Demon Possessed

“Oh, there’s one here. I saw it this morning.” Greyson lifted his glass, nodded at a servant. Megan wondered if he would be able to stand when this hellish meal finally reached a conclusion.

Of course, if he wasn’t, little Leora would probably be perfectly happy to help him back to his suite. Now, there was a cheerful thought.

What the hell had Justine done for him? Just before Christmas . . . he wouldn’t be where he was . . .

Templeton Black had died just before Christmas.

But that was a suicide. He’d left a note and everything. Tera said Vergadering didn’t suspect any foul play. Surely if there had been reason to suspect any, they would have suspected it. They suspected just about everyone, of everything.

What difference did it make? It was over between them. Done. He wasn’t her concern anymore.

She wondered if any sentence she’d ever uttered to herself had hurt more. No, it didn’t seem so. That was a personal best in the pain and misery department.

“You saw it?” Winston’s face—always susceptible to coloring, the way all blood demons seemed to be—went bright red. If he’d had a beard, he would have looked like a very angry Santa Claus. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“I believe I just did.”

“Yes, but—yes. I would have thought you would tell us sooner.”

Greyson shrugged. “I would have thought you’d have mentioned your rubendas going missing sooner, Win. Want to explain why you didn’t?”

“That’s different. That’s private business.”

“You thought there was a rogue demon in the city, and you didn’t warn the rest of us.” Baylor glared at Winston and Gu

“We weren’t sure what it was,” Gu

Justine licked whipped cream off her fingers. “That was totally irresponsible.”

“And totally our business,” Winston replied. “Have any of the rest of you had issues? No? Then it doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me. You let the rest of us take a risk.” Justine’s impressive bosom heaved.

“We take risks every day. We’re taking a risk even bringing this up. What if it’s one of you, trying to start a war?”

“If it is one of us,” Justine said nastily, “it’s probably Greyson. He’s the one giving us all some bullshit story about an angel.”

“He’s not.” Here, at last, was something Megan felt qualified to comment on. “I saw it too. And I—I felt it last night. It attacked me.”

She wanted to look at him, to see if she’d done the right thing. She refused to let herself. What she said and did wasn’t his business anymore either. Which was the way he wanted it, as he’d proven the minute he’d said “I’ll think about it” to Winston.

Winston, who looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “You felt it? You can feel it?”

Of course. Not “It attacked you?” Not “Are you okay?” But “You can feel it?” The others leaned forward—all except Greyson, of course, who was fiddling with his cell phone—making her feel as if she was in an interrogation room from an old TV cop show, with a bright naked lightbulb in her face.

“It feels like an absence,” she said finally. “Like an empty space. I think the Yezer can feel it too, if they focus.”

“Particularly if it travels on the psychic plane,” Greyson added. “But I don’t think it’s doing much of that.”

Gu

“I think it’s found several people to use as shields.”

“Like who?”

He hesitated. “It seemed particularly interested in that reverend person over at the Windbreaker. That’s where we saw it. Megan seemed to think it was feeding on the gullible little crowd, which makes sense, if you think about it. Zealots like that, desperate to believe . . . ripe for the picking, really.”

“Perhaps I’m in the wrong business,” Baylor said.

Greyson raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you are.”

Another uneasy hush around the table. Megan waited for someone to call him on his rudeness, but no one did. Fu

Win cleared his throat. “The point is, I suppose, that this angel is here. And it may be after us. Is that correct?”

There were general nods around the table.

“I have my Yezer on the alert,” Megan said.

“But we don’t just want to sit and wait for it to attack us. We want to find a way to solve the problem,” Win said. “Since you and Greyson saw it, why don’t you two see what you can come up with? We’ll all think tonight, and we’ll meet in the afternoon to go over plans. You two will have something for us then, I hope?”

Okay. Maybe nobody else felt awkward—she was fairly certain Greyson was incapable of feeling anything at that point—but she certainly did.

But she was pretending nothing was wrong. Vulnerability was not her friend in this situation, and she wouldn’t show any. So she smiled, as if that was a great idea, and nodded, and very carefully avoided looking at Greyson.

But she felt him watching her just the same.

Chapter 21

The view out her window wasn’t anywhere near as lovely as the one from the fourteenth-floor balcony she’d been on the night before, but she didn’t give a shit. She looked out the window but didn’t really see; through the glass more buildings sat silent, watching her right back, their edges blurred.

Everything was blurred. After that hideous meal had finally ended, she’d grabbed Nick and two bottles of bourbon from the bar and hauled all three back to her room. Her puny, lonely little room.

Greyson had left with Leora. She’d put her hand on his arm, and they’d left together. The fact tore at her like a flesh-eating virus.

She could have called Tera. Maybe she should have. But somehow thinking of Tera’s sympathy—damn, Megan had always known there were genuine feelings under there somewhere—combined with her bluntness and . . . whatever. No, if she were honest, the way she was always trying to get her patients to be, she’d admit she didn’t want Tera because she wanted someone more co

And hell, she had to be with Nick anyway, because he apparently still wanted to guard her. So why bring Tera in, so they could snipe at each other and flirt while she watched? If there was a worse way to spend an evening than nursing a broken heart while two very attractive people threatened to have angry sex in front of her at any moment, she had no idea what it could be.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “Think the Yezer will be able to track down the angel?”

“I imagine so.” She looked out the window again. This time the view seemed colder; she pictured the angel out there, watching her. Saw it again falling over the edge of the roof, relived the moment when she’d thought she killed it and couldn’t remember how it felt. It was all overshadowed now; she had much darker memories taking up space. It didn’t seem right that Greyson loomed so much larger, so much higher, but she couldn’t change it; she’d thought she killed a man, yes, but she’d done it to save her own life. And, as much as she tried not to think of it, he hadn’t been the first person—or whatever—she’d killed, had he? She’d killed the Accuser. She’d killed Ktana Leyak.

Had Greyson killed Templeton Black? Or ordered him killed? He’d been ready to ask Winston for the death of Orion Maldon, because Maldon had threatened them—had conspired against them and tried to end their lives.

But why would he openly discuss having Maldon killed with her and not tell her about Templeton?