Demon Marked tg-7

by Meljean Brook

  Brand looked to Revoire, who’d finished flipping through photos and closed the file. “And you still think we have your guy in our lockup?”

  “Probably not,” Revoire said. “There’s a distinct difference in the blood spatter. There’s no control. This looks like he was angry. He knew the victims?”

  “Not well.” The sheriff sat behind his desk, removed his hat. “They’re from up Lakewood, Steve Johnson has been here in Duluth for nine years now. Came in from Chicago. Says he was following Rachel, but when she moved to England and then disappeared . . . he found himself a few other girlfriends. He says that he never contacted the Boyles before Saturday morning.”

  “But he claimed that Rachel’s ghost visited him?”

  “Yes. Visited, and said that she hadn’t gone missing. Said she hadn’t been killed by some rich man. That her parents had done it, and she needed Johnson to get revenge for her.” Brand sighed. “The defense is already working up their insanity plea.”

  “And what do you think?” Taylor wondered.

  “I don’t think it’ll fly. He’s been working up to this for years. Rachel had a restraining order on him after he stalked her on campus. We’ve had other complaints from other girls. No violence in the priors, so this is unusual—but he said flat-out in the interview that he knew it wasn’t right, but he had to do it for her. So he’s got something loose up there, but he knows right from wrong. He’ll stand trial.”

  So the demon had probably known about Johnson’s obsession with Rachel, had known exactly who to push. To know that, it had probably accessed court records and found the restraining order. There might be a paper trail.

  Taylor and Revoire would start there.

  They took their leave of Sheriff Brand, walked to the front of the building. Teleporting around a busy city in the middle of the day was out, except in an emergency. Taylor didn’t mind. Growing up in San Francisco, she hadn’t seen a lot of snow, but it was falling outside and she wouldn’t get cold.

  She didn’t think Revoire was ready to teleport again yet, anyway. She caught his eye. “All right?”

  “Fine. Just reminded of why I can’t always tell the difference between humans and demons. That little shit deserves to burn.”

  Yes. Johnson had his issues, but when it came down to it, he’d wanted to kill the Boyles. Taylor had about as much sympathy for him as she did serial killers who blamed their mamas.

  She nodded her agreement, squinting a little as they emerged from the dim office to the bright fall of white. The sun wasn’t out, but the daylight and the reflection off the snow still glared on her sensitive eyes.

  “Do you recall anything odd about Rachel Boyle? The name is nagging at me.” And years on the force told her not to ignore those little niggles.

  Revoire shook his head. “I remember when it happened. It caught the news in this area a couple of times. But nothing stood out. Most people thought her rich boyfriend did it.”

  Rich boyfriend. Taylor stopped as the niggle turned into a full-blown itch. “No, not the news. The dungeon.”

  “Dungeon?”

  “Nicholas St. Croix.” Oh, it was coming to her. She’d been distracted, but she remembered this. “He said that a demon killed Rachel Boyle. That she died in his arms after saving him. He’d wanted to know if she’d become a Guardian.”

  “Did she?” Revoire’s brow furrowed, as if he was trying to recall the name now, too. “I don’t know many of the novices—”

  “She didn’t. We still don’t know why. And . . . speak of the devil. There he is.”

  Crossing the circular drive that served the government buildings, and still looking like the same cold, rich bastard. Taylor almost laughed. He hadn’t noticed her yet, and she briefly considered shifting her form—but no, this was better.

  His gaze lit on her, and she couldn’t detect any change of his expression or a crack in his emotional shields. But he recognized her. His heart sped up. An automatic response, she thought. Though Nicholas St. Croix knew he had nothing to fear from a pair of Guardians, his instincts were shouting at his body to fight or get the hell out of there.

  “Mr. St. Croix,” she drawled. “How was your trip from New York?”

  Cool amusement hardened his eyes. “How is Rosalia?”

  “Concerned about you.”

  “Ah, yes. The mother to everyone.”

  Such icy disdain for one of the sweetest women she’d ever met. God, Taylor wanted to punch him. “Better than your mother?”

