by Kat Simons
“Thanks for the call,” she said to Laura. “If he comes back, don’t let him know you’ve talked to me.”
“You know who this is?”
“Not sure.”
“Does he have something to do with that hunky hunter you were in here with earlier?”
“Maybe.” She was still staring at Sebastian as she spoke. He stared back, his expression carefully neutral so she couldn’t read what he might be thinking.
“Stay safe, babe,” Laura said. “If you need any help, let me know. We’ve got your back.”
“Thanks, Laura. I appreciate that. I’ll call if I need you.”
When she’d hung up, she remained silent for another few moments, not sure how much to say in front of Ellen.
“Emergency?” Sebastian asked.
“No. Just someone looking for me at Dana’s.”
He tilted his head a little, a slight, almost imperceptible nod toward Ellen and Mara. To someone who didn’t know him, it would look like he was moving his head in consideration of what she’d just said. But Sebastian didn’t do things, even slight gestures, without a reason. She returned his gesture with a very faint one of her own, a shrug of uncertainty. He’d recognize it, but she hoped neither Ellen nor Mara would pick up on it. She wasn’t as good at this as he was.
“I can deal with it later,” she finished. “We need to finish here first.”
Ellen stared between them with narrowed eyes. “Is it Bart? Has he found you?”
“It wasn’t Grant,” Angie said with complete honesty. Unless Grant was able to change his look that dramatically…
And while the hair and eyes were easy to disguise, and maybe even the eyebrows, the rail thin physique and short stature would have been obvious even with Grant sitting during their entire meeting. The skeletal look of the man’s face didn’t fit Grant either. She would have noticed the shadows in that kind of facial structure even in Grant’s darkened study. The only similarity was the pale skin, but even then, Grant hadn’t been on the edge of no pigment in his skin tone.
No, it wasn’t likely the man himself. Maybe one of his employees, or a hired thug, but not Grant.
Her sincerity must have come through clearly to Ellen because the woman let the topic go.
“I suppose you want to know how Mara ended up living with Bart after everything?” Ellen asked, returning to the topic, and going directly to the question Angie had wanted an answer to but hadn’t dared asked.
“That has crossed my mind,” Angie said as neutrally as possible.
“I ran away with her at first. I left the next night. I didn’t see Bart that entire day or evening. According to our housekeeper, he’d left the house and wasn’t expected back for another day or so.”
The fact that the housekeeper knew the man’s schedule but his own wife didn’t would have been an infuriating and terribly sad point in any other story. In the midst of this story, Angie wasn’t even surprised.
“So I packed a bag and took Mara to a hotel in New Jersey, someplace I didn’t think he’d look for us, but also someplace I could get to without a car since I didn’t have one at the time. I didn’t go to my parents because he’d look there, and I didn’t want to drag them into this. At least not yet. Not until I figured out how to handle it all.” She stared at Mara, her chin down. “Don’t you ever do what I did. You can always come to me, no matter what. Don’t dare try to handle things just to keep me safe.”
Mara made a face and looked away from her mother even as she leaned closer into her. Her cheeks had flushed a deep, splotchy red. Since Mara had been in the basement earlier trying to do exactly what her mother was warning her not to do, Angie thought the admonishment might have hit the girl a little close to home.
Ellen shook off whatever thoughts she’d fallen into in that moment, and said, “To make an already long story short, I tried to bargain with a demon myself. I used all that research I’d done and summoned one and asked it to kill my husband.”
“What did you offer it in return?” Angie asked quietly, making an effort to hold Ellen’s gaze and not flick a glance at Sebastian.
“My soul of course. What else did I have to give?”
“When?”
“When I was old and ready to die. I wanted to be around for Mara, to raise her, so I made that a part of the deal. That I’d go willingly but only after Mara had grown up and I was old.”
“What went wrong?” Because when dealing with a demon, something always went wrong. Angie knew that from firsthand experience.
“We set the deal. It agreed to the bargain. Even the part about waiting to collect my soul. We were about to finalize things, and then… Then it got pulled out of the circle I’d confined it to. I wasn’t even sure what happened exactly. I only found out later.”
“Another demon,” Sebastian said quietly. “A stronger one prevented the bargain.”
Ellen nodded. “You’re the one who told me that.”
“What happened here? Between you and Sebastian?” Angie watched them both staring at each other. Sebastian’s expression was closed. Ellen’s hostile.
“Because I didn’t understand what had happened the first time,” Ellen said, “I thought I’d done something wrong. I wanted to strike the deal, so I tried again on another night. I read some more, did some more research. And decided I needed a better setting.”
“Here?” Angie asked.
“Believe it or not, this particular apartment complex was originally built by an architect who worshipped demons. He aligned the buildings to form a sort of outer circle within which the setting of a protective circle to summon a demon was easier. Most of the people who live here don’t know anything about that. They wouldn’t live here if they did. It’s also why the rent is super cheap for a Manhattan apartment, even all the way up here. You won’t find rents like this anywhere else on the island.”
