The timer continued to sound, a shrill beep.
Lila was more concerned with spreading the goat cheese onto her cracker than Malik, which was a pretty brutal way to treat a friend, or lover, or whatever he was to her.
I shook my head. “If you were so mad at David, why make the deal at all? Why hand over any magic to those men?”
“Demons still needed killing.” She shot a wry glance at Malik, releasing her hold.
He slumped over, hands braced on the counter, his chest heaving, and swore in Arabic.
I blinked. “But–”
“You had your questions.” Her tone brooked no further argument.
Malik silenced the timer and shut the stove off with a snap of the dial, sliding the pot off the burner. “Tell her, Lila, or I will.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” The temperature dropped several degrees. Lila half-turned toward Malik.
Malik dissolved into flame. That familiar dancing blaze of gold and orange contained within a human outline with the merest suggestion of a face.
“If the Brotherhood is trying to repeat history?” he said. “Your peaceful isolationism is over.”
“I have survived much. These games mean nothing to me.”
“No? Not even if they carry out David’s plans? If your ex-lover wins even while in the grave?”
Eww. David had slept with both mother and daughter? Tacky.
The floor-to-ceiling window spiderwebbed with cracks. My wine was crystalizing. Shivering, I put the glass down in case it shattered.
It was an unholy showdown. Malik was pure flame. Hot. Bright. Awesome.
Lilith was a deep freeze. Winning in the scary-as-fuck department. She relaxed by degrees: the lowering of her shoulders, the looser clasp of her wine glass. “Like I said. These games mean nothing to me.”
“What games?” I had to say it twice because my vocal chords didn’t want to cooperate.
Malik became flesh again with nary a soot mark on his person or the furniture. Running the water in his sink, he dumped the pasta into a colander. “The deal with David was supposed to be a one-time thing. Get some more warm bodies to help fight us.” He snorted.
I inspected my glass and finding it unbroken after the mini ice storm, finished up my wine. “There’s a ritual to test babies. Initiate the next generation. That doesn’t imply single-use.”
“The ritual was to test David’s adult potentials. To see if they could handle the magic.” Malik took the water out of the colander. “David was a slick talker. He convinced another witch to create the initiation and induction rituals in order to keep the world safe for future generations. Witches are big on that.” He didn’t sound impressed.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I like this world. I like my toys and my playmates. Make sure that’s not disturbed.”
“Make sure yourself. Help me.” I looked to Lila to include her in that, but she was gazing out the window, giving no indication she was listening.
Malik laughed and laughed, putting final touches on his sauce while I scowled at him, arms crossed. “Oh. You were serious.”
“Lila.” When she turned, I handed her the gogota finger still purple from the magic signature spell we’d cast. I’d retrieved it from Rabbi Abrams before going off for the painting. “What’s it going to cost me to find out who did this?”
“One night with your lover.”
“You’re not his type,” I said lightly, tamping down a hot flare of “over my dead body.” Who was I kidding? She was everyone’s type.
“You are though. I want to possess your body for one night, habibty.”
“No.”
“Why not? You’re the host. I’m just a passenger allowed to experience your passion.”
That cold calculating part of my brain said to pay her price if it meant answers. The rest of me recoiled.
Lila sipped at her wine, her eyes intent on mine.
“Even if I was willing, which I’m not,” I said, going with my heart and my gut, “he’d never agree.” I didn’t want her knowing me that intimately. Didn’t want her perverting a precious experience.
She stroked a hand over my hair. “He doesn’t get to know.”
“No way. That’s wrong.” I ducked out from her creepy touch and grabbed the gogota finger. It may have been my body, but I wouldn’t be alone and I’d never do that to Ro. I wouldn’t take his choice away.
Malik blocked my route to the door. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is nothing.”
The marid may have appeared as an attractive, civilized man but in the end, he was still a demon and he was old. To him, time and life were an impressionist painting where any of the individual dots failed to matter.
