“I know this is a lot, but I’m going to need you to do what you do best,” Piper said.
“Get people killed?”
“Find the truth. Rafe and you were tracking down the informant who drew you out the night of Ethan’s death. What happened?”
I looked at the amber liquid. The familiar scent called to me, but I didn’t want to calm my edge, I wanted to remember everything so I could give her all the information she would need to protect her family. I walked her through it.
“Benny said a man named Cartwright hired him to get Ethan and me out in the open. Cartwright originally wanted revenge on me for exposing his bribes to the Mayor, but after the attack, Benny said it got personal, that Cartwright just wanted me.”
She frowned. “Where does the Demon come in?”
“Cartwright is the Demon, or actually, the demon’s host. but I don’t know why a Demon would want me.”
Piper digested the information. “If Cartwright knew you were a Lilin, it would make sense.”
“Why?”
“The Demon blood within you would make you the perfect host.”
I gulped. “He wants me for a meat suit?”
Despite the calm look on her face, she didn’t sugar coat it. “I’m guessing meat suit.”
Piper rose again and went back to the stovetop to inspect dinner. I sudden realized that cooking was her coping mechanism. No one needed that much spaghetti at noon.
“What else do you know?” she asked as she salted a pan of boiling water.
I took in a deep breath and focused on what I did know was the truth at this point. I lined the facts up in my head like sugar packets on the table. “There are four dead bodies all marked as a sacrifice. There is a spell of some sort. There is a Demon wearing a man named Cartwright.”
“What about Cartwright?” Levi interrupted as he came to stand in the doorway of the kitchen. He was the last person I wanted to talk to about this.
Piper spoke. “Merci is updating me on what she has found so far.”
Levi glared down at me and crossed his arm over his chest, waiting for the report. I’d still never get the image of his wolf out of my mind.
“Rafe and I found what I think is a portal spell at one of Cartwright’s buildings in Old City.”
“Why he would need a building there? They’ve got his huge outfit on the edge of Grey’s Ferry.”
“Think he’s the Demon type?”
“Would explain why he’s always able to outbid us.”
I stifled a laugh. Levi wasn’t the laughing kind, intentional ornot.
“What?”
Piper rescued me. “It was funny, Levi. You made a joke.”
Levi put his hands on his hips, then scratched behind his ear.
Piper got up and went back to her cooking, dumped two boxes of pasta into a now boiling pot. “So we have a name?”
“And potentially a location. Benny said they were at Schuylkill and Bainbridge.”
“What are we waiting for?” Levi asked Piper. “We have a location. We strike tonight.”
Piper turned on him with her steaming wooden spoon between them. “You will do no such thing. We need to know which kind of Demon, how to kill it, and what it really wants before can do anything.”
Levi stepped into the kitchen, but something hot passed between them, passed over me as I sat there, trying to be perfectly still in the swirling, silent argument above my head.
“I don’t want to hear it, Levi,” Piper finally said. “She’s one of us, I don’t care how, she and Rafe are going to get answers before you go charging in there.”
Levi exhaled through his nose, the snort of an angry predator. I half expected him to paw at the ground.
“Listen. If you need to go blow off some steam, I have about ten loads of ironing that need to be done.”
Levi took in another deep breath and let it out, the aggression leaving his shoulders. “Forgive me,” he said to her.
“We’ll talk about it later. Now, you can go or help me with lunch.”
Levi seemed to slink out of the kitchen.
Piper took the towel off her shoulder and wiped her hands. “My word, that boy. I don’t know how he’s made it this long with that fire under his tail.”
I snickered. But it faded fast. “He isn’t wrong. Cartwright is after me, killing people I know. You could be in great danger.”
“Nonsense,” she said with a wave of her spoon.
“How can you be so sure?”
She turned to me and smiled. “Because you are going to fix it.”
I looked up into her eyes and the Charm, my demonic harpoon, leapt through me trying to connect, but I held it back, pulled the rope back into my soul so that it was just me, Merci Lanard and her years of training asking the questions, getting her answers.
“Once Rafe and I figure out what this guys is, why does Levi think he has to take care of it? Wouldn’t you do a better job?”
Piper gulped as she slipped into the chair next to me. Her voice was soft, not like the skittering horse voice from before, but more like the hushed tones that I’d get in Sam’s diner.
“My power isn’t like yours or Levi’s. I’m human. Flesh and blood. Vulnerable to more attacks and spells that you are.”
“But I just watched you extract Demon essence from Rafe.”
She smiled and drew her nail down a seam in the table. “I am only a vessel for their power. It’s not my own. I am not a fighter, Merci. I’m a glass vase.”
It made sense. Sort of.
“Don’t you think I’d rather live in a big city with a theatre and decent WiFi? Don’t you think I’d rather be putting myself in danger instead of my family?” She shook her head, her graying strawberry blonde hair falling over her shoulder. “Seventeen years still hasn’t been enough time to heal the schism that The Great War caused. Packs are getting better, the leadership stronger, but I am still their Den Mother. And they still need me alive.”