Angie wondered if that explained the visible cut in the circle in the basement—she’d considered maybe Mara was coming into magic of her own and that’s why something that usually manifested in the magic realm like the cut in a containment circle had appeared in this one. But if the whole complex was designed to make summoning demons easier, that might be a better explanation.
“So, you…moved here?” Angie asked.
“Not at first. At first, I just snuck into the area late at night, set up my circle and called a demon. I tried to summon the same one I had already dealt with, but it didn’t show. Another appeared. This one was… Scary.”
“Aren’t all demons scary?” Angie had always thought so, and she was as used to them as a person who wasn’t a hunter could get. No matter how often she faced them, she always found them terrifying.
“Yes, but there was something a lot more challenging about this one. Holding it was harder. It tested the circle, and I wasn’t prepared for that. It was sly and calculating, and I had expected that, but maybe not as well as I thought because I was way out of my depths.”
“And Sebastian came and fought the demon off,” Angie guessed.
“It was a Molder demon,” Sebastian said.
Angie blinked at him a few times. The same demon who’d tried to grab her from the book in Mara’s room. A demon who haunted nightmares and stole souls in torturous ways. A demon who ate those souls after roasting the husks of the humans who’d carried them.
“Why did you call a Molder demon?” Angie asked, her voice quiet.
“I didn’t on purpose,” Ellen said, sharply. “I was attempting to call something else. It just…showed up.”
“What happened then?”
Ellen flicked a glance at Sebastian. “I told him about my husband trying to kill me and my child. He said if my husband was calling a demon, he’d be taken care of. But he wasn’t.” This last she threw at Sebastian.
He didn’t flinch except for a slight tightening around his eyes. There was more to this story from his perspective, too, but Angie didn’t want to ask in front of Ellen. If he wasn’t volunteering
the information now, she knew it was either something he didn’t want to discuss and she’d have to wring it out of him later, or something he couldn’t discuss with strangers and she’d have to ask in private.
He caught her gaze, held it for a split second before looking back at Ellen. She knew it was something he couldn’t discuss then. She’d have to bide her time.
“In the fight with the Molder demon,” Angie said slowly, “was any deal made?”
“No,” Ellen said. “There wasn’t time, and I was a lot more scared with that one. I hesitated longer.”
“You’re lucky,” Angie said simply.
“I didn’t feel like it after,” Ellen said.
“Believe me, whatever happened next, you’re still lucky you didn’t make a deal with a Molder demon.” Torture was too light a word for what they did to their captured victims.
Humans thought when they “sold their souls” to a demon that the demon took that non-physical part of them and they died. They considered that their souls might suffer, but they didn’t understand it, not on a physical level, because they didn’t think their physical bodies would be involved. Those with a religious background that involved a conception of Hell were more prone to thinking the sale of their soul would be a bad thing, but the rest… They never understood.
Giving a demon your “soul” gave them everything. It gave them the physical body as well as anything that was “you,” and what the demon did with its conquests was often much much worse than simply killing and eating them.
A Molder demon didn’t just want freed of its realm and turned loose in this one—that was the end game for a lot of the demons that heeded the call of humans. They wanted to be freed here in this realm, even if it meant having to sacrifice some of the power they held in their own realms. Each demon had its own reason. Some weren’t particularly powerful and just wanted to escape and live here quietly away from the torture of stronger demons. Some wanted to live the high life here, ruling over minions. Some…
Well, some wanted to murder and torture and kill as many humans as possible. When those escaped into this realm, they almost always made the news in some form or another, at least in this modern era—be that the war they created, the bodies they piled up, whatever it was, they always came to the public eye. And that always brought the demon hunters.
That kind didn’t last long because of that. The ones humans really had to worry about were the smart ones, the demons who knew how to hide their atrocities. The ones who enjoyed the torture but knew how to keep their activities away from public scrutiny. They were the worst.
A Molder demon was that kind of demon.
Had the demon escaped Ellen’s hold, it would have been a disaster for everyone, including her baby. It would have abided the deal it made, but that deal would have had loopholes and ways out that Ellen wouldn’t have even recognized until too late. And the demon would have been able to do whatever it wanted while still “abiding” by its deal.
Angie realized, with a growing horror, that because Mara had stopped on that image in her book, she might have seen one of those demons before. Angie stared up at Sebastian as that sank in.
“He’s been dealing with a Molder demon,” she said, her voice quiet.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed enough she knew he’d come to the same conclusion.
“Oh, shit,” Angie muttered. “It’s free, isn’t it?”
Chapter Fifteen
A freed demon. That would explain a lot. A demon couldn’t come out of a book and reach for her if it wasn’t freed in this realm. Yes, she could see into demon realms. Yes, she could rip a hole into a demon realm without meaning to and let loose demons onto her world if she wasn’t careful.
But she couldn’t do that through a book. She couldn’t just randomly contact a demon. She needed the specific instance of a naturally occurring “V” in a tree trunk. Not even every tree caused issues. They had to be very specific designs. Shapes mattered in magic and preternatural happenings. Shapes always mattered.
The demon being able to attack her through a book had been a horrifying oddity. And she should have realized the implications a lot sooner.
