Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “Why?”

  “As I was saying earlier,” Clarissa said, turning to Claude, “Jason called. He and your father tracked Ross through Durham, but he was gone by the time they got to his last known location.”

  “So, he took her,” Gail said, moving away from Claude’s side. “He took Ellery.”

  Gail, Sweetie, and Clarissa had hit all of Ellery’s known haunts—the hospital where she worked, her condo in Durham, and even her all-night gym—while trying her phone repeatedly with no luck.

  “Probably, but Gulielmus doesn’t believe he’s with her at the moment. The energy trail changed, so while Ross may have been with her earlier, he likely isn’t at the moment. She’s being held for something.”

  “Or someone.” Great. They were being split up and sent on two different chases. Ross had chosen an excellent page from the villain handbook. Somehow, Claude couldn’t muster up an iota of pride regarding his nephew’s intelligence. Papa might have felt a certain amount of grandfatherly joy of it before Ross had bitten him in the ass. Ross had out-villained the villain.

  Claude turned to Charles. “I’d like to know just who you slept with to have conceived such a cartoon character of a son.”

  Quick popping noises came in response as Marion cracked her knuckles.

  Charles wisely didn’t respond. He didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter, anyway, since the woman was likely long dead. Ross claimed to be more than seventy years old.

  “I’m never having kids,” Gail said. Her words were so quiet, she probably hadn’t intended for them to be heard, but Claude was close. He’d heard every one, and it took every ounce of self-restraint he had to not respond. Children hadn’t been important to him before, because he lacked his father’s proclivities toward fruitfulness. But his mother had reminded him that he was the very last Fortier. The legacy would end with him. That idea wouldn’t have bothered him three or four years ago, but knowing what he knew now, he liked the idea of having heirs.

  He could raise them up differently than how he’d been raised. They wouldn’t have to teach themselves how to balance the dark and the light; he’d make sure they knew it from the first time they felt the magic seeking its release. It wasn’t a good time for a discussion of the topic with Gail, however. They hadn’t even spent a night in the same bed, and he didn’t think she’d be amenable to a family-planning conversation at the moment. They had other problems to work through first.

  “So, who’s doing what?” Claude eased Gail toward the deck door when John approached the coffee maker.

  “We’ve got to pick up the leads Gulielmus and Jason aren’t following up on,” John said.

  “I’m going after my sister,” Gail said. “They’ll probably hate me for it, but I could probably wake some of the members of our family’s coven. If we work together, we might be able to sense her.”

  Claude barely suppressed his scoff. He didn’t need a circle of nine or thirteen, because he worked smart, not hard. He believed in taking the most obvious route first, and should that fail, he’d escalate his plans.

  “Well, excuse the hell out of me, Mr. Know-it-all.” She gave him an ineffectual push and moved closer to Clarissa, crossing her arms over her chest. “You have a better idea? Let’s hear it.”

  “Annoying as they may be, your familiars do serve several purposes. Where was the cat when you checked Ellery’s home?”

  “She was scratching the door when I let myself in. Why?”

  “They know when you’re not where you’re supposed to be, and their natural inclination is to follow you and render aid.” It was a far better deal back when witches had dragons for familiars. What the fuck was a tabby cat going to do, scratch up the enemy’s sofa and mark their baseboards?

  “You think the cat’s going to walk me straight to where she’s being held? Might be a lot of walking.”

  “Sure, she could certainly do that. Or you could try it the easy way and just ask the cat.”

  “You’ve got to be yanking my chain.”

  Had she been taught anything about being a witch besides some watered-down, politically correct curriculum?

  He turned to Clarissa for aid, pleading with his eyes.

  She shook her head, an action that seemed full of you’re on your own with that one.

  Dragging his heads through his tangled curls, he sighed, and pivoted toward Gail once more. “Where is the cat?”

  “I left her at my sister’s. I figured if she didn’t get home, one of her friends could feed her.”

