by J E McDonald
This time Stella looked to Lucas. “No,” he said. “Not that I could find anyway. But his permanent address was listed as being in Aubagne, France for five years.”
Confusion made her blink. “And that means…?”
“He was probably a member of the French Foreign Legion during that time.”
Aubrey straightened, and Loki protested at the sudden movement. People still joined that? She’d thought it was just part of black and white movies set in the thirties.
Lucas went on, “The legionnaires have a policy of taking anyone, even those with a criminal history, and only draw the line at rapists and murderers. The men who end up there usually have no other options.”
As Loki resettled on her lap, her mind raced. So Roman was a military man—a military man who “got rid of” demons for a living. It explained the ready alertness he’d had in her shop when he thought there was danger. The dread she’d been carrying in her chest all day shifted. When she’d seen his knife, she’d thought he’d been in the store to hurt her, that the man she’d been ogling was there to do her harm. But now him carrying combat knives made more sense.
When Stella and Lucas shared another glance, Aubrey tensed. “There’s more?”
Stella cleared her throat. “When I was talking with Grace, she said Roman hasn’t told her he’s back in town.”
Aubrey relaxed a bit. With everything else she’d been told, it seemed a small thing, not that important at all. Maybe the guy wanted a break from demon hunting for a while.
A change of pace.
When he’d given her the excuse, it hadn’t sounded quite right. But she hadn’t known the rest of it. If darkness filled his life, things a person wouldn’t want to think about too often, then maybe a job at an antique store would be just the thing. Maybe he searched for the same undefinable thing everyone else in the world did. Maybe he was trying to be happy.
“I’m thinking—” Stella said, stopping to glance at Lucas. “We’re thinking maybe it would be better if you didn’t hire him as your part-time person. There have to be better candidates out there.”
“I already fired him,” Aubrey murmured and noticed how Stella’s posture relaxed.
But maybe I overreacted.
“What happened after I left?” Stella asked, grabbing her attention. “You were upset when you got home.”
Aubrey waved a dismissive hand. “Finn knocked over a couple boxes in the stockroom and Roman pulled his knife, thinking it was a threat.”
It seemed so trivial now that she knew everything. He’d done what his instincts had told him to do. His change in demeanor had scared her. But now that she knew he’d been trained in the military, that his regular job involved demons, it changed everything. Instead of feeling threatened, she felt safer.
He probably wore his knives all the time. Just like how Lucas would carry a concealed gun when off duty and was probably wearing one right now as he sat across from her. It would be the same for Roman.
She’d made a mistake. She shouldn’t have fired him.
Would he come back if she asked him to? She had his cell number from the forms he’d filled out. And he wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of filling out tax forms if he hadn’t actually wanted to work at the store, right?
“Aubrey?” When Stella spoke, her brow furrowed even more than before. “What are you planning?
Standing with Loki in her arms, Aubrey set him in her spot in the leather recliner before heading to the kitchen. Her appetite had returned in full force. She pulled open the fridge and took out the bowl of pasta salad.
Stella followed behind her. “You’re not going to fire him after all, are you?” Her friend delivered the question in a flat tone.
Aubrey didn’t answer as she scooped some of the salad into a bowl. She looked at Lucas over her shoulder. “Do you want some of this?”
He gave her a nod, and she smiled. Lucas never turned down food. Passing him the bowl and a fork, she reached into the cupboard for another dish and heaped a healthy serving for herself.
“What about his energy, Aubrey?” Stella asked. “It’s…not good.”
“So you keep saying,” she replied, leaning a hip onto the counter and digging into her salad. “But you said yourself, energy can change.” Aubrey shrugged. “Maybe he needs to work in an antique store for a change of pace.”
“Sometimes people do need a change of pace,” Lucas agreed, his mouth half full as he sat at the kitchen table.
“You’re not helping,” Stella told him with a glare.
Eyebrows raised, he held a forkful of pasta salad suspended in front of his mouth. Then he shrugged, and took another bite.
Stella crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. An awkward silence descended between the three of them as she and Lucas ate and Stella sulked. Aubrey knew her best friend was objecting to Roman because she cared.
Finishing her last bite, she turned to the sink.
“I’m worried,” Stella said quietly.
Aubrey’s heart squeezed. If it weren’t for Stella, she’d have no one to worry over her. “I haven’t made any decisions yet,” she said, setting her dirty bowl in the sink to wash later. But she had kind of decided already, hadn’t she? And her friend would be able to sniff out the lie.
Intent on taking a shower, Aubrey walked down the hallway to her room and heard Stella follow. Crossing to her dresser, she opened the top drawer and paused to stare at the picture she had of Lina and Charles set on its surface. It was the only picture she had of them, the only thing she’d taken from their house after they’d died. What advice would they have given her in this situation?
