Demon Possessed

Chapter 9

“Why didn’t you drink to Templeton?” she asked him later, once they were back in their room.

“Hmm? Oh. It’s not appropriate, since I took his place. It would be disrespectful.”

“Really? Huh.” Gently buzzed but more tired, she turned around so he could unzip her gown and waited for the little bra-strap tug. It always made her smile, but tonight she had something more serious on her mind too. “So . . . I still want to call Tera.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

She almost fell over. “What?”

“What?” He hung his tuxedo shirt up and reached for his belt. “If a witch came after you tonight, getting Tera involved is the smart thing to do. She may have information we don’t. She may be able to track him somehow in a way we can’t.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I’m not playing around here, darling. Someone is trying to kill you. I don’t care with whom we have to deal or what we have to do, we’re going to find out who it is.”

He’d turned away from her while he spoke, slipping off his pants and putting on a pair of plain black ones, but the emotion behind his words came through loud and clear just the same.

She stopped with her silk nightie above her head, trapped in her arms. “You . . . you really mean that.”

“Of course I do. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“No . . . I just, I’m just surprised.”

Maybe it wasn’t fair of her, but she was. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she was important to him; she knew she was. But important enough for him to purposely involve witches in a demon situation, especially with all the other Gretnegs there? To purposely deal with witches at all?

Especially Tera. She may have been Megan’s best friend—well, no “may” about it—but Tera also had a sister; actually, she had three sisters, but only one of them mattered. Lexie. And Lexie mattered because she’d dated Greyson briefly, and it had not ended well. Something about a spell on his car and a near-death experience. Megan didn’t have all the details. All she knew was, talking about Lexie in front of Greyson amused Tera, who was not the most empathetic or socially adept person in the world.

So to encourage her to call Tera . . .

“You really are worried,” she said. Her nightie swirled around her ankles, its black silk the only thing moving in the room.

He glanced up at her, then looked again. Standing still, his hands loose at his sides. “Yes.”

“Me too.”

His lips quirked. “I can imagine you would be. Now call Tera. I’m going to order some room service. Do you want anything?”

She did, actually. It didn’t seem possible she could be hungry, especially with her notoriously weak stomach. But she was. Hungry for food. Hungry for all sorts of things. It occurred to her then that she really had been at death’s door and had emerged unscathed—at least physically. That she had won and that there was joy to be had in that winning.

It may have been awful. It was also normal, as she would have counseled any one of her patients who’d come to her with the same sort of issue. Human nature was what it was.

In the morning, she had no doubt, she would feel awful again. But being there, alone in the room with him, looking over a menu full of hopefully delicious food—she’d had too much experience with room service to assume that it would be of the same quality as found in the dining room—and anticipating eating it with him in the big white bed . . . She was just glad to be alive.

Even with someone after her. Even with the FBI—shit.

“Greyson, I saw that FBI agent earlier, in the hall. She was the disturbance, you remember, the one I left for.”

“She’s here?”

She nodded.

“Shit.” He sat down on the bed, still holding the thick leather menu he’d grabbed. “Okay, that’s—actually, that might not be such a bad thing, come to think of it. If she’s here alone—”

“No, hold on.” She sat beside him. “She is here alone; at least she was in the hall alone. But the witch, or whatever he was, attacked her too. I heard her scream. That’s when I left the ballroom, but she seemed okay. Just kind of spacy, if you know what I mean. She was wandering down the hall. I started to follow her, and that’s when he—that’s when he grabbed me.”

He squeezed her arm, hard and fast, like an involuntary muscle spasm. “She walked off on her own?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t really make sense, does it? If I’d been attacked, I wouldn’t just stroll away.”

“No, you’re right.” He was silent for a moment, staring at the menu. “But a witch might very well have bespelled her. She might not have felt whatever injury he gave her—if he did injure her—or even remember what had happened or why she was there. Which could be good for us, if you think about it.”

“Greyson.”

“What? I can’t help the fact that it would benefit us all if Little Miss G-Man would go away or the fact that if he did erase her memory, he simply saved us the trouble of doing it ourselves. But . . . damn.”

He shook his head. Megan, used to his look of concentration, waited.

“If he did kill her,” he said. “If he injured her badly enough to kill her, and she’s found dead here, that could be a problem for us.”

Megan sighed and stood up, stripping the nightie back off her head and reaching for the jeans she’d had on earlier. He was already opening the bedroom door, calling for the brothers in the suite’s other bedroom.

It only took a minute to get Agent Reid’s room number from the highly susceptible desk clerk, and another minute to obtain her key as well. She was on the fourth floor, in one of the smaller single rooms.

“Figures,” Greyson said, fitting the key into the door. “The FBI can’t be bothered to pay for a decent room.”

By Megan’s standards the room was decent; better than decent, actually. It certainly beat anything she’d stayed in at one of the chain motels dotted along the highways. But then, she hadn’t grown up in a Georgetown mansion watching her parents dress for inaugural balls either.

Malleus and Maleficarum entered the room first, with Spud staying outside to keep watch. Roc was still questioning the demons who’d allowed Agent Reid past them earlier to see if they’d seen anything, and would meet them when he was done. With something to report, Megan hoped, though she wasn’t counting on it.

The room was empty. At least empty of humanity, empty of a body. It was far from empty in every other way. Fast-food containers littered the unmade bed; papers littered the floor. Clothes hung off the back of the chair and lay in limp clumps on the floor.

“Ugh.” Megan wrinkled her nose and stepped over a greasy hamburger wrapper. “It smells funny in here. Like—”

Like blood. Not demon blood. It lacked the faint tangy, smoky scent of that, the whisper of power carried even in the fragrance. Megan had never sampled any demon’s blood, although several times she’d allowed hers to be sampled, once under duress. But she knew the way it smelled. She was attracted to the scent of it; it was part of her demon powers, part of what the piece of demon in her chest gave her.

This was human blood. Old human blood too, in that it was drying.

Megan turned with the others to see the bathroom and grabbed Greyson’s arm so hard she thought her fingers might break off.

Blood everywhere. It streaked the mirrors. It dotted the floor. A sodden towel hung over the edge of the counter, a blotch of violent crimson against the white tile.

“God.” Her voice shook. “There’s so much of it.”

“Not that much, I don’t think.” Greyson’s fingers covered hers. “A little blood spilled can look like a lot. And there’s no body. No blood outside this room.”

“How is that possible?”

He shrugged; she felt his muscles move through his shirt. “I guess she cleaned herself up.”

He and the brothers moved through the room, picking up papers and stashing them in Malleus’s big black bag. Greyson looked at her. “These are her files. Information on us.”

“Right.” Or wrong, rather, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t much she could say about it, except that she thought they’d better hurry, but they were moving quickly enough.

“So where is she? If she’s not dead, and she’s not here . . .”

Greyson pulled one last sheet of paper from under the desk and handed it to Malleus. “I have no idea.”

“Maybe them down at the front desk’d know,” Malleus suggested. “Maybe she went by there.”

That’s when Megan saw the other thing, the thing they’d missed. She bent down and picked up the key ring, half hidden under the bed by the fallen sheet. “She left her room key, so unless she has another set . . .”

Her eyes met Greyson’s. Faint circles etched the skin beneath his; she imagined hers looked even worse. He nodded. “Let’s go back down to the desk.”