Trick of the Light

Chapter 10

The House had their own jet. No surprise there. It was only a four-hour drive, but I suspected the last thing Mr. Trinity wanted was to be cooped up in a car, no matter how large and opulent, for that long with a bar owner. An annoyingly low-class bar owner with unsuitably tousled waves of streaked hair, equally unsuitable red jacket and pants, and the rude habit of demanding food and pomegranate martinis on an hour-long flight.

At least Eden House had connections far above and beyond the government, because I boarded their plane without showing ID and carrying my gun. And a few knives. I could’ve carried in a shotgun if I’d wanted. I didn’t want. I wanted another martini, but we landed before I was able to order one. Mr. Trinity hadn’t exchanged one word during the flight. His second in command, along for the ride, Jackson Goodman, was less restrained. “Greed and gluttony,” he said disapprovingly. “While we’re on . . .”

“A mission from God?” I smiled winningly. Old movies, I loved them. I’d been waiting a long time to use that line with Eden House.

After that, Goodman didn’t speak to me anymore while we were on the plane. It was for the best. He annoyed me, and I couldn’t spare the concentration right now to think of ways to annoy him back. Not that he didn’t think that I annoyed him already. Poor Jackie. He had no idea what I could do if I put my mind to it. But there was a time for everything.

We disembarked in San Diego to blue skies, the imagined smell of the ocean, and a slowly falling sun. I liked San Diego. I liked the cold, salty ocean, the wet sand, Old Town, the Gaslamp Quarter, the seals flapping and snorting seawater. It was a great place to visit, a great place to live if you could afford it, and apparently a great place to drop a bread crumb. That face, that name, their plans . . . someone had visited the aquarium in Vegas and stared at a particular shark through the glass—and that someone had ended up here. They had good taste.

Maybe I could pack in a minivacation while scooping up a tiny portion of the Light. I ignored the diesel fumes on the tarmac and turned toward the ocean. It wasn’t in view, but I could imagine it. Now, if I actually could get to see it and eat seafood on the docks, it would be a great day. A fabulous day.

I wasn’t holding my breath.

“Where is the next step?” Mr. Trinity said behind me, his voice the drip of a frigid icicle. I’d be willing to bet his greatest regret was that he hadn’t been born in the time of the Inquisition or witch burning. Not that Eden House was Catholic . . . they were an order of their own making, unknown by the public, unaffiliated, and were around before BC clicked over to AD. Ancient indeed.

“I’m not exactly sure. Sharks aren’t as verbal in their communication as people, even with the Light’s help. It took me a while to get his name, Butch—so imaginative—but I can’t get a last name. But I did get this general location. . . . I know he’s here. Somewhere. I’m just not exactly sure where.” I saw it again, a blurry vision of the man through water and a thick layer of glass. Almost unwillingly he’d put his hand up to the glass and the shark had rested its blunt nose on the other side. The trail to the Light had passed. The picture was waving in my head like seaweed—a man, not a very attractive one. He looked like the kind of man who’d toss a hair dryer into his ancient mother’s bathtub to get a measly inheritance—just enough to buy a truly gorgeous guitar. He’d find a band, then, who would take him. They’d all see. I could see the frayed towels, the rubbery flowers on the bottom of the tub to keep the elderly from slipping. A big ratty hair dryer from the eighties bought for twenty-five cents at a yard sale. A smirking grandson who’d kill a neighborhood cat if he could catch it. Sparks flying. The lights going out.

I’m known for my imagination.

Then again, knowing he was in a band wasn’t my imagination. The shark told me that, the Light told me that, the same as it told me to go here. So it could be that Grandma had shuffled off her mortal coil just as I pictured it.

Butch’s smirk in the aquarium had been combined with dyed black hair, a narrow face, weasel eyes, and silver canine teeth flashing in an uneasy grimace as the smirk slid away. Hard to blame him. It wasn’t every day a shark shoved something into your brain. Drugs, it had to be the drugs; I could hear the echo of the thought through the Light. He moved away from the glass, snarling and showing those inlaid silver ca nines again. See? Look at me. It’s just a stupid shark. I’m not scared of it or the cold, saltwater thoughts in my head.

I saw him brush by a man with a two-year-old tucked in his arms. The little boy looked at the silver teeth and whimpered. “Bogeyman.”

