Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (76 page)

“Do I think it’ll work?” Marion pushed up one of her full eyebrows and popped her fists onto her hips. “Come on, Claude. Don’t do the Obi-Wan shit today. I get enough of that from Momma. And F.Y.I.” Quick as a flash, she pulled a small knife from out of seemingly nowhere and pressed it against his sternum.

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. In fact, one corner of his beautiful lips dared to twitch. What had he endured in his long life that would have made having a knife pulled on him child’s play? Did she even want to know?

“Your niece hasn’t been sleeping through the night so well lately because she has at least seven teeth cutting in at once, so I’m feeling especially stabby. I can’t kill you, but I can make you hurt. I will put a hole through this lovingly maintained Jimi Hendrix shirt so quick you’d think I’d gone and had ninja training.”

Now
he cringed, and the nudged the tip of her knife away from Jimi’s faded-out Stratocaster. “You are a cold woman, Marion Thanos.”

She shrugged. “Charles likes it.”

“Hate to be the Debbie Downer as always, but y’all are off course yet again.” Sweetie insinuated herself next to Claude on the sofa arm, so close their hips and thighs touched. She ruffled his hair idly, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

Gail was seeing red, and it wasn’t the color of Claude’s eyes. The reasonable, rational part of her knew Sweetie didn’t mean anything by her proximity to Claude. She just wanted the energy, but couldn’t she try a little harder to keep her hands to herself? Marion was with them, so she could have even cuddled up to her instead and no one would have raised an eyebrow.

Gail feigned a cough, and ever vigilant, Claude looked up at her.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

His forehead furrowed.

She darted her gaze over to Sweetie.

Claude rolled his eyes, and carefully extricated himself from Sweetie’s side. He walked to the kitchen island and sifted through the pile of sales circulars on top.

“Y’all get so easily distracted. You went from magic to teeth to shirts,” Sweetie said, totally oblivious to Gail’s distress. “Bet you couldn’t hack it hunting with the wolves. Tell us about the cat.”

“I was.” Claude returned, deftly plucked the knife from Marion’s hand, and made that vanish, too. Where was he sending the things he confiscated? Ellery was going to want those keys back.

“You’ll have to pardon me for trying to make this a teaching moment. We don’t know the range of Marion’s abilities, and since Ellery is likely in a holding pattern right now, I wanted to see just what sort of psychic Marion is.”

“I can’t talk to
cats
, Claude.”

For that matter, neither could Gail judging by the glazed expressions Candy Corn presented to her when she tried to chat.

He shrugged. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”

Marion opened her mouth, closed it, and let her shoulders fall into their natural, relaxed position. “Um …” She squatted and rubbed her fingertips against Pumpkin Pie’s chin. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her forehead furrowed and lips parted.

After a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “No. Sorry. I don’t get anything from her.”

Gail had, though. It’d been clear as day.

“There’s a warehouse downtown. I recognize it, because Ellery and I went to a party there once years ago when it housed a club. It’s been shut down since then, and got boarded up. She’s there, and she’s okay for the moment.”

“The cat told you that?” Marion asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. It just popped into my mind as truth, and my gut said to trust it.”

“And just like that, you do?” Marion stood and swiped the cat hair off her hands onto her jeans.

“I’ve always trusted my gut over my head. It’s why my grandmother thinks I’m an idiot and got me a cat.” She blew out a forceful exhale and ground her palms against her closed eyes.

She smelled Claude’s familiar earthiness long before the press of his arms settled around her waist. She should have been running from him, knowing full well what his proximity could do to her, but her feet seemed glued to the floor as if they knew she couldn’t really escape him, anyway. She pressed her forehead against his chest and sighed. Why was she so forgiving of him? A minute ago, she’d wanted to kick his shins.

He rubbed up and down her back, soothing her with his hands and his gentle kisses atop her head. “Your grandmother is typical of witches nowadays. Everything is rote. Spells are memorized, and the practicing is clinical. Witches like her think what we do has to be constructed on a sacred altar and bound up in rigmarole. They hide their weakness behind ceremony. But you’re not weak.”

“You sure about that?”

