by Stacia Kane
“I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I’m really, really sorry.”
He nodded, his gaze cast down so she couldn’t see his eyes. “Thanks. It’s okay. It was just as much my fault, but thanks.”
“I talked to Greyson.” Why hadn’t she asked Tera for another bottle before she left? That was stupid. “I told him again what happened and that it wasn’t your fault and that he shouldn’t blame you for it. He said he’d try. And once we’re ready, you should call him.”
He sank down on the end of the bed, a respectable distance from her but still, she could see, close enough that he could reach out to her if need be. God, he was so great. She’d never be able to forgive herself fully for hurting him. “So you talked to him.”
“Yeah.”
“And? I mean, you don’t have to tell me, but did he—I mean, have you guys worked things out?”
She sighed and explained everything. Well, almost everything. She left out the sex, but she was pretty sure he knew anyway.
He shook his head. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I know what I want to do, but I also know I don’t want to start off a marriage—Jesus, I can’t believe I’m actually talking about a marriage—with him thinking I’ll just do anything he—”
The phone rang, and her heart leaped into her throat. It was as if he knew she was talking about him. Which would be more impressive if there weren’t such a huge issue between them at the moment, but the point was the same.
Maybe he was calling to talk. Maybe he finally understood.
Except it wasn’t him. It was Brian.
For a second the room actually seemed to tilt. Brian’s voice belonged to another world, the one outside this fucking hotel. It seemed bizarre that he would intrude on the claustrophobic, miserable little stressball that what was supposed to be a relaxing week had become.
“Brian? What’s up?”
“They won’t let me upstairs until I have your room number, and they won’t give me your room number. What is it?”
“What? You’re here? Why?”
“Um, an FBI agent slaughtered a woman here early this morning, Megan. It’s kind of a big story.”
“Oh. Right.” She gave him the room number and hung up, unsure why his presence bothered her so much but bothered just the same. He didn’t belong here. This wasn’t really the part of her life she shared with him. He knew about it, and he tolerated it, but they talked about her patients and work, about his work, about TV and movies and books.
If she stopped having that work, would she still have Brian?
Maybe that wasn’t fair. After a few initial conversations he’d backed off; he didn’t want anything to do with the demon part of her life, but he certainly didn’t openly disapprove. He got along with Greyson in a grudging way despite distrusting him based on his demon-ness. But he clearly saw her as human. Wanted her to stay that way and saw it as if she were somehow cheapening herself by being so involved with demons. He never said it outright, but she knew he felt that way. Was a little disappointed in her for it.
It didn’t matter, really. She certainly wasn’t going to make an important life decision based on whether or not a friend of hers might disapprove. But she would have liked him to approve and would have liked to think it wouldn’t matter to him. But it wasn’t important, especially not then. She didn’t have time to worry about Brian at the moment.
And she didn’t have time to hang around with him either. Time creeped on, as time was wont to do; it was close to five, and she’d hoped to try to eat something and get a little rest before meeting with the others at eight. Not to mention letting Tera and Nick know what the plan was and trying to figure out who might be the one who’d hired the angel in the first place—damn it, she should have asked Greyson who he thought it was—and thinking of him opened a whole new can of worms, one she’d have to face soon.
Her mood didn’t improve when Brian arrived. He wasn’t alone. He’d brought Julie with him. Shit.
Oh, she liked Julie just fine. But that whole detective-with-FBI-connections thing set her pretty low on Megan’s must-see list just then.
Best not to let that show, though. So she smiled and gave her a hug, admired the new way Julie wore her shiny shoulder-length chestnut hair. Julie had always looked to Megan as though rather than working as a detective, she should be milking cows somewhere; she had that healthy pink-cheeked openness that belonged in a shampoo ad.
Those wide brown eyes weren’t smiling this time, though, despite the friendly greeting. Julie sat in the desk chair, leaving Brian to lean against the wall. “Megan, the murdered woman, Justine Riverside. You knew her, didn’t you? She was part of this meeting thing your boyfriend came here for.”
Shit. Shit. What did she know? Had Brian told her anything?
Okay. Honesty was going to have to be the best policy here, because she had no idea what Julie knew and didn’t know. “I knew Justine, yes.”
“Because Greyson has some business involvement with her.”
There was a difference between being honest and being stupid, however. “Julie, am I being officially questioned here or something? What’s going on?”
“No, I’m not questioning you.” Julie sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out why Elizabeth would do such a thing. And I know she talked to you before you came here. So I wonder if she mentioned Justine or if they knew each other.”
“Where is Greyson anyway?” Brian looked around. “I would have figured he’d spring for a better room than this.”
For fuck’s sake, could she have one conversation today that didn’t involve someone asking her about Greyson?
“He’s not here. Elizabeth didn’t mention Justine to me, Julie. And I didn’t know Justine very well. So I really can’t help you much, I don’t think.”
Julie frowned. Megan couldn’t quite tell if it was a disappointed frown or an I-don’t-believe-you frown, and she had no real way to find out. Trying to read members of law enforcement wasn’t a good idea. She’d discovered over the years that they tended to have a little ability of their own, at least the good ones did, and got antsy if she read them. And even if she’d been tempted to try, Brian’s presence made it unthinkable. He’d know. He’d be pissed.