Oh, sugar, I thought with sympathetic amusement, not hardly. Here’s hoping that’s the worst thing you see in your life, that pathetic monster wannabe.

“We need to go that way.” I pointed. “Toward the Gaslamp Quarter. He’s there somewhere.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Goodman spoke up stiffly for the first time in forty minutes. Dressed in a suit an undertaker would’ve found darkly grim, with washed-out blue eyes and hair neither brown nor blond, he barely looked like a human being at all. More of a wax figure that didn’t make the grade and was tossed to molder in Madame Tussaud’s basement. In every way, he was far more frightening than the wannabe with the black hair and silver teeth. That guy had an identity, as pathetic as it was. Goodman looked like an identity vampire. Like he would suck up the essence of everything that made you you, to fill up the hollow figure he was . . . fill up what he was missing inside. What was he missing? From the looks of him and the shimmer of what seemed like almost a vacuum around him, that might just be every single thing that made a human human.

“I’m not a bloodhound. Get me closer and hopefully I’ll get more specific. Or the Light will.”

By the time the hired car took us to the Gaslamp Quarter, I did have it narrowed down. Unfortunately it wasn’t in one of the great seafood restaurants, but rather the looming presence of Petco Stadium. There was a concert coming up in two hours and the teenagers were already rowdy, shouting and cursing good-naturedly as the line curved around the stadium.

Goodman flashed his ID—CIA, FBI, Homeland Security; whatever Eden House provided him with got us through the door and past the crowds. I took the lead, a glowing thread reeling me in. I walked through the circular halls and past security guards and bodyguards, all who stepped back as if whatever laminated card Goodman continued to flash was kryptonite. Several bands were playing here tonight and our goth emo-imitation monster from the aquarium was no doubt in one of them. Finally reaching a door relatively untrampled by headset-wearing men and women who seemed frantic just for the love of the emotion, I opened the door without knocking. No one would’ve heard me anyway. It was a party. Drugs, alcohol, and underage girls galore. I grabbed a beer from a table and waded in. I looked over my shoulder to see that Mr. Trinity and his entourage had decided to wait in the hall out of the crush. Wimps. Demons they’d take on. Sweaty, half-naked, puking groupies were a little too much for them.

I moved through the room, ears deafened by bad music—this band’s music. Had to be. I came to an unconscious guy on the floor and bent for a closer look. Not my guy, not Butch. I stepped over him and kept going. I finally found the weasel on a couch with four women, two sandwiched on either side of him. He looked unbearably smug and rapacious. He thought he was a predator surrounded by his prey—a ferret with small, silver fangs.

Since the couch was full, I plopped on his lap and flashed him a smile, wide, sexy, and stupid as they came. “Hi.” I had to fit in with everyone else for the few seconds this was going to take. I needed him to hold still. The passing of the way to the Light was dis orienting. I didn’t need him having a shark/aquarium flashback and freaking out. Then I’d have to knock him unconscious and that was more work than I wanted to invest in.

“Hey,” he said back, trying to fake being bored and cool during our scintillating, monosyllabic conversation.

I reached a hand up and touched his hair as if I were going to comb my fingers through the limp strands. Instead, I clamped my fingers on the curve of his skull and let the shining bit of Light pass into me. It poured out of the drug-soaked brain into mine. It was like before, running to the edge of the cliff and jumping, arms spread. Flying for a split second, and then falling. Falling and falling. Forever. On top of whatever drugs he was on, it had to be ten times worse for him than for me. His mouth dropped open. He gurgled, then started to yell. I slammed my hand over the chapped, cracked lips of his mouth. Kissing him would’ve been more convincing to those around us.

Not in this lifetime.

I closed my eyes and let the Light flash through my brain around and around and then curl up like a cozy cat. If the Light had emotions, this tiny molecule of it was probably glad of the new, less drug-addled home. The ferret screamed under my hand. No one heard him. It was too loud, my hand was too tight, and the alcohol had flowed like a river in this room.

“Sharks and guitars,” I whispered to him. “Which is real? One or both?”

His thin chest heaved and the breath died against my palm. I pulled my hand away and he gagged in disbelief, “I’m high. I’m so high.”

“Depends on what standards you’re going by.” I moved off his lap, one of the better shifts in location I’d made all day, and headed back for the door.

