by Julie Kenner
“Mom, do you copy?”
I gave a little shake of my head, amused by the military tone. “Roger,” I responded, my voice low. “Do you see something?”
“Negative,” Allie responded.
“Well, then what happened to radio silence?” I asked. “It’s hard to sneak up on a demon who can hear us coming.”
“You really think he’s outside? I figured we were gonna go in and wander the halls. You know, skulking in the shadows and stuff.”
“Skulking is on the agenda,” I admitted. “For me, anyway. I want you and Stuart to wait out here.” This, naturally, raised a protest from both my protégés. “Hey,” I demanded, eyeing Stuart and hissing at Allie. “Who’s in charge here?”
“Fine. Whatever. And that’s not why I buzzed you, anyway.”
“It can wait,” I said. “Radio silence, remember?” We’d arrived at the rec center window, and since I wanted to have a peek, I passed the walkie-talkie to Stuart, then pressed my face up to the glass and peered around. Not surprisingly, the room was entirely empty, the facility completely quiet.
“So I was reading through some of the notes that Bernie brought,” I heard Allie say over the tinny speaker, making me grit my teeth and shake my head in exasperation. “And it’s the coolest thing. Did you know the house has a safe room? An honest-to-God safe room.”
I stepped back from the window, frowning at both the walkie-talkie and the expression of bafflement on Stuart’s face. “Ask her what part of ‘radio silence’ she doesn’t understand,” I demanded, but he merely waved my words away. Honestly, was I the leader here or wasn’t I?
“What do you mean ‘safe room?’” Stuart asked. “The place was built almost a century ago. Safe rooms weren’t a standard feature.”
“Not for home invasions,” she said, the trademark Alison Crowe eye roll coming through just fine orally. “A Theophilis Monroe-style safe room. You know. To keep out demons.”
That perked me up, and I tried to snatch the walkie from Stuart. He scowled and held it tight. “What are you talking about?” he said.
“I guess he wasn’t as keen on the demons as everyone thought. Either that or he wasn’t as cocky about keeping control of them as we thought.”
I tried again and this time managed to snag the walkie. “A demon-safe room? As in consecrated ground.”
“Relics. Holy water. Everything blessed by the pope. Pretty cool stuff.”
“Which room.”
“That room down the hall from the kitchen. The one we figured was servants’ quarters that’s only got a bed in it,” Allie announced, and I could practically hear the grin in her voice. Honestly, I had to agree. Theophilis Monroe, the big bad black-magic aficionado, running and hiding under the bed when the demons got out of control.
“You’re right,” I conceded. “That is a cool fact. But right now I need you focused and right here. I want you and Stuart watching each other’s backs while I do a round inside.”
“Roger that,” she said, but before she clicked off, I heard her sharp, terrified intake of breath.
“Go!” I yelled to Stuart, and we both hauled ass around the side of the building toward the thick stand of trees where Allie had been hiding.
“Dammit!” I yelled, when I saw her standing next to Eric, his arm tight around his daughter’s shoulder. “Dammit, Allie, you scared me to death.”
“What?” She glanced down at the walkie. “Oh. Sorry. I squealed, huh? I just wasn’t expecting to see Daddy.”
“No,” I said dryly, looking at Eric. “Neither was I.”
“I saw the article in the paper,” he said. “I figured you’d be hunting.”
“And you thought we needed help?” I asked, my arms crossed over my chest.
“I wanted to tell you not to bother. He came after me earlier. I took care of the problem.”
“You go, Dad!” Allie said.
He grinned and kissed her forehead as my chest tightened. I so desperately wanted Allie to know her dad. To hang out with him and be pampered by him and listen to all of his stories. But right then, at that moment, I wanted her the hell away from him.
And I couldn’t say a word.
“What’s with the walkie-talkies?” he asked.
“I got them from Eddie,” Allie said.
“Apparently he’s taking the control and coordination aspects of his new position seriously,” I added.
“I wondered what he was doing in Eyes Only,” Eric said.
