Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (80 page)

“So why now? You’ve been hands-off all this time, so why come out of the shadows now?” Gail asked.

“Contrary to what you might believe, I’m not heartless. I play the same game Bill does.”

“Bill?”

“Gulielmus. The rules are the same for all of us. We do what we must to toe the line and stay out of public awareness. Sometimes, that means we have to distance ourselves from the things we’d care too much about. You think the only people the Fates are pulling strings for are people like you?” Agatha’s eyes went wide, and Gail could see fear in their depths. Why would the idea of Fate terrify a being as old as Agatha? “It’s no mere coincidence, daughter, that you’re Claude’s and that Claude belongs to this little group.” She waved a hand, indicating the people in the room and on the property beyond it.

“And when you say
daughter,
you mean…”

Agatha pressed her hands to Gail’s shoulders as if she feared the younger woman was going to float away. “You’re mine. Direct line.” She shuddered. “I generally pay people to do math for me, but I’d estimate there’s something like one hundred and twenty-five generations between us.”

“A hundred and twenty-five generations and we’re it?” Gail shrieked. “You shouldn’t be able to count the number of descendants you have.”

“The descendants of gods have very high early mortality rates. If you make it to thirty, you’re beating the odds.”

Ellery made a whimpering sound. Gail nodded and didn’t stop until Claude grabbed her head.

“Easy,
chéri
. You’re with me. You’ll be all right.”

“Claude, honey, I suspect you’ll directly contribute to my mortality,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond except to bury his face in his hands and mutter in French. She’d have to apologize later. She sometimes didn’t realize she was being mean until it was too late to stop the words. He didn’t deserve it.

“It’s no coincidence that I headhunted Ariel years ago and have her on my staff,” Agatha said. “Those are all just puzzle pieces the Fates put together one at a time to force us into a group. Funny thing, because beings like me have been trying to fall out of collective memory. Now, it seems someone’s trying to rile us up and yank us back into it. Isn’t that right, Clarissa?”

Clarissa’s nod was slow, but clear. “I put my ear to the ground after seeing Gulielmus at Rooster’s. Nothing about his situation seemed right to me. Say what you want about him, he did his job the way he was supposed to. There’s no good reason for him to be on the outs right now. From what I could piece together from the people in my network willing to talk, the balance is tipping. There are some who want to be out in the open the way gods and creatures were thousands of years ago.”

“Demons? They thrive on that sort of attention.”

Clarissa shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t like these covert agendas. There’s no way to stay on top of them or to figure out how deep the roots go.”

“Maybe it’s good you’re all being pulled back out now, though,” Gail whispered, and she brushed her frayed shirt hem with the pad of her thumb. “We’ve forgotten what we are. We don’t even know what we’re capable of anymore.”

“And you’re capable of so much.” Agatha had moved quietly and stealthily around the coffee table. She mussed silent John’s hair, and paused in front of Gail. She nudged up Gail’s chin, forcing her to meet her many-times great-grandmother’s gaze. “Someone used you and Ellery to draw me out into the open, and now I’m out. I don’t care. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch another generation get yanked around. I’ve nearly lost you all so many times because of petty god squabbles, but now you’re going to destroy yourselves by not acknowledging what you are and what you can do. I don’t know about my brethren, but I’m not going to let that happen to the handful of descendants I have left.”

“Wait till our grandmother hears about
this
,” Ellery said.

“I don’t care about your prim and proper grandmother and her spell books and rituals. She’s not the real deal. She married into magic.”

Gail startled. Her grandmother wasn’t even a proper witch? What the fuck? “So, Granddad?” The man who always walked two paces behind his wife and didn’t speak until after she was done talking?

Agatha nodded. “He’s another one who doesn’t know his value. But it’s too late for him. You girls, though …” Agatha pulled Ellery closer and held both sisters in her embrace. “You’ve still got the future, and I’ll make sure it’s a fruitful one.”

Fruitful?

Gail edged out from Agatha’s embrace. “Wait. Hold the motherfucking bus with that one. I’m not having kids. I can’t be anyone’s mother, especially not in a political climate like this. I’d be insane.”

