Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (94 page)

Each tug was more painful than the last, and Claude felt as though his blood had been replaced with tiny needles and his nerves doused with accelerant and set ablaze.

He smelled burning flesh.

He smelled ozone and brimstone.

And with that last, torturous yank, he smelled death.

He felt it, too, just before he blacked out.

Claude stepped forward into the mist, scanning the barren, gray void for signs or life—or evidence of death. From every direction, there was the same scene: gray skies, soil that yielded nothing, and unceasing fog.

The quiet laughter behind him made him turn, startled. He’d know that voice anywhere.

Maman waved a dismissive hand at him, picked up her skirts, and called back, “Follow me.”

“Where to?”

“Everywhere and nowhere, just out of this mist. Of all the places you could imagine, you’d go for the trite imagery from old stories. You’re not at the crossroads, boy. You’re in your own head. I’m just carrying out the pretense so your brain makes sense of things. If I pretend to lead you somewhere else, your brain will accept the change of scenery and get me out of this mess.”

“So, I’m not dead?”

She rolled her eyes and resumed walking. “Come on.”

They didn’t say anything for a long while, and then she pointed ahead. “There. My old house in New Orleans. I see that old rocking chair is still there on the porch. See it?”

He did. He didn’t know why he did, but it was there, and the street he remembered from his odd childhood.

Maman settled into the chair, and Claude lowered himself onto the second step. Lacing his fingers over his knees, he watched horses pull carriages down the avenue, women hauling baskets of food and wares to the market, and children on the heels of their mothers, trying desperately to be helpful.

And there was that cat. That little black cat that wouldn’t stop following him around after Laurette was killed.

It sat across the street, peering at him, and suddenly he understood.

“You never told me I had a familiar.”

“You were going through a lot of changes at the time. I didn’t think you’d be so fond of inheriting a pet to tend. I gave her to Laurette, but she was meant to be yours.”

He called the cat over by tapping his fingertips against the wood of the step. It streaked across the road and immediately rubbed against his legs as if he’d been gone on some long trip and she was happy he was home.

But that was just in his mind. That cat didn’t
really
exist anymore.

“You’re lying to yourself,” Maman said. The porch floorboards creaked as she tipped her chair back and forth, back and forth. “You know how it works. That cat’s as real as I am.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I stick around on this plane because it suits me. She sticks around because she needs access. She skips in and out of your realm as needed. It’s not so hard to find a cat to inhabit. Throw a rock and you’ll hit one.”

The midnight black cat mewed at Maman, and she did that dismissive hand wave again.

“Settle down. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Hey. Since you’re here, you want to tell me what you did to Gail’s ring?”

“Didn’t I when I gave it to you?”

“I think you omitted some critical information.”

She huffed, “Oh, nothing serious. I just fixed it so you can always find each other, whether you’re in the waiting room, the woods, or one of those stupid shopping malls she can’t stand. You’ll never be able to hide from each other.”

It was a good thing Claude didn’t see that as a problem.

“Why am I here? If I’m not dead, what is my status?” He figured he should ask the obvious question if she were going to be so forthcoming. What was his body doing while his soul was away?

“You’re in a bit of a coma. Traumatic impact is all. You passed out, and then your father upped the ante and damn near tore a hole in the universe. Damn, he’s fine when he’s mad. Mmm!”

“
Maman.” He groaned.

“Hush. It’s the truth. You think I picked him just because of his power? Please. A woman’s got needs. And he liked those needs very much, too, contrary to what—”

“Maman!”

“Since when are you a prude? I could have sworn your daddy was a sex demon.”

“Is he … you know.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. My concern wasn’t with him, though. It was with you. Coming to you this way is easy for me. I don’t have to rip time and space for you to hear me, because your consciousness is afloat. Easier to communicate.”

Claude grunted and looked down at his hands. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Oh, I imagine you’ll wake up, some lady who’s been waiting too damned long for you will kiss you silly, and then probably slap you for that dangerous stunt. After that, who knows?”

“No more predictions? Your seer didn’t foretell anything beyond this?”

