“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I know that sounds like a cop-out, but in this case, it’s the truth. Believe it or not, he doesn’t confide in me about every little thing. Maybe he wanted to watch it for himself first but didn’t have the time. I know this may be hard for you to comprehend, but he doesn’t spend 24/7 being some sort of criminal mastermind. He has a job and responsibilities.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for him?”
Caleb reached for his beer and took a large gulp. Stalling tactic, or did he actually need the booze to steady himself?
“No, I don’t expect you to feel sorry for him. I’m just trying to tell you what happened, and some possible explanations for that. Do what you like with the information.”
Expression aggrieved, he picked up another piece of crostini and dunked it in the cheese. After a long pause, Rosemary did the same, although her appetite wasn’t nearly what it had been when she’d first sat down at the table. She wished she could know if there was any point in believing a single word that came out of his mouth. A lot of what he’d said sounded plausible, but….
“Is he worried that someone will make a connection between the Whitcomb mansion and all of you here in Greencastle?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Caleb said, in tones that seemed to indicate he wished she would just drop the subject.
“It’s kind of a stretch, isn’t it?” she persisted, not really caring whether she was annoying him or not. “I mean, Michael only discovered the connection after he had a hacker friend of his do some pretty deep digging. It’s not the sort of information that’s readily available for just anyone.”
He slammed his hand down on the table. Some of her beer sloshed, and Rosemary couldn’t quite prevent herself from jumping. Good thing none of the booths in the immediate vicinity were occupied, or Caleb’s outburst would definitely have attracted some unwanted attention.
“I don’t know,” he said again. Red seemed to flicker in his dark eyes, a reflection of the anger he was trying to control. “Just drop it, okay?”
“Sure,” she said easily. “I’ll drop it.”
She reached for her beer, acutely conscious of the slickness of the glass against her fingers, thanks to the beer that had just sloshed over the rim a moment earlier. However, she didn’t use her napkin to wipe it away. For some reason, doing so felt like betraying a weakness, like showing that she was upset by his unexpected show of rage a moment earlier.
All right, she was unnerved, but she’d do whatever she could to make sure Caleb didn’t know that he’d rattled her. The flash of anger seemed to have proved to her that he could act as casual and friendly as he wanted, but he would always be a demon underneath.
She’d have to make sure she never forgot that.
Chapter 8
Come over, had been the terse text from Michael, which hit Will’s phone at a little after five, just as he was preparing to lock up his office. There was supposed to be an Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting that night, but he’d asked Stan, All Saints’ senior priest, to take over that evening, since Will knew that Michael would want to gather everyone together as soon as it was feasible.
On my way, he texted back, and then went ahead and messaged Glynis that she and her daughters should also meet at Michael’s house if they were available. Isabel he wasn’t too worried about, since he knew from Rosemary that her oldest sister was divorced and didn’t have any children to look after. Celeste was more of a wild card, but Will figured that if at least Glynis and Isabel were there, they’d be doing okay.
Traffic was thick, but since he didn’t have to get on the freeway to get to Michael’s house, he figured it could have been a lot worse. As he was pulling up to the curb, a dark gray Volvo parked behind him, and Glynis and another woman got out. She had the same curly brown hair as Rosemary, but was a good deal taller, slim and elegant where Rosemary was delicate and elfin-pretty.
“Will, this is Isabel,” Glynis said as they met on the sidewalk. He extended a hand, and Rosemary’s sister took it and gave it a firm squeeze, accompanied by a friendly smile. “Celeste said she’d try to be over later if she could, but her husband had to work later than expected and she couldn’t get anyone to watch Tyler.”
“Not a problem,” Will replied — and it wasn’t, since he’d already mentally prepared himself for such an eventuality. “Did you have a chance to try to get a read on Rosemary, how she’s doing?”
The two women exchanged a glance. Then Isabel spoke. Her voice was slightly lower than her youngest sister’s, but otherwise sounded very much like Rosemary’s. “I think we’d rather talk about that with everyone.”
A frisson of fear moved down his spine. “Is she in trouble?” he asked, once again cursing the hundreds of miles that separated them.
“Not…exactly,” Isabel replied.
He couldn’t be relieved, not truly, but it was something to hear that at least Rosemary hadn’t met with some kind of terrible calamity. Still, he could tell that whatever they’d seen or felt was something the McGuire women wanted to discuss with the whole group, so he didn’t push it. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
The three of them went up the front walk to the porch. Will had only just begun to reach for the doorbell when the door opened and Michael looked out at them. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt rather than his usual black button-down and black trousers, but otherwise, he didn’t appear much changed from the last time Will had seen him. If he was at all fatigued by the long drive he’d just taken to get to Pasadena, it didn’t show.
“Hi, Will,” Michael said, gold-gray gaze flicking past him to the two women who also stood on the porch. “Isabel…Mrs. McGuire.”
“Glynis,” she said firmly.
“Of course. Come on in.”
