Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (33 page)

The barista flushed, and then grinned.

Charles rolled his eyes again.

“You’re supposed to be building an army, but right now I’d settle for you giving me one little lieutenant.” He grazed the pad of this thumb over the barista’s chin and propped it up so her lips were angled toward his. “Three months is long enough to make one stick, so that’s how long I’ll give you.” He brushed his lips over the barista’s and caught her when her legs wobbled beneath her. “And to make it more interesting,” he said, twirling a length of her hair around his index finger, “if I wade into the gene pool and manage to create a new ball of cells of my own before you do … you
lose
.”

“Well, that’s just
super
.
Thank you, Father, for your outstanding generosity. Where’s Homer or Hesiod? There should be someone writing epic poetry about your goddamned magnanimity.”

A deadline
and
a contest against the most fertile being on two legs on the planet? Awesome. It wasn’t like he was in the process of wooing his currently ignorant life mate or anything.

“I’m not playing. Fuck you and your contest.”

Pop shrugged his massive shoulders, and his expression remained a neutral blank. “So be it. Just remember, I tried to help you. People usually regret not taking me up on that kindness.”

“I don’t need help remembering. I’ve got memories of my dead mother to remind me just fine.”

“Good. Enjoy your brief freedom, then. Ross will meet up with you soon enough. He may not be able to teleport and pop in on you, but he’s aggressive. He’ll find his daddy just fine.”

The threat should have chilled Charles a bit, but instead of fear making his gut frozen and heavy, heat built up inside his chest.

He was just one man, one cambion. Why couldn’t Pop just leave him be? He had a hundred children fighting for favor, so why did he insist on badgering Charles? He’d done his time, and now he ached to be let off the hook. The guys running things in Hell didn’t give a shit about him, and he knew it. He was replaceable, and was more than willing to get out of the way and let someone else have his job. In truth, he would give up immortality to not be what he was.

Charles closed his eyes and counted his breaths until his father left. He felt the departure of the demon’s energy from the shop, and when he opened his eyes again, his father was on the other side of the window, winking at him while strolling arm in arm with the barista.

“Damn it,” Charles mumbled, tossing his cup into the trash and shouldering the street door open. “No wonder people smite demons.”

Charles pushed the grocery cart up and down the aisles of the giant super-store, scanning cans and boxes, confusion settling more deeply into his brain with each passing minute. What did people eat? Like,
real
people and not cambions who relied on waitresses to provide most of their meals. He wasn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination. He’d never stayed long enough in one place to justify learning that skill.

He lingered in front of the frozen food displays and stared into the fogged enclosure. Pizza, maybe? Fingers on the handle, he paused. No, pizza seemed lowbrow. He took a step back and pondered. But then again, Marion was a trucker. Maybe she expected such fare. He reached out again, and again froze.

The plan was to seduce her. He needed to impress her to do that. Would she be impressed by one of those frozen discs?

He grunted, and turned the cart around. He’d seen an employee somewhere—

Ah. The deli counter.

“What do you want, gorgeous?”

He raked a hand through his hair and shifted his weight. “Uh … If I—”

He took a step back from her to ease his aura away, and gritted his teeth. He held up one hand, bidding her to wait, while the images flitted through his head. There was a man in this store—in the storeroom. He’d been watching this woman for months and had grown fond of her. He’d yet to make a move, but they were a match. They just needed a push.

Groaning, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and relaxed his shoulders. He opened his eyes to see the woman giving him a patient, though bored, look. She probably dealt with all sorts of kooks in her line of work.

“I apologize. If I were going to make sandwiches …”

Both of her gray eyebrows inched upward.

“What I mean is, what’s good? If it was going to be for a date or a picnic?”

She pointed a gloved index finger toward the salami.

“And how much of it would …”

She shook her head and mumbled, “Men. All of you are the same. You need explicit instructions for everything, and even if you had them, you probably wouldn’t follow them. Why can’t you just see what’s there?”

That question didn’t seem directed to him, so he didn’t respond.