She looked up at me, a light of hope in her eyes. “I can make my people stronger, increase their power, but I can’t take part in this fight. You can. You have the will and the gift to figure this out. To keep fighting. And do you know what you really need to solve the mystery?”
“An easy button?”
She only quirked her eyebrow above those wise green eyes that looked a little more fragile in this moment than they had that morning.
I didn’t want to. Alone I was safe. Alone was the best place for me to be, but there was still so much I didn’t know. “I need Rafe.”
She smiled this sort of maternal I-told-you-so smile and went back to stir the pasta.
Footsteps drew my attention away from the Idiots Guide as I ate my spaghetti. I stared as Emily walked toward me and sat in the chair next to mine.
“They whisper when I’m around,” Emily said as she stabbed her spaghetti. “It’s like they don’t know how to talk to me anymore. I’m that poor widow instead of the pack Shala.”
I forced down a forkful of noodles through the shock of her sitting with me. Like old times. Perhaps this was the opportunity to open up with a bit of truth about myself, to ease us into the conversation I so desperately wanted to have, needed to have. RE-BUILDING RAPPORT 101. “Loss breaks off a part of you. The grieving process is you figuring out if you’re going to fight to be who you were or be comfortable with who you are now this piece missing.”
Emily stared at me like I’d started speaking in tongues.
“I lost my dad when I was young. It changes you. And people stare because they’re trying to figure out what you’re going to fill that hole with.” I set my bowl on the table between us. It was beyond strange talking about this with Emily, but this is what friends did, right? “If we’re being honest, I filled the hole with Ethan. He gave me a family I didn’t have. Philly gave me something I could fight for so I didn’t have to think about how lonely I really was.” Am. I wasn’t sure about the verb tense on that one. We’d have to see how the day
went.
Emily looked down at her bowl. “I’m just angry. I just want to punch someone.”
“And I will hold them down for you when we find them. It’s okay to be angry. Lord knows I was.”
“How long does it last?”
“Until you find something else to lose.”
Emily chewed slowly. I usually loved shocking people with the truth, but this was more of a confession that sliced off a hang nail in my soul. Like a stone that just needed to be out in the world so it could be polished and made smooth.
“Guess you’ve found someone new to fill it.”
Did she mean Rafe? I snorted. “It’s not what you think.”
“Whatever.” Emily smiled into her dinner. “He went to your house.”
I watched Emily for a moment—the freckles sprinkled across her nose, the hair that stuck out of her ponytail because it really wasn’t long enough to go into a ponytail. She wasn’t perfect. She was just a woman. A woman who, despite all the love and family going on upstairs, chose to be down here in the damp basement with me.
I opened my mouth to ask a question then shut it again. I needed to work on that. Now that I really knew where the power came from, I needed to be more careful with it. I started again. “Can I ask you a question?”
Emily nodded as she took another bite of spaghetti.
“Did you know Ethan had figured out a way to take pictures of magic?”
Emily took a moment, licking the pasta sauce from her lips before she answered. “About a month before he died. He said someone made it for him. Someone he met on the job.”
“Who? Where are they in this fight?”
“I don’t know. Guess he even kept secrets from me.” A flash of anger flicked across her brown eyes as she stabbed at her food.
“And you gave the lens to me?”
“And I gave it to you.” Emily’s brown eyes studied my face. “Ethan told me that you wandered. Showed me a picture he’d taken. I almost didn’t believe him.”
My jaw nearly dropped. “Why not?”
“Because it speaks too much to fate. Our lives are already so predetermined by our breeds. I had a hard time believing a girl who could make people confess their darkest secrets could would grow up to be a news reporter.”
“Don’t forget that she has to tell the truth herself.”
She gaped for a moment. “You can’t lie?”
“I can, but it is really not pleasant.”
There was one question buzzing around and I kept my eyes to the red leather book in my hands. “Then why not tell me? If he knew I wasn’t human and I obviously didn’t know, why didn’t he give me this book?”
Emily scanned the title. “I think it had something to do with my brother.”
“Figures.”
“Shifters don’t do well with other breeds, hell, sometime we don’t even get along amongst ourselves. It’s hard enough to deal with the innate magic the Mother has given us. It’s one of the reasons Levi keeps Ethan and Rafe on the outside of the pack. They asked questions no one really wanted to answer.” She gulped. “Kept, why he kept Ethan on the outside of the pack. He asked too many questions.”
The verb game was one that I knew well, the adjustment from is to was, so I distracted her for a moment. It was the least I could do.
“Yeah, asking too many questions doesn’t exactly garner you friends.”
Humor glimmered in Emily’s eyes for a moment, but the glimmer faded fast. When the ashen tone covered her face, I knew what she was going to ask. “So we know who killed Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“And we know who they are working for.”
“Yes.”
“So why are you here?” she asked frankly. “Why aren’t you beating down a path to his door? Calling in all those favors you have amassed. Why isn’t his name on the front page yet?”
I had to smile at that; our two great minds did think alike. I repeated Piper’s answer, one that had settled within me as new truths I had to live with now. “I want to do all of those things. But that’s what got Ethan killed in the first place – rushing in, head down and pen out. I need more information. I’ve been chasing the symptoms—bribes, decreased gang activity, missing people. I don’t need the scoop on this one. I need the solution.”