“It’s everything.” Magic erupted out of me. “Now get out of my way or so help me we’ll both find out exactly what I’m capable of.”
Hands up, he let me pass.
15
I sped through the city, hell-bent for the chapter club, white-knuckling the steering wheel. Barely holding myself together from the adrenaline and yeah, fear, still pumping through my system. I’d texted Ro that I was coming back but hadn’t answered his questions on how the delivery had gone.
I curved onto my dead-end street, the car fishtailing. The trees on each side that afforded us privacy from our neighbors pressed in on me. I floored the gas pedal that final millimeter, my body straining forward in my desire to get home.
The gate was open, Ro waiting for me to slow to a stop. The stiffness in his pose wasn’t all from his injuries. He strode past the wards out to the curb, stuck his head into my rolled-down driver’s side window, clasped my face in his hands, and kissed me. Leaning further into the window, he pressed me back against the seat, his hum of relief vibrating down to my toes.
I gripped his wrists, refusing to be let go of.
“You’re giving me gray hairs, Sparky,” he murmured with a shaky laugh, before kissing me again.
I rested my forehead to his.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Better now that I’m back.” I leaned across the car and opened the passenger door. “Get in. I’ll drive us up.”
An oshk materialized out of nowhere, denting the hood right as Ro walked past it.
I jumped out of the car and blew the demon back against the stone fence. While this oshk had the same blobby body as the one at the wreta house, instead of a single human arm, she had a fully defined female face with short blood-colored hair.
Her amorphous body expanded to deflect the impact. The oil slick pattern on her skin momentarily sucked all the light into it, creating the illusion of a massive void that was oddly hypnotic. I tore my eyes away, checking Ro for possible contact and repeat symptoms.
The glint in his eyes and hard set of his jaw was directed at the oshk, not me. He snicked out his blades as the oshk peeled herself off the fence.
I shoved him out of the way and blew a steady stream of electricity at the demon. “Are you kidding me?” I made a mental note to get some kind of long folding switchblade.
“I can’t just stand here.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I respected him enough that this had to be his choice, even if getting another hit of secretion wasn’t worth him lending his magic to this battle. “Your choice,” I said.
“Stop being reasonable,” he snapped. But his knives went away.
The oshk curled in on herself, her flesh rising up over the gash I’d caused and sealing it. “Where is he?” Her screech was a broken rasp. “Where is Candyman?”
“We don’t know,” Rohan said.
“You killed Five.” Was that a name and were there four more like her? Her eyes flashed red.
I launched a new offensive, but she ignored my magic like the deadly voltage was a gentle mist, and flew at us.
Rohan pulled me behind the open car door, swinging it outward to collide with the demon. The oshk slammed into the metal hard enough to rattle the hinges and disappeared.
“Bhenchod!” Rohan stormed up the driveway.
I got back in my car, driving past Ro and giving him space.
Drio was home so I dragged him into the library, filling him in on what had just happened.
The front door slammed. Rohan marched in wearing a deadly smile. “Leo needs better intel. Oshks aren’t Unique. Time to have a little chat with her.”
Ro had covered for Leo at every turn since I’d known him. Was the oshk in front of the chapter house really the final straw? Was he just frustrated or was he done keeping her secret? I stepped forward, but Drio gripped my arm, expression bland.
“That’s not Leo’s job.” He waved a hand around the library, deceptively mild, but leaving no doubt whose job it really was. “An urban legend’s got to have documentation somewhere.”
Rohan returned Drio’s impassive smile. “It better.”
The first time I’d met Drio, there’d been a moment when I thought Ro was going to kill him. I’d never seen that again from him and I wasn’t freaked out because I was seeing it again now. What had my palms clammy and my heart galloping was that Drio looked a blink away from methodically dismantling my boyfriend over my best friend.
Drio pulled the laptop close and ran a new search for the female face in the database.