  “Then we need to go to Durham.”

  “Great.” Sweetie pushed her chair back from the table, and snapped her right fingers. “Marion and I will take her.”

  “I’ll take her.”

  Sweetie snorted. “I think her being around you is a bad idea right now.”

  “Unfortunately, she has to get used to it.”

  “I’m standing right here. Stop talking as if I weren’t.” Gail’s tone was tired; there was no fight in her voice. Who could blame her for being weary? It’d been a long day for all of them.

  “Okay, it’s settled, then,” Clarissa said. “John and Charles are buddied up, and I’ll go with them and make sure your daddy behaves. Ariel holds down the fort here and relays information to whoever needs it. Sweetie and Marion, you go with Claude and Gail and keep them off of each other.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I can control myself.” Claude walked toward the stairs, turning on lights in the hall as he went.

  “Sure, you can.” Clarissa followed him to the base of the stairs. “I bet you telling her no to anything is going to be the easiest thing you’ve done in at least a hundred years, right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  They both knew he’d be lying.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The moment Gail let the crew into her sister’s condo, Marion started sneezing uncontrollably.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, pulling her shirt up over her mouth and sneezing again. “Candy Corn doesn’t set off my allergies.”

  “Pumpkin Pie has much longer hair.” Gail pulled her key free of the knob and shut the door on the dawn light. At some point, she was going to have to get some sleep, because not even intravenous coffee service was going to keep her upright for much longer. “The sire of that litter was a Persian. Candy Corn is a fluff ball, but Pumpkin Pie is more or less a big hairy tumbleweed on short legs.”

  On cue, the cat lumbered out of the kitchen, her collar’s bell tinkling with each labored footstep. Ellery spoiled that damned cat. As a nurse, she should have known better than to stuff her to the gills with unlimited quantities of Fancy Feast.

  Pumpkin Pie meowed loudly as she threaded herself around the ladies’ legs.

  She gave Claude, who’d sat on the sofa arm, a wide berth. The cat had always hated men. Fortunately for Claude’s ankles, she was only hostile toward the men she didn’t trust.

  “What do we do?” Sweetie knelt down and gave the squawking cat a rub between the ears.

  “Yes, is there a ritual or something, or do we just warm her up a bit … talk to her about the weather and whether she’s seen any good movies lately?” Marion pulled her shirt up once more and sneezed violently. “Shit. Sorry.”

  Claude folded his fingers together atop his thighs and looked at the cat, then Marion. “Perhaps, if you think that’ll work.”

  Was he serious? Gail tossed her key ring in the general direction of his head.

  He caught it without even looking and made it disappear.

  Scary.

  And she couldn’t stay away from him. Did that make her some sort of thrill-seeking masochist? Or was she just attracted to power after being around people for so long who’d had none? She wasn’t sure which of those things was worse. She didn’t like the idea of being some sort of power groupie. That sounded almost like being a gold digger, and she’d been accused of being that enough times to never want to hear the term again. Shaun really was a piece of work. He’d come on to
her, not the other way around.

  “Do I think it’ll work?” Marion pushed up one of her full eyebrows and popped her fists onto her hips. “Come on, Claude. Don’t do the Obi-Wan shit today. I get enough of that from Momma. And F.Y.I.” Quick as a flash, she pulled a small knife from out of seemingly nowhere and pressed it against his sternum.

  He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. In fact, one corner of his beautiful lips dared to twitch. What had he endured in his long life that would have made having a knife pulled on him child’s play? Did she even want to know?

  “Your niece hasn’t been sleeping through the night so well lately because she has at least seven teeth cutting in at once, so I’m feeling especially stabby. I can’t kill you, but I can make you hurt. I will put a hole through this lovingly maintained Jimi Hendrix shirt so quick you’d think I’d gone and had ninja training.”

  Now he cringed, and the nudged the tip of her knife away from Jimi’s faded-out Stratocaster. “You are a cold woman, Marion Thanos.”

