A shiver went through her, and she made herself climb under the covers, since sitting on the bed in that skimpy nightgown didn’t seem like a very good idea. Like it or not, she was sleeping in this house tonight, and she didn’t much see the point in making herself uncomfortable for no reason. Once she’d reached over and turned off the bedside lamp, she pulled the blankets and the duvet cover up to her chin, and hoped she’d soon be warm enough to find some sort of escape in sleep.
No sooner had her eyes closed, however, than she heard a whisper.
“Rosemary.”
Immediately, she sat bolt upright, eyes straining against the darkness. It actually wasn’t completely pitch black in the room; some light seeped in past the curtains. Because of that faint illumination, she was able to detect the shape of a man sitting on the window seat.
Caleb.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” she shot back in a harsh whisper.
He didn’t move. “I told you we’d talk later. So…I’m here to talk.”
Right. He had made her that promise, but she’d figured that he’d decided to postpone their discussion until the next day. Apparently not.
Cautiously, she sat up in bed, holding the covers against her so she could hide most of what the bare nightgown revealed. “Won’t your father know?”
A slight movement that might have been a shrug. “Probably. But I don’t think he would care if I talked to you, as long as I didn’t help you try to get away. Which I won’t,” he added quickly, “so don’t get your hopes up.”
“No hope over here,” she replied, and he chuckled.
“It’s not as bad as that.” He got up from the window seat and came over toward the bed, pausing for a moment to collect the chair that stood in front of the dressing table so he could place it at her bedside. Before he sat down, he reached for the lamp and switched it back on. Rosemary blinked at the sudden glare but didn’t try to move, since she really didn’t want him to get a good look at her in her borrowed nightgown. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on at dinner — a pair of faded jeans and a crew-neck brown sweater with a white T-shirt barely peeking out from underneath — and looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Rosemary wanted to scowl at his relaxed, friendly attitude but decided there was no point in telegraphing her feelings any more than she already had. Maybe it was useless to pretend, and yet she didn’t want Caleb to know how upsetting it was for her to be in this house, surrounded by part-demons. “Why is it so important for them to prove to me that I’m one of you?”
“I’d think that was sort of obvious,” he replied. He leaned back in his chair, but not so much that he was in any danger of tipping it over. “We want you on our side, Rosemary. You’re one of us.”
“So you tell me,” she returned, not sure if she dared to say much more than that.
His shoulders lifted. “It’s a fact. There’s no reason for us to be at cross-purposes.”
Actually, she could think of about a hundred reasons why she had absolutely no desire to be aligned with the Greencastle demons, but she thought it was probably a good idea not to enumerate them at that particular moment. “Don’t even bother trying to convince me you’re the good guys.”
“I won’t,” he said. “We’re just…us.”
“You killed Colin Turner.”
“No,” Caleb said, his expression almost regretful. “Belial’s demons killed Colin. We had nothing to do with his murder.”
Rosemary hadn’t even stopped to think that possibly the part-demon group here in Indiana wasn’t marching lock step with the demon who’d possessed Jeffrey Whitcomb and his assorted minions. “You didn’t?”
“I just told you we didn’t.” He shifted on his chair and then leaned forward slightly, gaze fastened on hers, everything about his posture all earnestness. “I’m not saying that my grandfather didn’t do Belial’s bidding as necessary. But once he left this mortal world and went back to — ”
“To Hell,” Rosemary said distinctly. That was what Audrey had told her, anyway; that once the original group of demonic trustees were finished with their work here on Earth, they returned to Hell where they belonged, leaving behind half-human sons to continue their line.
“Yes,” Caleb said, now looking a little annoyed. “Anyway, once the original demons were gone, everyone left here just sort of…lived their lives.”
“Except for the part where they meddled with mine,” she pointed out. All right, maybe it was only the truth that it had been full-blood demons straight from Hell who’d burned Audrey’s house to the ground and murdered Colin Turner and infested the Whitcomb mansion, but it sure hadn’t been any demons who’d placed a hex on Rosemary’s own home…and it hadn’t been anyone other than Caleb himself who’d confronted her in Colin’s Glendale house and attacked her and Will with fire and flame. “And are you forgetting the part where you tried to kill me only a week ago?”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Caleb said calmly.
She crossed her arms, and the covers slipped a little. For just the briefest second, his gaze slid downward, to the exposed curve of her breasts, but almost at once, he refocused on her face. As much as she wanted to pull the covers back up, she had a feeling that doing so would only draw more attention to herself, and so she decided the hell with it — she couldn’t stop Caleb from leering at her body, but she could definitely act as if she couldn’t care less what he did.
“It sure looked like you were trying to kill me.”
He let out a huff of a breath. Exasperation? Frustration? It was hard to know for sure. However, his tone was even enough as he said, “It was a test. Your powers seemed to be waking up, just a little, but I hadn’t seen enough evidence yet that you were really who my father claimed you were. I guessed that, in a pinch, they’d activate out of sheer self-preservation.”
Oh, they’d activated, all right. In that moment of terror, Rosemary hadn’t even stopped to think, had only tried to protect herself and Will in the only way she knew how. To her astonishment, the magical shield she’d summoned had actually worked.
