“Fine. Former bosses,” he said. “The less you know, the safer it is for you. Honestly, it would be better if you’d never learned about changelings.”
“You told me about you yourself.”
“I thought I was about to die. It was a moment of weakness.” He shrugged.
“Demons and changelings exist, but there are other creatures…?”
“There are countless creatures, spiritual and physical, mortal and immortal,” he said. “But since you don’t have the next century to discuss them all—and due to recent tragic events, neither do I—let’s focus on what the Protectorate calls a demon.”
My head was spinning. Could I trust him? He loved to tell twisting, confusing stories, as unmoored as his fairy ancestors. “Let’s focus on what is a demon.”
“The term is overly broad,” he said. “Witches are unable to tell the difference between several supernatural creatures that I know of. Like myself. Changelings. A fairy in a human body, switched at birth. Two beings, twins, bonded for life. Or thereabouts.”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. “Got that.”
“Not to be confused with, although we often are,” he continued, “demons. The malicious spirits who possess a living body. Magical and immortal with no natural, corporeal form of their own. They drain the fae for power to maintain their possession and generally like to do bad things. They’ve haunted humankind since the beginning.”
“Exactly,” I said. “What the Protectorate has been fighting for centuries.”
“The Protectorate’s target is true demons. Yes. True demons take possession of humans for indefinite time periods, sometimes permanently. Demons are what your witch agent friends are hunting. The problem is that there are other kinds of possessing spirits, not so dangerous, that get caught in the dragnet. Not just changelings like myself.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure. They’re a secretive, diverse group. The universe is a mysterious place. They’re local to a place, a tribe, a culture. A planet. An amoeba. Even your redwood trees contain spirits, for instance.” He looked at his fingernails. “Some even believe in possessing spirits who are the polar opposite of malicious, immortal creatures. Bright spirits who only want to do good in the world and act among humans as agents of benevolence.”
The opposite of a demon would be…
“Angels?” I snorted. “Come on, that’s a myth.”
But he kept staring at his fingernail, even bringing one to his mouth to nibble.
I leaned closer. “Seth?”
“There are countless supernatural creatures,” he said, lowering his hand. “Who knows what that might include? Is it so incredible to imagine a good spirit coexists with an evil one?”
“It’s incredible to imagine a good spirit would be eating fae and killing people,” I said.
His eyebrows went up. “You saw a demon kill somebody recently?”
“There’s demon sign at the house, around the property, even down to the beach. At least a mile, maybe more.”
“You mean demon sign as defined by the Protectorate?”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to mention Darius until I had to.
He leaned back in his chair. “Then you don’t know. I’m living—barely—proof the Protectorate sees demons in any supernatural humanoid.” He patted his chest. “When a witch dies, look for another witch. You people love to kill each other.”
“The fae are missing,” I said. “They were there recently—I found a house on the beach—but gone now. The garden, the grass, the field, the cliff, the—”
“Got it. You think a demon’s eating them.”
“Do you think I’m wrong?”
“It could be. But maybe having two trained Protectorate agents—stomping around, wearing their silver and redwood and herbs and amulets—have scared them away.”
“Dar—” Whoops. I cleared my throat. “There’s demon sign inside the house.”
“Darius Ironford says so?”
I looked away. It was the cider. I shouldn’t have had a drop of alcohol when I needed to stay sharp. “Yes.”
“What kind of sign?”
I carefully moved my foot, which was under Random’s chin, and stood up with the intention of exploring how he’d decorated the house, not having had the chance since he’d moved in. “I don’t know exactly, but he probably has a stake. Maybe something else. They sent us after you with a platinum chain that rattled whenever you got close.”
“Platinum? Nice. Weren’t they afraid you’d steal it?” He got up and followed me as I walked into the living room. “You guys didn’t look like you got paid very much.”
I walked over to the mantel, which held, somewhat surprisingly, framed photos of ordinary-looking people near a Midwestern lake. “What gave us away? The cheap clothes, the DIY haircuts?”
“Your bank statements,” he said.
I spun around to glare at him. “You—”
“I could do so many awesome things back then.” He took the photo of an older man and woman in matching Christmas sweaters out of my hand and replaced it on the mantel. “You might want to change your bank PIN.”
A surge of anger rushed over me. “You… you—” I turned away, closed my eyes, and struggled for calm. He wanted me to get upset. He enjoyed the game.
Breathing deeply, I walked to a pale yellow, shabby-chic easy chair and sat down. A floral scent wafted up to my nose, as if the slipcover had been hung out to dry in a blooming lavender field.
Was he worth the trouble? Was he even able to help me, let alone willing?
“I’m sorry.” He came over and sat across from me on the couch. “I’m emotionally fragile right now. It makes me insensitive and difficult. I’ll do better.”
“You’re so full of—”
“Who died, and why would a demon want to kill him or her?” Suddenly he was all business.
“You’re really going to help me?”
“You’re all I’ve got left in this world, Alma Bellrose,” he said.