  She shrugged. “Charles likes it.”

  “Hate to be the Debbie Downer as always, but y’all are off course yet again.” Sweetie insinuated herself next to Claude on the sofa arm, so close their hips and thighs touched. She ruffled his hair idly, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

  Gail was seeing red, and it wasn’t the color of Claude’s eyes. The reasonable, rational part of her knew Sweetie didn’t mean anything by her proximity to Claude. She just wanted the energy, but couldn’t she try a little harder to keep her hands to herself? Marion was with them, so she could have even cuddled up to her instead and no one would have raised an eyebrow.

  Gail feigned a cough, and ever vigilant, Claude looked up at her.

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  His forehead furrowed.

  She darted her gaze over to Sweetie.

  Claude rolled his eyes, and carefully extricated himself from Sweetie’s side. He walked to the kitchen island and sifted through the pile of sales circulars on top.

  “Y’all get so easily distracted. You went from magic to teeth to shirts,” Sweetie said, totally oblivious to Gail’s distress. “Bet you couldn’t hack it hunting with the wolves. Tell us about the cat.”

  “I was.” Claude returned, deftly plucked the knife from Marion’s hand, and made that vanish, too. Where was he sending the things he confiscated? Ellery was going to want those keys back.

  “You’ll have to pardon me for trying to make this a teaching moment. We don’t know the range of Marion’s abilities, and since Ellery is likely in a holding pattern right now, I wanted to see just what sort of psychic Marion is.”

  “I can’t talk to cats, Claude.”

  For that matter, neither could Gail judging by the glazed expressions Candy Corn presented to her when she tried to chat.

  He shrugged. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”

  Marion opened her mouth, closed it, and let her shoulders fall into their natural, relaxed position. “Um …” She squatted and rubbed her fingertips against Pumpkin Pie’s chin. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her forehead furrowed and lips parted.

  After a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “No. Sorry. I don’t get anything from her.”

  Gail had, though. It’d been clear as day.

  “There’s a warehouse downtown. I recognize it, because Ellery and I went to a party there once years ago when it housed a club. It’s been shut down since then, and got boarded up. She’s there, and she’s okay for the moment.”

  “The cat told you that?” Marion asked.

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know. It just popped into my mind as truth, and my gut said to trust it.”

  “And just like that, you do?” Marion stood and swiped the cat hair off her hands onto her jeans.

  “I’ve always trusted my gut over my head. It’s why my grandmother thinks I’m an idiot and got me a cat.” She blew out a forceful exhale and ground her palms against her closed eyes.

  She smelled Claude’s familiar earthiness long before the press of his arms settled around her waist. She should have been running from him, knowing full well what his proximity could do to her, but her feet seemed glued to the floor as if they knew she couldn’t really escape him, anyway. She pressed her forehead against his chest and sighed. Why was she so forgiving of him? A minute ago, she’d wanted to kick his shins.

  He rubbed up and down her back, soothing her with his hands and his gentle kisses atop her head. “Your grandmother is typical of witches nowadays. Everything is rote. Spells are memorized, and the practicing is clinical. Witches like her think what we do has to be constructed on a sacred altar and bound up in rigmarole. They hide their weakness behind ceremony. But you’re not weak.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He spoke it as if it was truth, but he could have merely been placating her so she wouldn’t fall apart there in her sister’s living room. She knew damned well it wasn’t truth. Strong women weren’t jealous, and Gail had nothing but since she’d met him. She was jealous of Laurette, furious at Sweetie, and enraged at every woman he’d ever touched. His list of conquests had to have been astounding. And if he’d loved her—or Laurette—as much as he claimed, how had he lived with himself?

  “I’m positive.” He brought his hands up to her face and skimmed the pads of his thumbs over her closed eyelids.

