Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1)

by Sara DeHaven

  Dion leaned back and crossed an ankle across his knee, prompting a protesting trill from the black cat as it was jostled. “I’ve been on the lookout for something small for you to start with, something to ease you back in, and I think I’ve found something.”

  “Look Dion, I know your intentions are good. I know you believe it will help me to get back out there and work a little power. But I don’t think…”

  “Look, this is a piece of cake, nothing too dark. Just a little bit of taint that needs cleared up for a friend of Kevin’s. Guy’s new in town, Kevin knew him back in Boston, and he’s not connected up with the resources here, if you know what I mean.”

  Hah. Of course Kevin would leave it to Dion to approach her. Kevin would take “no” for an answer, and Dion, in his slippery, sneaky way, rarely would. Still, in spite of herself, Bree’s interest was stirring. She used to like taint cases. They were interesting and usually easy.

  She stuffed the interest back in its box. “That would be assuming I want something to start with. You know, I’ve been enjoying a peaceful life. Just doing my work, getting caught up with the garden, actually cooking for a change. It suits me. Nobody gets hurt when I grow daffodils. I’m liking that about my life.”

  Dion regarded her seriously, dark eyes sympathetic. “You can’t just keep hiding out like this. It’s not working for you any more. You say you’re content, but you look like all the light has gone out of you. And I don’t think it’s just the grief over losing Seth. Not using the power you have, it’s just not healthy. It's energy, and energy needs to move, or it starts eating at you.”

  Bree winced internally. Dion was right about that. It wasn’t that she hadn’t given thought to getting back into power use. “How can I be ready when I’m still having flashbacks? I can’t afford to have one in the middle of a working.”

  “That has to have been something of a fluke. It’d been what, four or five months since the last one? And besides, how often are you going to be confronted with fire?”

  “Often enough if I go back to exorcisms. Look, I have to tell you about something. I really misjudged the strength of the demon during the exorcism with Jeremy. And I'm pretty sure that's what happened with Seth. I'm wondering if something is changing with demons to make that happen.”

  Dion shook his head. "I think you're jumping to conclusions here. I get you want there to be a reason those exorcisms went south, but I doubt we're talking some change in demons. Have you ever heard anything before about demons developing new abilities?"

  "No, but that doesn't mean it's impossible."

  "Exorcisms are just plain dangerous. You know that. And besides, I don't think you were ready to take primary on your first time back in action. I shouldn't have assigned you that one."

  Bree sighed. "Clearly I wasn't ready to take on primary, even if I am more experienced than the sweet young thing they sent to be my second. So you can just march on back to the Council and tell them I'm not ready to do exorcisms.”

  “But that’s not what we’re talking about here. I just think this gig with Kevin's friend sounds like a way to test things out a little. This guy’s a long time power user, born into a powered family, real traditional, so this isn’t like working a normal. And Kevin says the guy isn’t even sure it’s taint, so it can’t be that bad a case. It’s a piece of cake.”

  Interest popped back out of its box again, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. A nice simple job, a power user that could help her along instead of fighting her, no superstitions to wade through. But then Bree remembered all the other jobs Dion had said were ‘a piece of cake.’ “Right, so what’s the catch?”

  “Hey, there’s no real catch. Kevin vouches for the guy.”

  Suspicion reared up next to interest and smacked it one. “No real catch, Dion? You’re holding out on me here. I’m not signing up for anything until I get the whole story.”

  Dion backpedaled quickly. “Well, it’s no big deal. Just something Kevin said about the guy. Just that he’s done some battle with the Keltoi, that he was some kind of high powered back east. So he had his times facing the serious dark shit. And I know you don’t want to be around that any more. But Kevin says the guy came out here to get away from all that. And he thinks the guy is maybe just depressed and burned out. It might not be taint at all. Couldn’t you at least go see him and find out if it’s taint so he can know what he’s dealing with?”

