"Seriously. So we called it quits, but we're still friends. Sort of." Then she laughed a little. "Do all demons have the 'damn, boy, you have spoiled me for all other lovers' thing going? Cuz I gotta say, that part was almost worth staying through the bullshit."
I laughed. "I don't know if it's all demons. But, yeah. That's been my experience." Our food came, and we both dug in. "Someone will live up to it eventually."
"I can have fun trying to find him out there, then," she said, and I laughed again. "I don't think I'm the relationship type. Is that bad?"
I shook my head. "There's no wrong way to be. As long as you're true to you. That's all that matters."
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. "I'm so glad you're back, Molly. Not gonna lie: everything was shit while you were gone. And I felt lost. You're like my mother, my sister, my best friend, my mentor, all rolled into one badass bitch. I need you."
I shook my head. "You don't need me. But it makes me all warm and fuzzy that you think you do." She laughed and started eating again.
"You want to talk about what happened to you while you were gone?" she asked after a few minutes.
"Not really. But I'll tell you some of it if you really want to hear it."
"Spill."
So I talked and she listened, and we picked at our dinners. I left out a lot of the details, but she got the idea. When I'd finished, she sat in silence a while, shredding her napkin with her fingers. Anger rolled off of her, and I realized we were a lot more alike than I'd ever realized. She didn't feel sorry for me. She wanted to hurt someone on my behalf. I could respect that.
"So you don't believe they're gods?" she finally asked.
"Not really. I mean, it's not like I know either way, and ultimately it doesn't even matter. But I don't." It might have seemed like a weird thing for her to focus on, but I knew that Shanti was Christian, and still took her faith very seriously. The idea that there were gods around, and they weren't her god, had bothered her a lot. I knew she'd tried to work it out, figure out how to reconcile it with her faith. She still believed.
"You probably think it's stupid, the whole faith thing," she said after a while.
"No. I don't. I don't know any better than anyone else what the truth is. I mean, isn't that kind of the whole thing with faith? You believe, even when there's no proof. Otherwise, you wouldn't need faith."
"Do you believe?"
"No. But I never did to begin with," I said, shrugging. "But that doesn't matter. Your faith is yours, and my faith, or lack of it or whatever, is mine. The only thing I know for sure is that there's no fucking way I'm a god."
She laughed then, and before long, we were both laughing at the ridiculous concept of my godliness. We paid our bill and left, heading toward the car. I handed the imps their order of ribs, and they grinned and disappeared with their treasure.
We got into my car. "Want to patrol or something?" I asked Shanti as I pulled into traffic. "The imps had a lead on a lost girl in East English Village."
"You really know how to show a chick a good time," Shanti said.
"I don’t feel like going back to the loft just now."
She nodded, reached over and gave my hand a small squeeze. "Let’s go then."
We drove back toward the east side, left the car parked on a side street and got out to patrol on foot. All the imps had had was a general location, so I’d do some listening and we’d see what we came up with. It was kind of funny how easily I’d fallen back into certain parts of my life. Too bad not all of it was as easy.
"I’m going to listen," I told Shanti, and she nodded. I opened my mind, dropping the protective shields that kept other people’s thoughts from driving me nuts. I was barraged immediately with random thoughts from within the homes around us. Worries, minutiae, life-changing decisions, thoughts about laundry. It all hit me. The hardest part was trying to pick individual voices out of the cacophony. After the initial assault on my psyche, I forced myself to focus. Most voices, I could let fall to a dull roar in the background. I was listening for particular thoughts: worries about being caught or general thoughts of supremacy were always like flashing red lights to me. Lustful thoughts, too, unfortunately.
We walked in silence for several blocks, and I listened. I finally turned to Shanti and shook my head in irritation.
"Want to try for a little longer? I have a couple of hours before dawn," Shanti said. I nodded, and we kept walking. Every once in a while I got a glimpse of one of my imps, on top of a house or in a tree. Sometimes, climbing out of a window. After a while, I started to feel a familiar presence, considered turning around and walking in the opposite direction. But that would have been immature.