He spoke it as if it was truth, but he could have merely been placating her so she wouldn’t fall apart there in her sister’s living room. She knew damned well it wasn’t truth. Strong women weren’t jealous, and Gail had nothing but since she’d met him. She was jealous of Laurette, furious at Sweetie, and enraged at every woman he’d ever touched. His list of conquests had to have been astounding. And if he’d loved her—or Laurette—as much as he claimed, how had he lived with himself?

“I’m positive.” He brought his hands up to her face and skimmed the pads of his thumbs over her closed eyelids.

“Liar.” She opened her eyes, and he tipped her chin up, making her see him eye to eye. She’d worked in places where she regularly confronted hostile men—men she’d had to be aggressive with to make them understand that she wasn’t some wilting daisy who’d let a belligerent drunk call her out of the kitchen and demean her because his hamburger patty wasn’t pink enough. She met them head-on and usually sent them skulking away with their figurative tails between their legs, and she never felt fearful while doing it. After leaving Shaun, she’d promised herself she’d never let anyone cut her down as if she were nothing. The practice was hard, but every day she renewed her drive for it.

Meeting Claude’s close gaze, though, took a kind of bravery she didn’t have. Sometimes, she felt as though he didn’t just see her, but that he saw right through her.

She hated feeling so exposed. What did he think when he looked at her like that? Was he fondly recalling his Laurette and wishing Gail was her?

Dammit. There it went again.

“You’re not weak,” he repeated. “You’re unfocused. I had my mother to train me up the same way her mother taught her. What she taught me you can’t learn from books, although people try anyway.”

“Are you telling me you never cast spells? You don’t keep a grimoire or mix potions?”

“No, I’m not telling you that. That’s practical witchcraft. That’s how I make money. I’m talking about intuitive magic,
chéri
. It’s raw and instinctive, but can be very powerful.”

“Like how she tossed that charged cleaver at your daddy,” Sweetie said with a chuckle.

Claude laughed, too. “I would have loved to have seen my father’s eyes rolling back into his head from the shock.” He spun Gail around and gave her a little push on the bottom toward the door.

“But that was borrowed magic,” Gail said. She pulled the door open and hit the light switch, casting them into darkness.

They followed her out.

“You may have borrowed it, but now that you know what it feels like, you can try drawing your own.”

“Just like that, huh?” She patted her pockets and groaned about the keys she didn’t have.

Claude took her right hand into his and slipped it into the pocket of his flannel overshirt.

Her fingers grazed something hard and sharp, and she gasped, yanking out the key ring. “How do you do that?” She locked the deadbolt as her companions headed down the walkway.

“It’s not something that can be easily explained,” he said when she’d caught up to him. He mashed the unlock button on his Jeep’s key fob. “It’s half science, half intuition.”

“Do you think I could do it?”

She didn’t care so much whether she could or couldn’t. She’d resigned herself to be unable to do many things that came easily to others. That wasn’t why she’d asked.

He skimmed his thumb along her jaw and shook his head. “No.”

That’s why she’d asked. She wanted to see if he’d tell her the whole truth.

“A lot of what I can do is because I’m half demon. You shouldn’t envy that.”

Sweetie and Marion pulled their doors closed, and Gail turned so her back was to the Jeep. They couldn’t see her lips move. “I shouldn’t envy your power?” she whispered.

“What would you do with such power?”

She stared into his eyes and considered pretty lies, anything that would make her seem less pathetic than she was, and in the end decided to just keep her mouth shut. She wanted to be his equal, but she’d never be that.

And maybe that was another reason she should stay away from him.

“Come on. Let’s not keep Ellery waiting.” Gail pulled open the door, and stood aside, gesturing to the breezeway.

Marion and Sweetie passed through the opening without a word. Claude, however, paused in front of her and waited until she met his gaze.

“What?” she asked.

“How are you feeling? The ring’s magic tells me you’re agitated, which we can fix, but what’s this other thing? Are you angry at me?”

“Let’s just say I’m angry in general.”

“Why?”

“We need to go.”

“I don’t think a minute will make much difference.”

“If it’d been your sister abducted by an unstable quasi-demon, you wouldn’t think the same.” She pointed to the Jeep. “You’d be sitting in there cranking up the engine.”

