“She—” Megan stopped. Of course Ktana Leyak had tipped off the police. They’d said it was a female voice.
“And she heard our conversations.” Greyson raised a hand to his head, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second. “Now she knows the story of your father and Orion—if she didn’t already. She knows something about the layout of this house. She knows you two figured out why some demons are exploding.”
“We’re not sure of that,” Megan said. “It’s just a theory. There’s no proof, since every house has lost at least one demon and…they can’t all have attacked my Yezer. Can they?”
He met her gaze. “Anything’s possible. Mine are ordered to leave yours alone, but personal squabbles happen all the time.”
A weight she didn’t know was still on her shoulders lifted. Not much of a relief, but a relief just the same. She nodded, her lips curving into a slight smile.
Winston cleared his throat. “I haven’t ordered any of my rubendas to go after your family either, Megan.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“That doesn’t mean the other Gretnegs haven’t,” Greyson said. “Unless…unless she’s been possessing them, in order to attack yours, and not the other way around. Who’s been attacked, Meg?”
Her evening bag sat on the desk, behind Winston. He followed her pointing finger and handed it to her, with that particular uncomfortable air most men had when touching a woman’s purse. Like it was going to explode and spray them with tampons and cooties.
She pulled the lists out and handed them over.
“Okay.” His dark eyes scanned the sheets as he shuffled them. “So all of the victims, for lack of a better word, are still with you?”
“You think she was trying to convince them to leave?”
Greyson nodded.
“But I’ve lost some too.”
“Perhaps they agreed to join her, but something went wrong,” Winston said. “Perhaps it’s their connection to you that drives her out.”
“Then how are they managing to leave me?”
“They’re doing it themselves.” Greyson shrugged. “You’re connected to them as a whole, the individual bonds are pretty weak. So she might not be able to undo it, but they can.”
“You’re probably right,” Winston said, “but it doesn’t explain how she managed to possess Orion. That shouldn’t have happened. He should be too powerful.”
“Unless he invited her.”
Both men looked at her.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said, a little defensively. “Orion obviously liked to play with the big boys, right? If he tried to do some sort of deal with the Accuser sixteen years ago, why wouldn’t he try something else now?”
“To get her in here,” Winston said. His blue eyes—so like Orion’s and yet so different—lit up. “To get to you, my dear. Your little Meegra is her goal after all.”
“Yes, we already knew that,” Megan said, with a businesslike impatience she didn’t feel. “But—”
“Your demon is unspecified,” Greyson said. “It could become anything, since you haven’t done the Haikken Kra. She might not have known that before.”
“She had to know it.”
“She might not have known what it meant.”
Winston snorted. “That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? The Ancient Ones aren’t stupid, Grey.”
“But we’ve never had anyone quite like Megan either. She hasn’t tried to possess her, right?” He glanced at Megan. “She hasn’t, has she?”
Megan shook her head.
“So she’s afraid of you.”
“She hasn’t tried to possess you either.”
Greyson shrugged. “She wouldn’t. She’s not capable of possessing other demons unless she’s somehow connected to them—like the Yezer—or unless she’s invited. Orion must not have known what she would do to him when she came out.”
“Or maybe she said she wouldn’t.” Winston glanced around, then picked up his glass from the desk behind him and took a swallow. “If she told him she just wanted to eavesdrop and Orion thought he’d be killed in the morning anyway, why wouldn’t he let her in?”
“That would explain why she didn’t manage to materialize, too.” Greyson sat and pulled Megan down to sit beside him. Her legs ached. She hadn’t realized how stiffly she was holding them, her knees locked in an attempt to stop them shaking. “She doesn’t get power from other demons. Remember what I told you at Mitchell’s, Meg? Leyaks are generally dangerous to humans, not other demons. They kill people—sometimes they possess them, but usually they just steal their energy. That’s why she hasn’t been able to stick around for very long when we’ve seen her. She’s trying to do something she’s not meant to do.”
“But she did possess a human, at the café.”
“An old man,” he said. “Elderly and in poor health. He didn’t have the energy to power a flashlight, much less a demon.”
“So Orion found her,” Megan said, understanding. “And he knew my demon was…adaptable, because what I felt at his house, that I could use his power if I wanted to, he felt too? He knew it?”
“It’s the best explanation I can think of.”
“Orion always wanted more,” Winston said with a heavy sigh. Megan realized with a start that she’d forgotten all about Orion’s body, still and silent on the floor while they talked over him as though he were a needy pet they were ignoring. “That’s why he never went further. He was smart enough. But when I made him a lakri…that’s when I realized his ambition wasn’t tempered with anything. He wasn’t patient. He wasn’t willing to put in his time. So he never got closer. He just wasn’t…good enough to be closer to me.”
It was one of the saddest epitaphs Megan had ever heard.
“Feeling better?”
She tied the belt of his bathrobe around her waist and started rolling up the sleeves. “Actually, yes. Does that even make sense?”
The shower and snack helped clear her head, but there was still so much to discuss, so many facts and worries and feelings to slog through. The kind of things she would have advised her patients it was unhealthy to hide from.