"Nain is around here somewhere," I said.
"Probably looking for your lost girl, too. Didn’t you say Levitt was on this one?"
I nodded. Soon, I saw Nain’s big black pickup truck, Chief Jones’ car. Shanti and I jogged the rest of the way. We were about to go through the front door, which was wide open, when Nain came out and took me by the shoulders, pushed me back gently.
"You don’t want to go in there, Molls," he said. I tried to shrug his hands off, and he held firm. I stopped, looked up at him.
"I was too late," I said, hoping against hope that he’d disagree with me.
"We all were. Whoever took her is long gone, but they left her here," he said, his voice low, deep. I felt anger coming off of him, guilt.
"You never cared this much about this kind of thing," I said. He still had his hands on me, big cool palms resting on my bony shoulders. He looked down at me, met my eyes.
"I cared. Not enough to specifically go out of my way to help, not enough to completely focus on it, but it mattered. You have this tendency to make others care about the same things you do."
"He’s been in on lost girl searches since he got back," Shanti verified.
"Was it just the one we were looking for? Or were there more?" I asked. I didn't want to think too much about how touched I was that my dedication for finding lost girls had made Nain make it one of his duties as well. I shrugged my shoulders again, and then he did remove his hands. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched me.
"It was just her. We have to find these assholes. Elsoloth didn’t know anything, did he?"
I shook my head, then I looked up at him sharply. "Wait. You’re telling me my rogue demons did this?"
He nodded. "They’ve left a few bodies around. All the same as this one."
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
He opened his mind to me and showed me, and I was sorry I asked.
"I will find the fuckers," I growled, feeling my power rise in response to my anger.
"I know you will," Nain said. Our eyes met for just a second, and I looked away. "Jones is here for cleanup. He’ll inform her family. There have been so many murders the last few years, the media has figured out something’s going on. Story now is that there’s a serial killer out."
"Technically true," I said, rubbing my temples.
"Yeah."
I glanced over at Shanti who was watching Nain and I with more interest than I felt comfortable with. And my ex-husband was a whole separate issue. As angry as he was about the woman and my demons, he was very much distracted by something else just then.
Me.
He did a good job of hiding it. His face was calm, his posture relaxed. If I wasn’t able to sense emotions, I would have had no idea what he was feeling just then. He wasn’t like Brennan in that way. Brennan’s emotions were easy to read, and, at least when it came to me, he wore them plainly.
I took a step away from Nain. "Okay." I glanced at Shanti again. "We should get going so you have enough time to get back."
"Uh huh," she said, glancing between Nain and I again.
"Come on," I said. I glanced back at Nain one more time. His face was impassive. Not at all like the emotions coming from him. I walked as quickly as my legs would carry me in the other direction.
When we were about a block away, Shanti laughed. "Well, that wasn’t a whole bunch of sexual tension or anything. Damn."
"It wasn’t," I said, irritated.
"Right."
I shook my head, kept walking, fast. Shanti of course had no problem catching up with me. She smartly changed the subject, and we talked about where to look for my demons. She said she’d ask around with the vampires and see if anyone had heard anything.
We drove back to the loft, and she got in her car in the below-ground garage. Sporty little red thing. Very Shanti. She hugged me before she left, telling me we’d get together again soon, and she’d call me to let me know if the vamps had heard anything.
I made my way up to the loft, hoping to avoid a Brennan confrontation, and, for once, I ended up lucky. He was up in his room. Ada and Stone were in their room. Levitt was on patrol, as was Nain. E had headed to the Nether again. Alone. I was blissfully alone, and I needed it, just for a little while.
Chapter Sixteen
I kicked off my shoes and padded into the living room, where I fell into Nain’s big leather chair. I’d gotten used to sitting there after he’d died, and it was, without a doubt, the most comfortable seat in the house.