I blinked. “Where?”
“Eyes Only. It’s a new shop in Old Town. Spy equipment.”
“You’re kidding?” I examined his face, saw only amusement, then shared a grin with Stuart.
“Eddie with spy equipment,” Stuart said dryly. “We’re going to have to start watching what we say around the house.”
That got a laugh out of everyone, including me, and in that brief moment, life seemed normal, even good. We were a family, albeit odd and extended. A team.
Then Eric cocked his head and took my arm to pull me aside. “Hold up there, buddy,” Stuart said. “This isn’t your party.”
“More mine than yours,” Eric shot back. “The party, that is. Not the woman.” Though it was clear from his eyes that he meant me as well. “I need to talk to Kate.”
Stuart took a step forward, and I stepped between them. “It may surprise you to know that the alpha wolf game isn’t helping. And I do need to speak to Eric.” I looked at Allie. “You and Stuart can get in some more training.”
I thought Stuart was going to argue, but I stared him down. He must have seen the plea in my eyes, because he nodded, then moved toward Allie. “Looks like we’ve got no targets,” he said. “What kind of practice can we squeeze in on the lawn of a nursing home?”
Allie grinned wide, and as Eric and I walked away, I heard her laugh. “Well, I could tell you to drop and give me twenty, but . . .”
“What is it?” I asked when we’d moved out of earshot. “What really happened?”
“He knocked on my door, Kate. Knocked on my door, and when I opened it, the bastard bowed and told me he was there to serve.”
“Did you question him? Ask him about Odayne, get any details at all that we can work with?”
“I invited him in, shut the door behind him, and slid a blade through his eye,” Eric said, sounding more dangerous than I’d ever heard him. More dangerous, even, than I’d recently seen him.
“Dammit, Eric, you should have held him. Should have called me.” Interrogation wasn’t my strong suit, but I could manage it when I had to. And, honestly, if I was interrogating some badass demon that was somehow involved in dragging Odayne out of my husband and into the world, then interrogating his ass would be a pleasure.
His face darkened, and I was on the verge of revising that earlier observation on his dangerous appearance, because right then he was close to outdoing even himself. Then he seemed to pull it together. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. But I couldn’t. Dammit, Kate, I couldn’t stop myself.”
I nodded, hoping I looked businesslike and determined rather than worried and shaken. This lack of control was bursting forth more and more frequently, and so far, we’d found nothing to slow it down. Worse, we had no hints, no leads. No anything.
“There’s more,” he said, and I looked up at him, certain the worry was written all over my face. “I’m remembering my dreams.”
For the longest time, he could remember only that he’d had them. That they were dark. That they were filled with the demon. Impressions of evil and danger. But no specifics.
“Are you okay?” I asked, taking his hand and hating the thought that he was privy to whatever vile machinations went on in a demon’s subconscious.
“So far it hasn’t been too bad,” he said with a wry grin. “Though I feel a bit like a teenage boy.”
I scowled. “What are you talking about.”
“Sex,” he said. “Violent and brutal, but also hot. Very hot.”
Despite the fa
ct that this was only a dream, I felt a knot of jealousy skip into my stomach.
“That’s two demons now, coming to me as if I’m part of the team.” I could hear the torment in his voice, could see it in his eyes. “And now these dreams. Wild, sexual dreams.” He reached out as if to touch me, but pulled his hand away. “I wish I could say it’s you in them, but it’s not.” He reached out and brushed my cheek, my heart fluttering merely from the touch of his hand. “Katie, I don’t know who she is, but she’s there, with me. And the demon inside. Dear God, he wants her.”
I’m not sure if it was jealousy or prudence that made me speak then, but I took that opportunity to tell him that I thought I’d seen Nadia.
“Nadia?”
I laid it all out for him. How I’d opened the door and seen her standing in the distance.
“You’re sure it was her?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I have a feeling it was. Especially after hearing about your dream.”