There were only so many ways a demon could get loose in the human realm. The most common way, the way the hunters spent most of their time trying to prevent, happened when a deal with a human went bad and the human lost control of the demon they were trying to contain. Once the demon broke out of that containment, whatever it was, they were free to rampage through this realm with only the hunters standing between them and disaster.
But there were other ways as well.
“Ellen,” she said, trying to keep some of the urgency from her voice, “what happened with Grant after you called the Molder demon? Why was Mara living with him?” There was no more time for niceties. Angie had to know. Because if there was a freed Molder demon in her adopted city, it had to be stopped.
“After Sebastian left, when I knew summoning a demon of my own wouldn’t work because either he’d come back and stop me again or the demon would escape my control, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to keep Bart from killing Mara, but how?”
“Your parents?”
She hung her head. “I was so ashamed to go to them. They were people of faith and would have been horrified to discover I’d dealt with a demon.” She looked away. “I might have gone at that point, though. I was desperate enough. But they died suddenly. A car accident.” She didn’t meet Angie’s gaze. “I’ve never been sure if it was an accident or not. The police said it was, but…”
She closed her eyes, let out a long breath. “That cut off my last option, my last real support system. I’d been too late…” Choking on a sob, she pressed her hand to her mouth.
“What did you do?” Angie asked.
“I went to Bart to negotiate. It was my only option. I wasn’t just dealing with an abusive husband I could hide from. I was dealing with a man who could call demons to hunt me down. Demons that would find me no matter where I went. I didn’t stand a chance against that and I no longer thought I could summon a demon of my own to counter him because I knew someone would stop me.” She threw another glare at Sebastian.
“I told Bart he could have the money,” she continued, “the status, everything. I’d even give him my inheritance. And I’d leave. So long as he didn’t kill Mara. She wasn’t to be sacrificed. He didn’t need to if I gave him everything.”
“He wasn’t satisfied with that?”
“He said he didn’t trust me to keep the deal. He knew I’d tried to call a demon of my own.”
“He knew? How?”
“I don’t know. He might have been guessing for all I know, but I gave myself away in my reaction. Stupid. So even if he’d been guessing, he knew he was right after that. He said there was no way to trust I’d hold to my part of the bargain. Unless I left Mara with him.”
Angie straightened. “What?”
“He said, if I left Mara for him to raise, she would be his guarantee against me doing something to harm him. She would be a guarantee for us both.”
“He held her as a hostage?”
Ellen pressed her lips together before answering. “This was the deal we struck. I would pretend to be dead so she wouldn’t come looking for me. He would keep her safe and raise her well. If I tried to summon a demon to get revenge on him, he’d kill her. If he tried to sacrifice her or hurt her, I would kill him.” She snorted, a bitter sound. “I don’t think he believed I could kill him, but because I’d called a demon—two as a matter of fact—he wasn’t entirely sure. At the time at least, he was worried I’d destroy him. If he hadn’t been worried, he wouldn’t have proposed the deal.”
She looked at Mara, her eyes full of sadness. “I didn’t know what else to do to keep her safe. I believed he could get to us, no matter what. And I knew—even if he didn’t—that I wouldn’t be able to control a demon to counter him. I thought the deal would keep him from hurting her. He was worried enough to m
ake it. I thought it would keep her safe.” She lifted her chin. “And it did. For twelve years. She was safe.”
“What changed?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she said, frowning in confusion this time. “I stayed in New York, moved here because its cheap and close to Mara. I didn’t let her know I was alive, of course, but I wanted to keep an eye on her, make sure she was safe. I didn’t let Bart know where I was. I was careful. He didn’t have a clue I lived here—I’m not sure it occurred to him that I’d lower myself to live in such a place.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if he knew about the architect of these buildings and that the area is good for demon contact. Maybe he did, and he did know I lived here. Maybe because I live where it’s easier to summon demons, that’s what ensured he kept our bargain.”
“If he knew you were here, he would have come here to look for Mara, though, wouldn’t he?” Angie asked.
She glanced at her daughter. “Maybe. Or maybe that’s why he sent you here. Maybe he can’t come. Maybe the demon he’s dealing with can’t reach us here?”
“Why would that be?” It was possible. Angie could think of several ways it could happen, but she wanted to know what Ellen knew. What Ellen thought.
“He was shaken when we talked, when we made our deal. He was scared, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Something had changed for him as well. I left him with the resources to find me if he’d been determined to hunt me down. He never tried.”
“Did you give him your inheritance?”
“I kept some of it, but most of it I let him have. Willed it to him so he’d receive it after I ‘died’ in an accident. But I kept some so I could live without needing to find on-the-books type work. Not enough to have hidden from him indefinitely, though. If he really wanted to track me down, I think he could have. He didn’t come looking for me. And now, when he wants to find Mara, if he knew I was here this whole time, he’d have come here to check. Or sent someone to find us. If he was able. Right? So maybe he isn’t able.”
Maybe he isn’t Grant anymore, Angie thought in an instinctive flash. Maybe the demon Grant had originally bargained with had finally taken him, and that’s what had changed.