  Bree didn’t like the sound of run-ins with the Keltoi, or of high powered. But Dion had a point. A lot of people, even really talented powered, couldn’t tell depression from a mild case of taint, especially in themselves. She could probably tell within a couple of minutes since reading taint was one of her best abilities. And she certainly understood burnout, intimately. She considered in silence for a few moments, and Dion had the smarts to keep quiet and let her do it. All the risks rolled a familiar litany through her mind, but in the end, she had to admit if she was going to try a little power use, this was a pretty ideal set up. It was the kind of thing she should have done before trying an exorcism in the first place. She drew in a shaky breath, gathered her courage, and said, “Okay, I’ll check it out. No promises on clearing the taint, though. Not if it’s a serious case after all. A bad case could set me back, and I'm already pretty shaky after that blown exorcism.”

  “Done deal,” said Dion a little too quickly. “I’ll let Kevin know he can tell the guy to call you.”

  “What’s his name, so I’ll recognize him when he calls?”

  “Daniel Thorvaldson,” Dion replied.

  Bree tucked a long-sleeved T-shirt into her jeans and topped it with a brown turtleneck sweater. It was still raining outside, and October in Seattle could be chilly in the rain, so layers were definitely called for. She trotted downstairs to her small bathroom and did a quick brush through of her hair. It was full of static from her sweater and kept sticking to her hands. She sighed in frustration and ran the bathroom faucet, the plumbing squealing a little as she added hot water to the mix. She lived in an old Victorian era house, and the plumbing was in serious need of an update. She rubbed a little water onto her hands, then ran them over the long layers of her brown hair, trying to tone down the static, then quickly put on some makeup, just blush and some eyeliner.

  She regarded herself more critically than usual. She still hadn’t gained back all the weight she’d lost after Seth died, and her level dark brows, longish nose and sharply defined jaw line stood out now and gave her a severe, ascetic look. She did not look like a happy person, and she felt a small stir of rebellion at that. Hadn't she done enough penance? Hadn't she had enough guilt?

  She glanced at the clock on the bathroom windowsill, and saw she was on the verge of being late. She went around the house quickly, turning out all the lights, then got into her raincoat, grabbed her keys and purse and hustled out of the house. She wove a ward spell on the door without thinking about it. Just the prospect of a little power work, and here she was, flinging it around again. Well, the spell was cast now, so she might as well leave it. She made her way through the drizzle, a little ways down the street to her Subaru. If the mid-morning Friday traffic was as light as she was expected, it should be little more than a ten minute drive to Thorvaldson’s address in Wallingford. She should be right on time.

  As she drove up and over Phinney Ridge, she saw the line of the Cascade mountains to the east, half wreathed in clouds, the peaks beginning to whiten with the first snows, and pondered why the sight of the mountains always made her heart lift. They were just piles of rock all across the horizon, but they still had the power to move her even though she’d grown up with them.

  She mentally reviewed her brief phone call with Thorvaldson as she headed downhill. He didn’t say much, which wasn’t that big a surprise, as most powered were too paranoid about normals finding them out to discuss business over the phone. She got an impression of a soft baritone voice, and a certain reserve, but that could just be the circumstances. She had a visual m
ind, and was busily constructing a picture of what he would look like as she drove. She was thinking Nordic, given the last name, some big, tall blond guy with blue eyes, a little lantern jawed, late forties or early fifties, careworn and tired looking. The kind of face that shows battle with the dark.

  It wasn’t long before she turned onto Thorvaldson’s street. She passed a cluster of small restaurants, an organic donut shop and a neighborhood pub. His place was a couple of blocks into the more residential part of the street. It was a big square box of a brick house on the corner, the type that looked like it used to have a store on the bottom level. She saw wooden slat blinds half pulled up in the big front windows, but the angle of light was wrong for her to get a feel for the place with a quick peek in. She went up the steps and immediately felt the pressure of a ward. It was subtle, and she felt the conviction that no one was home, that there wasn't anything of worth in the house. She forced herself up to the front door, which was set in the corner of the building, and, bracing herself, knocked.