“She wasn’t in my dream,” he said stiffly, and I was petty enough to rejoice a little about that.
“If she’s here,” he said, “we’ll find her. And whatever she’s up to, we’ll stop it.”
He reached down and grabbed my hand, the support entirely Eric, and the wash of relief that flooded through me was overpowering. And why not? I needed him on my side and on his game. Because Nadia was bad news for both of us. The last time she was in town, after all, she’d used Eric for demon bait, then strung him up and tried to bleed the life from him. I’d taken it a step further, of course, and shoved a knife through Eric’s heart.
I’d brought him back to life, but that didn’t change the fact that Nadia—a former Hunter gone bad—pretty much topped my shit list.
Ten
As it always does, Monday arrived on the heels of Sunday, and after what I could only think of as a wild and unpredictable weekend, we fell back into routine. Better than routine, actually, because now that Mindy and Allie were walking the best-friend path again, I didn’t have to drive Allie to school. Laura gained that honor.
“We need to start the carpool up again,” Laura said, but I shook my head and made a sign of the cross as if warding off evil. For years, we’d had a neighborhood carpool going, but little by little the riders were dwindling away, schedules altered by pre-class band practice or post-class musical rehearsals. After several rocky attempts at coordinating, I pulled out, practicing what all those self-help books recommend: the power of saying no. Considering that I had a toddler, a teenager, and a constant flood of demons, I had more than enough juggling on my hands, and driving my own daughter—and only my daughter—to school seemed like a fair and reasonable decision.
Naturally, I’d felt like a selfish, guilty bitch.
At the time, Mindy had been going to school early and coming home late. Not only had it driven Laura crazy, but it had meant that our girls hadn’t ridden together. Once Mindy was past rehearsals for the musical, the rift between them had widened and they still weren’t riding together. Now that the rift had healed, I wasn’t sure what I was more happy about—that my daughter had her best friend back, or that I no longer had to drive her every single day.
Laura, thank goodness, had that honor today, and although I’d asked her to come over and help me research after she dropped the girls off, she’d said she couldn’t this morning.
Actually, she’d gone a bit pink, looked down at the cup of coffee we were sharing while the girls got themselves organized, and said she had some things she needed to do beforehand, but that she’d meet me at three-thirty to help with Allie’s party planning.
“What’s going on?” I’d asked, and she’d blushed even pinker.
“Nothing. Honest. It’s nothing. If it turns into something, I’ll tell you, but until then, I’m—Oh, hell, I’m going to go take the girls to school.” And then she’d left, leaving me baffled. I ran through a mental list of possibilities, and decided the odds were that she was getting back together with Dr. Hunk. And although I was desperately, pruriently curious, I also knew she’d tell me in her own sweet time.
In the meantime, my focus needed to be on demons. And on toddlers, I thought, smiling down at the little boy playing with his trucks on the kitchen floor. My clean kitchen floor, which was amazing in and of itself. But, yes, the house was still spotless, having been scrubbed clean with Stuart’s help yesterday before the party. Well, the downstairs anyway. The children’s rooms and their bathroom were still a wreck, but since we hadn’t reached a point that would require the health department to step in, I decided not to worry about it.
Stuart had left early for the office and then a run-through of the mansion, so I was on my own watching Timmy. I tossed some of his trucks in a laundry basket, then picked up both the basket and the boy and headed upstairs.
Our attic is of the Brady Bunch variety, the kind that is accessed through a door and stairs rather than some annoying pull-down ladder. The room is finished as well, with drywall over the insulation, though we’d never bothered with paint or anything other than plywood flooring.
For years, I’d secretly kept my old hunting trunk up there, with my additional equipment tucked away in the storage shed. Now that my secret was no longer secret, my entire arsenal of weapons and books was up here, with the added bonus that they didn’t have to be concealed.