  “Is she?” He shrugged. “She lies, she manipulates. I don’t see the difference, personally.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Perhaps not,” he agreed easily. He looked to Revoire, who was frowning at him—probably wondering if St. Croix was a demon—before addressing Taylor again. “If that is all . . . I don’t recall your name. Detective something or other, was it?”

  Oh, he was good. Playing up that British accent when she knew he’d spent over half his life in America. Deliberately shutting her out, pissing her off. Why?

  “Special Agent Taylor of Special Investigations. This is Special Agent Revoire. Do you have time to sit down for coffee, Mr. St. Croix?”

  “No.”

  She smiled pleasantly, but put steel in her voice. “Make time.”

  “Or what?” His gaze ran over her in a calculating assessment. “How could you possibly make it worth my time?”

  “Because we’ve just finished looking at photos from a recent crime scene. Frank and Caroline Boyle. I believe you know them?”

  Finally, a break in his shields. Just a fraction, but enough to feel his rage. His sadness. But no surprise.

  “Yes,” he said, and now there was bleakness beneath all of that coldness. “How did it happen?”

  Taylor suddenly understood that this was why he’d come to the sheriff’s office. He was looking for answers. He cared.

  She hadn’t expected that.

  “Steve Johnson, an old boyfriend of Rachel’s, did it . . . after he’d been visited by her ghost.”

  She saw the realization hit him. His dark brows lowered and his jaw hardened, cracking the icy cast of his expression.

  “A demon?”

  “Yes. We’re looking for her now.” She paused, hoping for any reaction, but didn’t get one. She’d have to try again. “Rosalia thought that you might have run into a demon lately.”

  “No. I just had questions.”

  “Questions that brought you to Duluth?”

  “I heard rumors that someone who looked like Rachel had been seen in the area. I never believed that she hadn’t become a Guardian. So I came looking, because when I find her, I can finally clear my name.” That cool amusement came sliding back. “I guess I’m not looking for a Guardian, but a demon. I don’t suppose that you’ve slain her yet?”

  “No.” Was he lying? Taylor couldn’t decide. He did have good reason to follow up on any rumors. “But we will. Do you plan to stay in town?”

  “Just long enough to make certain the ghost wasn’t the demon I’m looking for.”

  His mother. Though that demon wasn’t an excuse for him to grow up into such an asshole, she couldn’t blame St. Croix for wanting to slay her.

  “We’ll let you know if she is,” Taylor said.

  “Not if I find her first.”

  Taylor smiled thinly. “Good hunting, then.”

  He nodded and continued past her up the stairs. Taylor waited until he passed through the doors before looking to Revoire.

  “We need to contact SI. I want to know everything he did, looked at, bought, went online for in the past week. And we need a picture of Rachel Boyle.” The demon had probably changed her shape by now, but maybe not. “If the demon impersonated Rachel once, it might do it again—especially if the target is someone like St. Croix.”

  Rich, ruthless, probably on the edge of sanity after a childhood in a demon’s tender care. God knew how a man like that could be manipulated, or how dangerous he could be.<
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  “I thought for certain I’d finally run into Basriel.” Revoire shook his head. “He was human?”

  Barely. “Let’s go. We’ve got a demon to find, before Basriel does.”

  Or before Nicholas St. Croix did.

  Nicholas returned to the hotel. If the Guardians tailed him, they wouldn’t find a demon. They wouldn’t find any evidence that she’d stayed in the same room the night before. Hell, even the porn rental suggested that he’d been alone. He ate lunch and watched the financial news, then hit the gym for two hours, giving the Guardians time to conduct a search of his suite.

  If they were tailing him. Hopefully, they’d decided to focus on finding the demon who’d posed as Rachel, and hopefully they’d believed Nicholas when he’d told them Rosalia had been mistaken about his being with one. And if they hadn’t believed him, hopefully they thought he was such a dickhead bastard that he deserved whatever a demon did to him, and left him to it.

  He knew the Guardians didn’t work that way, though. Unfortunately, they even tried to save the bastards.

  In the afternoon, he completed the business-related calls and sent the e-mails that he hadn’t the day before. No need to hide his electronic trail now. He tried to think of any way to contact the bed-and-breakfast without giving Ash away.

