“You studied literature, Dr. Castleford. Do you know of a John Polidori?”
Hugh fought the urge to look at Lilith for her response. “Of course. He wrote The Vampyre—a story that originated from a challenge Lord Byron gave to a group on holiday on Lake Geneva in 1816. Mary Shelley conceived and wrote Frankenstein that same summer. Both are considered classic gothic tales; The Vampyre, in particular, was a strong influence on Stoker’s Dracula. Nineteenth-century lit isn’t my area of expertise, however. If you need information relating to Polidori, Byron, or the Shelleys you’d be better served asking one of my colleagues.”
“What is your area of expertise?” This, from Preston.
“Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama, poetry.” This time, he did allow himself to glance at Lilith. “I wrote my dissertation on Milton’s use of the demonic female figure.”
Her chin dipped, but from this distance he could not read her expression.
“And is it from Milton that you got your ideas for your book?”
“Which one? I have two books that include discussions of Milton’s works that have gone to academic press.”
“Lilith.”
His stomach clenched, and he would have done anything for clear vision at that moment. He let his gaze rest on Lilith for a long second, felt no reaction from her. “In part.” He turned, opened the side pocket of his bag and pulled out his glasses. “What has this to do with Ian?”
“Just gathering as wide a range of background as possible, Dr. Castleford,” she said. “What of the nosferatu? They are in your book, but Milton makes no mention of such a thing in his work.”
He paused, glad that he was partially turned away so that he could better hide his surprise. They’d made a connection between Ian and the nosferatu? Lilith must have had something to do with it, but why? He slid on his glasses and looked at her. She shifted in her seat, and once again he saw her tightly contained anger.
How to answer Taylor’s question? He had the feeling anything he said would damn him in the detectives’ eyes.
Did Lilith intend for that damnation to be literal?
He thought quickly. When did the word enter the human lexicon? “The nosferatu has been a traditional part of vampire literature since the late eighteen hundreds. I think Stoker was the first to use it in English.”
“Seventy years later than Polidori?”
Hugh nodded. The truth was, Polidori might have known it through Colin. Guardians and demons had long called the creatures nosferatu, and a few vampires knew the truth behind their origins. Colin was one of them. “Yes, but again, this isn’t really my area. I didn’t research the book very carefully.”
He didn’t meet Lilith’s eyes, afraid he would begin laughing if her expression was even slightly amused. Afraid he would see something other than amusement.
Had she read it? He fought the slightly sick, vulnerable sensation it left in his gut, forced himself to push that thought aside.
The detectives exchanged a look. “You’re an educated guy,” Preston said abruptly. “Do you know any other languages?”
“Yes. Quite a few.” Several that were extinct.
The older man scratched his chin. “Any ancient languages? Can you read obscure writings, that kind of thing?”
Were they trying to determine the nature of the writing used in the ritual? Of course—they assumed it was a human language. “Latin and Greek,” he said carefully. “But nothing older or nonphonetic, such as hieroglyphs or cuneiform.”
“Why would you study them if your area of expertise is English lit?”
“In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all of the English writers read and wrote Latin and Greek,” Hugh said dryly. “It was a standard part of their education, so I made it part of mine.” Not exactly true, but answer enough.
Taylor pulled a sheet of paper from the folder. “Have you ever seen writing like this?” Both she and Preston watched him carefully.
Symbols covered the page. The ink smelled fresh, as if they’d recently been copied by hand.
He recognized many of them from Lilith’s skin, from Ian’s corpse, but he shook his head. “No.” He pretended to study it. “It looks a bit like Devanagari script, but I’m certain I’ve never come across a series of glyphs like this in my studies.” Raising his head, he added, “Perhaps the linguistics depart—”
“Thank you, Dr. Castleford. We’ll consider that.” Taylor snatched the paper back, her impatience showing in the tightness around her mouth, the narrowing of her eyes. She knew he was giving her indirect, runaround answers—but did she want the truth?
He didn’t think she would. And he didn’t dare offer anything more without knowing what input Lilith had in their investigation.
She still sat, her gaze fixed on his face, her long legs stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed. But for the crimson glow around her pupils—did she not know she did that, or was she warning him of her anger?—her expression was unreadable.
God, but he needed to get her alone. Needed to question her and break through her defenses. To get to the truth, to bring her humanity to the fore before she destroyed both of them.
“Aside from the DemonSlayer games at Auntie’s, do you know anything of Mr. Rafferty’s activities?”
Hugh returned his attention to Detective Taylor. “He played football in the fall, I think. His papers often used analogies comparing the sport to devices in literature.”
Preston gave a bark of laughter, which he quickly smothered.
Hugh allowed himself a smile. “It could be tedious reading at times.”
“As tedious as your book?” Taylor said sweetly.
His smile faded. “No.” Behind the detectives, Lilith’s eyes shone furiously crimson. He frowned at her, and as if remembering herself, she visibly regained control. “I don’t know much beyond the football. I imagine Courtney Eliot would.”
“His girlfriend,” Preston said, and Hugh nodded. “So during those game nights, he never talked about clubs they might have frequented? Any type of music he liked?”