She shook her head. “The prophesy is complete. Whether you and Gail choose to stay together at this point is your choice.”

“Who’d choose to live like this? To have chaos be her norm, when she could just reintegrate into her old life and resume being the quiet witch her family expects her to be.”

“Do you choose it?”

He opened his mouth, then closed them on his quick, visceral
no
. Did he want a white picket fence life, a tidy little yard, and no surprises beyond the occasional visitor?

No. He liked his messy life, minus all the demonic terrorism. He could sure as shit do without all that.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, and nudged the cat off his lap. She settled onto the step below and curled into a furry cat loaf, tucking her legs beneath her body.

“Well, give her a choice, too. That’s all you can do.”

The scenery around him flickered, colors faded.

Maman sighed. “You’re waking up.”

“I’ll guess I’ll see you during our monthly séance.”

“Take a month off. I know how draining it is, especially with all those folks waiting for you in the waiting room. Boy! Don’t you forget to deliver those messages, you understand me?”

“Yes, Maman.”

“And Claude?”

“Yes?”

“Your magic may be a bit different when you wake up. I can’t predict how.”

“Why would it be different?”

He didn’t feel any different, but then again, he wasn’t in his body at the moment.

“Because of what your father did, child.”

She vanished.

He must have, too, because the next thing he knew, he was looking up at an institutional white drop ceiling. He had problems drawing breath and his chest was so tight. Dark brown eyes loomed over him, two sets. One panicked, one calm.

“We had to intubate you to speed up your recovery, Claude. Relax. Slow your breaths.”

Ellery. Thank the gods for a familiar face.

“I’ll get that out of you. Cough for me.”

He did, and she slid it out.

Turning his sore neck slowly toward Gail, he saw the panic in her eyes. She grabbed his right hand and squeezed hard.

“Fuck, I need a cigarette.”

She gave him a light smack. “Asshole. You scared me. This fell off when you reversed that sigil, and I thought you were gone.” She turned his hand over and put his ring on his palm.

Closing his eyes, he groaned, and shook his head. “It’s yours,” he rasped. “Keep it.”

She curled her fingers around it and pulled it back. “Why did it come off?” Her voice was thick, eyes wet.

“Ah,
chéri.
It’s okay. I’m okay. I made a calculated risk. I gave everything I had to my father so he could deal with Ross. That’s probably why it came off. The magic was broken.”

“Oh.” She turned it in her fingers a few times and leaned her forearms atop the bed rail while Ellery puttered about.

Gail pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, studying him quietly.

“What,
chéri
?”

“I was wondering if you …” She cut her gaze to her sister, who looked up from the chart she was studying. Ellery slid it back into its holder and nodded.

“I’ll go rustle up a cup of ice chips for you, Claude.”

“Thanks.”

She slipped through the partially open door.

He lifted his right hand, curiosity choking him. With one little flick of his fingers, the door closed softly behind Ellery.

Well, that still worked. He snapped his fingers and the television set mounted in the corner crackled to life. That worked, too, then. But those were little things. Was he still capable of
major
magic? That he wouldn’t know until he was on his feet again.

Gail waved at the television and the channel switched.

He grinned. “Hey. Look at you.”

“Yeah. You were right. Once I knew I was capable of it, I tried harder to do things by myself. I’m not as natural at it as you, but Ellery’s impressed.”

“You’ve got to start somewhere.”

“Yep.”

“What were you going to say before Ellery fled for ice chips?”

“Oh.” Gail wrung her hands and kept her gaze pointedly fixed on the television screen. “When you were out, asleep—”

“Comatose.”

She cringed. “Yes. I had a couple of days to think. So much of what’s happened in the past couple of months has rocked my world.”

“And mine as well.”

“Yeah. I worried that when you woke up, you would take one look at me and decide I wasn’t worth it.”

“What?” He ground his elbows against the bed and tried to push himself more upright, but couldn’t manage it. His body was at least two days from recovery, if this malady was anything like the last time he’d had the juice blasted out of him. Instead of struggling to sit up, he reached for the bed controls and raised the back. “Why the hell would you think that?”

