandated follow up to our Samson mission.
“Nava? You need help with something?”
“No, Rabbi,” I replied. “Everything is crystal clear.” I swept past them up the stairs, done with the she-who-pines-over-unsuitable-guy cliché. There was a veritable buffet of boy options out there and this girl was now all-you-can-eat.
“Stick this on.” I pulled a tiny round adhesive bandage out of my purse and handed it to my best friend Leonie Hendricks.
She rolled up the wide sleeve of her funky velvet dress, the motion setting her mass of silver bangles jingling as she slapped it onto the inside of her elbow. “Affixed.”
I stuck mine onto the top of my hand. “Juice box?” I asked, pulling an apple juice from my purse.
“I’m good.”
Ripping out the straw with my teeth, I spat out the plastic wrapper and jammed the straw in the box. I took a few sips, keeping the straw between my teeth. “Try to look altruistic.”
We strolled into the ballroom of the student union building at the University of British Columbia, currently set up for the campus blood drive. A fact gleaned from my dad’s text that had woken me up a couple of hours ago, reminding me to give.
Waving our Band-Aids at the sign-in table like a couple of nightclub re-entry stamps, we walked past the rows of students earning good karma through bleeding. I figured I bled enough on a regular basis for the good of humanity to reap the rewards of blood drives now and then.
“What’s your take?” I asked.
When Leo and I had resumed our friendship a couple of months ago after some idiocy on my part, we’d both gotten the shock of the century. Her at learning I was the first female Rasha and me that she was a half-goblin. I’d stumbled upon her the night I was looking for a demon informant. Leo was it. She had passed on a lot of good intel to Demon Club previously. Though none of its current residents knew of her true heritage.
Well, almost none of them.
I’d had to do some clever dodging to keep my brother from coming with me today as I went to meet with the snitch. Ari hadn’t been thrilled about not coming to meet the informant given he was “in charge,” but I’d convinced him that the snitch only trusted me and his presence would complicate things. Understatement.
A student volu
nteer came by, spotted our Band-Aids, and stuck a smiling blood drop sticker on each of us. “Thanks for donating.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “Where do we get our meal tickets?”
She pointed at the line-up at the far end of the ballroom.
Leo and I made our way there. “I can’t say off the top of my head which of those demons are in town,” she said.
“In that case…” We joined the line-up and I pulled a folded paper out of my purse. “These are the victims. Any chance you know either of the students on it?” I indicated the names I meant.
Leo blinked. “I do.”
“Brilliant. Who?” We shuffled forward.
She pushed her fall of red straight hair off her shoulder, her face screwed up. “Here’s the thing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Davide Garza? He went to SFU with me.”
“And?” I slurped my juice.
“He was friends with Cole. Harper,” she added, as if I’d somehow misunderstood who she meant.
I stilled, lowering the juice box. “This is where you tell me that you would never have kept in touch with that rat bastard.”
“I would never have kept in touch with that rat bastard.”
“I see.” I gave her my sweetest smile. Which maybe was a bit feral because she flinched.
“Next!” The bored volunteer handed over our tickets for a free meal and beer at the student pub.
I grabbed Leo’s before she could. “I’ll just hang on to these, shall I? Thanks so much,” I told the volunteer and strode out the door, slamming my juice box into the trash.
Leo raced after me, tackling me in the hallway, and smashing my cheek into the wall. She was a pushy little thing. “Gimme my ticket.”
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
She planted her hands on her hips and glared at me. “It’s a small campus and when Cole and I run into each other, we chat. It’s polite small talk, not detonating car bombs.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Need (Nava Katz Book 3) Page 5