“If he did, I don’t recall mention of it.”
“Do any of the other students who meet talk about a specific hangout, a place they got together?”
Hugh shook his head. “I don’t recall any,” he said truthfully. “I’m often at the restaurant, but I’m not active in the game itself, so I’m not privy to many of the conversations that take place while they play.” He checked the clock over the door. “They’ll be meeting tonight, at eight. If any attend, that is; I imagine most of them have heard about Ian by now.”
Even as he said it, he knew that many of them would be there. It was human nature to gather and grieve, sharing their memories of the life they’d known.
And often dangerous to grieve in solitude. He knew that well.
He didn’t dare look at Lilith for the ache in his chest. If she was trying to read him, she would feel it. Would she think it was for Ian?
“Are you familiar with a club called Polidori’s? Have you ever heard any of your students mention it?”
Startled, his gaze locked with Lilith’s, and he suddenly understood. She’d somehow pointed them in the direction of Polidori’s, suggesting a link between it, the nosferatu, and Ian’s murder. And, because of the book bearing her name and its contents, it made him the primary suspect, solidifying the detectives’ suspicion that he’d been involved.
“No,” he said flatly. Lilith looked away, her jaw flexing as if she wanted to speak but could not.
His hands clenched in his pockets. A moment alone. Then she was going to talk. If he did it well, didn’t hold back, she was going to scream.
“He’s smart,” Taylor said. She unlocked the sedan’s door, then looked across the blue metal roof at her partner and Lilith. “And he knows it. I expected that his arrogance would lead him into a mistake, that he’d claim to have some knowledge and show off, but he gave us a neat runaround.”
“Smug bastard,” Preston
agreed. “What was your impression, Agent Milton?”
Her lips tilted slightly. The look Hugh had given her as they’d left had created the most significant impression; she could still feel the arousal the heated glance had stirred within her.
She didn’t know what he was thinking, and she didn’t like how eager she was to find out.
But as she couldn’t tell them that, she gave them an answer by rote. “I think he knows we’re on to him; you should continue surveillance, see if he tries to cover any tracks he might have left. If nothing else, he’ll be wondering what we didn’t say, and he’ll want to determine if he’s left any evidence, or if someone connected to him has revealed more than they should have.” She paused. “If he’s our man.”
“You don’t think he knows something?” Preston raised a brow.
“Knowing is not the same as perpetrating,” Lilith said.
Taylor smiled thinly. “But it might make him an accessory. He’s our strongest lead, Agent Milton, but don’t think we aren’t investigating every possible avenue.”
Lilith heard the territorial note in the other woman’s voice and couldn’t care less. She had her own territory to protect; it made no difference hers was not a case, but a man.
“She’s not suggesting we aren’t doing our job, Andy.”
Knowing she was going to piss them both off, Lilith said with a shrug, “Maybe I am.” She had to force away the regret that rose when Preston’s expression cooled and Taylor’s hardened. “That book you showed me was not written by a man congratulating himself on his mental prowess. ‘The demon from Hell itself, burning and terrible, speaks with fearsome intonation, “No recourse will you find, no escape from my horrific clutching. All your souls are belong to us,”’ ” she quoted, shaking her head. “It’s ridiculous tripe, not an intellectual treatise designed to stroke his ego.”
Preston raked his hand through his hair. “Then explain why an obviously educated man would write it so badly, except as a puzzle for others to decipher?”
“I can’t,” Lilith admitted. And she didn’t care; there were other portions of it that concerned her more. They could talk of codes and hidden meanings; she just wanted to know why Hugh had written her story with the skill and care of a retard.
And why he’d lied to her for eight hundred years. The anger that had boiled in her belly for hours began to rise again.
“You looked through that book for the first time on the drive here,” Taylor said. Her psychic scent radiated suspicion and disbelief. “But you quoted that passage verbatim.”
“And so you think I’m not being honest about having read it before?” Lilith guessed, unwilling to mince words. She grinned, and despite the absence of fangs and horns there was more demon than human in the expression. Her fingers clenched on the rear door handle, denting the metal. “Just like Castleford, I’m really fucking smart.”
Cerberus’s balls, she was being incredibly stupid. Her stomach and chest ached, her head felt ready to explode. What was wrong with her? She needed to get out of here, to settle herself. Through her ignorance of the book, she had screwed up the letter as evidence that would help direct the investigation away from Hugh. Now she was alienating the two people who might hold Hugh’s fate in their hands.
Better human detectives than Lucifer to own that fate? Or Lilith, once Lucifer called in her debt to him?
Before either detective could launch into the angry response Lilith could feel them getting ready to deliver, she held up her hand, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was out of line, and I apologize.” She smiled sickly, and she didn’t have to fake it. “I don’t think I’m feeling very well, and I’m taking it out on you.”
Taylor stared at her for a moment before giving a short nod, getting into the car and slamming the door. Preston hesitated for just a moment. “Agent Milton—”
The words wanted to stick in her throat, but she forced them out. “I know. I wouldn’t want to ride back with me, either. I won’t have a problem making my way back.” She sighed, leveled a look at him. “You have something on this guy, something you haven’t shared with me. This book isn’t reason enough for the certainty you two have that Castleford’s your guy.”