She sighed and grabbed a sheet of butcher paper. “You’re young and probably stupid, so I’ll get you sorted. Just two people?”

He nodded.

“How many meals?”

“Lunch and dinner.”

“Come back in ten minutes.”

“Right. Uh … thanks.” He let his gaze fall to her nametag. “Rosie.”

She grinned, but made a shooing gesture.

He wheeled his cart away. He meandered around a floral kiosk and admired the lilies and tulips. Women liked flowers, right? Or was that the last century’s fad? Marion didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would be endeared by such a thing, but would she be angry if he tried?

“Maybe I’ll say they’re for the house if she doesn’t seem interested …” He reached into the display and drew out the largest bundle of dark red tulips they had. Red because red wasn’t sweet. The feelings he had at the moment were anything but. They could never be anything besides passionate, because they were a fated pair. Besides, his mother had always bought red. Back then, she’d said it added a bit of ardor to the house where otherwise there would have been none. She’d stopped buying them, though, when she’d fallen in love. She hadn’t needed them anymore, because she and her husband had plenty of passion to spare.

After the flowers, he considered other things that would either thrill or offend Marion. Chocolates—those he left on their shelf. Champagne—he put that back, and opted for a bottle of wine he knew he wouldn’t be drinking himself. His father may have sobered him up, but
staying
sober was a battle he had to fight alone.

He even circled the shopping cart around the jewelry counter for a bit, before realizing he was getting way ahead of himself. The likely outcome to this situation would probably be a hard slap, and
not
Marion throwing herself into his open arms.

Maybe he could just tell her who he was to her—that she was his, and he was hers, and nothing would ever change that.

Yeah, right, she’d fall for that lickety-split. Sounded fucking cornball even to him.

He sighed and retreated to the deli counter where the employee held out two bags and handed him a ticket for the cashier.

“What’s all this?” he asked, rifling through the neat white packets and clear plastic tubs.

“Sandwich fixings, coleslaw, pickles, rolls, a rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes, some dill green beans, and today’s cake special. Mocha-chocolate crunch.”

“Oh.” Sounded good, and he told her as much.

She nodded and dismissed him by resuming her previous wiping-down of the case.

He’d set the bags into his cart and started wheeling away, when he turned back to her. “Uh, Rosie?”

“Hmm? Need something else? Maybe some suggestions on where to take her to after you feed her?” She gave him a long blink.

Ah.
She’d been waiting on that man to make a move.

“No, I’m good with suggestions, but since you helped me, I’d like to help you.”

“You going to go get me some coffee from the Coffee A-Go Go kiosk?”

That sparked his memory. There was no coffee to go in the percolator at the house. Marion was a Morton, so she’d want coffee, and a lot of it.

He shook his head. “No, my dear. You know, you have quite a personality. I bet people are intimidated by you. I bet you like to take charge, and people expect it.”

She scoffed and flicked a dismissive hand in his general direction. “Never had a stranger psychoanalyze me across the meat counter before.”

“It’s not psychoanalysis, but …” He closed his eyes once more. He couldn’t always pluck a name out of the ether, but the man was so close, perhaps if he concentrated hard enough—

Ah, there it was.

When he opened his eyes, she was leaning against the counter with a look of concern on her face.

He didn’t blame her.

“George expects you to take charge. I think if you do, you’ll get what you’ve been hoping for.”

Her mouth fell open, but no words came out.

He turned the cart and scanned the aisle markers in search of coffee.

It’d have to be very, very good coffee. Marion deserved it. No, she deserved
everything
.

When he was a boy, his mother had told him when he found The One, he’d want to give her everything, including his own life. At the time, he’d thought that sounded insane. Who would give up his life and leave the woman he loved alone to fend for herself?

But his mother had understood the nature of love, because as a descendent of Anteros she was love embodied, in the same way Pop was lust.

He
had
given up his life. He’d started letting it go the moment he realized there was a woman out there for him. It would have been easier for him to just toe the line with Pop, but he didn’t want easy.

He wanted Marion.