I began to scoff, but he looked serious. I didn’t know what to believe. “The murdered witch was Crystal Hawk, the hostess. Wife of Warren Hawk, who—”
“Him I’ve heard of. Well, one of his ancestors. New England roots?”
“Yes. Old family. One of the first to come over from Europe, the last of his line to survive.” I glanced at the coffee table where another framed photograph sat. This one just showed a lake surrounded by pine trees. “Lot of influence in the Protectorate.”
“Lots of reasons somebody would want to kill his wife then, you’re thinking?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me. Do you think demons hold grudges? Would they hunt down and kill the humans who’ve done the same to them over the centuries?”
“Was Crystal Hawk a demon killer?”
“I don’t know. But she seems to have been a blackmailer,” I said. “She… she was collecting money from at least one of the witches at the party, a performer. Crystal accused her of stealing from her audience.”
“Her name?”
“Tierra Ramos.”
“Where was Tierra when Crystal was killed?” Seth asked.
I paused. “With Warren.”
“Sounds totally legit.” He rolled his eyes.
“They were sleeping together in a B & B miles away,” I added.
“Yeah, nothing suspicious there,” he added. “Honestly, what kind of agent training are they doing at the San Francisco office these days?”
“Crystal killed herself. She took off her jewelry and her clothes and walked into the ocean. No sign of struggle.” I leaned over to sniff a candle next to me that smelled like lemon verbena. “A demon could make her do that. Right?”
Seth paused, let out his breath, nodded. “Or another possessing spirit,” he said.
“I’ve got to find it.”
“Your safest bet is to stay far away,” he said. “The old spirits aren’t found easily. You don’t still have tha
t platinum chain, do you?”
I rubbed my forehead, thinking of the stake in my file cabinet. The week was getting much more dangerous than I’d ever expected. “I should’ve made Birdie come home with me.”
“Send a car for her. I’ll pay the fare.”
Again, he seemed serious. The offer was kind, but— “I have to go back. I promised, and she doesn’t have the power to evade Darius anyway.”
“Go back, get her, and then leave. If it’s what you think and the demon is settling scores, you’re more vulnerable than Birdie.”
“There’s something else.” Now that I was going to ask him about demon heritage in human beings and any magical objects that might detect it, I felt a thick, powerful resistance to exposing myself to ridicule or disgust.
I picked up the lemon verbena candle and buried my nose in it. Luckily, it was unlit.
“You’re afraid to tell me you want to rejoin the Protectorate so you can see if you’ve overcome your Incurable Inability,” he said.
My head snapped up. “What? No. Ew.”
“What then?”
Oh man. I set down the candle. “Crystal said I’m part demon on my mother’s side. I believe she detected this, or something weird, using an opal ring. Darius has the ring now.”
I tried to read his face, but his expression was blank. He stared at my face, unblinking, a slight crease furrowing his brow.
“Huh,” he said finally.
“That’s it? A grunt?”
He shrugged. “It would explain a lot.”
“It explains nothing. What does that even mean? You said there’s more than one kind of… spirit creature. Maybe I’m descended from one of the good guys.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But…”
“What?”
“The good ones tend not to impregnate people while they’re on board, so to speak.”
“But demons aren’t physical. They don’t have bodies of their own, they don’t have DNA that can be inherited—”
“How do you know?” he asked. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m just asking. They’re immortal, supernatural spirit beings. Unlike fairies, they truly cannot die. You can stab their physical bodies with your silver sticks, but how can that really do anything to a creature that has floated in and out of existence since the dawn of time?”
“Exactly! They don’t have bodies. How can they make babies?”
“They possess bodies, and those bodies have babies.” He made a face. “That’s a tongue-twister.”
“And then?”
“Then the babies aren’t quite… not entirely… human. A little something else gets carried down.”
“Do you know this, or you’re just guessing?”
He glanced at the photo of the lake on the coffee table. “I was told.”
I tried to imagine his lake fae mother speaking to him. Did they use words to share their stories? Or was it like a dream, intense but insubstantial?
“So it’s true,” I said quietly. “I’m part demon.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I wouldn’t put it that way. You bear a mark. It’s just a residue of what an ancestor of yours once experienced.”
“Crystal called it—” I paused, suddenly ashamed and then angry I was ashamed. “Demon stain. She said my blood was contaminated with Shadow.”
“Your blood is human.” He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. “Female human.”
He was trying to distract me from my worries, which was nice but unnecessary. “Please, not now,” I said, waving aside his half-hearted flirting. “I need to figure this out. Why would Crystal have a ring that set off alarms for an absolutely one hundred percent human being whose ancestor was once possessed?”
Seth leaned back in his seat and hooked one ankle over his knee. “I imagine the ring was originally created to sniff out active demons,” he said quietly. “But it’s strong enough that the hint of any possession from even a few hundred years ago might set off the same alarm.”
“So to an amulet like that and possibly the Protectorate, I look like a demon?”
“If the Protectorate suspected you, they’d run tests first and eventually conclude what I’ve just told you.” He scratched his cheek. “Probably.”