“We’re on. Let’s go!”

Someone from the band actually said it. It was like a rockumentary, a very bad, fake rockumentary. I stepped to the side as the room emptied in a rush, all the bad music lemmings flowing out into the hall. I waited until they were gone and followed. Trinity, Goodman, and the others were waiting, completely wrinkle and rumple free. Untouched. Quick of foot, force field of holier-than-thou superiority—either way it was impressive.

“I have it,” I told Mr. Trinity. “It’s not telling me anything yet, but I have it.”

“Good,” he said, as if he expected nothing less. There couldn’t be too many failures among the agents of Eden House. Trinity wouldn’t tolerate it, which is why he didn’t suspect Griffin and Zeke of being double agents. He couldn’t imagine anyone going against his authority, especially not for the likes of Leo and me.

I leaned against the wall and folded my arms. “Give me a second. I’m still a little dizzy.”

Goodman looked impatient, Trinity was impassive, as usual, and the minions were as blank of face as they’d been throughout the entire trip. I bowed my head and studied the toes of my boots for several minutes before I said, “All right, I’m ready.” I straightened, stepped away from the wall, and started down the hall. Goodman was ahead of us with his magic card in hand, parting the Red Sea. We were almost out when I heard the band start tuning up out on the field. I turned and saw them on the stage set in the grass. Singer, bassist, drummer, and my friend, the guitarist. He did have a gorgeous guitar as I’d seen, the one the Light had said Grandma had paid her life for. It was red. Of course I was sure he had lots of guitars, all colors. He just happened to pick my favorite color. Wasn’t that ironic?

What was more ironic was when his fingers touched the strings, there was an arc of white fire that arched him up on his toes with his back bowed and his head thrown back with tongue jutting forth. Not a pretty sight. Fortunately, the roadies were bright enough not to touch him, but it was a few seconds before they managed to turn off the electricity. They tried CPR, but he was gone, just like Grandma had been.

“Damn,” I murmured to Mr. Trinity, “a real act of God. I’d never seen one before. You guys . . . sometimes Hell takes too long, huh?”

He looked at me blandly, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about, but that symmetry? Grandma and grandson going out the exact same way? Justice. It couldn’t be denied, and I certainly wasn’t going to. There was power behind this. Real power, the kind to be respected.

Trinity didn’t bother to discuss it, turning and walking away. His men stayed behind me, keeping me in sight. Keeping me in line, they thought. One seemed to think I wasn’t moving quickly enough and gave me a push. I whirled quickly enough that none of them had a chance to slide a hand inside their jackets. I punched the one who thought he could put his hands on me uninvited hard enough to knock him flat. I turned back and kept walking. “You shouldn’t take things for granted, especially not women who work in bars. Sometimes we have to act as our own bouncers,” I said over my shoulder. “Sometimes we have pervert dates.”

“And sometimes you even face demons.” Trinity slowed until I moved up even with him. “And that,” he said flatly, “is something civilians don’t do.” Not shouldn’t do or couldn’t do, but didn’t do. Mr. Trinity and the House of Eden had plans for me after this was all done. It wasn’t so far-fetched. The firstborn wiped out, the cities destroyed, angels had been God’s warriors in the Old Testament—Eden House had taken it on themselves to do that job now, and no middle-management Gabriel or Raphael had bothered to tell them differently.

While Trinity must have known every word of the Bible, I thought he rarely spent much time mulling over the love and forgiveness in the New Testament. Whatever he thought he was going to do to me, none of it would give the man a second’s pause or a single night’s bad sleep. After all, wasn’t it God’s will? Did anyone know that will better than Trinity? That doubt couldn’t exist in his mind. I knew that for a fact. He didn’t need to check it out first with any dagger-feathered angel; he already knew. Superiority, arrogance . . .

Pride. We all knew whose fall that went before. Mr. Trinity knew his Bible, but did he know his Bible?

Probably not.

Yes, Trinity no doubt had plans for me or just one in particular. A swift and ruthless one. It was entirely too bad for him, because he simply wasn’t man enough for the job.