“Oh. Here.” She rooted through a bag on the chair at the bedside and pulled out that damned striped pillow, grinning. “I remember the stripes now. It came back to me when I was fixing a ball of Clarissa’s yarn that Candy Corn unwound. It was blue like your eyes, and I remembered the scarf. Took me a minute to remember what I was remembering it from. It was crooked and you wore it anyway.”

Gods
. He ground the heels of his palms against his burning eyes as she nestled the pillow behind him. Gail was Laurette. The same, but different. The differences mattered. They meant she’d survive. “Of course I’d wear it. You made it for me.”

“Yeah.” Her shoulders fell. “Look. I’ve been nothing but a pain in the ass for four, five, however many lifetimes, and in this one, my own ex-husband tried to use me as a supernatural battery and my great-great-whatever more or less sparked a brand-new feud with the supernatural types in Shaun’s family lines because she dealt with him. Agatha doesn’t seem worried because she knows how to play the game, but I feel like it’s my fault. I’ve reignited the old infighting bullshit. I’d understand if you didn’t want to give this a go. I’d be sad, but I’d understand.”

“Not your fault,
chéri
. They wanted this. Agatha will get part of the blame, but many will take advantage of the disruption. Besides, they’ve all been acting contrary to their natures for far too long. I think we’re long overdue for the old gods to come out of hiding and for us all to learn our capacities. Your entry into the magic world may have been turbulent, but that seems to be par for the course for our girls. Me and my brothers, I mean.”

Her laugh was soft, but sincere. Her smile brightened her eyes and loosened the tension of her jaw. “You do try to one-up each other with your disaster movie romances, huh?”

“Try to? No. Shit just happens. And Gail?”

“Yes?”

“When I was out, you were worried I wouldn’t want you want I woke up, and I was worried you’d run away because you were sick of all the messiness.”

She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and chuckled. “It’s a different kind of messy than what I’m used to, that’s for sure.” She let her hands fall to the covers beside his thigh, and sighed. “I like this messy better. I think I fit.”

“Yeah, you do.”

She was still eying that space on the bed, so he patted it. “Know where else you fit? Right here.”

She worked the railing down and climbed onto the bed next to him.

He groaned from the renewed shock of pain as she moved, pulling the rail back up and cuddling close to him. Once she was settled, he immediately felt better. She was like a salve for him. A balm for his frayed nerves and broken body.

She tossed her right arm over his waist and her leg across his legs, and sighed. “Sorry you didn’t get to see the light show of souls before you got knocked out. It was amazing.”

He tried to sit up again, and quickly aborted the endeavor. “What?”

“I don’t know what he did, exactly, but it was amazing. All those souls your father and I guess all his kids were responsible for marking, he ripped them back as if he was taking money out of the bank. I don’t know what happened to them after that.”

Claude’s chest deflated with a relief he hadn’t felt since he was seventeen. Guilt was such a heavy thing, and he was glad to be rid of some of it. Thank
gods
. His father had known what to do with Claude’s death magic even if Claude hadn’t expected him to engage in such a feat. “I imagine they got a proper judging,” he said. “Some may yet find their heaven, and the others … well, they may go back to whatever Hell they were in.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“I don’t know,
ma reine
.” He didn’t know it could be done, really, not even with all the years of researching he’d done on the topic. He’d assumed he’d been chasing a pipe dream.

“Maybe when he wakes up—
if
he wakes up—you can ask him?”

“Wakes up? What do you mean?”

Ellery padded back in holding a plastic up with a straw with a doctor on her heels.

Panic tightened every muscle in Claude’s body, and while he would have usually sprung to action, he just didn’t have the juice. He could feel the magic his father had given back to him settling back into him in bits, and his mother was right—it was different. It felt—
cleaner
.

The doctor put up his hands. “Don’t worry, I’m a wolf. Scott called me. No one else has been in here except me and my practice associate. I’m not going to kick your girl out, and I’m not going to ask you any stupid questions, all right? I’m just here to treat the human part of you and get you back on your feet fast. I don’t try to understand the way the rest of you works.”