I looked at my fingers, my wrists, my legs, torso. “If they’d known I had this mark”—I hated the connotations of stain—“they wouldn’t have given me a job.”
“Or let you keep one if you still had one,” Seth added.
Yet another Incurable trait. My self-employment as a craft artist was meant to be. “Is that why I have the fairy sight?”
“I’m only guessing here, but… I think so. Predators need to be able to see and hear their prey,” he said. “Without consuming fae, demons can’t maintain their possession.”
From now on I would view my talent from an entirely new angle. The sight was for killing, something I abhorred. Yet the fae had never run from me. “Did you ever—you know what I mean—to maintain your possession?”
A flash of revulsion crossed his face. “Of course not. I’m a changeling. Launt received my body, I received his. That was the magic price, and it was paid.”
I’d never seen him look so offended and regretted my question. “Sorry.”
So the sight was a gift for hunting fae, carried down from a demon-touched ancestor. Had Crystal sensed the mark in Raynor and then tried to blackmail him? It would explain why he’d wanted to get solid evidence on Crystal to discredit and convict her.
Raynor, the best demon hunter of his generation. Maybe he’d inherited more demon qualities than I had, qualities that had made him such a ruthless killer.
With a sigh, I looked at my hands. A supernatural being would have better nails. “Is there anything else demonic about me?” I asked.
“I’ve always found you irresistible,” Seth said blandly. “Didn’t know why.”
I said, “Gee, thanks,” and felt my face get warm.
“You’re cute, obviously, but I always find myself wanting to climb into your lap and purr. That’s kind of bad. Demons take advantage. My lake mother told me so.”
My cheeks flamed hotter. To hide my face, I turned away and made a show of looking around the living room. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Pier 1? IKEA?”
“Estate sales, mostly,” he said. “I like old things.”
“Reminds you of… home?”
“I don’t remember much about my real home. My fae mother saw to that. All my thoughts were filtered through the brain of a human baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult.”
“But you remember some—”
“She spoke to me while I grew up in my human family.” He got up, walked to the window. Wind was pushing branches from a photinia bush against the glass. “Otherwise how would I ever have known what I was?”
“Does she still?”
He didn’t answer. Then, still facing away from me, shook his head. “Not for a long time.”
“Do you—”
He spun around. “I’m not going to talk about that anymore.” He put his hand over his heart, his sly mask back in place. “It’s dangerous to expose your deepest secrets to a demon.”
“I’m getting tired of that joke.” I sank back into the chair and gazed at the ceiling. The implications of being marked as part demon raced through my mind. “They might force me out of Silverpool.”
“Who?”
“The Protectorate. They haven’t installed a new Protector, but when they do, I’ll be driven out of my home.” I peeked down my nose at him. “And so will you.”
“Don’t worry about the future.” He came over and tapped the candle next to me, setting it alight. “Humans love to worry. It’s destructive magic, like casting a spell for bad things to happen.”
I couldn’t tell him about Raynor, but it gave me some comfort to know, if my theory was correct, the director of the Protectorate was probably in the same predicament as I was. Although he might only protect me from exposure as long as I continued to
work for him.
Then again, maybe he’d kill me.
“What’s the matter?” Seth asked. “Don’t like the candle?”
“Is there anything useful you can tell me? How I can find the demon?”
“If you haven’t sensed it yet, you’re not going to without more magic. That staff of yours maybe?”
“It won’t have any power that far from home, but I have a few things I can try.” I’d kept the silver stake Raynor had handed me when he’d dealt with the child demon. The fact that he’d let me walk out of the office with it probably meant he’d wanted me to have it. “Isn’t there any clue you can give me? The inside scoop from another supernatural being? There must be something that makes an active demon stand out.”
“Didn’t they teach you that at the Protectorate?”
“I want to know what they didn’t teach us,” I said. “What do you know?”
Seth rubbed the stubble on his chin and gazed at the burning candle. “Take this with a grain of salt,” he said. “I don’t want you running after the wrong person just because of what I said. Don’t jump to conclusions.”
I clasped my hands together, trying to sound calm, but my pulse picked up. “I won’t jump. Lots of salt. No running.”
He looked at me. “They tend to go into particular occupations,” he said. “Organized crime, fashion, politics, show business…”
My mind darted over the witches at the party. Show business would be Tierra and Nathan…
Seth continued. “But most of them, sooner or later, end up in business,” he said. “Usually at the top. They like having a lot of money. Or maybe they just can’t help making it.”
I rose to my feet. “Like, billionaire kind of money?”
“See? You’re jumping to conclusions,” he said, standing too. “And you’re totally about to run after somebody.”
“I’m not. I’m going to drive after him.”
“You’re too tired,” Seth said. He set a hand on my arm. “You need to sleep before you hit the road.”
The thought of sleep struck like a blow, and I let out an enormous yawn. “I’ll get”—a second yawn—“an herbal remedy to keep me”—a third—“awake.”
“The best remedy is sleep,” a voice said, dreamy and quiet, far away, safe, comforting. A friend.
Hex at a House Party Page 20