  It was opened in a moment by Thorvaldson, and the door ward dropped. Bree felt a fierce stab of attraction, right in her gut, at first sight of him, almost before she could fully register what she was seeing. Something about the angle of his cheek, the winged brows, the long, narrow dark eyes, the shy half smile all added up to something her back brain registered as “Yes!” Bree felt a blush rise even as she said, “Daniel Thorvaldson? I’m Bree Jenkins,” and stuck out her hand to shake.

  He reached out and shook her hand firmly. “Bree. Yes. Come on in.” He stepped back to let her go by, and shut the door behind her.

  Bree’s first impression that the house used to be a store seemed confirmed by the open layout of the place. Two of the main room’s walls were brick. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, just a battered brown leather couch, one high-backed green chair, some plants, some paintings leaning up against the walls waiting to be hung, and quite a few stacks of cardboard boxes scattered about. The paintings were largely unframed canvases of landscapes in an ethereal, abstract style, and she wondered if Thorvaldson had painted them. She could see a kitchen in the back.

  “Sorry the place is such a mess, I just moved in a couple of weeks ago,” Thorvaldson said, reaching out to take her coat as she shrugged it off. He put it on a wooden coat tree near the door. Standing right next to him, she saw he was tallish, maybe around six feet, and wiry. He gave the impression of not taking up much space for his height, the kind of guy who seems less tall than he is. Her stomach jumped as he met her eyes and said, “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Coffee? A cup of tea?”

  “Tea would be nice, thanks,” Bree answered in what she hoped was a calm and cordial voice. Thorvaldson led the way back into his kitchen while she firmly ordered her libido back to the jail cell where she had been keeping it for the last year and a half. She needed to be able to focus to do her job here. She had no interest in dating, so this inconvenient bout of physical attraction would just have to go away.

  As Thorvaldson put the water on to boil and got out the tea things, Bree got hold of herself. She started watching how Thorvaldson moved, how he inhabited his body. It was an important part of reading for taint. He seemed to be tight in his joints, holding himself with tension in his upper body. His movements were a little stiff and sudden. She kept thinking he was going to be clumsy and knock something over, and sure enough, he hit a teacup with his elbow. It clattered and rolled off the edge of the counter. He had quick enough reflexes to catch it just as it went over the edge. Overall, it seemed he was holding himself in, or holding himself ready more than he seemed to be moved by something, as he would be if he were possessed or the taint was big. He sat down across from her as they waited for the water to boil. “Listen, Bree… can I call you Bree?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “And I go by Daniel. I’m not sure what all Kevin told you about my situation,” he began, looking a little nervously from her to the cuticle he was picking at on his thumbnail, “but this could be a wasted trip on your part. Kevin was worried about me, and he’s a bit of a mother hen. I’m getting over a few things, and I’m not at my best right now, so it’s probably not taint he’s picking up on.”

  Bree looked for tells as he talked. She started with a gestalt of him, his short, thick black hair, somewhat narrow face. A bit more of a Slavic look with the strong cheekbones, not the Swede or Norwegian she’d been expecting. The only things Nordic about him were a slender, long-boned look and a bit of fullness to his lips. She focused more closely then, seeing the tension around his mouth as he spoke, the slight drawing together of his brows, the way his shoulders canted unevenly, the shuttered look to his eyes that spoke strongly to her Reader talent as sadness and weariness. And there was something in the way it formed up for her, that hard to define Reader sense that told her he’d been carrying something big for a very long time, but that this level of sadness was newer. She also thought he didn’t want it to be taint, and would almost rather not know. She pegged him to be five or so years older than her, in his early thirties, and she was having a hard time getting a feel for which powers he had. He met her eyes again, then held still, knowing she was already reading him, and allowing it. She was impressed. Many powered who didn’t have Reading as one of their talents were leery of it.

  “Well, Kevin told Dion you’re powered, so I’m sure you know the drill. To know for sure that it’s not taint, I’ll have to do a deeper reading. Are you good with me taking a look?”