But she didn’t have any patients anymore. Was she even really a counselor anymore? Her show probably didn’t count.
Which meant that as an almost-official-not-counselor, she could engage in whatever unhealthy avoidance she wanted to.
Greyson glanced up from pouring their drinks. By unspoken agreement they’d decided champagne was inappropriate under the circumstances, so he fixed them both Jack and Cokes. “Everybody feels better after eating and taking a shower. It’s a scientific fact.”
“See? All those years of college wasted, when I could have just charged people for sandwiches and some hot water. I knew it.”
He smiled. “Tera said they’d probably want—”
“Can we not talk about it? Right now, I mean. I think I’ve had enough for one day.”
“Of course. We can talk about anything you want. It’ll wait until morning.”
She sipped her drink, looked around the room. “I can’t think of anything to say.”
“We don’t have to talk at all,” he suggested, stroking her back with his left hand and leaning down to kiss her neck. “We could just go to sleep, of course, but…I think this might be more fun.”
Part of Megan was horrified by the thought. When she closed her eyes, even after the shower and snack, she kept seeing the pool of red spreading from Orion’s head and ruining the intricate pattern of the carpet. Or the dungeon, again, the flames almost licking the ceiling, almost finding her hiding place…
Too bad other parts of her were intensely interested. What better way to drive the memories of chilling horror away? To replace those images with considerably more pleasant ones?
“Are you going to sleep with Justine?”
He stopped moving but stayed where he was, his face buried in the curve between her shoulder and her neck, and his arm around her waist. “No, bryaela, I’m
not going to sleep with Justine.”
“But if she—”
“She’ll accept a substitute. She always did with Temp.” His lips resumed their lazy journey.
“But you were the substitute, weren’t you?”
“It was part of my job.” Strong fingers tilted her chin up, so their eyes met. His were deep, unfathomable; but she realized as she looked into them how shaken he’d been earlier by the presence of Ktana Leyak, saw his need to put it behind him was no less intense than hers. “It’s not anymore.”
Megan forced her relief not to show. “So what is part of your job now?”
“Ah, that’s a secret. If I told you, I’d have to hypnotize you to make you forget.”
“I think the line is ‘I’d have to kill you.’”
“No. If I killed you I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore.” He caught her earlobe between his teeth and sucked it softly. She shivered. “And then you wouldn’t do that anymore and I do so enjoy it when you do that…”
She swallowed. Uncomfortable images and thoughts still played in her mind, but it was hard to concentrate on them while his silver-smooth voice whispered some of John Donne’s finer lines in her tingling ear and his hands illustrated them on her heating skin.
What the hell. A little forgetfulness was just what the counselor ordered.
Chapter Twenty-three
He bashed his own head in? I’m supposed to believe that?”
“No. Your witches did that.” Greyson shrugged. “We tried to heal him so you could take him in, but…he was beyond saving.”
“Our weapons did not do this, Grey. Look at that!” Tera gestured toward her feet, where Orion Maldon’s body lay, mostly covered by a white sheet, on a rickety gurney. The damage was obvious. His entire face had sunk when his skull fractured, like a deflating balloon.
“I’ve seen it, thank you.”
“We sent smoke after him, that was all.”
“Now hold on, that was not all. Have you seen my fence? The gate is practically destroyed.”
Megan spoke up for the first time. It was hard to follow the conversation for some reason. Three cups of coffee had failed to perk her up, and she was about to start on a fourth. The week was finally catching up with her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept an untroubled night. “They were shooting something else at him, Tera. Something…they looked like black rocks, and they exploded.”
Tera’s brow furrowed as she glanced from Megan to Greyson and back. “Really?”
Megan nodded. “I was there, I saw it.” Please believe me. I’m already having to lie to you, and you’re my friend and I hate that.
“That’s…well. I don’t see that there are any particles of that in his hair. It looks to me like somebody hit him with something.”
“The blast knocked free one of the finials,” Greyson said. “It flew into the back of his head.”
“Shit. This is just what I need,” Tera said. “If you’d given him to us last night we could have saved him.”
“I couldn’t, Tera. You know that. I couldn’t ignore his request, especially when I had no idea why you guys were after him.”
“Are…are you going to get in trouble for this?” Megan bit her lip. If this would cost Tera her job…and it was almost Christmas too. Never mind that Tera didn’t celebrate. Nobody should lose their job four days before Christmas, it was a crime against humanity—and witches were close enough to human, right?
Tiredness always made her sentimental. Or grumpy. Today it looked like sentimental.
“No. He’s right. It doesn’t sound like protocol was followed, so the ones in trouble will be the soldiers, not me. This wasn’t my affair anyway, I just stepped in because of you. No harm done. Except, of course, that now we can’t find out why he killed those witches.”
“Killed witches?” Greyson leaned against his desk and crossed his ankles in front of him, clearly ready to enjoy himself.
