Demon Possessed

“And please, forgive Nick. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it was so i

He glanced at her but didn’t speak.

“He’s your friend. You know that.”

“I’ll try,” he said finally.

“Thank you.”

Pause.

His smile wasn’t even a shadow of what it normally was, but it still made her heart skip. “Are we going to stand in the elevator all day?”

“What? Oh, no.” She turned and hit the button for fourteen. And up they went.

It probably wasn’t the best idea after all. Yes, there were things she needed to know. Yes, he was the best one to get the information from, especially if the others were spending the afternoon writing up wills—wasn’t that cheery and optimistic?

But being there in the room again, talking to him, it was hard. Incredibly hard. Difficult to sit on the chair instead of beside him. Difficult not to smile, to joke. The chair felt wrong beneath her; she was cold without him at her side. Her hands felt too big at the ends of her arms, wanting to curve themselves over his thigh or around his chest. It was as if he wasn’t Greyson. As if she was sitting speaking to a stranger who looked like him and sounded like him but was still a stranger.

They were both being so careful, so businesslike. As if their momentary ceasefire could crash at any moment like icicles over their heads and stab them.

Of course, if it didn’t, the angel probably would. As time went on Megan stopped wondering about Gu

“Of course,” he said finally, leaning back on the couch and closing his eyes, “this all assumes the damned thing hasn’t been tipped off and isn’t waiting for us. Which it probably will be.”

“Tipped off . . . How?”

He stretched one long leg out and rested his foot on the coffee table. His eyes were still closed; Megan let her own do what they’d been dying to do all day and wander freely over every inch of him. Over the sharp bones in his face, the almost—but not quite—beaky nose; it wasn’t a classically handsome face, necessarily, but at the same time it was. She loved to look at it, was all she knew. And with his eyes closed, when he couldn’t see her, she let herself look, knowing it would probably be one of the last chances she would get.

He opened one eye and glanced at her; she quickly looked away. “Because one of them hired the horrible thing, and they’ve probably contacted it by now.”

“What? But I thought it was here with the exorcist.”

“Oh, it probably is. But if someone got wind of its presence here and knew this meeting was coming up—which, of course, we all did—it’s quite probable he hired it.”

“But why?”

“Think about it, bry—Megan.” Oh, that hurt. “With the rest of us eliminated, the city belongs to whoever made the deal.”

“But we all sort of control our own subspecies or whatever. I mean, would your demons accept me as a—”

He flinched. Oh, shit. Right. “I mean, would Winston’s blood demons accept you, or Baylor, or me, or anyone else as their Gretneg? I thought it was, I don’t know, a breeding thing. Wouldn’t Carter, for example, simply take over your House if something happened to you?”

“It is a breeding thing, as you put it, to some degree. But it’s also a money thing, and that trumps everything else. Carter couldn’t take over right now. They’d never stand for it. But a Gretneg from another House, one who’d proved himself powerful enough? Who’d proved himself smart enough to eliminate the others? That’s the sort of masterstroke they’d appreciate. It would prove his ability to control things, his dedication to controlling things.”

It slipped into place then—well, not really. She knew. Maybe she’d always known and simply hadn’t wanted to ask. “Like when you had Templeton killed.”

He didn’t move, and she knew she was right. “Yes.”

Knowing and getting confirmation were two different things. Her head swam. It wasn’t a surprise, and yet it was. It bothered her, and yet it didn’t. She just sat, staring dumbly, unsure what to say or do or think.

After a moment he cleared his throat. “In my defense, he was trying to have me—us—killed first. The gun-toting witches, remember? The scene at Maldon’s house?”

As if she could forget. “I remember. I just . . . that wasn’t the only reason, was it?”

“I wanted to avoid it. It didn’t work out that way.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me? Before?”

He looked at her then, the old look, a half-smile and a faint gleam in his eye that made her knees weak even sitting down. “You didn’t ask.”

“Would you have told me if I had?”

The smile faded. “I’ve never lied to you. Not when you asked me a question outright.”

Part of her wanted to argue that. It didn’t really make much difference; lies by omission were still lies. But she didn’t have the energy. Didn’t want to.

She wanted it all never to have happened. Wanted to pretend, just for a minute, that it hadn’t. And if that wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, too bad.

“Justine did it for you, didn’t she? That was the favor. That was what she talked about at Templeton’s funeral.”

“Yes.”

“Do the others know?”

“I imagine so, yes.”

“And they approve?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really care.”

Something else occurred to her then. Something she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten, but she had; with everything else going on, it had faded away. “So do you think that litobora the other night, at my house, do you think one of my demons could have sent it? Roc, even?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I suspect we were right about that one. It’s one of us here. Probably the same one. It makes sense, if you think about it.”

“How?”

“You were able to escape the angel the other night. As a psyche demon—part psyche demon—you make the thing vulnerable. Psyche demons are pretty rare. Psyche demons that look human are even more so. When the wars were going on—we fought the witches on one front, and the angels decided to step in and see what they could do on the other—we didn’t have too many, and most of them were only part psyche demon, most only about a quarter. They weren’t as powerful as you are.”

“But psyche demons are better against angels.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just get the nonhuman-looking ones to help you? The ones people can’t see?”

“Because they’re very rare, as I said. Their populations are negligible, fractions of ours. They tend to be like Yezer. Small. Fragile. Or they’re uncontrollable. They’d kill the angels, yes, but they’d also kill anything else they came across. And because of the way . . . well, let’s just say most of them aren’t really fans of those of us who pass for human.”

“And someone knew this. They knew they’d have an angel here and that I could be useful against it.”

“I assume so, yes. Especially since they assumed you’d—well, never mind. The point is you’re useful, and that would be reason enough.”

“Then it had nothing to do with—” She snapped her mouth closed. This was much bigger than Winston wanting to get her out of the way of the marriage he wanted or Justine doing it simply because she didn’t want a human involved with demon business. If he thought that wasn’t it, she believed him.

“What?”

“Nothing. You really think this is why?”

He nodded.

“Who’s behind it, then?”

He shrugged. “I have my suspicions. Nothing concrete, but I’m fairly sure I’m right. I usually am.”

“And so modest too.”

“Modesty is overrated.”

This time they were both smiling; their eyes caught and held for a second too long.