“Hawkins and Reese may have foolishly trusted you, but I know differently. Whatever your reasons for killing demons, they aren’t ours. You don’t know the greater good.“

It was far too cuddly to call your employees by their first names, but I so rarely heard their last names—Zeke Hawkins, Griffin Reese—that I often had to think twice when I did hear them, just to remember who was being referred to. It was easy to forget. Just like Trinity would be quick to forget them once they were gone. His plans for them weren’t any better than the one he had for me. Regardless of whether they were true double agents on his side and not mine, watching Leo and me for Eden House and ready to help drag us in at any moment, their fates still wouldn’t have been any better. Working with outsiders? That was worse than failure to Trinity. That was treachery, intended or not.

Griffin and Zeke knew they were in trouble, knew they were playing with fire, but I wasn’t sure they knew how far their boss would go. When all was said and done at the end of this, they were the same as demons to their House. We all were.

The greater good, as they saw themselves, didn’t want us.

When I got home just after nightfall, the place was empty. The bar was closed and dark. Leo had hung his version of a Gone Fishing sign on the door—black marker on white cardboard that said GO THE FUCK AWAY. There are men of few words and then there are men of perfect words. Leo was the latter.

I let myself in, waving at a car parked across the street that held two Eden House agents. Trinity’s cover for Zeke and Griffin, and a check because it never paid to trust anyone too much, not even your own “double agents.” Our Mr. Trinity was so untrusting.

Flipping on the light behind the counter, I looked for a note. Not that Leo and I usually kept that close an eye on each other. We knew we could each take care of ourselves, and our social lives weren’t crossing paths. Leo’s taste in women—except for me—didn’t lead to double-dating. Amazons and bimbos with IQs half their cup size. Leo’s bad taste aside, this situation was a little different. I’d asked him to watch Zeke and Griffin. If he had left, there’d be a good reason. There’d be a note.

There was. It was held down by a bottle of bourbon and a shot glass. That wasn’t a good sign. I read it and sighed. I was lucky Leo had applied the antibiotic ointment to my back that morning, because it didn’t look like he’d be here to do it tonight or to bunk on the couch again. I folded the note on the words Family emergency. The dog is loose. Back tomorrow. In a way though, it was a good sign. Leo’s family was reaching out. It might only be to use him, but that was better than the past years of not speaking to or acknowledging him at all. And that dog was mean, mean enough that no one but Leo could deal with it, but mean or not, it was family too. They’d simply have to catch it before it ate anyone.

“Want to share the bourbon?”

I looked up to see Griffin on the stairs. “Still hanging around, you two?”

“Zeke still thinks I’m off my game. Besides, how could Zeke and I send Trixa reports back to Eden House if we’re not here to actually watch you?”

He still looked tired, gray smudges under his eyes. No, Zeke wouldn’t be happy with that, and an unhappy Zeke could rarely be budged. “So your fellow demon hunters outside don’t have a clue, then, I take it?” I retrieved another glass and poured him a shot as he sat down beside me.

“No.” He rolled the glass between his hands, then tossed it back. “You and Leo are damn good at keeping your thoughts and emotions under wraps. The agents outside aren’t as strong as Zeke and I. No one in the House is, and you two are the most self-possessed people I’ve come across. You don’t give off anything you don’t want to give off. I didn’t pick up on you while I was upstairs until you walked through the door. Normally I can pick up on someone I know or a demon a good three blocks away. Even now I’m not sure exactly how things went in San Diego, except you’re not disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed. You’re right there.” I drank my own shot. “As for giving off thoughts and emotions, having a psychic and an empath hanging around the place will teach you better. Especially when it comes to Zeke. He wouldn’t see the harm in watching my last date in his head like it was rent-a-porn.”

“Your last date was that good, eh?” He held out his glass for another.

“Since the last man in my bed was you, drooling and unconscious, with Zeke nobly defending your virtue, not especially.” I poured, then stretched out the kinks from the two plane rides. My back protested and I gave myself another shot of my own. Purely medicinal.

“I don’t drool.” He tried for outrage, but with his weariness couldn’t quite pull it off.

“Maybe not, but your virtue did survive the night intact,” I pointed out, putting the bourbon away. It might be medicinal for me, but it would only make Griffin more tired. I didn’t need den mother Zeke down here trying to kick my ass.

“Thanks for that, Zeke,” he said glumly.

“He was very cute—in an unsocialized-pit bull kind of way.” I patted him on the back. “Now, pack up your things and move them down to the office. The two of you are sleeping on the couch. I want my bedroom back.”

