Demon Possessed

Chapter 23

Tera nodded. “Yes, that’s her. Justine.”

Her first thought was, Thank God it wasn’t Greyson. Her second was to be a little ashamed that she couldn’t bring herself to be too upset. “What happened to her? Murdered how?”

“Oh, man. How did you miss all this?” Tera glanced at Nick, sitting very still in the chair at the desk. “Oh, right. You were sexing up the love god here or whatever. She was slaughtered, apparently. I don’t know much about it, really—it’s not like any of them are going to talk to me—but Roc told me what he could find out from Malleus.”

“Where is Roc?”

“Eating breakfast. Charged to my room. Hey, is Greyson still going to pay for all that?”

“I assume so. He said he would.” Megan closed her eyes. Apparently Tera’s moment of concern and sympathy from the night before was over. She supposed she couldn’t complain. She hadn’t even expected as much as she got. And really, the question about the room was a legitimate one. It was just bad timing. But since when had Tera been alert to social niceties?

She reached out to Roc with her mind, giving the invisible strand that connected herself to her demons a little tug, and waited for him to tug back. “I’ve called Roc. He should be here in a minute.”

She slumped back on the pillow. Now all she needed was a shower—and a new stomach and head—and for the last twenty-four hours or so not to have happened.

“Well, I guess he’ll tell you, then. But I think that FBI woman was involved.”

“What?” Megan sat up too fast. Spots swam in front of her eyes. She clasped her hand to her forehead in a vain effort to stop her brain from exploding and lay back down.

“Yeah. I got there in time to see them take her out of the building. She was all bloody. Apparently it was some mess in there. Hey, are you okay? You look a little green.”

“Yeah, I’m . . . I drank too much last night.”

“Ah. Here, sit up. I’ll help you.”

“Tera, this is—what do you mean?”

“Trust me. Come here.”

Megan obeyed, over the furious protests of her stomach. She was still in her evening gown, having barely managed to tumble into the bed and pass out after Greyson left the night before. It would need to be cleaned; no amount of hanging in a steamy bathroom would take care of those wrinkles.

Then again, maybe she’d just burn it. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to look at it again.

Tera raised her arms and muttered something; cool energy flowed through Megan, from her head down. The pain disappeared. Her stomach settled. She even felt more awake, although that might have been the coffee kicking in.

“Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks, that’s great.”

“Better” was relative, wasn’t it? Physically she felt fine. Mentally, emotionally, without the dubious distraction of the hangover, she felt as if she’d just dipped herself in liquid doom.

Tera looked over at Nick. “How are you feeling?”

He hesitated.

“Oh, come on. I promise I won’t play any evil witch tricks on you. Looks like you’ve been through enough.”

Tera got up and stood behind him, with her hands over his head. The look he gave Megan might have been comical any other time or had she not known what she knew about his childhood.

But he sat there, and after a few seconds the last of the swelling and bruising disappeared; another few seconds, and he no longer slumped under what Megan knew was the dreadful weight of a throbbing head. At least if he felt anything like she did, which come to think of it, he probably didn’t. He probably felt much worse.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Now—”

Another knock at the door. Roc; Megan felt him. “Come in.”

He materialized in the room. Obeying their compromise even though it really wasn’t necessary anymore. After a hideously embarrassing incident one rainy afternoon early on, she’d forbidden him ever to appear unannounced in bedrooms, no matter what time of day or night. So now he knocked first.

His little eyes immediately went dark. “What happened? You feel awful.”

“Greyson caught her making out with Nick,” Tera said.

Megan glared at her. “Thank you, Tera.”

Sarcasm was a waste of time with Tera. “You’re welcome.”

“Wow, really?” Roc looked impressed. “What’d he do?”

Nick glanced at her. She couldn’t tell if the look was accusatory or beseeching and didn’t wait to decipher it. “Never mind. What happened to Justine?”

“Oh, gosh. It was a mess. I mean, I only saw it after, but Malleus was one of the first there, and he told me about it. He said—”

“Wait, what was Malleus doing there?”

Roc’s beady eyes shifted a little, in a way Megan didn’t like.

“Roc, what was he—”

“He was walking past, he said. He heard a scream. When he busted the door, he found, and I quote, ‘Lady Riverside were all covered in blood, dead as I ever seen a dead woman, an’ that FBI agent were screaming wif blood all down ’er front an’ ’ands an’ all. Looked like she’d taken herself a baf in it, she did.’ ”

His impression actually wasn’t bad. Megan might have laughed if what he described wasn’t so horrible.