Preston opened his door. “I’ll send a copy of the file to your office for you to look over. We can use your expertise, but”—he gave a humorless snort of laughter—“if this is how you work with others, I can see why the Bureau keeps you out of the locals’ faces.”
She deserved that, Lilith mused as they drove away. She opened her fist, and the mangled door handle dropped to the pavement with a clatter.
Petty pleasures. She’d existed on them for far too long.
She wanted deep, meaningful pleasure. The kind Hugh had promised with his eyes in his office, with his lips as he’d spoken her name. The kind she couldn’t have.
The building in which Hugh was now, teaching kids who probably didn’t know their ass from their balls, sat only yards away, at the other end of the parking lot. Easy enough to walk back there, see if he’d follow through on that promise.
She closed her eyes so that she couldn’t be beckoned by the curving concrete and glass, and the man within. Was her desire to have him stronger than her desire to avoid Punishment?
She breathed out slowly. Yes.
But any emotion that forced her to choose between him and herself was a treacherous one, and she couldn’t trust it. After all, it was the type of emotion she had spent her existence engendering in others. That choice would only be destructive for both of them.
It was reason enough to walk away—but she couldn’t.
She heard the clacking of his computer keyboard from the hallway. Her ego bruised that he hadn’t been sitting in silence, brooding, she opened the door.
“That took longer than I thought it would,” he said. Lilith frowned, wondering if she’d been so predictable when her decision to come had been one of the most foolhardy choices she’d ever made.
He was certainly predictable in his lack of reaction; he didn’t look away from his computer. From her angle, the glare of the screen on his lenses made his eyes impossible to read.
“I know what you’re doing; I read it in your book. You’re trying to provoke me by ignoring me. It won’t work.”
“Only because you make it impossible to ignore you. And I daresay you would have been provoked even if I had given you notice.”
Smiling, she rested her hip on the edge of his desk, thumbed through the papers and books spread across the surface. He continued typing. A paperback selection of poems stood on edge next to his monitor; she picked it up. “Donne?”
Hugh only grunted an assent.
Lilith pursed her lips. “He was fun when he was young. Then he met me, and he only wrote sermons after.” A glimmer of a smile around his mouth. Much better. “You, too, have become something of a monk in a man’s clothing. You may have discarded your robe, but this . . .” She gestured to the Spartan office, the stack of student essays—and remembered the description of Caelum in his book, its white sterility. “You’ve exchanged one monastery for another,” she realized.
An infinitesimal flinch, as if her comment had struck something painful within him; but still, he did not turn to face her. “And what have you become?”
“Certainly more patient,” she muttered.
“Yes.” He paused, and finally looked at her. “I fear I am less.”
“You could only be less patient than you were as a Guardian. Though imagine my surprise, when I discover that so much of it is false.” With a sarcastic lift of her eyebrow, she quoted, “ ‘Demons remain a stranger to physical need; like a demon, deceptive and concealed, remained I. ’ ”
“This is why you were angry,” he said slowly. “Because you learned I used my Guardian powers to hide my body’s response to you.”
“You lied.” Even as she said it, color washed her face. They revealed too much, those two words. How she had depended on his unfailing honesty; how she had
desired—needed—his attention.
Worse, she was a demon making an accusation of a lie; it would have been laughable, had it not been so humiliating.
And he seemed to understand, damn him. His gaze softened. “I didn’t know. I felt it, Lilith. I just didn’t allow it to show. Demons don’t experience physical desire; I protected myself as best I could. If I’d known you weren’t . . . if I had guessed . . .” He trailed off. “But I didn’t know it could be anything other than a game for you.”
She averted her eyes. It shouldn’t have been. The sense of betrayal she felt was a result of her vanity, her certainty that had he desired her as strongly as she had him, he couldn’t have held his glamours. Shrugging, she said, “It was nothing.”
His mouth thinned. “Was it?”
“Yes,” she said, and he relaxed into his chair as if she’d said the opposite, turning back to the computer screen. Suddenly, she didn’t care if he intended to or not: she was provoked. She unclenched her teeth, her voice low and silky. “Though I’m pleased, knowing you have no defense against me now. That I could come over there and have you begging for me within moments.”
“Let me finish this e-mail first.” His tone was mild, disinterested.
Her breath hissed out. She launched herself over his desk, landed behind him, and caught a glimpse of her human name and a mention of swords before he hit Send.
Slowly, he swiveled his chair around, tilted it back to look up at her. “Will you materialize your horns?” he said, his expression unreadable. “If you are here to lead me to prison by my cock, I’d like something to grab onto in turn.”
Prison? Her eyes narrowed, and she pushed away her disappointment that he hadn’t seen the truth behind her ruse with the detectives. But how could he have? “That’s what my tits are for, you imbecile.” Planting her foot on the seat between his thighs, she gave his chair a shove.
Stupid, to unbalance herself like that. Quickly—he was faster than she’d thought he’d be, but when had she last fought a human?—he pulled on her knee and rose up and bent her back over his desk. Books and her gun jammed against her spine and shoulders, his hips wedged between her thighs.
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