“When will Greyson be back? I’d like to speak to him.”
“I don’t know. Do you need to speak to all of us? It seems like a pretty open-and-shut thing, from what I’ve heard. I mean, you know who killed Justine, right?”
Julie cocked her head, her gaze measuring Megan like Spud with a new lipstick he was thinking of trying on her. “Can I be honest with you?”
Oh, no. Questions like that never led anywhere good. But what could she say? No? “Of course.”
“Elizabeth has been . . . she’s been behaving very oddly. I spoke to her this morning, and she . . . It’s normal for people who commit murders—I mean good, normal people who suddenly snapped or whatever—to be confused. Or even to say they don’t remember it very well. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”
Megan nodded. She did, very well. One of the benefits of her training and career.
“But Elizabeth is . . . If I hadn’t worked with her before, didn’t know her, I’d think she was just trying to set up an insanity defense. She keeps rambling on about beautiful white lights and witches and demons.”
Megan and Nick didn’t move, but Brian twitched. Luckily Julie didn’t notice.
“This isn’t part of an official investigation, which is why I’m telling you this,” Julie went on. “Yes, as far as the case is concerned, it’s done with. Elizabeth confessed. But she’s making less and less sense. She’s drooling. She’s falling asleep. She’s not on any drugs or anything, but she’s totally out of it. And I just wondered . . . she mentioned you.”
“Me?” Did that sound squeaky? She really hoped that hadn’t sounded squeaky.
“She said you came to her room. At least that’s what I think she said. And then she said so
mething about another woman and then something about an army or something. She said guns. That guns were there, and they were pushing her to do it, and the light wanted her to do it. And she didn’t have control—” Her cell phone rang. “Sorry, hold on a second.”
Megan barely heard it. One of them. Not guns. Gunnar.
Elizabeth would have known who he was. Would have recognized him. And of course Justine knew him and would have opened her door to him. From there, Elizabeth, powering the angel or being used by the angel—a stroke of cleverness she wouldn’t have expected from Gunnar, setting up a murderer so no suspicion was cast on him—could have walked in right after him and done the dirty work.
Gunnar, who’d tried to downplay the deaths of his rubendas. Gunnar, who hadn’t wanted to go to the Windbreaker and confront the angel. Gunnar, whom Megan had always considered the dullest and weakest of her fellow Gretnegs; the man collected fish, for fuck’s sake.
She glanced at Nick, saw the same knowledge in his eyes. The same aching uncertainty of what to do, with Julie and Brian there.
“Oh God!” Julie’s voice cut their eye contact but did nothing to still the panicked hammering of her heart. “And she’s—oh my God. Yes. Yes. Okay.”
She hung up and stood staring at the phone, her pretty face set in a deep frown.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Brian took a step toward her, but Julie shook her head.
“Elizabeth is dead.”
“Oh, shit, seriously?”
Julie nodded. “But . . . they said her body was all . . . She just died, but she’s already decomposed. Like she’s been dead for a couple of days instead of twenty minutes.”
Knowledge hit Megan so hard she had to grip the bed to try to hide her shock. The angel had killed her. Killed her the other night, either right before or right after it had attacked Megan herself. That’s where the blood came from. That’s why Elizabeth had been so spaced out. The angel had either been inhabiting her body part of the time or using it, moving its limbs like a fucking marionette. The image made her stomach lurch; she put her hand over her mouth.
Luckily it wasn’t too extreme a reaction to discussions about decomposition anyway. Julie reached for her. “Megan, I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking—this must be really more than you want to hear.”
Megan waved her off. Okay. It was Gunnar. And the angel hadn’t just seen Megan, attacked her. It had seen her with Greyson, with Nick and the brothers, with Roc and—
Tera.
Tera the witch. Tera, whom, if Greyson was right, the angel would have just as much reason to go after as any demon would. Yes, as a witch Tera was better protected than the rest of them, but still. If it snuck up on her, alone? She hadn’t sensed it at the exorcism, hadn’t seen it the way the rest of them had.
Megan stood up, almost falling in her haste. “Hey, guys, I just realized the time. I’ve really got to get going. I’m—I’m meeting Greyson. And I need to go right now. Nick? Nick, we need to go. Can you call Greyson and tell him we’re on our way while I freshen up? And tell him to meet us in Tera’s room. And to hurry.”
Chapter 28
When she emerged from the bathroom—her hair was tangled at the back, she looked ridiculous, and nobody had bothered to say a word—with her heart still hammering and her hands almost shaking, she expected to find Brian and Julie gone.
They weren’t. Or, rather, Julie was. Brian wasn’t.
“I asked her to go get us some Cokes,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She looked at Nick, but he was on the phone, his back to her. She hoped he was talking to Greyson. “Brian, this isn’t a good—”
“What’s going on? You look terrified. This is a demon thing, isn’t it? Some demon possessed Elizabeth Reid and made her commit that murder.”
“No, Brian, it isn’t a demon. Really.”
“Well, what did happen? Megan, I’m trying to help. Is something after you?”