They all went inside, then followed Michael into the family room. Although it had only been a few days since the last time Will was there, the time that had elapsed felt much longer than that. So much had changed — he and Rosemary had become intimate, had traveled to Greencastle and confronted the demons who lived there. He’d thought they’d eked out a victory in that particular instance, but even though the Project Demon Hunters footage was still in their hands, he couldn’t be too glad of that circumstance, not with Rosemary still missing.
Audrey was sitting on the couch, her long brown hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She also looked fairly relaxed, although maybe some of that was relief at surviving the seven-hour road trip without any demon-created mishaps. On the chair next to the couch was a man Will had never seen before and guessed must be Fred Peñasco. Will wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting, except that Fred definitely wasn’t it. The other man was probably in his middle forties, with gray-streaked dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and strong, rather saturnine features. His olive skin was further tanned by the sun, and the arms beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his army-green shirt were tattooed and thick with muscle.
Michael made some quick introductions, then went on, “We’re not going to stand on ceremony here. There’s some beer and wine and bottled water in the fridge, and I figure we’d order pizza or whatever later. But I thought we’d want to get right into it.”
“Sure,” Will said. He sent a quick, almost questioning gaze in Glynis’s direction, and she nodded. “We’re pretty sure Rosemary is in Greencastle.”
“Sure, sure, or just a feeling?” Audrey asked.
“Well, she sent me a text.” He went on to explain his hunch about the message Audrey had sent him earlier that day, then added, “But I think Glynis and Isabel can probably elaborate on that.”
Isabel spoke then. “My mother and I both tried to reach out and see if we could get a sense of what was happening with Rosemary. Sometimes we’re able to see each other pretty clearly, while other times it’s much more difficult.”
“I didn’t have much luck,” Glynis said. “But Isabel thinks she saw something.”
“What
was it?” Fred Peñasco asked, speaking for the first time. His voice was deep, almost rough, the kind of voice that sounded as if it had gotten that way through smoking too many cigarettes or drinking too many shots of whiskey.
She met his eyes, her gaze steady. “Michael explained to you that my whole family is psychic?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Fred’s mouth curled slightly. “I wouldn’t be working with Michael if I weren’t.”
That reply seemed to reassure her; something about the set of her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she said, “All right. Well, I did my best to focus on Rosemary, to see where she was, what she was doing. I got a sense of her in a large city.”
“Not Greencastle, then,” Will murmured.
“No. I have a feeling she was in Indianapolis. There were three of them with her.”
“‘Them’?” Audrey repeated. “You mean the demons?”
Isabel nodded. “Or part-demons, I guess, if what Will has been telling me is true.”
“Oh, they’re part demon,” Michael put in. “Either half, or quarter, like this Caleb Lockwood person. Depends on the generation. Did you get a good look at them?”
“No,” Isabel replied. “It was more a…a sensation of them. They didn’t feel right, for lack of a better word.”
“So, Rosemary was with these three part-demons in Indianapolis,” Audrey said. “Was she afraid?”
“Not exactly. That is, what I was sensing felt more like nervousness, or some kind of strange anticipation, than outright fear.”
That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? Will wasn’t sure. Of course, being nervous also wasn’t exactly a desirable state, but better than being obviously afraid for your life. “Could you tell what they were doing in Indianapolis?”
“Not really.” Isabel paused there, eyes half shut as though she was trying to concentrate and make sure she didn’t forget even the smallest detail, the tiniest bit of evidence that might help them figure out what was going on. “I could feel that there was a reason for them being there, that they had a sense of purpose. I don’t know what that purpose was, though.”
Odd. What in the world would have made Rosemary accompany three demon-kind to the closest big city? Was there something they needed in Indianapolis that could only be found there? He supposed it was possible, although he couldn’t think of anything that would have made Rosemary willingly go anywhere with three of the Greencastle demons.
“Anything else?” Fred asked. He was leaning forward now, eyes fixed on Isabel. And while Will could tell the other man was intent on Isabel’s reply, he also got the impression that there was something almost admiring in his gaze, that he hadn’t expected the missing woman’s sister to be attractive but was damn glad to be proven wrong.
However, Isabel didn’t seem to notice that possibly Fred’s interest in her wasn’t purely professional. “That was all I got from that one flash. Later, though…later, I got one very brief, very clear image. It was definitely Rosemary. She was sitting in a restaurant somewhere, and a man was in the booth with her. That is, he looked like a man, but he felt wrong.”
This piece of information did nothing to reassure Will. If Rosemary was being held against her wishes, what was she doing sitting in a restaurant with one of the part-demons? “Did you see what this man looked like?”
“He was about Rosemary’s age, with sandy blond hair. Good-looking.” She paused before adding, “I just assumed it was Caleb Lockwood.”
Except that was impossible, because Caleb was dead.
Unless he wasn’t.
Audrey spoke then, sounding startled. “Michael, I thought you said Caleb Lockwood was dead.”
“What?” both Glynis and Isabel cut in. They looked shocked, and Will realized that Rosemary must have kept that bit of information to herself — probably in an attempt to prevent them from worrying whether she was a suspect.
“I suppose I should have suspected something when Rosemary told me about Daniel Lockwood but never mentioned Caleb,” Glynis went on. “But I didn’t want to pry, just because I knew Caleb was a sore subject with her.”
