Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (86 page)

Love seemed to be its own sort of magic. It brought changes in people that no other kind of power could. Claude had only scratched the surface of that lesson with Laurette. Yes, he’d loved her dearly, but what he felt for Gail was different. Gail was his other half. His
purpose
. If she weren’t, why was he hurting so much? He could hardly swallow due to his frayed nerves and upset gut.

“You guys are a hoot,” Jason said. He popped the last bit of bread into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I hope you’ll invite me back for a barbecue or something when this mess is all over. My girlfriend’s not going to believe this shit.” He crooked a thumb toward Papa. “This guy popped in on us when we were
in flagrante delicto
, if you catch my drift. She’s probably losing her shit right now. I keep calling her, but she’s freaking out. I’d be surprised if she hangs in there. We’d just gotten together.”

“I doubt you’ll have any problems making her stick,” Papa said through clenched teeth. “Monogamy seems to be a sweeping epidemic amongst you kids.”

“Is that part of the reason you’re being stripped of your power? Because you can’t get us under control?” This time, there was no cheekiness in Charles’s voice, but there did seem to be a bit of residual venom. Keeping them in check had always been such a big deal to Papa before.

“No,” Papa said. “You’re all sorry excuses for cambions, but I daresay that it’s your
choice
to commit. It’s your life. Ruin it as you see fit.”

What?

Claude cut his gaze to Charles, who looked equally stunned.

“
Did he just …
”

“Besides, I have other children who want the power and favor if you don’t. What’s a few lost fools in love to me?” he added, but the damage was already done. It was more than just a few children. There were many who’d defected, and he wasn’t trying all that hard to rein them back in.

He’d stood up for them after all this time? After he’d killed Charles’s mother and Laurette and so many others to exert his control? Why?

Jason didn’t have their history or know the extent of Papa’s oppression, so it seemed suitable that he was the one to speak next.

“I don’t know this guy from Joe other than the fact I look a little like him, but my psychic Spidey sense says he’s got more ulterior motives than Imelda Marcos has shoes.”

Suddenly
,
Papa became very interested in the conditions of his cuticles.

“I know I’m the low man on the totem pole,” Jason said, “and I hope I haven’t overstepped my boundaries, but I called my mother and told her what I was up to. Pointless, because she already knew.”

“Fucking soothsayers,” Papa muttered.

Jason ignored him. “Ma says there’s something amiss about Gail’s car. There’s a reason beyond sentimental attachment Shaun wants it, though Ma couldn’t tell what.”

“Interesting,” Claude said.

“I hope you’re not angry at me for butting in.”

“Not at all,” Claude said. “Only fools refuse help given willingly.”

“Okay, well how about this, then?” Jason asked. “Why don’t we use the car as bait? Shaun wants it back, so give it to him. The wolves want to make up for losing Ross, so get a couple of them to keep an eye on Shaun and see what he does with the car.”

“It’s not a bad idea, newbie,” Charles said. He grabbed another roll and chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe what’s in that car will lead us to Ross. When I get my hands on that little—”

“Are you fucking insane?” Claude shot his brother a withering look. “It’s not just the car that would be bait, but Gail along with it. I’m not letting her go anywhere near Shaun.”

“Because this situation will magically resolve on its own, right?” Papa scoffed. “Any path to resolution is likely going to involve your witch, so you’d better let that settle in, and fast. This is about her as much as it’s about the smudge in our family tree. If she can render aid, let her. That is, unless you
prefer
for her to wallow in self-pity for the rest of her life. That’s certainly up to you, but I could have sworn you wanted a woman this time who would fight back and not another Laurette.”

A blue flash—John’s teleport signature—flooded the room right as Claude stood to fling himself across the table at his father. “It’s all right,” John said quietly, with his strong arms forming a tight band around Claude.

He walked Claude a few paces back from the table. “I guess I popped in right on time, huh, bro?”

“Let go of me.”

“Nah. Just chill out. You’re not thinking straight. If you really wanted to hurt him, or free yourself from me, you’d use magic. Deep down, you don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re just angry, right? He hit one of your buttons?”