Follow your heart. That’s what Lina had always told her. Aubrey had lived with the couple for eight years, the best—and last—foster parents she’d ever had. The social worker who’d taken up her case when she was ten, Abigail, had known them personally and arranged it. After all the bad houses she’d been sent to, Abigail had taken it upon herself to see her in a good home. Those eight years were the happiest portion of Aubrey’s childhood. Such a short span of time, but also so important. If she hadn’t had them in her life, who knew where she would have ended up.
The couple had talked about adopting her, but for some reason she’d always put the brakes on. She’d been stupid. Any other kid in her position would have jumped at the chance to have real parents. When Aubrey reflected on it now, she thought it was because she knew the moment she committed to them like that, she’d lose them.
And she’d lost them anyway. At least if they’d been her adoptive parents, she would have known about her inheritance sooner than her twenty-first birthday. She would have felt like she was a real part of the family. It continued to be the biggest regret of her life.
All she could do now was focus on the good memories. Whenever she’d had a life issue, Lina would sit with her on her bed and stroke her hair while they talked. The advice was always the same. What is your heart telling you?
Her heart was telling her she’d made a mistake and she shouldn’t have fired Roman. But her heart was also telling her that inviting him back might hurt her friend. Two choices pulled at her in different directions.
But Stella was a big girl and had dealt with much more than someone’s unusual energy. As a witch, she knew how to protect herself. If she had warning, she should be able to handle Roman’s energy, whether it was “not good” or not. His presence might have startled her that morning, but it didn’t mean it would happen next time.
“Look,” Stella said from doorway. “I could tell you were really interested in Roman as something other than an employee from the way you talked about him, before I knew who he was and,” she took a deep breath, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Aubrey grabbed a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, shut the drawer, and turned to face Stella’s concern. “No one’s getting hurt. He’s going to work for me, that’s all.” Maybe. If he came back.
The skeptical expression on Stella’s face t
old Aubrey she wasn’t convinced.
She turned away from her friend and grabbed her bathrobe and towel off the hook on her closet door. “Are you and Lucas spending the night here tonight?” she asked as she brushed past Stella and went down the hallway to the bathroom.
“I think so. Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay. This is your house too.” Even if Stella spent as much time at Lucas’s place as she did here and also owned a whole other house that used to belong to her grandmother, Aubrey was always glad for her friend’s company, no matter how short it was. “I was just wondering if you guys could keep the sex noise down this time?”
Looking over her shoulder at Stella’s flushed face, Aubrey grinned. “Because if you can’t, warn me ahead of time and I’ll order some of those noise-canceling headphones.” She shut the door on Stella’s stunned expression, and let out a giggle.
“Oh, yeah?” came the rejoinder through the door. “Well maybe you should change the batteries in your favorite vibrator so it doesn’t buzz so loud.”
Aubrey snorted and turned on the shower to drown out her laughter.
11
Roman stood on the opposite side of the street around the corner from the antique store, leaning against the stone wall of an office building. Watching. Waiting. To say he’d been surprised when he received Aubrey’s text last night would have been an understatement.
He and Moe had been in the middle of a Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode, one of the demon’s favorites. The little guy had been lying upside down in the sofa with his legs in the air when Roman’s phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Hi. It’s Aubrey. I might have overreacted. Can you come in at nine tomorrow and talk about it?
He’d stared at the text a good five minutes before he’d put the phone down, not replying. He shouldn’t go. For Aubrey’s sake, he should leave town and forget the prophecy even existed, instead of returning to the farce of a job he’d applied for. How many times had he tried to convince himself to leave town, to forget Gusion’s words? Too many to count.
Yesterday, he’d frightened her, but for some reason she reached out to him. She’d been right to be scared and should stay as far away from him as possible. Her life may depend on it.
With the prophecy pressing down on him, he’d be a fool not to accept.
The early signs of a business day were visible in the increase of both foot and vehicle traffic as the sun traveled up the horizon. He wondered what side of the coin Agent Martinez won that morning. Was he watching him now, or was it one of the others? Roman waited for the familiar feeling of being observed from a distance, but it never came. Either no one was keeping tabs on him today or they were very good at what they did.
He’d been here for a while, waiting in the shadows, but as the sun rose, it became harder and harder for him to remain hidden. Aubrey had arrived about fifteen minutes ago, entering through the back door. He’d walked through the alley on one of his first visits to the place, staking it out. If he needed to snatch her without being seen, that was the place to do it. It would almost be too easy.
The thought left a dry and bitter taste in his mouth.
After she arrived this morning, she’d come out the front door to place a sandwich board sign with the store’s name on the sidewalk, then watered the flowering plants that ran the length of the front windows. She wore ripped jeans and a long sweater over her red T-shirt, her shoulders hunched against the brisk air that became cooler with each morning.
He tried not to appreciate her curves as she bent to her tasks, but it was impossible for him not to. She filled out her jeans in the best possible way, the skin-tight material disappearing into ankle boots and showing off every movement of her muscles beneath. She had an ass made for smacking. His fingers twitched at the thought. The comment she’d made about role playing the day he applied for the job had him clenching his fists. He could think of about a dozen more scenarios better than employer-employee.