I leaned my head back, closed my eyes.
Unfortunately, my thoughts went right where I didn’t want them to, and I forced them away.
I could admit it to myself: seeing Nain again did all kinds of things to me. We hadn’t been finished when he’d died. Not by a long shot. I didn’t doubt that we would have broken up eventually. The good parts of our relationship had been amazing, and I could admit that it had apparently been three years since I’d been with a man, and Nain very obviously wanting me the way he did was tempting as hell.
Lust. That had never been a problem between Nain and I.
I took a deep breath, pulled my legs up to my chest. Lust was one thing. I would probably have pretty vivid memories of Nain and I together for the rest of my life, however long that was. But the man I loved was upstairs. Maybe I shouldn’t have loved him anymore. But I did. Maybe that made me stupid, or pathetic, or blind.
Considering all the mistakes I’d made, who the hell was I to judge? Now, if he screwed around on me now that I was back, we’d have problems. He’d broken my trust, and I wasn’t sure that part of our relationship would ever be the same again.
I got up and walked through the loft, turning off lights, checking the messages. Nain had an assistant who'd started coming in a few times a loft, and she took care of things like messages and mail, all the crap that had always fallen to Ada. From what I'd heard, she was a Normal. Which was weird. I'd have to check her out.
Once I was done, I went up the stairs toward the bedrooms. I let myself into Brennan's room, went over to the dresser and dug out a pair of my pajama pants and a t-shirt. I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, started scrubbing my hands, my face. By the time I was done, my hands were red and raw and I didn’t feel any cleaner. I took my hair down and changed, then went back into the bedroom.
He was awake in bed, lying on his back, hands behind his head. His chest was bare, and he looked just as good as he always had. He sat up when I walked into the room, watched me. I climbed into bed next to him, snuggled under the comforter. He put his arms around me, and I put my hand on his waist. He trembled at my touch, and the emotions coming from him were overwhelming. Love, desire, relief, sadness, longing. We rested there in each other’s arms for a while. He ran his fingers through my hair.
"I wasn’t sure you were coming up. You didn’t want to be around me today," he finally said.
"I wasn’t sure I was either."
He moved his fingers from the ends of my hair to my scalp, started massaging it gently, the way he knew I liked. I sighed in contentment, closed my eyes.
"I’m sorry, Molly," he said softly. "I want so bad to make it up to you, and I know I can’t."
"I just need some time," I said. "I know you love me," I said. "I’m just not sure it’s going to be enough."
"If you believed that, you wouldn’t be here," he said, pulling me close again. "I will do whatever it takes to make things right between us. I swear."
I rolled over, facing away from him. My warring emotions were making me feel like I was about to lose it. Brennan slung an arm over my hips, and I found myself relaxing back into his warmth even as I kind of wanted to shove him away from me.
This shit was going to be complicated.
I laid there. I felt when he fell asleep. It was like a veil falling over our connection. It still existed, but it was muted. I laid there awake, thinking, listening to Brennan snoring softly beside me. Anger toward him washed over me in waves, and I tried to shove it back. It was actually a relief when Sean woke up crying for his six AM feeding, and Brennan got out of bed and went downstairs. It seemed like when he was around, I either wanted to kiss him or kill him.
I punched my pillow in irritation, rolled over and pulled the blankets over my head. I was back. Yay, me. But I was back and very little was the same, and I could admit that I was petty enough to be pissed off that the entire world hadn't waited for me, hadn't stayed the same so I wouldn't feel so lost once I finally made it back. Shanti, Nain, Ada and Stone, my rogue demons. Brennan and his son. Did I even belong there anymore?
I pushed my thoughts away from feeling sorry for myself, because that was stupid. I was back. I should be grateful for that, no matter how crazy everything seemed. I started thinking about where to look for my rogue demons. Both Elsoloth and Bash had said they'd been looking, but that the demons were proving impossible to find. Which made no sense, since they were apparently leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. They weren't exactly being subtle.