“You’ll change your mind. You’ll want to.” Agatha squeezed her hands, and her voice went quiet. “You have to.”

Gail felt Claude’s departure from the room before her eyes registered it. When he left the room, it was as he’d yanked the tethers on her heart, and it was then that she’d recognized her gaffe.

He’d been following her for five of her lifetimes, and she’d thrown the gate closed on their legacy.

Agatha gave her another little squeeze. “You’d make a wonderful mother. Better than I was.” She stood and headed toward the kitchen with Ellery on her heels.

A wonderful mother, she’d said.

Gail could barely take care of herself and a cat.

If that would be a deal breaker for being with Claude, so be it. It likely wouldn’t be the last thing they came to an impasse on. She didn’t know if it was poetic or pathetic, but this was shaping up to be another lifetime where they just couldn’t get it together.

Maybe there was a reason for that.

Claude rubbed his eyes and pushed back the cup of coffee Gail had slipped onto the kitchen table near him.

He really didn’t need her so close for this. In fact, her presence was distracting.

He’d driven home to the mountains to pick up a couple of crates of research materials and was working diligently to hone in on the sort of magic used to ward that warehouse door and to lay him out on his ass a week ago. It was dark magic, that much he knew. Sometimes, certain spells originated in families who’d recorded them for posterity, and other witches cited them as source material. He’d made it as far back to 1912 with the spell he thought was cast on the door, but hadn’t yet made headway with the other. The problem was, he didn’t know enough about what had been done to him to research it. The spell had been quite complicated, and he’d need to question his brothers, Calvin and Sylvester, about what they saw and heard before they got blasted.

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Gail said.

Claude growled and pushed his headphones up to his ears. So what if it was childish? It was a wonder he had any home training at all given his upbringing. “You could be helpful by practicing those simple magic acts I gave you.”

“Maybe you’d like me to practice writing my name in cursive and coloring inside the lines, too.”

“If you can do them, then show me.” He queued up his music player and sought out the loudest, most nonsensical heavy metal he could find.

“I don’t need to perform for you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I think you’re submissive enough that you
may
need to. Just not right now. I’m a bit busy.”

Her jaw dropped.

He winked and flicked his thumb across the phone screen to start the music.

She grumbled behind him, and set about clattering utensils and pans loud enough for him to hear over Hinder’s “fuck you” rock.

Papers scattered and his old, bound manuscripts fluttered open as a gust of wind disturbed the table.

His careful notes fluttered to the floor, and he pushed back his headphones, stabbed the pause button on his phone, and turned in his seat.

Gail’s eyes were narrowed into
I dare you
slits, and he was in just the sort of mood that he just might.

He stood, gripping the table edge for a few seconds, and searching for that place of inner calm that kept him more man than monster. “Cute trick,” he said through clenched teeth. “Agatha teach you that one?”

“Yup. Amongst others.”

“Good for you.” He really meant it. Sort of. “Enjoy it,
chéri
.”

“You know what? I don’t like your tone.”

“And I don’t like being toyed with.” He straightened his spine and stepped away from the table. As he stalked toward her, her haughty expression fell away fractions at a time, until he was right on top of her, in her space.

He pressed his hands to either side of her at the counter and met her wary gaze.

She blinked. Swallowed.

“Afraid?”

“Of you? No.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Maybe I am.”

“You should be afraid. I very rarely get pushed to my brink and I like keeping it that way. You seem to be intent on witnessing what nuclear meltdown looks like. Trust me when I say you don’t want to.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Being half-demon doesn’t affect my desire to be truthful, even when lying would better suit me. I’m capable of being a monster, and that’s something you’ll have to cope with.”

Something she
might
have to cope with. At the moment, he didn’t know where they were headed. Just because it was foretold that this would be their last go at it didn’t mean that they would
stay
together. They’d reconnected, made love, and it was wonderful, and maybe that was meant to be it.

