Demon Hunting In the Deep South (30 page)

She met the man’s luminous, dark gaze, and the polite refusal died on her lips. She was falling, drifting like a leaf on a pool of silence that separated her and the dark-eyed man from the rest of the world. Panic fluttered its wings against her breast and died. It was useless to struggle, a dim voice told her. He was too wise, too old, too powerful.

“Who are you?” she whispered through trembling lips.

“I am Sildhjort,” he said, sweeping her into his arms and onto the dance floor.

Or perhaps they were not on the dance floor at all, but spinning beneath a diamond-crusted sky on a cobweb of moonbeams. No, her befuddled brain corrected, she was in a forest under a canopy of trees, sunlight dappling the loamy earth as they danced to the tune of a noisy brook. Faster and faster they twirled, and all the while he held her gaze with his. He was very handsome, her fair-haired captor, with a laughing mouth and eyes as dark as peat. He wore a black frock coat, matching trousers, and a silver vest. The tie at his throat was a splash of color, bright as blood against the dazzling white of his shirt. He moved with the easy, fluid grace of a wild animal as he spun her around the dance floor, and he was strong, very strong, his arms and shoulders taut with muscle beneath the fabric of his long coat.

His form shifted and blurred, and now he was naked and glowing like a star, a shining silver star.

She was dancing with Shiny Naked Guy, Evie realized, the strange, antlered creature she’d almost run over that afternoon. Except that tonight he was Mostly Naked Guy, she amended, noting with dizzy gratitude that he’d donned a loincloth for the occasion. A loincloth made out of something shimmery, like moonbeams.

Out of all the people here, he’d asked her to dance. It didn’t make sense. Nothing that had happened in the past two days made sense. But, for some reason, the fact that she’d drawn the notice of this bizarre godlike being with a penchant for going commando and a rack that would make a bull elk give a bugle call of envy bothered her the most.

“Why?” she asked, unable to squeeze more than the one word from her throat. Her body was shaking, and she felt light-headed and out of breath. Muddy was right. Something was coming, something big. She could feel it hovering over her, waiting to pounce.

“You called to me, sweet child. I felt your distress.” He dipped his head closer to hers, his hoary antlers sparkling in the light from the chandeliers. “Remember, and come into the fullness of your power.”

He kissed her on the cheek, and
wham!—
somebody dropped a piano on her head.

Chapter Thirty

T
he pain knocked Evie to her knees. Jagged flashes of light pulsed at the edge of her vision. Her stomach churned, and the noise and the smells in the room intensified.

The mother of all migraines, she thought, closing her eyes as pain lanced through her.

Someone called her name. The sound was muffled and hard to hear over the roaring in her ears. Voices and images assaulted her. Ansgar smiling as he loosed her hair the first day they met in the flower shop, chiding her for hiding her fire beneath an ugly gardening hat. Ansgar murmuring words of love and desire in his sorcerer’s voice as they had delicious, delirious sex beneath the stars on a clear summer’s night.

She shook her head, not caring that it made her head hurt like the devil. No, they hadn’t had
sex
in the woods. They’d made love.

. . . love you, Evangeline,
he’d said, over and over again. And she, poor stupid, lovesick fool, had believed him.
Love . . . love . . . love . . .

“No,” she said.

Clutching her head, she struggled to her feet, no easy feat in the Scarlett gown. She was winded, gasping for breath like she’d run a marathon. Both shoes were gone.

So was Sildhjort. She was alone on the dance floor surrounded by a sea of shocked, disapproving faces. Lenora watched Evie from the fringe of the crowd, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She’d flipped off her come switch and the magic fan, and the string dress was covering her parts. Mostly.

Let them look. Let them
all
look. She was trapped in her own thoughts. The memories rushed over her, shuffling through her brain like playing cards in the hands of a Las Vegas dealer, visions of her and Ansgar in their “before.”