“Well, he’s dead,” Will said. “At least, he wanted us to think he was. I saw the body, but….”
“You did?” Rosemary’s mother asked, now looking even more startled. “How — ?”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “And probably moot, if Isabel is correct about the man she saw.”
Isabel didn’t look offended by his suggestion that she might not have reported her vision accurately. A slight lift of her shoulders, and she said, “It was very clear. A man around Rosemary’s age, maybe a little older, with dark blond hair. Tall, I think, although that was harder to tell because he was sitting down.”
“Sounds like him,” Will replied, figuring there wasn’t much point in arguing the subject further. After all, faking his own death sounded like exactly the sort of trick Caleb might pull. “What were he and Rosemary doing?”
“Just talking, I think. They were sitting on opposite sides of the booth.”
Well, that was something. At least they weren’t being extra cozy and sitting next to each other. A weird stab of jealousy went through him, and Will told himself not to be foolish, that he very much doubted Rosemary was in that booth with Caleb Lockwood out of choice. But if that were the case, why would she allow herself to be with him at all in a situation where it didn’t look as though she was being coerced?
It all just added to the mystery, and Will found himself thinking that he didn’t know what was worse — not knowing anything at all about what was happening to Rosemary, or seeing only these brief glimpses that didn’t tell a full story and made him start to invent scenarios that might or might not be true. Still, he knew Isabel was only trying to help.
“Did you see anything else?”
She shook her head. Her height and something about the way Isabel carried herself tended to give the impression of a woman who was confident in her abilities, but in that moment, she looked troubled, uncertain. “No. I tried, but visions like that aren’t something I can really control. And I only had an image of them and didn’t actually hear anything, so I have no idea what they might have been talking about.”
“That’s okay,” Michael said then, seeming to sense that Will was bothered by these revelations but didn’t want to say anything that would reveal his inner turmoil. “At least we know that Rosemary is all right and they’re not torturing her or anything.” Glynis made a muffled sound of protest, and he went on, “Sorry about that, but I think it’s important that we don’t try to ignore what these part-demons are capable of. For some reason, they seem to think Rosemary is useful to them, or I doubt she’d be getting wined and dined by Caleb Lockwood. What we need to figure out is why they’d believe that in the first place — and how we can get her out of there.”
“Should I look into flights to Indianapolis?” Audrey asked, her pretty features tight with worry. “I assume we’d fly — that would be a hell of a long road trip.”
“I’m not sure we should do either,” Michael replied, and Will stared at him in consternation.
“You’re not proposing that we just leave her there, are you?” he demanded.
“I don’t know yet.” His friend paused, jaw tight, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “Look, I don’t like the situation any more than you do, but we have to be rational about this. We know there are fourteen of these part-demons in Greencastle. Some are half demon, some a quarter, but Caleb’s shown that even the younger generation can be pretty dangerous. Even when we add Celeste to our little group here, that’s only seven of us. And you and Fred don’t even have any psychic powers…or anything else that might be of use in a fight against a group of people with demon blood. No offense,” he added quickly.
“None taken,” Fred drawled, and he leaned against the back of his chair, expression thoughtful.
“I may not be psychic, but I can throw a mean bottl
e of holy water,” Will said.
That remark made Michael smile…but only for a moment. Sobering, he replied, “Yes, I know. But it’s already been established that these part-demons aren’t necessarily deterred by holy water, right?”
Yes, that was an unfortunate truth Will had discovered to his dismay the last time he’d gone up against Caleb Lockwood. He gave a reluctant nod.
“So,” Michael went on, “we have to question the wisdom of trying to confront them openly, especially on their home ground, where they’ll have even more of an advantage. It sounds as though Rosemary is all right for the moment. Maybe it’s better to wait a little and see if Glynis or Isabel — or Celeste, even though she couldn’t be with us right now — have any more visions that will give us more information.”
Although all this was said in a reasonable tone, Will didn’t feel like being reasonable. The woman he loved was more than a thousand miles away in hostile territory surrounded by demons, and he was supposed to just sit here on his ass and hope for the best? If that was the best plan Michael could come up with, why the hell had he even bothered to come here to California?
Audrey spoke then, her tone gentle. “I know what you must be thinking, Will. You were hoping we’d get together our posse and saddle up and go riding to Rosemary’s rescue — if you’ll forgive the metaphor. But until we can come up with a good way of extricating her without putting her in any more danger, it’s probably better to wait. And at least we’re all here together now, so when the moment does come, we’ll be able to act immediately.”
“I suppose so,” he said, wishing he sounded a little more enthusiastic.
To his surprise, Glynis came over and laid a hand on his arm, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I think if Rosemary was truly in danger, I’d know,” she told him. “I haven’t gotten any sense of that. While we can’t guess at what the demons want with her, Isabel’s visions tell us she seems to be okay for now.” A pause, and then she added, a glint in her blue eyes that reminded Will far too much of her daughter, “And you never know — Rosemary might not even need us to rescue her. She might be able to do that all by herself.”
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