• • •

When Charles returned home, loaded down with bags and a bouquet of flowers tucked under his arm, he expected to find the house quiet—for Marion to be napping. No, she was sitting at the kitchen table, cross-legged, with the little radio on the counter cranked up to that unholy rock and roll garbage Claude liked, and peering into an open book.

“Oh, let me help,” she said, unfolding her legs and readying herself to stand, but Charles grinned and shook his head.

He liked finding her sitting there at his table, in his home. He so rarely ever went to any of his homes, and never had a woman waiting for him. Naturally, he wanted to savor the experience, even if it was one-sided. “I’ve got it, but thanks.” He set the bags on the counter and shifted the flowers to his other hand.

Should he give them to her? Or find a vase and—

“Those are pretty,” she said. She folded her legs beneath her again.

His gaze trailed down to the smooth stretch of flesh spanning her thighs and ankles. She wore little cut-off sweat-shorts that must have been meant to be pajamas. “Uh … I bought them for you,” he said, whipping them toward her as if he had a robo-arm.

She looked at him with a look of suspicion. “For me?”

Incubus Charles would have easily buttered her up, but that Charles seemed to be switched off at the moment. He cringed and decided to try honesty for a change. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.” He held them there. Waiting.

Slowly, she stood, and her expression shifted from marked distrust to hesitant excitement. She wrapped her fingers around the plastic-covered stems, brushing his hand for a brief moment as she took them.

A jolt traveled down his arm, and Charles knew it was a human sort of magic and nothing supernatural.

She carried them back to the table, dipping her nose into the bunch and making a small moan of pleasure. “No one’s ever given me flowers before.”

“Impossible.” He opened his empty refrigerator and piled his purchases onto the shelves. “Don’t women get corsages when they go to the prom?”

“I didn’t go to the prom.”

There was a note of heartache in her voice, but Charles didn’t turn around. He didn’t know what he’d do if she were sad and had it written all over her face. He’d never been tasked with consoling anyone before, beyond his mother. And after she died, who was left?

No one.

“I didn’t go to the prom, either.” He closed the door.

“I think you’re lying,” she said with a laugh. “I bet the girls were falling all over themselves to go out with you.”

“Well …”

He strode to the pantry, eyes trained straight ahead. The old percolator was on the middle shelf, right where the housekeeper had last dusted it. He withdrew it and shut the door. “Believe it or not, I was rather awkward as a teenager. Hadn’t grown into my skin yet. I was tall and lanky, and honestly, I didn’t have much to say of interest.”

“I don’t believe that.”

He stole a look at her and found her cradling the flowers like a newborn, smiling. If such a simple thing could make her smile, he’d fill a whole room with tulips for her.

“It is, unfortunately, true. Of all my peers, I think I was the last to …” He shrugged and made a waffling motion with his hand.

“Get laid?” she surmised.

The chuckle escaped his throat before he could throttle it. He filled the coffee pot with grounds and water and set it atop the stove. “Yes. By years.”

“You filled out okay.” She gave him a speculative look from head to toes and then her stare retreated to her book.

His eyebrows darted up.
What am I going to do with her?

Then he remembered. He was
supposed
to be delivering her to her sister and grandmother. He was
supposed
to be alerting his prick of a father of her whereabouts should he cross her path.

He didn’t give a damn about supposed-to at the moment. This was about Charles Edison and his needs, which he was beginning to understand had less to do with his body and more to do with his spirit. Apparently, he still had one.

• • •

Charles’s breath was warm on Marion’s neck as he leaned over her chair, peering over her shoulder at the open book. It felt almost as good as that hot bath she’d taken, but that bath hadn’t heated her core the way his silken voice and deep, throaty chuckles were. Nor had that bath smelled of expensive cologne with a slightly sweet note left behind from the tulips he’d carried. She’d walked out of that warm bath squeaky clean, and now, sitting at his kitchen table with his hands pressed onto the table edge at either side of her, she was getting dirty all over again. If he could see her sweating, he was probably too much of a gentleman to comment on it.