A Demon Does It Better (8 page)

“Who—?” Lili thought of the bottle of wine she had planned to crack open to accompany whatever she pulled out for her meal.

“Friends,” Cleo said brightly as the doorbell chimed.

Lili hurried to the door and squealed with delight to see two old friends on her doorstep.

“We come bearing dinner.” The lovely blond and her male companion held up white Chinese take-out cartons.

“Love the outfit, babe.” The man grinned and winked at Lili.

“Rea, Adam!” She hugged them both and stepped back. “I am so glad to see you.” The empath and witch were the two friends she’d missed the most after she had left San Francisco.

“You look good, Lili.” Adam carried the containers into the kitchen. “Hey, Cleo. We brought something for you too.”

“Ooh, I love you.” The cat purred her pleasure.

“You’ve got the place looking great,” Rea said, looking around the family room furnished with comfortable-looking pieces meant for lounging, not just for looks.

Lili loved the one-story cottage she had purchased back in the 1930s when she returned to San Francisco for a visit. Over the years, she had allowed friends to use her house when they needed a refuge. It had been updated over time, and now it was time for her to add personal touches to her space.

This time she arranged the living and dining rooms into one large family area and updated the kitchen with modern appliances but kept the vintage touches that melded seamlessly with the contemporary.

She pulled out a bottle of wine and filled three glasses.

“I love the colors you’ve chosen,” Rea said, unerringly finding plates and flatware and carrying them to the nook that held a small table and chairs. Twinkling lights on the patio gave the backyard a faery garden feel.

“I wanted a touch of home.” Lili enjoyed the deep blues, the bright yellows, and the splashes of coral that surrounded her.

“Can we eat?” Adam begged, transporting the cartons to the table. “Hungry witch here.”

They dug their chopsticks into the Kung Pao chicken, clams in black bean sauce, and lobster Cantonese, along with barbecued pork, fried rice and bacon-wrapped shrimp.

“What did you get Cleo?” She frowned at the cat’s now loaded dish.

“Peking duck,” Adam replied, using his chopsticks to snare a spring roll.

“Tastier than that cheap king salmon you picked up.” Cleo narrowed her eyes at Lili.

“And very fattening.” The witch bared her teeth.

“How does it feel being back at the hospital?” Rea asked. She refused to use her empath skills to read a friend unless expressly asked to. She usually joked she was off duty.

Adam, as a water witch, was happiest when at the beach, where he felt more in tune with the tides, than he was living further inland. Rea teased him that it was a shame he wasn’t born a selkie.

Lili knew a lot of surfers liked visiting Adam’s magick shop, since his charms could keep them safe while riding the waves, and fishermen also availed themselves of his skills. The two witches had dated briefly, years ago, but then decided they were better off as friends. Now Adam and Rea were a happy couple, and Lili was pleased she had been able to match them up.

Like her, they chose to live on the outskirts of Inderman, settling on a lovely Victorian Painted Lady home built in 1882 across from Alamo Square.

“It feels the same, yet it’s not, since there’s not that many staff members who were there the last time I worked at the hospital,” she replied. “The doctor in charge is very old-world medicine, and the Director of Nursing is a dragon-shifter.”

Rea wrinkled her nose. “Dragons always have way too much attitude. We had one running our counseling center for a while. We held a party the day she left.”

“Do you really think you can discover the truth about Sera and the others?” Adam asked.

Lili had contacted her friends before she returned to San Francisco and confided her plan, asking for their help. Both tried to dissuade her from her task, but she refused to back down. She was glad they were available as backup.

“I can try,” she admitted. “But there’s so much else going on there that’s odd.” She related her time below in the asylum and described its inhabitants. She glossed over Jared, since she still wasn’t sure about him. She also brought up her meeting with Amy in the dungeon space and what she learned about the ghost.

Rea’s eyes darkened with tears. “That poor baby, trapped in such a place. Why would some creature kidnap her and bring her across time?” She shook her head, clearly hating the idea of a frightened child dropped into a foreign situation.

“I don’t know. I need to talk to one of the Guides at the hospital about helping her cross over, hopefully to join with her mother. But I’m afraid I’ll need someone special. If the right person isn’t at the hospital, can you help me find someone?”

“Of course,” the empath said without hesitation.

“She said a big black bird took her?” Adam asked, pulling a small leather-bound notebook out of his shirt pocket.

Lili nodded.

“I’ll see if I can find anything out for you.” He jotted down a few sentences in his notebook before he returned it to his pocket.

“Thanks, Adam.” Lili sighed. “The hospital has changed quite a bit since the last time I worked there. Now it’s as if the place exists in two opposite worlds. Upstairs is up-to-date, light, airy, and filled with so much healing magick, you feel energized just by being there. But if you go below, it’s like being transported backward to a dark, ugly past, where mundanes viewed insanity as a sign of evil and locked their family members away in attics, cellars, or worse. If they had the money, they’d put them in an asylum where the patients were treated no better than something you’d scrape off your shoe,” she said grimly. “No wonder I preferred treating the usual diseases of the supes. Just being down there for a short time was draining.” She emptied her wineglass and refilled it. She didn’t believe in finding courage in alcohol, but there were times it pacified the agitation that made her feel so antsy. This was one of those moments.

Over the next two hours, the three friends ate and talked and laughed. For the first time in the past week, Lili felt well and truly relaxed.