“Why are you pushing me away?”

“Who said I was? I just want to get my sister.”

“And we will. I ask you if you’re angry because I’m trying to calibrate what the ring is telling me with the truth.”

“Let’s talk about this later.”

“Fine.” He threw his hands up. “By the way, you just talked to a cat.”

“I’m certain that’s the ring, too, because I damn sure have never been able to talk to Candy Corn.”

“It’s not me.” He shrugged. “You understood her because she had something important to say.”

“You could understand her, too, then.”

He shook his head, and drew her out of the condo. He turned the lock and pulled the door shut. “No. She wasn’t talking to me. What she had to say wasn’t meant for me to overhear.”

Gail was two steps down the breezeway before she turned and put up a hand. “Wait. You’re going to trust an unseasoned witch’s course of action?”

“What choice do we have?” He pressed his left hand to the small of her back and nudged her on.

“So you’re accepting it just out of lack of a better plan.”

He pushed his baseball cap down and sighed his exasperation. “No. I’m accepting it because you stated it as fact. You believed it as truth when you spoke it, but you’re doubting yourself now. If a witch can’t trust her own gifts, of course they’d remain hidden. If you don’t use them, don’t value them, they recede.”

“Great. How can I use them when I don’t even know what they are?” She snatched open the Jeep’s front passenger door and climbed up to the seat. Before she could slam it, he worked his body into the gap and grabbed her wrist.

“Your parents should have taught you. Your grandparents. They would know what traits run in your family and be prepared to help you harness them.”

One by one, she lifted his fingers from her wrist, and then flicked his hand away. “So you say. Judge me if you want, but in my family and all the families I know that are like mine, we don’t explore the natural gifts. We study our spell books, light candles, and talk to cats who never talk back. What you have is what I grew up believing was wild magic.”

Sweetie sighed from the backseat.

Gail didn’t bother turning around. She didn’t want to hear her friend’s judgment on the matter. What could be wilder than werewolves?

“What you have, Claude, and what you want me to use, is something I was raised to believe was improper and off-limits to a girl like me.”

“Yet your grandmother discredits your common sense. She’d try to strip away the defenses witches have developed over time not just to defend ourselves, but to thrive, and then give you a fucking
cat
to compensate.” He mumbled something in low, rapid-fire maybe-French and slammed the door on her rebuttal.

Marion cleared her throat from the backseat as Claude walked around the front of the vehicle, still muttering to himself.

Gail pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and rubbed. “Go on and say it. Quick.”

“I’ve never actually seen Claude truly angry, and I get the sinking feeling I’ll get to witness what that looks like in the near future.”

“I don’t like your sinking feelings, girl,” Sweetie said. “They always forecast me getting bruises on my shins and some of my fur yanked out.”

Claude pulled his door open and climbed into the seat, stabbing his key into the ignition without another word. He threw the Jeep into gear and peeled out of the complex.

They rode along for several miles with the only sounds coming from the stress he put on the engine, the transmission as he shifted gears, and the occasional inhale and exhale from the backseat.

Gail turned to the left and looked at Marion and Sweetie. They sat rigidly, hands gripping the
oh, shit
bars, and lips pressed into tight lines. Gail didn’t know if it was Claude’s frantic driving that had shocked them into silence, or Marion’s previously mentioned fear of Claude’s anger.

For some reason, Gail wasn’t afraid of it. What was the worst he could do to her? He didn’t want her soul, so he probably couldn’t think of a damn thing that hadn’t already been done to her. She’d survived Shaun, and so she had the path of
keep on keepin’ on
memorized.

She faced forward and pointed at the upcoming light. “Turn left. We’ll drive up to the back lot. The windows should be boarded, so if anyone’s in there with Ellery, they won’t see us approach.”

“Who’s taking point?” Sweetie asked. “I don’t have to get too close to hear or smell them, so I can go in first and assess the situation.”

“We’ll all go at once,” Claude said in a flat voice. His eyes had taken on that unnatural red color Gail had surmised indicated he was actively using his magic. She couldn’t feel it and couldn’t guess what he might be doing, but whatever it was had him gripping the steering wheel like a vise long after he’d stopped the Jeep.