“But how did Justine die? Shot? Stabbed?”

“He’ll tell you himself, I guess.” Roc glanced at the door. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

“Here? Why?”

Roc looked uncomfortable. As uncomfortable as a small green demon could look anyway.

“Roc, what’s going on?”

Another knock at the door. Why did Roc look so unhappy? What was—well, only one way to find out, right?

She managed to get off the bed, almost falling when her long skirt tangled in her legs. It did feel ridiculous to be greeting visitors at nine in the morning wearing an evening gown. Her jeans and shirt from the day before were on the floor by the bed. Malleus was at the door, but what the hell. She scooped them up. “Let him in, okay? I’ll be right out.”

Tera had been being tactful, surprise surprise. The mirror showed Megan a woman who looked as if she’d been in a bar brawl with a vat of mascara and lost badly. Her hair stood straight up on one side; her skin had the shiny, pasty look of a dead pig under plastic wrap.

“Hideous,” she muttered, and set to work.

It only took a few minutes—she was aiming for presentable, not attractive, as she doubted that was possible—and she emerged with clean teeth and skin, her hair twisted up at the back and held with the long silver barrette she used when washing her face at night. She hadn’t wanted to use it. It was a gift from Greyson. But it was either that or let it hang limp and dead, and at least this looked tidy.

She thought it did anyway. But having three large demons look at her as though she had just lain down in her coffin made her wonder.

“What?” She looked down. Her feet were bare, but it wasn’t as if—

Oh. Maleficarum shifted his weight; she saw the box behind him, and her heart fell right down into those bare feet of hers. Peeking over the top edge of the cardboard was one of her books, one she’d left on the bedside table at Ieuranlier Sorithell.

“M’lady.” Malleus rubbed his right eye with his fist. “We brung—Lord Dante, he tole us to bring—”

“Why’d you do it?” Maleficarum interrupted. “Why’d you leave us? Lord Dante, ’e’s a wreck, ’e is. We thought, when ’e bought the—”

“What’re we s’posed to do now?” Malleus raised his red-rimmed eyes. “We dunno what to do!”

“Yeh,” Spud said, but without conviction. True to form, he looked more upset than the others, if that was possible; while she looked at him a single fat tear ran down his cheek.

She’d thought she was too dehydrated for tears herself, but apparently she wasn’t. They filled her eyes. She tried to wipe them away before they overflowed, but she didn’t manage it.

It was really happening. All of her things. Everything she’d kept at his place. It wasn’t a small box, but then it wouldn’t be, not with the contents of her drawers, the dresses in the closet, the hair products and toothbrush and . . . oh God, everything. He’d made them drive over there and remove every last vestige of her from his home.

He couldn’t even wait until he got back from the hotel. Couldn’t give it a couple of days and see if maybe time led him to believe again the things he’d started to say to her the night before about working it out. The things he’d started to say when he was interrupted, the things he’d never said.

And now apparently he never would.

She bit her lip, cleared her throat. The brothers looked ready to start sobbing. If she didn’t pull herself together quickly, they probably would.

“Thanks, guys. I ap—thanks.”

“Thought you was gonna come live wif us,” Maleficarum replied. “Was it summat we did? We din’t mean to, whatever it was, we can—”

“No! No, it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t anything you guys did. How could it be? You’re—you’re so great, all three of you.”

Malleus wiped his nose on his sleeve. “If we’re so great, how come you’re leavin’?”

“We’ll be better,” Maleficarum said. “We promise. I din’t mean to walk in when you was in the shower, t’other week. I know you don’t like when I do that. I din’t see nuffink, I swear it. I won’t do it again, I was thinkin’ you could put a sign on the door or somefing so I’ll know—”

“It’s your fault, then, Lif. She don’t want you always peekin’ in at ’er. I tole you before, ladies don’t like when you see ’em naked. Why can’t you quit bein’ so rude?”

“Yeh!”

“You was the one who spilled a drink on ’er, Mal! An’ were you what ast her if she were menstratin’, like it’s any of your mind! No wonder she’s leavin’ us, with you pokin’ your nose in—”

“She looked pale! I were only tryin’ to ’elp! To show ’er I cared, like. Shouldn’t I worry for ’er health?”