“A test, huh?” she responded, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of her voice. “Was nearly killing Will part of your ‘test’ as well?”
Caleb’s mouth pursed, and she thought she caught a glint of amusement in his dark eyes. “Well, actually, I wasn’t too worried about hurting him. What do you see in that guy, anyway?”
Anger flashed through her, but she made herself sit still. She was in no position to fight back at the moment, and besides, even if she didn’t yet know what she intended to do with the information he was currently providing, Rosemary understood that it was better to keep Caleb talking for as long as possible. “Nothing you’d understand,” she said, “since I wouldn’t expect a part-demon such as yourself to comprehend courage, or nobility, or, or — ”
“I get it,” he said with a grin, apparently not offended at all. “The ineffable Will Gordon is far beyond my base comprehension. On the other hand, since you and I have the same amount of demon blood flowing through our veins, I’m not sure what this all says about you.”
“Alleged demon blood,” she countered, and his smile only broadened.
“Oh, it’s there.” A pause, and then he added, “Why do you think we got along so well together?”
Rosemary wasn’t sure how she wanted to answer that question, mostly because she remembered with some mortification how she’d thought basically the same thing when she first met Caleb and started spending time with him. It wasn’t until later that she began to have doubts. “As I recall, we got along well…until we didn’t.”
Her comment didn’t seem to faze him, although she’d hoped he would remember the awkwardness at his house when he’d tried to initiate further intimacies and had been rebuffed, and that such a recollection might make him reconsider his belief that they were somehow intended to be together. Unfortunately, he only raised an eyebrow and said, obviously undaunted, “
I was trying to move things along too quickly. I see that now. But I never stopped hoping you would give me another chance.”
“Not going to happen,” she said at once. “I can’t — I could never — ”
“Never what?” he cut in. “Be with someone who was part demon, when you’re pretty much the same as me? I’d say that was a little hypocritical.”
Rosemary opened her mouth to argue, then stopped herself. Maybe Caleb was correct on that one point…but he needed to know there could never be anything between them. “I’m in love with Will Gordon,” she said, hoping her bluntness would be enough to convince him he was pursuing a dead end.
“For now,” Caleb said cryptically. “Anyway, I just wanted to disabuse you of the notion that we’re up to anything nefarious here. You’re safe…you can go to Indianapolis tomorrow and get your blood test done…and then you can go home and figure out what to do with the knowledge that you’re a quarter-demon just like the rest of us Greencastle grandchildren.”
“Just like that.”
A nod. “Just like that.”
“And all that chasing around after the Project Demon Hunters footage was just a game.” She spoke lightly, but Rosemary honestly wasn’t quite sure how she’d react if he told her the footage was only a red herring, an excuse for him to get closer to her and see if she really measured up to the rest of the part-demons of their generation.
“Oh, no,” Caleb said, his expression abruptly sobering. “We wanted the footage. And we’ll get it back.”
“I’m surprised one of you didn’t swoop down and take it once it was unguarded.”
For the first time, his gaze shifted away from hers. “We’re working on it.”
Which meant they must have tried to take it, and had been thwarted. How, she wasn’t sure. Yes, she’d put extra wards on Will’s safe, but, considering the way Caleb was able to come and go despite the magical protection she’d laid on the house, she didn’t know for sure how effective those wards even were. The safe itself was small enough to pick up and tuck under your arm, so it wasn’t as though another of the Greencastle part-demons couldn’t have dived in and taken it away, even if they weren’t yet able to open the thing.
The important thing, though, was that the footage wasn’t back in their possession. She could hold that minor victory in her heart, even as she was trapped here in enemy territory. Because they were her enemies, no matter how polite they tried to be, how much consideration they showed her.
“Well, good luck with that,” she said.
“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Caleb got up from his chair and stood there for a moment, looming over the bed. Rosemary held herself still, wondering what she would do if he tried something…and whether any of her efforts would be successful.
After a painfully long pause, however, he sent her another of those grins that made her flesh want to crawl right off her body.
“Sleep well,” he said with an obvious leer, and disappeared.
Even though he was gone, she made herself remain where she was, absolutely unmoving, for another minute or two. At last, she slid down against the pillows, covers pulled up nearly to her chin.
She didn’t know whether she’d be able to sleep a wink that night.
Chapter 5
The safe still sat on its shelf in the office closet. As soon as Will had called his friend to tell him what was going on, Michael had inquired in sharp tones about the hard drive with the footage. He’d said he would check and call back, and so Will had come here, Glynis McGuire trailing behind him, to make sure the drive hadn’t disappeared along with Rosemary.
Will’s hands shook a little as he reached up for the safe and lowered it to the desk, and he wanted to curse himself for his weakness. This was not the time to be losing it. If the footage was gone, well, they’d figure out how to get it back…after Rosemary was safe. Making sure she was all right superseded any other concerns.
Although he knew Rosemary had warded the safe, he also knew he wouldn’t have any problem getting inside. The safe and its contents had been protected against those who might wish him ill, not against someone who only wished to keep those items secure. He rotated the dial to key in the combination — 14-22-49 — and then lifted the lid.