“There’s a . . . creature, yes. Something not human. It’s after all of us. It attacked me the other night, it attacked Elizabeth and did something to her, and it killed Justine. And I think it might be after Tera right now. Or any one of us. So really, I need to go, I’m—”
“Can I help?”
“What?”
“Can I help? Is there anything I can do to help?”
She had no idea what to say. On the one hand, it’s possible that, being psychic as well, Brian could be very useful. On the other, this was dangerous. And she couldn’t bring him into it without telling him exactly what they were fighting.
But the offer brought tears to her eyes. All of her earlier worries about their future faded as she looked at his earnest face. He would always be her friend, no matter what.
“I—”
“Greyson’s not there,” Nick said. He looked more worried than she’d ever seen him, even more than he had the night before when Greyson knocked and interrupted their ill-fated and ill-advised makeout session.
Her heart fell into her stomach and started thudding so hard she imagined her entire body vibrated like a speaker on too loud. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not there. Malleus doesn’t know where he is. He went out this afternoon, after you left, I guess, and he hasn’t come back yet.”
“What about his cell?”
“No answer.”
Her legs suddenly didn’t feel strong enough to support her. He was fine, of course. Maybe he went for a walk or more likely a drive—he did that sometimes when he wanted to think—and saw where the call was coming from and just didn’t want to answer. “Try calling from your cell,” she managed.
He started dialing, while she tried not to panic. He’d said he was pretty sure he knew who it was. He wouldn’t have blundered into Gunnar’s room, or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Good thing she hadn’t eaten after all. She couldn’t possibly hold on to food with this kind of fear making her body feel like an icy husk.
Okay. Time to focus. Time to call Tera and get her up there, make sure she was okay. And of course, Roc. She’d given him the day off, essentially, until they knew what was happening. She should have contacted him sooner. Should have reached out to him as soon as she got back to the room.
The little psychic cord connecting her to her demons vibrated when she sent a push along it, waited for the push to come back. Nothing. She sent it again. Nothing.
Okay, what the hell. If she hadn’t known better, she would have wondered if they were planning some fucking surprise party for her or something.
One more time. This time it came back, finally, a little shiver that made her feel much better.
“Roc will be here in a minute,” she told Nick. “Anything?”
He shook his head.
“What can I do?” Brian asked. “Just tell me.”
They all turned when someone knocked on the door. Roc, Megan felt. But Julie too. Shit, she’d forgotten about Julie.
“You can’t do anything, Brian. You have to get Julie out of here. It might . . . it’s probably not going to be the safest place to be around here tonight. So you really should just go.”
Another knock.
“I’ll take her home and come back.” He put his hand on the knob. “Okay? I’ll be back in a bit.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. It’s not safe.”
His brows drew together. “You’re my friend. I’m coming back.”
With Greyson gone—unreachable, she reminded herself; not gone, just unreachable—it fell to her to try to corral everyone, to figure out what was happening and what to do about it. She and Nick were the only ones aside from him who knew who was behind the angel.
Or they had been. Tera was mercifully safe, if a bit irritated to be interrupted in the middle of a manicure in the hotel spa. Roc was fine, if a bit irritated to be interrupted in the middle of feeding off a group of very bitter divorcees he’d found by the pool.
But none of her Yezer had found the angel. It wasn’t traveling on the
psychic plane, and it wasn’t anywhere visible to them. Probably in hiding. Lurking. Waiting.
“So if you know who it is,” Tera said, frowning at her half-painted nails, “why don’t I just call Vergadering? They’ll come get him. Once he’s in jail, the angel probably won’t come after the rest of you.”
“You’re assuming it would know. Or that it would care.” Time wasn’t helping Megan calm down. With every minute that ticked by, both of her hearts sped faster, and more horrifying images and thoughts buzzed in her head. If the angel had him . . . if he was gone . . .
She should have been strong enough, focused enough, not to think about him. She wasn’t. Embarrassing but true. “And it might not just be Gunnar.”
That possibility had occurred to her not long after they’d found Tera. She was focusing on Gunnar, so sure it was him—and she was sure, she knew it had to be. But that didn’t mean Winston wasn’t in on it, or Baylor. This was business, if of a particularly twisted kind, and business made bedfellows just as unlikely—or unholy—as politics or anything else.
“I don’t like the look of that Baylor,” Roc said. “He looks shifty.”
Coming from a tiny, wrinkly, bald green demon, that was saying something, but Megan didn’t argue. “It could be any one of them.”
“So what do we do?” Tera picked up the room-service menu and opened it. “How do we find out which one it is? Are you still meeting them all at eight?”
“Yeah, we’ve only got an hour,” Nick said. Tera’s room was larger than Megan’s; Nick was at her side on the little settee.
It was a prettier room too, with crown molding and its own small balcony. Ordinarily Megan might have wanted to go sit outside, to try to think with the breeze on her face, but not then. Not when she felt as if sniper rifles could be trained on the room waiting for one of them to move.
Shit, an hour. Only an hour. She was due to walk into battle at eight with at least one traitor, and her death was apparently pretty high on that traitor’s priority list.