I gripped the top of a chair watching the anger rolling off Rohan meet the implacable front that was Drio. It scraped my already raw nerves to fine wire. I opened a window but the fresh sunny breeze failed to ease the powder keg vibe.
Screw it. I jogged downstairs and rapped on Rabbi Abrams’ door.
“Come in.” His voice was a bit muffled.
I threw open the door. “What’s wrong?”
He crumpled up a Kit Kat wrapper. “Found them.”
I placed a hand over my heart. “Stop at one, please, and no more honey in your tea today.”
“Agreed. Do you have an update?” He waved me at a chair.
“Yeah.”
Give the man his due, he stayed pretty calm while I told him about his illustrious founder. I left out the deal Lilith had proposed because there wasn’t enough money in the world to make me talk sex with the guy. “You think Rabbi Mandelbaum knows this? Or that he’s up to the same thing? Making demon pets to help fight this war?”
“I’ve never heard any of this, and I’ve been around this Brotherhood much longer than he has.” He stroked his white beard. “It is, however, possible. Does Esther have anything to add?”
“She doesn’t know yet. I’ll go see her soon, but first I need your help with something else. Ever heard of an oshk?”
He sat forward with an interested gleam. “No. A demon?”
I gave him a brief run-down, asking if he could think of the best place to search for it since it wasn’t in the database or any of the texts we’d tried. He reached for another Kit Kat from the stash on his desk, leaning back with a grumble when I shook my head at him.
Denied his treats, Rabbi Abrams heaved himself out of his chair and pulled a thin book off his shelf.
I took it from his gnarled hands. “It’s a journal.”
The leather binding was brittle to the touch, the ink on the parchment was faded with time, and many of the pages had come loose. Entries were written in a spidery handwriting in a combination of English, Hebrew, and Russian while the pages were filled with illustrations of demons I’d never heard of, not that that meant anything. I didn’t have as complete an education in demonology as the other Rasha. “Are these Uniques?”
“The Brotherhood doesn’t believe them to exist. According to them, Rabbi Shokovsky made it his life’s work to record the whisperings of madwomen.”
“Witches?” I said.
“The Brotherhood wanted facts, demons that were confirmed in different cultures, not crazed rumors and fanciful tales. He died alone and reviled.” He ran a wrinkled finger along the edge of the page. “You said the oshk was an urban legend told by other demons. Perhaps Shokovsky heard the story.”
I stopped flipping pages at one covered in rough scribbles, all the sketches a variety of the oshk I’d met. “I’d say he did. How’d you get this contraband, Rabbi?”
“He was my great-great-great-grandfather.” Rabbi Abrams winked and tossed me a Kit Kat. “My family doesn’t precisely toe the party line either.”
I skipped into the library, clinging to this small victory like a lifeline. “I have returned triumphant.”
The mood had thawed between Rohan and Drio, but both the men seethed with frustration, open half-drunk beer bottles on the table in front of them.
“Did you bring us chocolate, too?” Drio asked.
“No. Rabbi Abrams gave this to me because I’m his favorite. He also gave me this.” I lay the open book down on the table, tapping the demon’s name that Shokovsky had written at the top.
“A matryoshka,” Rohan read.
“Like the Russian dolls?” Drio humphed, studying the drawings. “We’re dealing with eight of them?”
“Seven,” Rohan corrected. “We killed one of the versions with an arm.”
“Seven out there for Candyman to make more Sweet Tooth with? That’s plenty,” Drio said.
“The matryoshka is a Unique. She just comes in parts. Leo wasn’t wrong,” I said pointedly, dropping into a chair.
“No, she wasn’t.” Rohan hooked an ankle around my chair and tugged me close. It was all the apology that I was going to get.
The journal entry confirmed that the matryoshka ate other demons with no apparent interest in humans. Its secretion worked as a paralytic on demons.
“We’re lucky it doesn’t work as a paralytic on us,” Drio said.
“It’s bad enough,” Ro replied.
“Speaking from experience.” Drio smirked.