Claude nodded and met his father’s icy stare. Papa’s expression was inscrutable, but the hands he wrenched on his lap gave him away.

He was on edge, too. They all had something at stake here. It was easy to forget that.

Claude took a deep breath, and John let go of him.

“I’ll think about it. Using Gail, I mean.”

His father was probably right. He might not have a choice but to let her stand on her own. Like hell if he would let her out of his sight while she did it, though.

• • •

Claude nudged the bedroom door open gently, and startled at the sight of Agatha on Gail’s bed, holding the remote control in one hand and rubbing Gail’s head with the other.

She gave Claude the barest nod as he entered.

“When did you get here?”

“About an hour ago.”

“You shielded your energy. Why?”

“Do I look like I wanted all you aggressive apes to come running upstairs to see who’d popped in?”

Gail was asleep, or at least looked to be. Her face, atop Agatha’s lap, was puffy, and evidence of her tears had dried on her cheeks. The striped pillow had changed owners again, and Gail held it tightly in her arms over her belly. They’d probably forget which of them it belonged to at some point, it went back and forth so much.

Candy Corn scuttled out from under the bed and wound around Claude’s legs. Sighing, he picked her up and gave the attention-starved cat a squeeze. As keenly as he felt Gail’s distress, Candy Corn felt it too, though probably in a different way. Being a cat, she couldn’t fix it or even offer comfort unless Gail was willing to receive it.

“No. I imagine you don’t,” he said.

“I don’t think she’s going anywhere for a while,” Agatha said. She turned down the volume on the television and set down the remote.

“That may be a problem. I need her.”

“Whatever it is will have to wait.”

“This isn’t a situation where waiting would be prudent.”

“You want to use her as a decoy. A lure.”

He cringed. How she’d come to that conclusion on her own, he didn’t know, but her prescience was startling. “We don’t know what else to do. If we had any other options …”

“You have options, Claude. What you don’t have is time.”

“Fair enough.” He sat on the edge of the bed and set Candy Corn beside him.

Candy Corn crouched low, staring at Gail, then took a few tentative steps toward her. When Gail didn’t react, the cat curled up in front of her.

“I would prefer to wait and go about this a different way. I would like for Gail to have some calm in her life, especially with—”

Agatha shook her head. He didn’t need to say it. She already knew, and maybe she even blamed herself for it. If she hadn’t been keeping her descendants at arm’s length—no, a
football
field’s
length—she might have seen Shaun for what he was. She might have intervened sooner.

“It can wait a day or two, don’t you think?”

Could it? They didn’t know what kind of hell Shaun was raising behind the scenes and whether or not Ross was gaining power by the day the same way Papa was losing it. Things could all get very messy in a matter of hours. Days seemed like an unacceptable risk.

But pulling Gail out of her depression before she had even begun to process it seemed like a worse one.

She was going to need to substitute all that self-loathing for something else if she was going to climb out of it. Vengefulness. Righteous indignation. Anger.

He had plenty of his own anger, but that was something they couldn’t trade like power. She had to find her own.

Gail sighed in her sleep, and Agatha resumed her rubbing of her hair.

“I don’t know what changed the game, but Papa isn’t interested in harming her anymore.”

Agatha scoffed. “One less reason for me to try to kill him. I was on the fence about whether or not I wanted try for what he did to her last time, and Laurette wasn’t even mine. Prophesy or not, I’m not happy about what he did. It didn’t have to be
him
.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s always some room for interpretation in those things. It suited his purposes at the time that it be him dispatching her. I will say that if Laurette had been one of my descendants, I couldn’t have retaliated anyway as I was neutral. Not that it would have done me any good.”

“Because it had all been foretold.”

She nodded. “Our world is a political mess. We shake hands while crossing the fingers of our other hands behind our backs.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“Even for a goddess.”

He brushed his thumb over Gail’s cheek and rubbed away the tear track that had dried there. “I would protect her from all of this if I could, but that’s a mistake I made during her last life that I don’t intend to repeat. She deserves to know everything and to make her own choices, now that she has them.”