He hoped it wasn’t, but he’d spent more than two centuries learning the harsh lesson that hoping for things wasn’t enough to get them.

Or keep them.

Closing her eyes, she tipped her chin back and sighed. “You smell like maple syrup,” she whispered.

He’d spilled a bit on his shirt during breakfast.

“It’s hard to having a serious conversation with you when my compulsion is to lick you.”

Now it was his turn to sigh. And she was hard to resist, too. She’d bared her neck to him, so of course he had to sample it. He kissed her chin and down her neck, letting his lips linger at her collarbone.

Her skin burned hot like a metal door with a raging fire behind it, and he knew just how pliant it would be should she take off all those unnecessary clothes and find her way to his bed. She was soft in all the right places, firm in all the others. Every time he kissed and touched, she responded freely and without filtering. Knowing he could work her into a sensual frenzy with just gentle strokes of his thumb pads over her collarbones made him feel very powerful, and it didn’t have a thing to do with magic.

She worked her hands into the front of his sweatpants and honed right in on her target. She gave him a possessive tug, and wrapped her fist around his head as she rested her forehead against his chest. She murmured something too soft for him to hear, and he leaned in closer, putting his lips to her ear. “What’d you say?”

“For fuck’s sake, there are rooms in this house with actual doors and locks. Shit, y’all,” came Sweetie’s chastisement behind them.

They broke apart, Gail growling as ferociously as Sweetie ever had, and Claude adjusted himself before turning around.

“What’s with the mess?”

“Just a little lover’s tiff. Nothing serious.” He bent down and started gathering up his papers. When he had the time, he’d finish scanning it all into his computer because there were far more efficient ways to do research than to carry piles of loose papers around.

Gail resumed her tending of the stove. He wasn’t sure what was for lunch, but whatever it was smelled amazing and she hadn’t disappointed him yet. The folks in Mortonville appreciated her unique food preparations as well. Clarissa was good at stretching the food budget, even though she didn’t really have to with Charles’s frequent cash infusions, but Gail could squeeze a hundred and five pennies out a dollar. He didn’t want to know what parts of an animal were going into those full-bodied stews, and neither did anyone else.

“Have you seen Mark around?” Sweetie leaned against the refrigerator and worried at the hem of her tank top. Her lips were pale, and her usually olive skin was flushed.

“You all right? You’re looking a bit peaked. Do you need a heaping helping of Claude’s demon mojo?” Gail asked in a strained voice.

What the fuck?

“Yeah. No. I mean—” She balled the shirt in her fists, and tugged. “I might need to isolate myself for a while so the wolf doesn’t lead me to any bad decisions.”

Ignoring Gail’s odd distress, Claude turned to Sweetie and studied her. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her attention flitted from one spot to the next, never lingering on a single thing.

Ah. Calvin had been in that place a couple of years ago, but Calvin also had five or six years over his little sister.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I started snapping at everyone, and everyone’s been so nice to me here.”

Gail set her long slotted spoon on the holder and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Where would you possibly go?”

“Back to the mountains. My momma’s, I guess.” She shuddered as she rolled her eyes.

Claude wanted to tell her it’d be all right, but he’d met her mother and he’d never been a liar.

“It would just be a short-term thing, right?”

“Maybe. I hope so.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. We call it
the mania
. You fix it by accepting your mate, and I haven’t even picked one. Most wolves settle for whoever’s convenient before they let the mania take hold. If they get it, they don’t let it go long.”

“I would imagine not,” Agatha said as she stepped into the kitchen, gracefully bypassing all the scattered papers.

She gave Gail a little peck on the forehead that made Claude’s eyebrows shoot up. The only allusion she’d made to kissing in the three years he’d known her was in once telling Papa to kiss her ass.

“Your founding goddess was practically a baby when she started having children. It’s no wonder you all go into heat before you’re even able to qualify for mortgages.”

“Can you zip me to my momma’s?”

“I can, but do you really want me to?”

“No. I don’t have a choice. I feel like I’m going to be doing more howling than talking soon, and I need to be somewhere I can run off the wildness.”