  “Yeah, that’s cool,” Daniel replied. He was looking back at her now with the kind of intensity that told her he was doing a little reading of his own. Funny, he hadn’t felt like much of a Reader to her. The teakettle started whistling, saving them from further eye contact.

  Daniel spooned loose tea from a tin canister into a china teapot, poured the boiling water over the tea, then set the teapot on the table between them, along with two porcelain tea cups, and a silver strainer on it’s own little blue and white bowl. “Milk? Sugar?” he asked.

  “I take it black,” Bree replied, and he nodded as if satisfied. Here was clearly a man who took his tea seriously.

  Once the tea things were set up, he sat down, unzipped the blue hooded sweatshirt he was wearing and unbuttoned the blue denim shirt underneath halfway down his chest. Bree could have read him through his clothes, but skin-to-skin contact definitely made things easier. She scooted her chair across the wood floor so she could be close enough to touch him, and started rubbing her hands together to warm them. His bared chest was more muscled than she would have expected given his slender build, with a light patch of chest hair. Daniel took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I’m ready.” He closed his eyes as her hands made contact with his chest.

  Bree closed hers as well and let her Reader sense reach out to gently brush Daniel’s base energy. She had to control a gasp at the contact. It was insanely strong. Overall, it tasted good, but it was almost too strong, too aggressive. Definitely high power. In fact, she was sure she’d never read anyone remotely that high power before. She reached deeper, bringing up her Demonsense now that she had a read on his base energy for comparison. Almost immediately she felt it, that oily, hot, roiling energy of taint, and not a mild case. Still, not such a bad case either.

  She took her hands off him and sat back, considering, while he buttoned up his shirt, re-zipped his jacket, and poured out the tea. She should have been able to sense that level of taint when she shook his hand, but there was a darkness to his base energy that muddied the waters. There was something dark powered about it, not evil, certainly not that, but not quite fully light either. Was it that sadness, maybe even depression she sensed that darkened his energy, or had he carried taint too long without knowing it? Powered who did a lot of exorcism work could get that. And besides, it was clear from the quick attraction she had to him that her energy liked his energy in some way, so he was unlikely to be truly dark powered. She never went for those types. At least you haven
’t so far, she corrected herself wryly.

  He took a sip of his tea, then slumped back in his chair, as if he’d let go of trying to look alert and on top of things. His expression shifted, eyes lowered, a hint of a wry smile turning up one corner of his mouth. Bree read resignation in the tells, an expectation of rejection. He thought she was going to pass this off to someone else now that she’d read him, that he’d scared her off. Somehow, that just made up her mind to try to help him.

  “Yep,” she said, keeping her tone matter of fact, “Kevin was right for a change. You’ve got some taint going on there.”

  “Well now, that’s a bitch,” Daniel said. He swirled his tea around in the cup, then took another sip. “Any idea how bad?”

  “It’s not a mild taint,” Bree answered, “but from what I read, not the worse case I’ve seen by a long shot, and nothing I can’t handle.” She hesitated, but decided to be honest with him. “I can see why you figured it might not be taint. Your base energy is a little dark, and given what you said about a lot going on lately, that’s probably confused the situation. Any idea when you might have picked up the taint?”

  “Oh, you could say I have an idea,” Daniel replied. “I put down an Utukku about two months ago. A mean one, liked to feed on powered.”

  Bree tried not to be intimidated by the level of Exorcist ability that implied. An Utukku demon that fed on powered was almost as bad as it got when it came to demon kind. At their best, she and Seth would have had trouble… She stopped that thought cold. “Utukku are certainly capable of leaving taint,” she replied, feigning cool, professional unconcern. She didn’t think he was that much of a reader, and hoped the usual human evasions would hold here.

  “I knew it was possible, but I’ve had my hands full, and didn’t take the time to get it checked before I left Boston.” He stopped, dropped his eyes, then gave her a crooked half smile and continued. “Correction. I didn’t want to take time to get it checked. Guess I didn’t want to know I had taint. It’s been kind of a point of pride to never let it get me. ”