She saw them again at the Grand Goober Ball. They were dancing and she was happy, so happy. She wore an exquisite green and gold gown, a gift from
him.
Ansgar, temptation itself in a tuxedo, so handsome he made her teeth ache. The scene switched, and she and Addy cowered beneath a tree in the park, looking on in shocked disbelief as Ansgar and Brand battled creatures out of a nightmare. Felt again the fear that had gripped her, suffocating and paralyzing as the two warriors fought, followed by a floodtide of relief when the demons were defeated. Relived the awful moment and her helpless terror as the wraith rose from the bloody body on the ground and entered her, settling in her bones like cancer.

She remembered her sick certainty that she would never be whole again, not as long as the demon possessed her. That hard as she might fight, she would succumb to evil, her body and soul sucked dry by the demon consuming her from within, a fate worse than death.

She heard herself beg Ansgar to kill her and watched the calm, removed expression settle on his face as he raised his bow and fired. Saw the silver flash of the arrow slicing through the air and felt again the starburst of agony as the arrow pierced her breast.

Falling, falling into nothingness. She’d awakened with a heavy spirit, a curtain between her and the rest of the world and a weight like Stonehenge pressing on her heart. Dragging through the endless, leaden days, alone and bereft and not knowing
why,
without even the comfort of her beloved fairies to ease her suffering. Endless nights of hot, tortured dreams of a man’s hands and mouth teasing her flesh, bringing her to the brink of release. Only to have it all vanish when she opened her eyes to face another dreary day.

She remembered. She remembered it all.

“Evangeline?”
Blip!
Ansgar did the demon hunter bop and stood before her, his expression concerned and wary. “Are you well? You were dancing alone. ’Twas the thrall’s effect, perhaps?”

Ah, so he hadn’t seen Sildhjort. None of them had, she realized. They saw her twirling like a maddened marionette by herself, her feet moving faster and faster until the straps of her heels broke and her shoes sailed across the room. How funny she must have looked, dancing alone. She began to shake. The migraine, no doubt, though her head no longer throbbed and the flashes of light were gone.

“You left me,” she said to Ansgar.

“Only for a moment to speak with Lenora. The Directive—”

“You said you loved me, and you left me. Alone, all these months, with nothing but phantom memories of you, like an amputee missing a limb. Only you took my heart instead of an arm or a leg, and you left me here to die without it.”

He was getting it now, the fact that she remembered, and his expression was desperate. Good, she’d been desperate since he left, though she hadn’t known why.

“I thought it best—”

“You thought it best?!”

She was shouting. She’d never shouted at anyone in her life. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm down. She was trembling like she had a fever.

“You left me,” she repeated. “You told me you loved me, and you left me.”

The words echoed in her brain, those magical, wonderful, totally false words.
Love you, love, love . . .

Liar. She should have known.

He took a step closer. “Evangeline, listen to me. I was wrong. I was a craven fool to leave you. You turned my universe upside down, and I was petrified of the things you made me feel. So, I ran. I told myself I could forget you. But I could not, though the gods know I tried. I volunteered for extra duty, battled and defeated scores of demons, but nothing could defeat my love for you. Not even the emptying embrace of a thrall could erase your memory and I—”

“What?!”
She was shouting again.

The life-size oil portrait of Mr. Collier’s grandfather, Zephaniah John Collier, split down the middle and fell to the floor, and the microphone on the stage flew through the air and crashed against the back wall, narrowly missing the drummer.

“Dude,” Addy said, covering her ears. “Ixnay on the all-thray.”

Ansgar had sex with someone else? Evie’s chest hurt and her heart hurt, and she wanted to smash something. So this was what rage felt like. It felt scary. It felt
good.

She rubbed the aching spot where the arrow had entered her chest. Ansgar had shot her in the heart. She should be dead, but she wasn’t.

He’d saved her, like Brand had saved Addy from the demon. She was no longer human. The world reeled and righted itself. The weeks of not eating without ill effect, her record-setting gorge fests with Ansgar, the sharpening of her senses—deep down she’d known all along that she was different. She’d been too miserable to care, because of
him.

“You changed me,” she said, staring at Ansgar in anger and disbelief. “You changed me and left me here to wither and die without you, while you went off and had your jollies with another woman.”

“Not another woman,” Ansgar said, “a thrall, to try and forget you, but I—”

“But dying wasn’t really an option for me, was it? I’m Dalvahni now. Thanks to you, I can grieve
forever.
And you knew. You took everything when you left, even the fairies. How could you be so cruel?”