Tera colored. “Yes. Um, those witches who died, the ones I mentioned at the funeral? It looks like he was the one who did it, so…sorry about that. About suspecting you, I mean.”
“No problem.”
“But you have to admit you were a pretty likely suspect. It wasn’t exactly stupid of me to think you were behind it.”
“Of course.” Not a hint of sarcasm colored his voice.
“Well,” Megan said, clapping her hands together, trying to get her blood to circulate. The sleeves of Greyson’s shirt flopped from her arms. Her own clothes were being cleaned. “Tera, do you want some coffee or something?”
“I guess I’ll have water. Is Winston Lawden coming? He was here last night, right?”
“He’ll be here any minute,” Greyson said. “He said he was on his way.”
And he was. Winston arrived just after they’d settled Tera in a chair with a glass of water.
“Miss Green. What a lovely surprise.”
Tera raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Lawden. I have a few questions for you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t see what sorts of answers I might have. Greyson called me last night to inform me your witches had gravely injured Orion. He was dead by the time I got here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you implying something, Miss Green?”
“Only that if one of your people killed my witches, you might know something about it.”
Megan choked on her drink, but Winston only smiled indulgently. “Miss Green, I can assure you I did not. I’ve recently discovered Orion was…acting outside his authority, shall we say? This had nothing to do with me.”
Greyson must have called him while she was in the shower or when he got up in the morning. Or maybe demons simply had plenty of practice at this sort of thing, which was likely. She knew how quickly Greyson’s mind moved. Usually she wasn’t too bad herself, but she just couldn’t seem to get it together this morning. The coffee actually seemed to be working against her rather than helping; she was starting to feel sick.
Two witches came to collect Orion’s body, their faces fixed in disapproving sneers as they pulled the sheet over his ruined head and lifted the gurney with a clang of metal against metal.
“This will still be investigated,” Tera said. “Just because we can no longer question Orion Maldon doesn’t mean we’re done looking into his actions.”
“I’m an open book,” Winston said. A whisper of cold wafted over Megan’s skin. His voice echoed strangely in her head. Was he dragging out his words, or was it just her? He sounded like a record played on too slow a speed. “Feel free to make an appointment to speak with me, if you must.”
“How about now?”
“Am I suspected? Are you declaring me so? Because if not, you can make an appointment, and if so, I’m permitted my own witnesses. Uninvolved witnesses.”
Megan’s cup fell from her hand. The couch was so soft…she could just lie down and go to sleep…
“Megan? Megan!”
Greyson’s hands on her shoulders, shaking her. Maybe a little more roughly than he needed to. She was just tired, is all. Didn’t it make sense that she would be, after everything that had happened? And they hadn’t ended up going to sleep until almost three. So much to do, so much to discuss…
“Le’me ’lone.” She brushed feebly at his arm, while Tera’s and Winston’s voices joined the chorus of concern and she heard pounding in the distance. Someone knocking somewhere…why couldn’t she open her eyes?
More voices. One sounded like Roc, which didn’t make any sense because Roc wouldn’t be here. He was with the other Yezer, in his little room that looked like Currier & Ives threw up in it.
“All of them…she took…destroyed…everywhere…” The voices sounded like faraway whispers, like television filtered up stairs and under a closet door. She used to like to play in the closet, when she was little…it felt so secret and safe in there. Just like now.
“Fuck! Meg, wake up, sit up, come on…”
“God, she’s so p
ale.” Gentle hands patted her cheeks.
“Is she breathing?”
“Shit, get…”
Hands on her shoulders, lifting her from the couch, then sliding up to cup her face. She mumbled feebly and tried to push him away. Just like a man, couldn’t he see she was tired?
His lips pressed against hers, forcing her to accept the kiss. “Go ’way,” she started to say, but when she opened her mouth his tongue slipped inside, along with a deep, low rush of burning power. It flew through her body, heating her from the inside, speeding her sluggish blood and making her gasp.
Her eyes opened, then closed again as she leaned forward, raising her hands to his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. Somewhere deep in her mind she remembered there were other people in the room, but it didn’t matter. She was waking up, unfurling like a butterfly, going from exhausted to normal to overheated with desire in the space of a few seconds.
Abruptly he pulled away. She reached for him, her eyes widening at the sight of his tense, pale face, but as she did, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
Tera’s and Winston’s backs were politely turned, but she was dimly aware that she’d moaned, or something, and her face grew hot. Or would have, if it wasn’t already. Her cheeks stung. How hard had they actually hit her?
Worse than that was the little body next to Tera. It was Roc. And if Roc was here, something was very wrong.
Wreckage.
That’s all it was.
Megan blinked back tears as she took in the little doors hanging on their hinges, the broken furniture scattered across the shining floor. At least, it had shone once. Now blood, sticky and dark, slicked the surface and spattered the walls. It formed a clotted sludge in the crevices joining the floors and walls and in the cracks between the floorboards.
Roc righted a chair and slumped into it. “She took everyone,” he said for the tenth time, repeating the words over and over as if he could make sense of the event by describing it. “I managed to get away…I don’t know how.”