“Stickin’ your big Mary’s into ’er womb ain’t helpin’, ye gobshite! ’S personal business between her and Lord Dante! ’S all your fault!”

The sound of Tera’s helpless giggling brought Megan back to earth finally. This was not some bizarre after-school special, and to stand and watch it in a half-sick, half-amused stupor as she’d been doing was not the best way to deal with it.

“Guys! Guys, please!”

“And what about Spud? He tried that new eyeshadow on ’er last month, an’ it made ’er look like a consumptive! She don’t want to go out lookin’ like ’er lungs is about ter fall out!”

Spud said nothing, but his hands wrung faster than before.

“Guys!” She tried again. “Guys, shut up!”

Spud burst into tears. Malleus and Maleficarum simply looked injured; they huddled around Spud, with Malleus patting his back, and gave her baleful glances.

“I’m sorry. But this has nothing to do with you, okay? I promise. It’s nothing you did, it’s just . . .”

She resisted the urge to tell them that sometimes grown-ups just can’t live together anymore, but they still loved each other very much. Well, she resisted the urge because she might have been able to start the sentence, but the thought of the last phrase made her ill. She didn’t think she could manage to say it without crying, and Spud was doing quite enough of that.

From the depths of his black trouser pocket he produced an enormous white handkerchief and gave his nose a thunderous blow.

“We ain’t gonna see you again,” Maleficarum said. “Why can’t you stay? Don’t you want to be wif us?”

“This is so pitiful I may cry,” Tera muttered. Megan ignored her.

“Of course I want to be with you.” Now it was an after-school special on Coping With Divorce. Or it would be, if they were getting divorced, which they weren’t, because one had to be married to get a divorce, and they weren’t.

And obviously they never would be. She forced herself to ignore the stab of pain and focus. “But I— It’s not that simple. There are some things I want out of life and some things he wants out of life, and we just couldn’t find a way to make those things match up, is all.”

“Don’t make any sense.” Malleus grabbed Spud’s handkerchief—Spud didn’t want to give it up, and they tussled for a second before Malleus won out—and dabbed his eyes with a clean corner of it. “If you love ’im, why can’t you make them things match up?”

“I— We just can’t. Look, guys, it’s really— I really wish this wasn’t— This isn’t what I want, it’s just the way it is.” Her eyes stung. If she could just get through this, if she could just get them out of there, she could get into the shower and have her first solid cry of the day, the first of what she felt confident would be many.

“But ’e’s miserable!” Maleficarum wailed. “Up there now, ’e is, starin’ at nuffink! You go up there, m’lady, an’ you sit an’ you work this out. We need you, we do. Can’t you just try it? For us, you know.”

This was surely the most horrible morning of her life. Punishment for what she’d done to Nick; when she looked at it that way, she deserved this and more.

“I’m sorry, guys. I really am. But I can’t. He needs to come to me if he wants to work this out. It’s complicated. But trust me, I can’t go up there.”

Spud started sobbing anew. They stood there, the four of them with their interested audience—Tera had finally stopped giggling, but a quick glance showed Megan she was still smirking—for a long moment before Maleficarum finally nodded.

“Well. I guess if you say it can’t be fixed, it can’t be fixed. But m’lady, we’re gonna miss you. Don’t know what we’ll do wifout you there.”

“You can still see me.” She knew it was lame even as she said it. Her heart hurt too bad for her to care. It had finally hit her. She wasn’t just losing Greyson; she was losing them too. And she loved them, she really did. They drove her nuts sometimes, but they were family, and she wouldn’t see them again. They were too busy to visit her even if Greyson would allow it.

Before he’d come to her room, she would have been certain he would. Now . . . probably not.

But she said it anyway. “You can come visit me anytime. I’d love to see you.”

Then she did start to cry. The brothers crowded around her, patting her, stroking her. Spud offered her his handkerchief, which she declined. “I’ll miss you, too, guys,” she managed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

They nodded. Malleus took her hand. “Got anyfing you want us ter tell ’im?”

Only about a million things but none she thought would matter or make a difference. “Tell him I’m sorry,” she said finally. She couldn’t fault herself for her reaction to the lies, to the work issue or anything else. But she could fault herself for trying to use Nick to get back at him. For hurting both of them. “Just tell him I’m really sorry.”