A relieved breath escaped him as he stared down at the hard drive. It appeared to be untouched…but what if the real hard drive had been taken and a dummy left in its place? He supposed he’d better check to make sure the precious footage was still intact. With everything that had been happening, he hadn’t had the chance to go to Best Buy and get a drive large enough to back up the files, and he silently prayed that the blunder wouldn’t prove to be a fatal one.
“What is that?” Glynis asked as he lifted the drive from the safe and began to rummage around in his desk drawers for a spare mini-to-USB connector. “Is it the footage?”
He didn’t bother to ask how she knew about the Project Demon Hunters tapes, since he assumed Rosemary must have told her mother about them at some point or another. Without looking up from his work, he nodded and replied, “Yes. The drive looks all right, but I want to make sure all the files are intact. Luckily, they’re .mp4 video files that I can play though QuickTime on my laptop. If they were still the native Premiere Pro files, then I’d be in trouble, since I don’t have that application on my computer.”
Glynis nodded but didn’t ask any further questions, seeming content to watch while he hooked up the portable hard drive to his laptop and then clicked on the drive’s icon to look at the files it contained. As far as he could tell, they all seemed to be there. Just to be safe, he clicked on one of them and waited as QuickTime opened. Within a few seconds, the video started to play, showing Michael Covenant and Audrey Barrett standing in what appeared to be someone’s bedroom, albeit a bedroom so large it would have swallowed up his own much more modest space several times over. Strange, ghostly tendrils began to reach out of the mirror, and Glynis let out an audible gasp. At once, he clicked on the player to pause it.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Some of this footage is pretty disturbing. I suppose I should have warned you.”
“It’s all right,” she replied quickly, although he noticed the way she reached up to push a tendril of curly hair — so like her daughter’s — away from her face with a shaking hand. “It’s just….” The words trailed off into silence, and she shook her head. “I suppose I wasn’t expecting to get such a sense of evil from merely watching a video.”
He swiveled his office chair slightly so he could face her more directly. “You could feel it just from that?”
“Yes. Probably not as bad as it must have been when it actually happened, but still….” Again, she lapsed into silence, as though searching for the best words to describe her reaction. “I don’t want to think about my daughter being mixed up in anything so terrible.”
“She’s not,” he said quickly, then added as Glynis looked at him in some surprise, “What I mean is, those were actual demons Michael and Audrey faced in the Whitcomb mansion. What we’re dealing with now is something different. I’m not saying they’re not capable of doing some very bad things, but they’re still part mortal.”
That explanation didn’t seem to reassure Rosemary’s mother, because she pressed her lips together and gave another look at the terrifying image on the screen before saying, “People do a lot of terrible things. Your enemies being part human isn’t enough to guarantee my daughter’s safety.”
No, he supposed it wasn’t. And although he wished he had some reassuring words to give Glynis, the truth of it was, he didn’t know what the Greencastle demons even wanted with Rosemary. Revenge for stealing the footage, even though it wasn’t theirs to begin with? Some kind of retaliation for Caleb Lockwood’s death, even though she didn’t have anything to do with it? Either explanation seemed plausible, although Will didn’t pretend to understand anything of the part-demons’ thought processes.
“If they really did take her, it was for a reason,
” he said. “And I doubt that reason involves hurting her, or….” He stopped himself there. No point in making things any worse than they already were.
Glynis seemed to understand where he’d been heading before he cut himself off, because her already fair skin paled visibly, and she took in a breath as though to steady herself. “Let’s hope so. What’s next?”
“I need to call Michael back and let him know the footage is still intact,” Will replied. “After that…I suppose it depends on what Michael has to say.”
Before he’d called Michael the first time, he’d almost responded to Rosemary’s text, thinking there had to be some way to answer without letting slip that he knew the entire thing was a lie. However, he’d decided to wait until he spoke to his friend — and when he’d mentioned the possibility of sending a reply, Michael had shot the idea down right away, saying it was too risky. Now, though, Will found himself staring at the message screen and wondering if he should dare. Yes, there was every possibility that someone was monitoring Rosemary’s phone, but wouldn’t it look even stranger if he didn’t answer at all?
That seemed to decide things. He sent a quick text, explaining that he’d gotten stuck late at the church and his phone battery had died, and that he was sorry to hear Celeste and Tyler weren’t doing well. Of course, he understood that Rosemary needed to look after her sister and nephew, and he hoped he’d hear from her soon.
Before he could stop to second-guess himself, Will sent the text, then went to his contacts list and located the entry for Michael Covenant. The phone hadn’t even rung twice before his friend picked up.
“Were you able to access the footage?”
That was so like Michael — no greeting, no preamble, just cutting right to the heart of the matter. Despite the dire circumstances, Will couldn’t quite keep himself from smiling. “Yes,” he replied. “I have the drive, and, as far as I can tell, all the files seem to be intact. I don’t know why the drive was left behind, but maybe whoever took Rosemary just didn’t have the time to try getting past the wards she’d set.”
Unbroken Vows Page 6