“You say that now, but have you forgotten that ring won’t come off? She has no choice there.”

He chuckled. “I guess I saw that as a sort of motivator for her. I think she knows now that she doesn’t need to draw on me. The ring was just a crutch. Soon, she’ll understand what her limits are and will constantly push them, but not overstep them. She’ll be able to borrow from me if she needs it, but I think she’s the kind of woman who won’t want to.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“I’ll leave her be for now. Will you be around a while?”

Agatha twined one of Gail’s abstract curls around her index finger. “I’ll be around forever.”

Her and him, both.

“Let me know if she wakes up soon, will you?”

“Of course.”

When Gail opened her eyes to the sound of
Let’s Make a Deal
and feminine groaning, her vision focused on one pair of feet in trouser socks, the owner’s legs crossed at the ankles at the foot of the bed, and another pair of red-and-white polka-dot socks she recognized as a past Christmas present to Ellery.

She struggled to sit up, only to have Candy Corn’s tail swoosh in her face.

“What time is it?” she croaked. Her voice sounded rough and abused, and perhaps rightfully so. It’d been a long time since she’d had a cry that hard and that long. Her throat was tight and seemed eager to close in on itself.

She put her spine against the headboard and watched Agatha lean over and pick up the digital clock on the nightstand.

“Just past one.”

“AM?”

“PM, dear. It’s afternoon. You were out cold and needed the rest, so we didn’t wake you.”

“Oh.” She ground her palms against her sleep-crusted eyes and let the yawn tickling her nose out through a wide-open mouth. “Did I miss anything?”

Ellery grunted. “Candy Corn and Pumpkin Pie are in the midst of a turf war over the single litter box.”

Gail smiled in spite of her sullen mood. “Who’s winning?”

“There are no winners of a cat fight when there’s litter all over the bathroom floor for me to clean up.”

“Sorry.”

“Eh. It’s temporary.”

“Anything else?” She could just come right out and ask,
Where’s Claude?
but after her embarrassing breakdown, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to see her. If Ellery volunteered the information, though, she certainly wouldn’t cut her off.

“Jason might bring his girlfriend here.”

“He has a girlfriend?” Stupid question. Of course he did. He was charming, self-sufficient, considerate, and had the tall, dark, and handsome thing on lock.

“Yeah. In Ohio. She’s probably freaking out because of the way Gulielmus made him disappear and won’t believe Jason is alive until she sees him in the flesh.”

“I’m sure some of the tenants of Mortonville will be very sad to hear he’s off the market.”

“Hell,
I’m
sad.” Ellery huffed. “These guys set the bar pretty high.”

“I don’t think you’ll be on the market long,” Agatha said. She crossed her legs in the other direction and squinted at the television screen.

“Why? What’d you do?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should
always
believe me. Unlike some people, I don’t skirt around the truth.”

“Okay, then what is it you’re
going
to do?”

“Why are you girls so skeptical?”

“Most be an inherited trait from somewhere down the line.”

Agatha didn’t even try to refute that one.

“So …” Gail started. “Any news about … Ross?”

“Oh.” Ellery straightened up, and nudged Candy Corn out of her cozy recline between the two of them in the process. “I don’t know. The boys were working up a plan of some sort. I haven’t spoken to them since breakfast. Clarissa probably has lunch ready. Think you’re up for some?”

“What are you not telling me?”

“What makes you think I’m withholding anything?”

“Because I’ve known you since I was ten and a half months old.”

Ellery blinked several times, slow, then faster, and then put a hand to her right eye. “Oh, shit. My contact lens slipped into the corner of my eye.” She turned herself off the bedside before Gail could grab her. “Better fix it! Be right back.” She hurried into the bathroom and closed the door.

Gail turned to Agatha, who didn’t bother peeling her stare away from the television screen.

“Why are you being so tight-lipped? That’s not like you.”

“I’m not. I simply know that sometimes, some words are received differently depending on whom delivers them. Are you ready for lunch?”