“I don’t think the two of us are going to fit on your couch,” he said dryly.

“Spoon.” I gave him a light shove toward the stairs. “Or one of you can sleep on the floor. It all depends on how secure in your masculinity you are. Either way, I’m sleeping in my own bed.”

“It’ll be hard to get Zeke to give up all that decadence, but I’ll do my best. And no one is that secure in their masculinity,” he finished as he headed for the stairs.

“I wish I’d taken a picture last night. Curled up like puppies in a basket,” I lied without a qualm. As for Zeke, his appreciation of my décor went as far as cleaning weapons with it.

“You are truly evil.” He disappeared, but I heard the repeated, “Evil,” as he went.

Several seconds later someone added from behind me, “I like that in a woman. Malevolence is good too. Do you have that on tap, Miss Trixa?”

I swiveled on my stool, automatically training the gun pulled from my waistband directly at Eli’s head. He was leaning against the end of the bar and was every inch as I remembered him. Gorgeous and charismatic. Also deceptively deadly, and that didn’t bear forgetting. I didn’t need the take-out box of noodles he held in one hand to remind me.

He used the chopsticks in his other hand to point at the container. “Want some? Best in the world . . . now.”

Was making the ultimate sweet-and-sour worth your soul? I didn’t think so, but apparently the restaurant chef had. “No thanks.” I kept the gun pointed. “If I want food of the damned, I’ll just microwave a Hot Pocket.” Griffin and Zeke didn’t come running down the stairs, shotguns in hand, which meant Eli was as powerful as he said he was—or at least equally as powerful as Solomon. He couldn’t be “seen” by a psychic or empath, no matter how good. He was simply better. Stronger.

“Suit yourself, and I’m assuming you usually do.” He stabbed the chopsticks into the noodles and set the cardboard box on the bar. “I don’t have to ask if you found the next step to the Light. I can see it, glowing around you like a halo, which, by the way, is a huge turnoff.”

“Sorry about that.” Not quite. “Do you have any information for me or are you here for the ambience?”

He looked around at the scarred tables, dartboard, small pool table, TV mounted over the bar and shrugged. “Add a floor of knives and air of pure unholy fire and it’d be just like home. Except for the TV. We don’t have satellite yet. The boonies are always the last to get it.” He peeled off his jacket and tossed it over a stool. “Actually, I’m here to dance.”

Leo’s radio behind the bar came on and jumped from station to station until a slow song came on. “Once again, before your time,” he observed. “A flash from the past, but it’s easy to move to . . . vertically. Horizontally too, if one were in the mood.”

“Which I’m assuming you always are.” I considered the situation, then replaced the gun in the back waistband of my pants. If he wanted to play, I could do that. In fact I was rather good at that. Demon good? I guess we’d have to see. “And the halo?”

“I’ll close my eyes.” He gave me that smile, far more warm and intimate than a monster had any right to, as he held out a hand. I took it as he looped an arm around my waist, deftly avoiding my gun. We moved to the music. “Amazing. You can dance like you’re all grown-up.” He whirled me around slowly.

“I’m thirty-one. I’ve been to a dance or two. Hit the floor at weddings with more than one grandpa.”

“Ouch.” He tilted his head down to look at me. “Are you going to hold a million years or so against me?”

He smelled nice, which wasn’t fair. There was no clichéd whiff of the traditional sulfur and brimstone. He smelled clean—like soap and wet spring grass with the faintest trace of ozone. Of lightning and a thunder-storm in the distance, ready to wash over you to bury you in rain and shake the ground like an earthquake. I could play all right, but he wasn’t an amateur by any stretch of the imagination.

“I’ve dated older men before. Age doesn’t matter.” We did another slow turn as I added, “It’s the killing innocent people and the taking of souls I have a problem with.”

“I’m sure they weren’t all innocent. I mean, really, what are the odds of that? Three out of ten might be mostly innocent, I’ll give you that. But all of them? Statistically impossible for the human race.” He dipped me and smiled as he hung over me. “And surely you’re not claiming innocence, Trixa. I see things behind your eyes that tell a different story. A far more interesting story, by the way. Innocence is so boring.”