I spent fifteen minutes moving daggers, crossbows, and swords back into locked cabinets so that Timmy would have a nice safe area in which to drive his trucks, and then I opened one of the boxes of Eric’s old books. Allie had already been up here, and she’d taken an entire box down to her room. Her reports so far had been limited to an announcement that she “couldn’t find a dang thing,” and I hoped that I’d have better luck.
The leather-bound books were musty and fragile, and as I pulled out the top one, tiny bits of desiccated leather stuck to my fingertips. I sat the book carefully on the floor and began to slowly flip pages, forcing myself to concentrate on the words and not let my mind wander.
Research had never been my strong suit; that had always been Eric’s thing, and now I had to wonder if he really had enjoyed research, or if he’d simply been desperate to find his own answers.
Answers that weren’t, I realized, in the book I was reviewing.
I carefully pulled out another, and then another, both of which I managed to review before Timmy got restless and begged for me to play “truck” with him. Since truck requires me to lay flat and still and pretend to be a massive highway system, this wasn’t the kind of game I could play while multitasking. And though I tried to convince him that he really didn’t want to play that game, he was not to be deterred.
“Ten minutes,” I said, and he jumped up and down, holding up both hands, fingers splayed, and shouting, “Ten, ten, ten!” at the top of his lungs.
Five minutes into it, I heard Eddie’s familiar tread on the stairs into the attic, then grimaced as he peered into the room, his grin wide, as Timmy drove a truck up my arm, over my chest, and then down toward my belly button.
“Heh,” Eddie said, as I scowled in his general direction.
“Take my place,” I said. “And then let’s see if you laugh.”
“You’re missing the humor, girl,” he said. “What’s funny is that you’re down there and I’m not.” He whipped off a little salute. “And now I’m off to work. Tonight we can talk about whatever you find in those books. Assuming you ever get off your back and look again.”
“Very funny. Now go.”
He went, and I heard his chuckle all the way down the stairs.
I gave Timmy an extra five minutes of using Mommy as a highway, then sat up, to his extreme and vocal displeasure. “Mommy’s gotta work, kiddo.”
“NOOOOOO!!” he wailed “Play truck. PLAY. TRUCK!”
At which point I had to either give in and play, or stick to my guns and work.
I chose the middle ground and carried him downstairs for a bribe of a banana and Teddy Grahams.
“I love you, too, munchkin,” I said, hauling him from his chair into my lap. I wrapped my arms tight around him and buried my nose in his thick mop hair. I breathed deep of the clean scent of baby shampoo and tried to rid my mind of the memory of that bitch holding my baby’s head. Honestly, I couldn’t bear it, nor could I stomach the thought that she might be gunning for my family.
“Too tight, Mommy!”
“Sorry, kiddo,” I said, and loosened my grip. But I had an idea. A little idea, but it might give me some peace of mind.
“What we do, Mommy? What we do?” Timmy asked as I stood up.
“We’re getting dressed,” I said. “And then we’re going to go have a chat with our friendly neighborhood James Bond.”
Eyes Only sits at the southern end of the Promenade, between a coffee shop and a candy store. Timmy and I hit both of them, coffee to fuel me and candy to fuel the kid. Then we pushed open the mirrored door to the spy shop and found Eddie standing behind the counter, his eyes going wide when he saw us.
He recovered quickly enough and snorted. “Look who’s here.”
“So it’s true.” I looked around, took in the various spy accoutrements.
“Oughta be a detective,” he said. “What you doing? Tailing me?”
“You gave Allie the walkies,” I said. “And Eric saw you in here one day. Wasn’t too hard to figure it out.”
He shrugged.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He snorted. “Man’s gotta have his secrets, right?”
I blinked, baffled. “Out of everything we know about each other, you’re keeping secret the fact that you work in a spy shop?”
“I’m old and eccentric,” he said. “You need more explanation than that?”
“No,” I admitted. “I think that about covers it.”
“So you here because you got curious? Or ’cause you need something.”
“Both,” I said, then pointed to Timmy. “Can you track him?”
“What? You mean like put something on him? Have him swallow a radioactive isotope. Direct a satellite to this location?”