  If they were watching him, he couldn’t. Goddammit. He couldn’t. There was absolutely nothing that they couldn’t hear or trace or follow.

  Was Ash still waiting in the room as he’d instructed? How long would she wait? She’d been desperate to know what had happened to Rachel’s parents. If Nicholas didn’t bring back answers, would she stay in the room? And even if she did, how long until the innkeepers worried and contacted the authorities? Probably overnight, he thought. Maybe into the next evening.

  Maybe by then, he’d figure out whether she’d killed the Boyles, and whether her desperation had been an act.

  An act? God. That he even considered the possibility it wasn’t proved how she’d already gotten to him, somehow made him believe that she was different from other demons, made him wonder if the amnesia had affected her nature so strongly. But, Jesus—when she’d seen the Boyles’s living room, she’d seemed so shattered. Lost. He knew that emotional reaction had to be a lie. Maybe the Boyles’ murder had been her plot all along, and bringing Nicholas in to see the aftermath was just the icing.

  But if that were true, why the hell would she still be playing along? Why would she pretend to care what had happened to them? Why wasn’t she gloating?

  He didn’t know. But he needed to figure it out. And if she had been responsible for the Boyles, he’d let the Guardians have her—his bargain and his soul be damned.

  Searching through his e-mails, he found Cooper’s report, verified the investigator’s timeline. A month ago, Ash had escaped from the hospital. Cawthorne had hung himself a week later; the same night, someone had entered Madelyn’s town house. A few days after that, Rachel’s ghost had begun visiting Steve Johnson. Then the previous night—Saturday night—Nicholas had found Ash at the house in London.

  The Boyles had been murdered Saturday morning. Even accounting for the time difference, a demon could have easily watched Johnson kill them, then flown across the Atlantic to London.

  Ash could have done it. But Nicholas couldn’t make himself believe she had.

  He tried. At the window overlooking the lake, he recalled how she’d stood here while he ate dinner, plotting to see him naked, with amusement and mischief taking their turns lighting her usually emotionless expression . . . and later, tempting him with her nudity and her claim that she wanted him. Jesus. That lust had to be a lie, too. But she hadn’t lied about Nightingale House—and why would any demon stay there for three years? Why didn’t she try to tear him apart with every opportunity? Why didn’t she imitate Rachel more perfectly? Aside from a few mannerisms and her accent, nothing about the two women was similar.

  He’d go mad trying to make sense of her. Demons were supposed to be creatures of habit, but there was nothing that he could see in Ash that resembled any other demon he’d heard of. Certainly not—

  Oh, fuck. Creatures of habit. What the hell had he been thinking, wasting time worrying about one demon when he should have been hunting another? He knew someone else who preferred hotels like this—and there weren’t many of them in Duluth.

  And that someone might be looking for Ash, too.

  Nicholas didn’t have to go far. The clerk at the registration desk recognized Madelyn’s picture. She wouldn’t tell Nicholas the name Madelyn had checked in under, but he learned that she’d left two days before.

  Fuck. He’d missed her by only a day.

  And she had some balls, still using his mother’s face. He scanned the hotel lobby and the adjoining bar. Shape-shifted, Madelyn could be any of the people here. The Guardians could be any of the people here. Just waiting for him to lead them to Ash. If Madelyn had waited a day, she’d have just run into Ash at the hotel, and wouldn’t have needed to—

  Realization hit like a punch to the stomach. Two days. Saturday. She’d left the hotel the same day the Boyles had been murdered.

  Oh, goddammit. Now that made sense, sick as it was. Ash had escaped from Nightingale House, and if Madelyn knew Ash was searching for answers, she’d have assumed that Ash would eventually make her way to America and the Boyles’ doorstep. But if Madelyn got to the Boyles first, Nicholas had no doubt that she’d have taken Rachel’s mother’s place. Within a few days, after the investigation died down, she’d probably have begun waiting at the house, planning to lure Ash in like a witch from a fairy tale.

  For what purpose?

  That didn’t matter. Whatever Madelyn wanted from Ash, he’d see that she didn’t get it.

  Of course, it was damn hard to make certain of that when he was stuck in a hotel lobby, and Ash waited a few miles away. Did he risk going?