“Speaking of boring, if you don’t have any information for me, then that’s all you’re doing.” I mirrored his smile, my back twinging from the dip. “Boring the hell out of me.”

“You do make a demon work for his due.” He straightened, pulling me upright, and let go of me. The radio shut off. “When did this demon kill your brother and where? The one you want so badly?”

“If you need that to do your job, you’re not half as good as you say you are.” I sat back down. My back was healing, had healed quite a bit in the past few days, but the dancing hadn’t done it much good. I’d thought of having Whisper heal it when she healed Zeke, but it was just scraped and torn skin already mending on its own. Zeke’s pain had been out of control. My pain was more of an inconvenience. When you find inconveniences too much to handle, then you’ll find life to be exactly the same.

“Oh, I’m good and I’ll find him, but I could find him more quickly if you’d be a little less of a bitch and a little more cooperative.” He said “bitch” the same way he would’ve said “sugar” or “honey” or “darling”—as if it were an endearment. He really was something.

“You’re a straight talker, I’ll give you that. And only that.” I retrieved the bourbon, poured him a shot in my glass, and slid it down the bar about four feet to him. “I’m not here to help you. You’re here to help me . . . that is, if you want the Light. If I make things too easy for you, Eligos, who’s to say you’ll wait for me to find the Light? Who’s to say you won’t try to take me from Trinity and put me on your own leash?”

“Who is to say?” he echoed blandly before he swallowed the shot quickly and smoothly, sitting down himself. “I might be transparent to your eye, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be easier and quicker for both of us.”

“Quick or easy—it doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to happen,” came a new voice, deep and rough.

Which was all we needed to make a party.

Solomon.

He stood by the door, not that he’d needed to use it. His gray eyes were slits. I’d been right when I’d guessed that Solomon wouldn’t care for Eli any more than Eli cared for him. “This is my territory, Eligos. This place is mine. She is mine. You can leave now, whole and intact, or you can leave it in a spray of blood and flesh. A pool of rotting fluid on the floor.” The gray blazed to silver, the first physical hint of demon I’d ever seen in Solomon—the first true loss of temper.

“He’s a cranky son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Eli turned over the shot glass and tapped it once, to all appearances bored. Certainly the farthest thing from intimidated without actually dozing off. “Tell me you never found him entertaining. No one’s taste could be that bad. The brooding. The smoldering. He’d fit in fine on the soap opera channel or a vampire movie, but real life?” He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Real sex? You’d be better off with a Ken doll. Same personality, and probably the same equipment.”

I’d felt differently when Solomon had paid me that uninvited visit several nights ago, straddling me in bed. And I do mean felt it. But true or not, it was enough to tip Solomon over the line from temper to rage. I’d never seen him angry; I’d only seen the imitation of it. Solomon didn’t care that much about his club and our arson of it. He played as if he had emotions, because that’s all Solomon had ever done with me—play. With Eli he was serious—the kind of serious that would end with demon blood and entrails on my floor, neither of which could be put right with your average household cleanser.

The fight wasn’t a surprise. The surprise was Solomon pulling a gun from under his jacket and nailing Eli with several shots midchest. The two that should’ve hit him in the head missed and for one reason only, because Eli could move that fast. It was a flicker of brown so quick that my eye only caught an afterimage of it. Caught it from the floor, by the way, where I was crouching below the bullet path. I was good, but I wasn’t a fool.

“Please. You’re kidding, right?” Eli brushed at the front of his shirt that had turned black with demonic blood. “A gun? Oh, I get it. You don’t want the girlfriend to see you for what you really are, warts and all. Or should I say scales and all?” He didn’t move from the stool. Instead he grinned, gloating and smug. “I have news for you, Solomon. She likes that. There’s a whole level to her you didn’t even suspect.” He looked back at me as I waited ready on one knee with my own gun drawn. “What do you say, Trixa? Want to see the real thing fighting over you? You want to see scales and fangs and everything we truly are as we rip each other to shreds?”

First, it wasn’t me they were fighting over. It was the Light. If I forgot that, I’d be another puddle on the floor that Leo would have to Clorox the hell out of. Second, it appeared my system of hell-spawn checks and balances might go all the way to balancing each other out altogether. That wouldn’t do me any good when it came to Kimano’s killer.