Not just a trail of dead bodies, I reminded myself. A trail of dead women. Almost as if they were taunting me. And I wasn't sure anymore whether I was being realistic or paranoid, believing that everything that happened was about me. But it sure the fuck felt like a taunt. "Oh, hey, look, more dead lost girls, Angel."
So what was their game? Draw me out? If they wanted that, they sure were doing a good job of running. And it wasn't like I was hiding.
And then I remembered what Athena and the Furies had told me about Strife, that she gains strength through chaos, which always causes more chaos, which makes her more powerful. A string of murders was a good way to cause fear and chaos, and get back at me at the same time.
I wasn't sure how far off I was. Probably just paranoid. Still it was something to think about, and I knew that, either way, Strife wasn't someone I could keep ignoring.
I gave up trying to fall asleep (which was for the best. I felt less in control when I relaxed anyway.) I took a too-hot shower, scrubbed my skin raw. I could feel that I was on the edge of a freakout. If I didn't get hold of myself I'd be a bawling mess on the bathroom floor again. I shook my head, finished shampooing my hair, tried fighting off the panic. Being back, having my powers all fucked up only made everything worse. Even the panic attacks, which I was sure couldn't get any more hellish. My power rose in response to my emotions, and I gritted my teeth against the agony coursing through me. I punched shower wall in my anger and pain, ended up cracking the black tiles. Panic attacks were a bitch already. It hardly seemed fair that I had to be in actual physical pain because of my powers on top of it.
I breathed through it, stood under the rapidly cooling water. I heard the bathroom door open. Brennan. Shit.
"Molly? You okay? I thought you fell or something," he said.
"I'm fine. Go away, Bren," I said, and I could hear the growl in my voice.
I sensed irritation, worry from him. Then he pushed the shower door open and turned the water off, pulled me out of the shower and into his arms. I shoved him, but he held tight.
"I don't want to hurt you," I growled.
"Yes, you do." He reached over and grabbed one of the towels from the cabinet, wrapped it around me while still holding onto me tightly with one arm. "But you
won't, because you're you and even if I absolutely deserve to have my ass kicked, you'd never do it."
"I'm not totally in control anymore," I said quietly. He ran his hands over my body, drying me.
"What happened to you?" he asked softly.
I shook my head. I knew that telling Brennan would be different from telling Shanti. Him, I'd tell everything. Every detail, every second of pain, every thought I had while dying. And I was still pissed off at him, and the idea of being that vulnerable with him… I wasn’t quite there yet.
He leaned his forehead against mine, held the towel wrapped around me.
"I broke a bunch of tiles. I'll pay Nain to get it fixed. And I owe him money for buying that house for the demons."
"Molly. Who cares? He's got money to spare. He bought that house because he figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have another house nearby and he wanted to keep an eye on your demons."
I took a deep breath. I could feel the pain and panic subsiding as we stood there. Brennan was doing what he does best: soothing and taking care of me. And that would have been great if I didn't have that stupid rage monster, that darkness inside of me that was triggered by him. I pulled back.
"I'm okay now," I said, and he let me go. His eyes searched mine, then he stepped away. He wanted to kiss me. Hold me. Do a lot more with me. I could feel it. But he stepped away anyway, left the room and went downstairs, because he knew I wasn't ready.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. I made it through drying off, getting dressed, and braiding my hair.
I went downstairs, stepped into my shoes, left without interacting with anyone. I knew I was acting like an asshole. I couldn’t put on a happy, calm, everything-is-just-fine face. I got in my car, and Bash and Dahael joined me, climbing into the back seat. I found the classic rock station, turned the volume up, and roared out of the garage.
Find my demons. Find Strife. That was my focus.
I drove all over the city. Packard Plant, empty neighborhoods, places where I'd always had good luck tracking demons down before. They fed off of human fear and pain, so they liked being around crowds of people. But they always retreated to dark, quiet, solitary places.
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