  If he didn’t, and Madelyn found Ash, he might lose his only chance to learn where his mother’s body lay, and to slay the demon bitch who’d killed her, Rachel, and now Rachel’s parents. But if he was with Ash, Madelyn would come to him.

  And he knew exactly the place to wait for her—where the Guardians wouldn’t find them, but Madelyn eventually would. When she did, he’d have his revenge, and Ash . . .

  Ash. God. All right. She’d gotten to him. And though he’d planned to slay her after her usefulness ended and she led him to Madelyn, he wouldn’t now. He couldn’t now. He’d tell her what the Guardians looked for when they searched for demons so that she could avoid them, and then he’d let her go.

  So what would he rather risk: staying away from Ash and possibly losing an opportunity to find Madelyn, or having the Guardians follow him to the bed-and-breakfast?

  The answer came easily. Nicholas returned to his room, collected his computer and his keys, and left everything else. Hell, he should have done this earlier—this wasn’t much of a risk at all. Even if the Guardians followed him, he’d get to Ash first. He’d protect her. As a human, the most powerful being in a room of Guardians and demons, he had no doubt that he could protect her.

  And she was just too damn useful to lose now.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ash couldn’t remember staying at a bed-and-breakfast before, but this one didn’t fit the mental image she had of them. Instead of small, cozy rooms filled with overstuffed furniture and quilts, everything in their suite appeared spare and elegant. Just as well. Better not to have rooms that seemed to invite her to hide beneath the blankets, or curl up in a ball and eat a tub of ice cream. The Victorian restraint, the straight-backed wooden chairs, served as a guide for Ash. She, too, remained stiff and composed.

  She’d thought the grief and fear would have faded by now. They hadn’t. And she’d forgotten—or maybe she’d never known—how much effort it took to constrain them. By the time afternoon had come and gone, and Nicholas still hadn’t returned with any information, that effort had crept into a souldeep exhaustion. Never before had
she wished that sleep would come to her; she wished it now, if only to make the time pass more quickly. If only so that she wouldn’t feel this emptiness—an emptiness that, for the first time that she could remember, seemed hollow.

  She wished Nicholas were here. Not only so that he could confirm the news Ash feared she already knew, but so that he would be here with her when she learned for certain. He made her happy. He also irritated and frustrated her, but any of those emotions had to be better than this unending dread.

  Where was he?

  Night fell. The innkeeper’s wife knocked on the door and invited Ash down to dinner. Roasted chicken and garlic mashed potatoes, by the scent of it. She could taste the woman’s sweet concern, and the piquant bite of her pity. Though she was tempted to join them downstairs for no other reason than to ask whether they had a newspaper from that morning, or even a computer and an Internet connection that she could use, Ash had to plead a headache and decline without opening the door.

  Her eyes wouldn’t stop glowing.

  In the red wash of light, she studied the picture of Rachel and her parents over and over again, searching for a simple emotional association, any hint of familiarity. A little girl’s tiara could remind her of Cinderella and send Ash on a search through her memories, but there were no similar connections to find here. Nothing in the Boyles’ shirts, their smiles, the sparkle of the mother’s wedding ring. Yet seeing their blood had torn her apart. Why?

  She found no answers in the photo. Perhaps the answers were coming, however, as was the familiar sound of the engine that she’d listened to for a thousand miles. Nicholas. Unable to see the road from her room, she pushed through the doors leading onto the balcony, where she had a better angle on the winding street leading to the house. His headlights swept across the snow as he rounded the final curve. He wasn’t even to the driveway yet. Minutes might pass before he arrived at the mansion and walked up the stairs.

  Ash couldn’t wait that long.

  She dropped from the balcony, landing in a knee-deep pile of snow. Behind her, light from the dining room spilled across her body, casting a long shadow. She didn’t give anyone eating inside time to see her. Up on her feet, she sprinted across the unbroken blanket of white. It should have been harder, she thought, but her legs churned a trail through the heavy snow, strong, unstoppable. Within seconds, she was at the driveway, racing in front of Nicholas’s vehicle and into the splash of his bright headlights.