“Don’t start,” Ro said. It was unclear whether he meant me or Drio. Drio’s smirk grew wider and I pressed my lips together, pointedly looking away.
We poured over the drawings, learning everything we could about the rest of the forms. A head, an arm, a leg–put the eight parts of the oshk together and she made a complete human figure.
The guys discussed how best to track it, as well as what protective gear we’d need to keep from getting splashed with its secretion. Ro agreed not to tempt fate by using his blades so he and Drio made a list of weapons we had on hand that would get the job done.
I told them that the heart was the sweet spot then tuned them out, needing to properly regroup after the shit show at Malik’s. Needing to release the breath that had been stuck in the base of my throat these past couple hours. I pressed up against Rohan. With every inhale, I filled up a little more with him. My skin heated, my tension eased, and my muscles became pliant. I shifted closer as if the hard warmth of his side could keep me upright when my spine so clearly couldn’t.
He didn’t look at me, didn’t speak to me, listening to Drio expand on an idea. His only movement was the idle play of his fingers on the neck of his beer bottle but his utter awareness of me emanated outward. So when the table got jostled and he reached past me for the box of tissue to blot the pooling liquid with a murmured “kitchen,” I had to shut my eyes to steel myself because the unease humming in my system had become low grade arousal and that one word skyrocketed me.
Rohan left the room carrying his beer and the soggy tissue.
Drio kept reading the journal. “Go after him.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I scampered into the kitchen.
Rohan caught me, pushing me up against the cabinets. “I hated letting you go to Malik’s by yourself.”
“But you did.” I slid my arms around his neck. I didn’t want to think beyond this moment, so I kissed him deeply, and whatever else he might have said died as his lips met mine. The kiss danced on the edge of violence, grinding against each other, working through all the anger, fear, and frustration we both had penned up.
Our darkness banished, our lips became a sweet tease. Rohan wrapped his arms around me and we held
each other, our heartbeats slowing in tandem.
“Want to tell me what happened?”
I pulled away with a shaky sigh. “Yeah. But let’s get Drio. And food. Lots of food.” I hadn’t eaten since breakfast on the red eye flight home, and using my magic had long ago metabolized it.
Excellent boyfriend that he was, Rohan made sure I was stuffed with my favorite Szechuan food, even ordering the ginger beef extra crispy for me. He stayed at my side, a steady presence, while I caught Drio up on Orlando, and told them both about meeting Lilith.
Ro took the bit about Lila making my mouth vanish better than I expected. His vibrated fury only lasted a few seconds. He stuffed it down to focus on me, pulling me into his arms and rubbing my back in slow, steady strokes, as I recounted everything else that had transpired.
Almost everything. I couldn’t tell them about Lila reliving my memory or her offer. I tried three times, and on each occasion broke into a coughing fit. The third time my coughing was so violent that Drio actually got me some water instead of his expected response of letting my brains leak out of my ears. When I was able to speak again, I ended up saying I’d pissed her off with my questions and it was a no-go.
I yawned, my lids half-closed.
Ro tugged me up. “Let’s get you to bed.”
As soon as he climbed under the sheet with me, I gripped his hand, wrapped my leg over his, and stuffed my cheek against his chest. He was something real and solid to rest against; someone caring and fierce and mine. I finally felt secure enough to let sleep claim me.
I woke up in the middle of the night because I’d kicked the sheet off and I was cold. I reached for Rohan, but he wasn’t there. My hand hit something crinkly. I switched on the light to find a note Ro had left me on his pillow.
Gone to Palm Springs. Back in the morning. Don’t worry.
He’d snuck out in the middle of the night to fly to California. Why would I possibly worry? I tried to go back to sleep, but his absence left me raw and empty, like a demon had sliced me open, casually thrust in a claw, and yanked out my insides.
Dawn was a long time coming. Rohan’s reappearance even longer.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Crave (Nava Katz Book 4) Page 20