She looked at the couple and saw a relationship that weathered storms and only grew stronger from their trials. She knew that Maura, Adam’s mother, hadn’t liked Rea in the beginning, thinking the gentle-hearted empath wouldn’t be a good match for determined, rigorous-thinking Adam. She was glad they proved the old witch wrong. What Lili saw was a love that only grew over time.

After her friends helped her clean the kitchen and left, Lili settled in bed with her Nook, as Cleo stretched out on the other pillow.

However, the book she’d begun with such anticipation didn’t hold her interest. Visions of the demon Jared kept her attention wandering. She finally set her e-reader on the bedside table and snuggled down under the covers.

Even
after
all
these
years, was Jared still as dangerous as Dr. Mortimer claimed he was—or was there something else going on?

***

The world was wild and desolate, and the village was quiet save for a few restless dogs housed near the living quarters.

He’d been at this place once before, when earlier generations had played and lived here. The girl he took at that time had been tasty and provided him with his sustenance. But, over time, his hunger had increased, and he moved among the world and all its planes more often.

Magick was strong here. He could feel his pores taking it in the way dry skin soaked up water. The strongest came from one house, where a young girl radiated it like the sun.

He stole through the cottage entrance and made sure that everyone inside would sleep soundly while he took what he required.

Perhaps he would use the shadows, so he could remain for the days he needed to view their death rites, to send the girl into the next world.

It was always sad when a young one perished, but she also had much power in her blood. Power he needed. The way he saw it, her demise was really for the greater good.

***

“I’m glad we’re finally able to have time for a chat, Dr. Carter.” Director of Nursing Arimentha Garrish occupied the large chair behind her desk in the same way that the queen of the universe commanded her royal throne. “It has seemed that every time I’ve requested your presence, you have managed to find something to occupy your time.”

“Well, as you know, it’s been very busy lately. Full moon and all.”

Lili mustered up a brief smile while wishing for mega air-conditioning. Due to the head nurse being a dragon-shifter, she preferred keeping her personal space at a toasty 110 degrees, unconcerned if her visitors roasted in the process.

The dragon-shifter fingered the file folder in front of her. “I like to have some time to chat, Dr. Carter—a chance to get to know our doctors here.” Her dark eyes glimmered.

Ah, there’s that royal we.
Lili kept a brief smile on her lips.
Never
let
them
see
you
sweat, even if the room is like a damn sauna.
“Of course, and I’m always happy to help in any way I can. As you know, we’ve been very busy in the ER, not to mention my work below, treating the emotionally troubled patients.”

Miss Garrish’s nose wrinkled. “While I realize such a ward is needed, even among our kind, I do not consider it a suitable work place for females.” She eyed Lili sharply. “Even if they think of themselves as powerful witches.”

Lili swallowed her sigh. She had fought prejudice about her sex, even among the preternatural communities, for so many years that she should have been immune to the bias.
Not
gonna
happen
if
the
speaker’s a know-it-all megareptile
. She was relieved that, at least, the shifter wasn’t a T. rex.

“Miss Garrish, I am a healer first and foremost, whether the damage is physical or mental,” she spoke in her firm, no-nonsense doctor voice, one that had left more than a few nurses in tears. “It doesn’t matter that I have a vagina instead of a penis. I would think that you, being a female, would also see it that way. I know that you wouldn’t have this position unless you worked very hard for it and had the knowledge to back it up. Just like you, I have labored hard to be the best healer I can be. I am here to treat the suffering of our patients, no matter what they are or what they’re going through. It doesn’t matter what my sex is or what I am. All that matters is that I have the power to ease their pain.”

The Director of Nursing didn’t even blink, and Lili could swear she didn’t even take a breath.

Damn.

“How accustomed are you to getting your way?” The elder’s eyes shot black-and-gold sparks, revealing a mere hint of her temper.

“Not as much as I’d like,” Lili freely admitted, knowing the shifter would sniff out if she said even one word that wasn’t true. “And I only truly battle for what I feel is right.”

Miss Garrish tapped her long, silver-tipped nails on her desktop. Lili wondered how many victims knew those claws intimately and how many survived.

“I like to think I can offer some hope to the patients housed below,” Lili said. She knew she was taking a chance, since she wasn’t sure what kind of relationship Miss Garrish had with Dr. Mortimer.
Don’t go there, Lili. You’ll only sear your brain if you think the worst.
“You have to admit no one should have to look on those ugly ogres every day if they can look at a smiling face.”

“They do have their uses,” Miss Garrish murmured, with a hint of distaste in her tone proving she wasn’t all that fond of Turtifo and Coing either. “Just because you have the title doctor in front of your name does not mean you aren’t subject to my rules.”

“Of course.” Lili really needed to remain on this female’s good side—if the Director of Nursing had one, that is.

“One other thing.” The elder speared the healer with a dark eye. “Your familiar.” She sniffed as if she just used an odious word.

Good
thing
Cleo
wasn’t here. The cat would be having a royal hissy fit.
“Cleo isn’t my familiar. She merely lives with me,” Lili corrected. “Many of us don’t have familiars. I’m one of them.”

Miss Garrish waved her hand in dismissal. “Whether or not it’s a familiar, it still should not be wandering the halls of this establishment. Perhaps we do not follow the same health codes as the mundanes, but we do have our standards.”

Oh
yes, a very good thing Cleo wasn’t here.

Lili reached into her pocket and pulled out a small scroll. “Cleo is a certified therapy cat, warranted free of any disease,” she stated, placing the parchment on the desk. “She is also excellent working with traumatized young. She makes them forget their illnesses. And even if she is a long-haired feline, she doesn’t shed.”