Third, Zeke wasn’t going to let any fight go down that he wasn’t part of. He came down the stairs in a rush, followed by Griffin. Both had shotguns, but only Griffin was polite enough to tell me to duck right before they fired. Both went for head shots, the surest way to put a demon down; both missed. And that, that was unheard of. If nothing else, it showed that all the demons we’d killed in Vegas, except for the black ones that had taken Zeke down, were nowhere near as powerful and inconceivably quick as the two that were in my bar now.

Eli swiveled on the stool to take in the two partners. The slugs that should’ve blown through his skull had instead blown through one of the wooden posts that went from counter to ceiling. “Pets, Trixa?” he drawled. “You should have them neutered. Makes them less likely to piss on your rug.”

I ignored him, ignored Zeke and Griffin who were reloading, and looked at Solomon. “What happened to the two guys in the car out front? The two who were watching me.” Why hadn’t they come running at the shots as Zeke and Griffin had?

The silver darkened back to gray and his eyes focused on Eli. “I imagine he killed them. That’s what he does, Trixa. I take the willing souls. He takes it all.”

Eli shrugged. “Right, as if you don’t. But if those two angel ass-wipers are dead out there, Solomon did it. He likes easy targets, the fish-in-the-barrel types. Lazy, lazy. I prefer a challenge.”

“Liar.” Solomon had let his gun fall to the floor. That he had even tried the weapon meant he hadn’t known Eli was equally as good as he was. He’d suspected maybe, but he hadn’t known. From the animosity between them, it couldn’t be their first battle, but it could be their first one in human form. Solomon could’ve thought he’d have the advantage there for some reason, or that he’d simply surprise Eli with something as outrageous as an actual human weapon. If that were the case, he’d been wrong.

“Of course I’m a liar. I’m a demon, just like you, Solomon. Or have you played human so long, you’ve forgotten what you really are? Pathetic.” He turned his gaze on me as I slowly stood from my crouched position. “If those men out there were sliced and diced by yours truly, I wouldn’t deny it. I’d brag on it. I might lie about most things, like all good demons, but I never lie about my body count or the notches on my bedpost. Some things are sacred. Right, darlin’?”

“I don’t notch my bedpost.” I put my gun away. It wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. “I cut off their tackle and hang it from my rearview mirror.”

“Damn, you must taste great,” Eli said with admiration. The trouble with that admiration was I didn’t know if he thought I would taste great sexually or in a culinary sense. Probably both.

“Go. Get out. The both of you. I’m tired and going to bed. Alone.” I stood up. “And one of you take the bodies and the car with you. I’ve had my fill of cops around here.”

“Bossy, bossy, bossy,” Eli sighed as he slid off the stool. “Rather fun being on the receiving end of it for once.” He passed a hand over his shirt and it was pristine again. “I’ll take the car. Like I said, the Chinese doesn’t stay with you. Not when you have an appetite like mine.” If anyone was going to have the last sexual innuendo, it was going to be Eli. He waved a hand and went to the door and through it, passing so close to Solomon that their shoulders brushed. Solomon briefly bared his teeth in a snarl; then his eyes met mine intently for several seconds before he silently disappeared.

“I should’ve opened a women’s shoe store. Demonic visitors don’t just drop into a women’s shoe store.” I went and locked up.

Zeke was studying his shotgun with a furrowed brow and an annoyed lift of his upper lip. It was his equivalent of a man finding his wife in bed with the mailman and the local Jehovah’s Witness before falling to the floor, shouting, “Betrayed!” to the skies. Griffin took in the expression and elbowed him. “Don’t be so melodramatic.” He looked at me. “We’ve never been up against anything like them before. I’ve never seen demons move like that.”

“No.” I turned out all the lights but one. “So no going after them alone.”

“The demon was right. You are bossy.” Zeke transferred the disgruntled look from his weapon to me.

“I’ve babysat your scrawny asses for ten years. I’ve a right to be bossy,” I retorted, shooing them toward the back office and the couch. “Now, go cuddle.”

“Four years,” Griffin muttered as he moved into the back and out of sight, but I heard the last words. “You’re only four years older, Trixa. It hardly merits a salute.”

“Cuddle?” Zeke looked after him, then back at me, a mildly panicked expression replacing the aggravation. “We have to cuddle? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to cuddle.”