He flinched as though she’d hit him. She
wanted
to hit him, to pound her fists on his chest, to make him understand her anguish.

“I know.” His mouth twisted with self-loathing. “I hate myself for it, for all of it. But I came back. I was gone but a few weeks. I could not stay away. All these months I have stayed in the shadows, watching you, longing for you—”

Evie didn’t want to hear anymore.

“And you,”
she said, rounding on Addy. “My so-called best friend. You let me walk around like a dead thing for months and didn’t tell me. How could you?”

Addy lifted her shoulders in a helpless gesture. “I thought he’d cut and run for good. I didn’t want to hurt you. I was so worried. You’ve been like a zombie.” She shook her head. “I was afraid if you remembered, it would be too much, and I—”

“You knew.” Evie glared at Muddy and Mr. Collier, Bitsy and Shep. Lenora was there, too, still studying her like she was some kind of bug. Evie ignored her. “You all knew and didn’t tell me.”

Ansgar had betrayed her and so had her so-called friends, every last one of them. People she loved like family, people she trusted.

The scream boiled out of her, from some angry, hurt place deep inside her. It went on and on, shattering the heavy chandelier and cracking the ornamental medallion on the ceiling.

The storm broke with wind and lightning. It was raining turtles inside the Collier Grand Ballroom. People shrieked and ran for cover. Ansgar remained; Addy and Brand, too. The tempest raged around them. Clothes and hair plastered to their bodies, they stared at Evie in shock.

Ansgar struggled against the gale-force wind, trying to reach her. “Evangeline, wait.”

“Don’t bother,” Evie said. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”

Crack!
She disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

The doormat triumphant.

Evie’s knees slammed against a hard surface, the ground perhaps. She stretched out her hand and encountered a cool, smooth surface. Not dirt, a wooden floor. How had she gotten here? She remembered an urgent, frenzied desire to get away before she had a complete meltdown, and then a stretching sensation. Granny Moses, she’d destroyed the ballroom at the country club—it was a safe bet she’d never get invited back there again—and then she’d done the demon hunter bop and teleported.

But where was she?

It was dark, the can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face kind of dark. She smelled cedar and lavender and the faint leathery scent of new shoes. Reaching up, she fumbled around. Her fingers brushed against something silky and soft—fabric. She was in a closet. Perfect.

Taking a deep breath, she began to curse, dredging up every expletive she’d ever heard or read. She started with the mild ones, like
doggone
and
ding dang it
and
darn,
and worked her way up to the big ones, the really foul ones pertaining to bodily functions, sex, and private parts. She reached the end of her list and started over, inventing a few new ones along the way. She was particularly partial to buggerflicking, goathumping, snatherblasted turkey buzzard. For someone who hadn’t closet-cussed since middle school, it was good to know she still had the knack.

She was on her third round when the closet door opened and someone turned on the light.

“What are you doing?” Lenora said, surveying her from the doorway.

Evie blinked up at the thrall. “Cussing. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You are an odd creature. I think I like you.”

“Thanks.” Evie got to her feet and looked around.

She was in the walk-in closet in her guest bedroom. She hadn’t been in this room in months. And now she knew why. The racks and shelves overflowed with clothes, accessories, and shoes, all gifts from Ansgar, an entire wardrobe to celebrate the new Evie.

Then he left and she went back in her shell. But, on a deep subconscious level, she’d known about this closet and its contents and avoided it like the plague. Talk about being in denial.

“I have never liked anyone before,” Lenora said. “Except for Shepton and Lily and William, and today I do not like Shepton. Do you like me?”

“I don’t know anything about you, except that you’re a sex worker from another dimension who likes to wear clothes made out of string.”

“Does that mean you cannot like me?”

“No, but we don’t have much in common.” Lenora looked so disappointed that Evie relented. “Tell you what. I promise to give it a shot.” She thought of something and scowled. “Unless you’ve slept with Ansgar. I don’t care if it is your job, if you’ve slept with Ansgar I can’t like you, even if he is a snodcoddling son of a biscuit eater.”