  “Liar.” She opened her eyes, and he tipped her chin up, making her see him eye to eye. She’d worked in places where she regularly confronted hostile men—men she’d had to be aggressive with to make them understand that she wasn’t some wilting daisy who’d let a belligerent drunk call her out of the kitchen and demean her because his hamburger patty wasn’t pink enough. She met them head-on and usually sent them skulking away with their figurative tails between their legs, and she never felt fearful while doing it. After leaving Shaun, she’d promised herself she’d never let anyone cut her down as if she were nothing. The practice was hard, but every day she renewed her drive for it.

  Meeting Claude’s close gaze, though, took a kind of bravery she didn’t have. Sometimes, she felt as though he didn’t just see her, but that he saw right through her.

  She hated feeling so exposed. What did he think when he looked at her like that? Was he fondly recalling his Laurette and wishing Gail was her?

  Dammit. There it went again.

  “You’re not weak,” he repeated. “You’re unfocused. I had my mother to train me up the same way her mother taught her. What she taught me you can’t learn from books, although people try anyway.”

  “Are you telling me you never cast spells? You don’t keep a grimoire or mix potions?”

  “No, I’m not telling you that. That’s practical witchcraft. That’s how I make money. I’m talking about intuitive magic, chéri. It’s raw and instinctive, but can be very powerful.”

  “Like how she tossed that charged cleaver at your daddy,” Sweetie said with a chuckle.

  Claude laughed, too. “I would have loved to have seen my father’s eyes rolling back into his head from the shock.” He spun Gail around and gave her a little push on the bottom toward the door.

  “But that was borrowed magic,” Gail said. She pulled the door open and hit the light switch, casting them into darkness.

  They followed her out.

  “You may have borrowed it, but now that you know what it feels like, you can try drawing your own.”

  “Just like that, huh?” She patted her pockets and groaned about the keys she didn’t have.

  Claude took her right hand into his and slipped it into the pocket of his flannel overshirt.

  Her fingers grazed something hard and sharp, and she gasped, yanking out the key ring. “How do you do that?” She locked the deadbolt as her companions headed down the walkway.

  “It’s not something that can be easily explained,” he said when she’d caught up to him. He mashed the unlock button on his Jeep’s key fob. “It’s half science, half intuition.�
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  “Do you think I could do it?”

  She didn’t care so much whether she could or couldn’t. She’d resigned herself to be unable to do many things that came easily to others. That wasn’t why she’d asked.

  He skimmed his thumb along her jaw and shook his head. “No.”

  That’s why she’d asked. She wanted to see if he’d tell her the whole truth.

  “A lot of what I can do is because I’m half demon. You shouldn’t envy that.”

  Sweetie and Marion pulled their doors closed, and Gail turned so her back was to the Jeep. They couldn’t see her lips move. “I shouldn’t envy your power?” she whispered.

  “What would you do with such power?”

  She stared into his eyes and considered pretty lies, anything that would make her seem less pathetic than she was, and in the end decided to just keep her mouth shut. She wanted to be his equal, but she’d never be that.

  And maybe that was another reason she should stay away from him.

  “Come on. Let’s not keep Ellery waiting.” Gail pulled open the door, and stood aside, gesturing to the breezeway.

  Marion and Sweetie passed through the opening without a word. Claude, however, paused in front of her and waited until she met his gaze.

  “What?” she asked.

  “How are you feeling? The ring’s magic tells me you’re agitated, which we can fix, but what’s this other thing? Are you angry at me?”

  “Let’s just say I’m angry in general.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to go.”

  “I don’t think a minute will make much difference.”

  “If it’d been your sister abducted by an unstable quasi-demon, you wouldn’t think the same.” She pointed to the Jeep. “You’d be sitting in there cranking up the engine.”

  “Why are you pushing me away?”

  “Who said I was? I just want to get my sister.”

  “And we will. I ask you if you’re angry because I’m trying to calibrate what the ring is telling me with the truth.”

  “Let’s talk about this later.”

  “Fine.” He threw his hands up. “By the way, you just talked to a cat.”