Before returning inside, Aubrey glanced over her shoulder in a nervous manner, her brows pinched together. Good. She should be more cautious about her safety, more wary. The world was a harsh place, and she needed to protect herself.
From him.
A foreign sensation spread through his chest. If circumstances were different, if he’d met Aubrey at a pub or had entered her store on a whim, he might have pursued her. Over the past years, he hadn’t attempted a normal relationship, preferring short hookups with women he’d met at a bar. But if he’d met Aubrey normally, if he’d allowed himself to acknowledge the appeal she had, maybe he would have changed his ways.
He wished he could be a different person, one worthy of being in her presence. Instead, he was a man who was very good at doing very bad things. The fact that his mind processed the vulnerabilities of Aubrey’s schedule was proof of that.
At five to nine, he pushed off the wall and headed to the entrance of Relics. The door was locked when he tried to open it. He knocked on the glass window.
Through the plants hanging in the front window, he saw her move away from the counter and head toward him. The deadbolt clicked, and she swung the door wide.
For a moment, she just stared at him, the fear he’d seen in her eyes yesterday was replaced with wary caution. She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she murmured, then stepped back to let him in.
He didn’t answer as he walked inside. The deadbolt clicked loudly when she locked the door behind him.
Aubrey wrapped her sweater tighter around herself and headed to the front counter. He followed, but slowly to give her space. “I was surprised by your text,” he said when she turned around to confront him.
“I had a talk with Stella last night.”
“She should have warned you to stay away.”
“She did.”
He stared at her, wondering at the conversation they’d had.
“What happened to the woman?” she asked suddenly. “The one Stella told me about at that house. The one who wouldn’t stop screaming?”
Tension racketed through Roman’s already-taut body. When he worked with the Lillers, he signed contracts, which meant he wouldn’t talk about the work they did. He had a similar agreement with the Church. It would be the same for the witch. And if she had relayed details of the event, then she either received Grace’s permission or she didn’t care about the contract. Neither scenario was ideal.
But Aubrey waited for an answer, and from the look on her face, she assumed the worst.
“She’s okay,” he said quietly. “She’d been hurt, but she’s okay now.” He liked to keep tabs on the people who survived possession, and when he’d returned to town, he’d checked up on her. Unlike some, she’d escaped with her life. The rest of her family hadn’t been so lucky, sacrificed before the Lillers had even arrived.
It had been another case of fire demons and air demons teaming up on a human family. He kept seeing it more and more. How many details did Aubrey know? What else had Stella said about him?
She stared at him and swallowed. The ticking of the clocks on the back wall filled the silence of the store. He should go. She’d asked her questions and was still nervous around him. There was no reason to honor their verbal agreement of him being her employee when she remained uncomfortable. She couldn’t be the one he searched for anyway, not with her soul so pure.
He took a step back.
“Are you wearing those knives now?”
The question stopped him. “Always.” There’d been too many close calls in his life to be without them.
Nodding once, she looked away and walked around the counter where she had a set of silverware laid out beside a bottle of polish and a rag. “I’ve never heard of a demonologist before,” she said, not meeting his gaze. “I looked it up last night. There aren’t very many of you, and what I could find was all connected to the Catholic Church. Priests and the like. I lived next to a Catholic school for a while when I was a teenager, so I feel like I might
have learned a little through osmosis.”
Lifting her eyes to his, she let out a nervous laugh he was beginning to recognize, and smoothed her hair. It was like she wanted to confess a deficiency in her upbringing.
He was the wrong person for that. “I’m not Catholic.”
“Oh.” Aubrey let out the word in a puff of air.
“My father wasn’t, and the woman who raised me after he died never pressured me to convert.” Why did he just tell her that? He never opened up about his past to anyone. “But I did go to mass with her every Sunday while I lived with her.” He clamped his jaw to stop talking.
Aubrey stared at him with parted lips.
“Mrs. Klassen worked at the church, but I never accepted the sacraments.” But he knew the words to all the creeds and rites. For most of his teenage years, he had the feeling she expected him to join her in her faith, and believed Jude had something to do with Mrs. Klassen never pressing the issue, but never asked.
Bur why did he keep telling Aubrey all of this? His internal temperature heated uncomfortably. Opening up wasn’t on his list of things to do today, or any day. He shook his head and tried to focus on why he was here in the first place. “The Church calls me a demonologist, but what I do for them and the Lillers goes beyond that. Demon hunter would be more accurate.” He cut himself off. He really needed to stop talking.
Aubrey watched him with a mix of wariness and curiosity. He wasn’t sure what she wanted from him now. The clocks on the back wall ticked to an odd little tune, like out of sync tap dancers, as they stared at each other. She still had her arms wrapped around herself.
He took another step back.
“I’ll admit,” Aubrey said, stopping him, “you startled me yesterday. The knives are…intimidating.”
