Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (75 page)

“Do you?” He pulled her along, barely registering his bare feet hitting the ground.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been around them much.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”

“When it comes to my brothers, I’m not. They wouldn’t touch you, but if you get frisky whenever you’re around incubi and can’t think straight, it may be best for you to avoid them.” He slid the deck door of Clarissa’s house open and pulled Gail into the kitchen.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

Clarissa and Sweetie were at the large kitchen table, sipping coffee, along with Marion and Ariel.

Good. He had some time to think without his brothers in close proximity. Three a.m. or not, they were all up and making plans.

Sweetie cleared her throat and pantomimed knocking something out of her hair. Then she repeated the action with her shirt.

Gail’s cheeks glowed bright red as she patted her mussed hair and knocked what dirt she could off her formerly white top. “God,” she muttered.

He wanted to reassure her, but what could he possibly say to assuage her from what she was likely feeling? Tell her that nobody knew?

Everybody
knew. If they didn’t, they hadn’t been around the Morton complex long enough.

“Claude, you must have switched cigarette brands. Your reek is different,” Clarissa said, crinkling her nose.

He was surprised she hadn’t said anything when she walked by earlier. It wasn’t enough for her that he smoked outside. Usually, she wouldn’t let him in if the smoke got into his clothes. “Temporary switch. Someone gave me a couple of packs out of his carton. Are you going to put me out?”

She sighed. “Not tonight. You know the rules. They’re the same ones Ariel had when she smoked. Don’t bring that stink into my house. I’ve got heirloom furniture and shit.”

Ariel made a muffled, croaking noise, and her watery eyes, flattened lips, and red cheeks said what she couldn’t say about what she thought of her grandmother’s furniture.

“Where are John and Charles?” Claude asked, hoping to distract Clarissa from the stink-eye she was casting at Ariel.

“Getting dressed. What’s-his-name called while you were—”

Gail groaned and moved toward the coffeemaker. She slid the half-full carafe off the warmer and poured a cup. Poor thing.

Clarissa didn’t need to spell it out. He knew what he’d been doing better than she did.

“Jason, you mean?”

“Yes. Where’d he come from, anyway? I thought you and the boys made a list of all the surviving kids of Gulielmus and rounded up all the non-hostile ones last year.”

He shrugged. “We did. There’s no way to keep track of the ones who haven’t been marked yet, though, unless there’s word of mouth. Word of mouth is dangerous in this climate, especially since we seem to have someone on the inside passing information on to Ross.”

“You don’t really think it’s someone
here
, do you?” Marion twisted her wedding rings around and around which should have indicated nervousness, but her furrowed forehead and the steely glint in her eyes suggested otherwise. She was probably itching for a fight—ready for all this shit to be done so she could live a sort of normal life without having to constantly watch her back when she was on the road.

“In this community, you mean? No, but I do think information got gathered by someone who’d been here—perhaps a contractor—or pieced together by an outsider too curious about the goings-on here. Sixty people live here, and if someone had asked each of them one seemingly benign question, that person would have been privy to a lot of information and we might not have had our red flags going off about it. There’s nothing inherently suspicious about someone you recognize asking you one or two questions.”

“Or maybe there’s a scenario we haven’t considered. Perhaps Ross was never working alone in the first place. Not even last year when the boys locked him up.”

Clarissa plopped her fists onto her hips. “Huh. How about that? You’ve got the Morton cynicism, that’s for sure.”

Marion rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “That, and an overprotective husband,” she said in a mumble.

Before she’d gotten hooked up with Charles, she was a long-haul trucker. He’d tried to keep her from going back to her former occupation because, really, they didn’t need the money, but she’d been born with the spirit of travel. She picked up a load every now and then, but Charles had pretty strict rules about which trips she was allowed to take. She could only take Ruby on trips shorter than two days, and she always had to have a co-driver. Usually, it was him. No one would go near Marion when Charles was around. But when Charles wasn’t available, her father Sylvester went, or rarely, Sweetie.

Marion had had a couple of close calls with Team Hell’s bounty hunters in the past year, and she’d proven time and time again she was capable of better-than-basic self-defense. Her exceptional intuitiveness was the deadliest weapon in her arsenal. No one ever got the drop on her, just like no one ever sneaked up on her grandmother.

Claude looked from Marion, who sat with fingers knit, grinding her teeth—to Clarissa, who had her hands jammed into the pockets of her windbreaker, pacing behind Sweetie’s chair.

Restless.

His books said that was typical of elves. He was damned sure that was what they were now that he’d learned of what Papa had called Clarissa
.
He’d always spoken of elves in disparaging terms, and “hobbit” was just the newest slur. Papa would have known what she was because he’d been around long enough to see entire races rise and fall. He knew all the hallmarks.

Claude rubbed his hand idly against the scruff on his chin as footsteps on the deck stairs sounded behind him.

Gail moved to his side, warming her hands around a coffee mug, and whispered, “It’s your brothers. Should I go?”

He hated making her feel aberrant, like she’d done something wrong, when she hadn’t. She couldn’t help her reaction any more than he could help feeling something was off about it. He’d been around too long to take things at face value.

“No,” he said. “Just stay near me. My energy should be a buffer.”

“So I’ll only get turned on by one of you instead of all three.”

Put like that, it didn’t sound like a winning option.

“I’ll do my best not to turn you on, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem. I think it was just the fact you were around a full-blooded incubus and then came home to me while my magic was off.”

“This is a conversation I never thought I’d be having.”

“Nor me.”

“I took Ruby to your parents’, Marion,” Charles said. He made a cautious arc the long way around Gail and Claude and grabbed a coffee mug from the drying rack.

“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.

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.