I patted his cheek as I passed him on the stairs. “You never know until you try.” I made sure I locked my bedroom door behind me in case a pissed-off and forcibly cuddled Griffin stormed up. It didn’t happen. It made me wonder who slept on the floor or who was the big spoon and who was the little spoon. When I woke up the next morning, it was to see Zeke standing at my bureau holding my picture of Kimano.

“When did you get so good at picking locks?” I would’ve woken up had any stranger tried to enter the room. But I could sense Griffin and Zeke. The psychic and empath thing. The raising them for a few years thing. A hundred other things. Take your pick, but I knew when they were around, the same as I knew when Leo was around, and the building still felt empty. He hadn’t come back yet.

“Since you taught me.” He continued to study the picture.

“You talk like I’m not always on the side of the good and noble law. Like I’m an actual criminal. Shame on you. I fed you fried cheese to your heart’s content when you were a boy.” I pushed my hair back and climbed out of bed. Still in silk, but a knee-length nighty this time. I did love silk beyond all things. I walked over and took the picture frame and folded it against my chest. I had a world of deceits in me, too many to count. My wandering and slightly unlawful ways called for them, but that protective movement I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.

“You don’t look alike,” he commented.

It was perceptive of him. The hair, except for my streaks and his being straight to my curly, and the skin color, were both on the money from what you could tell from a black-and-white picture, but, no, we shared none of the same features. “Our family’s that way. No peas in a pod among us.”

He then picked up one of my knives that had been lying close to the picture, opened a drawer, and began to polish it with a pair of my underwear. And from the tilt of his head he knew exactly what he was doing and the degree to which he was annoying me. “Leo told us a long time ago a demon killed your brother. He told us you didn’t like to talk about it.”

“Leo should’ve kept his mouth shut and what exactly do you think you’re doing now?” I said grimly as I snatched the panties away from him with my other hand. Revenge for the cuddle remark, had to be. He normally wasn’t suicidal. Homicidal, yes, but not suicidal. At least not since he was fifteen, the scar on his neck reminded me.

“Talking about it.” He flipped the blade and caught it. “Griffin says you’re too stubborn to realize how dangerous those two demons are. He says you’re so focused on revenge—on your mission—that you’re blind. He says you’re acting like me.” He looked down. “Nice legs.” He bent over slightly to get a better look.

I kicked him hard in the shin with the heel of my bare foot. It probably stung me more than him, but it was worth it. I grabbed the knife he was still tossing as it was midair in another flip. Holding it by the point, I tossed it at my headboard, nailing a cheetah in the eye. The panties swung cheerfully from the blade. I’d keep it there as a reminder. These things were temporary. Once the killer was dead, I was gone, and if it felt like I was leaving two other brothers behind . . . I’d get over it. Because for all his irritating ways, let me count the thousands, I did love Zeke. And I loved Griffin. It was something I never counted on. Leo would leave too. He was staying only because of me and my mission, as Zeke called it. What would happen to them then? They were men, all grown-up, but there was Eden House and then there was the truth. . . .

I sighed and pulled him down by his shirt until I could rest my forehead against his. “Who better to tell me if I get too Zeke-like, then, right? But trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

“You are too Zeke-like,” he countered immediately, resting a tentative hand on my back. “But I trust you.”

“Honestly?” I smiled. Absolute, full trust from Zeke . . . that was huge.

“Right behind Griffin.” He paused a beat before adding, “He tells me I should.”

I groaned and reached around to swat his butt. “Ass,” I repeated fondly before turning him and pushing him toward the door. “I’m going out to shop for the bar. Plus, I have no desire to see your boss today. If he shows up asking where we go next, tell him I still don’t know. I still haven’t sorted it out yet. That guy was so high I’m having trouble telling where his hallucinations begin and the Light ends. As for the two missing guys out front . . .” I shook my head. “Tell them the truth, but just say it was Solomon. They already know about him and how he likes to hang around here and harass me.”

“Demonic dick,” he grunted. “But he’s good. Too good. You really are being too much like me. Can’t you stop it?”

I didn’t answer, only shoved him out the door and closed it behind him. But the truth was I couldn’t stop it, any more than he could have. Griffin’s training, it wouldn’t work on me, and Leo knew better than to try talking me out of it. I had my mission.

Because I didn’t have my brother.