The hair on Emily’s skin stood on end and I could see it across the side table between us. “You really have taken up the knife.”
I nodded. “I have to. For Ethan.”
Emily’s eyes flooded with tears immediately and she looked up at the ceiling to keep them from falling down her cheeks.
I took one more moment of bravery. “I know you’re grieving and I’m a walking, talking reminder of what happened to Ethan, but I miss you. I miss the stupid texts and ganging up on him. And when this whole demon thing is put to bed, I want us to see if we can be friends again.”
Emily ran a knuckle under her eyes to catch the tears. “I’d like that too.” Emily smiled. “After you catch this bastard.”
“After I catch this bastard.”
Emily chuckled, a weight lifted from both our shoulders. “I’ve got a box of books in the trunk of my car. You and MacWolf can snuggle over them.”
I glowered at Emily. “What is it with you and Piper?”
She only smiled. “Must be a sixth sense.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was not just sitting in his room, watching him sleep. I’d come up to his room with a book and a bowl of spaghetti because I wasn’t sure this group believed in leftovers, though the bowl had gone cold hours ago. He needed his strength. I sat in the chair by his bed and willed him to get better. I needed him walking and talking. Even if talking meant yelling at me. And while I could see with my own eyes his chest rising and falling, I could at least be sure that he was still with me, assuage my fears I’d lose him for good.
I’d been reading through what I could of the books Emily had brought in. Reading his Idiots Guide lead me to the current tome that I was wading through. The book was thirty pounds of breed indexes including information on Lilin, a.k.a demon spawn, and it was like reading a horoscope; everything about them seemed to pertain to my life somehow. The compulsions. The drive. The self-destruction when the hunger wasn’t met, like drinking too much to make the storm stop. Rafe had said that Demons were hunger, but I wasn’t sure what exactly I was craving.
Without knowing the Original Sire, the demon granddaddy, I still didn’t know much about my ability, my hunger, just that it was there. Depending on the purity of the blood line and the generations from the original host, there wasn’t a gauge that really said how much power a Lilin might have, or even what form it would take. It depended on the person.
It was oddly reassuring to see that magic was a fairly stable concept across breeds and spells. The power was innate, like a battery, which fueled the abilities specific to each breed, and the practitioner’s will drove it all. Piper’s confession came into crisper view. She’d said she was a human with power, which meant she lacked a vital part of the equation, the ability of a breed. She was more like a battery to fuel the others connected to her.
From what I could gather, Rafe had all three. Power from his Legacy, Ability from his breed, and a will that was strong and open. A will to protect others which had landed him in the bed before me.
As if summoned by the smell of book dust, Rafe moaned, and I sat up straight in my chair. He strained, struggled against something invisible. His wide blue eyes popped open and darted around the room, his gaze slamming into me like a lead weight.
A dark shadow crossed his brow. “What the hell happened?”
I slowly closed the book on my lap and stuck to the facts. He couldn’t be mad at the facts. “I found you on my back porch. Brought you to Piper. She …” Now wasn’t the time to sugarcoat anything either. “She extracted Demon essence from you.”
Rafe slowly sat up, the blanket falling from his bare chest where the bruises were in the healing shade of purple. He looke
d down at his hands, his scabbed knuckles, studying them. He ran his fingers up the inside of his forearms as if trying to read the marks like Braille. “Who cleaned me up?”
“I fixed up Ethan a few times, so I knew what to do, what precautions to take.” I leaned forward. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Why don’t you just glamour me and find out?”
No need to ask if he was still pissed. Check. “For the record, you might actually be the only person in Philly who hasn’t been under the Lanard Charm.”
I got up from the chair, setting the large book at my feet, and went to get him the bottle of water and pain pills that had been waiting for him. “And it’s not a glamour. That’s what fairies do apparently.”
I handed him the pills and the water. “I thought I was just a hotshot reporter, turns out I was more of a one-trick pony.”
He glared up at me and I was surprised he could even get the pills down with the way his jaw was clenched. He gulped down half the bottle of water and handed it back.
“Will you please tell me what happened last night?” I set the bottle on the nightstand next to the cold bowl of spaghetti and lowered myself back into the chair, gazing at him intently.
He finally looked away from me and at the blanket before him. I watched the tension roll across his freckled shoulders as he remembered. “I remembered the Lux Stelen spell and the lights disappearing.”
“That’s what happened the night in the store. The lights just vanished.”
His gaze only flicked up to me, then back to the bed. “I fought them and then there were these big steel traps and a cage, and I don’t know what happened.” He clenched his fists, then put his face in his shaking hands. “I just don’t know.”
I took in the state of him. Underneath his steely exterior, he was terrified. Confused. If he was taken, maybe they tortured him like they tortured Benny. I hadn’t seen any carved marks on him, and I’d gotten a fairly comprehensive look at his body, but whatever they had done to Benny was enough to make him want to die. If a wolf saw a steel trap and a cage, what did poor Benny see?
The Truth About Night Page 22