Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (39 page)

John stepped out the bedroom first, followed closely by Ariel, who’d pulled on a robe and stepped into the cramped living room, squeezing her long hair dry on a towel.

“So, anything weird?” he asked.

Charles bobbed his shoulders. “No. Not as far as I can tell, but I don’t know if I would be able to, anyway. I mean, is it an instantaneous thing? Her shield evaporates and suddenly being in close proximity to demons will transform her into a holy water-slinging zealot?”

“You mean like this?” Clarissa asked.

Charles turned toward the piano where she stood, and opened his mouth to ask “What?” but before he could form the syllable, a cold mist met his face.

Dragging his shirtsleeve across his face, he sighed. “Did you just flick holy water at me?”

“Yep. I keep it on the heater so the air doesn’t get so dry in here.”

“Momma,” Ariel said with a laugh. “I think that’s overkill. You could probably just use regular water for that.”

“I’m aware of that, little girl. But it’s easy to come by and it’s handy. Right there by the front door, and ready to fling when necessary.” She sank onto the piano bench and crossed her legs at the knees. “Sometimes when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come by, I have them say a few words over it just to cover all my bases.”

Ariel looked at John, who looked at Claude, who looked at Charles with a shit-eating grin. Claude and Charles laughed, and Clarissa erupted into a fit of giggles.

“You’re bullshitting,” Ariel said. She flicked the end of the towel toward her grandmother, who caught it handily in a clap and gave it a yank.

“Respect your elders.”

“It’d be easier to do if you still looked like one.”

Clarissa flicked the ends of her short hair, giggling, as the bathroom door creaked open.

Marion stepped into the hallway, carrying her parka over her arm. Her face had taken on that dewy quality as if she’d splashed water on it.

Charles took a step forward automatically to go to her, but Clarissa grabbed him by the belt loop and gave him a yank backward.

She cleared her throat.

Oh. Right. I’m supposed to be hands-off from now on.

She stood and walked slowly to the young woman, a smile pulling her lips as she held out her right hand in greeting.

“I’m Clarissa Morton,” she said, and she said the words slowly as if they’d be difficult for Marion to understand—as if there were some sort of language gap that needed crossing.

Marion’s gaze flitted from Clarissa to Charles.

He nodded at her. “Tell the lady hi so she can go ahead and get that first pot of coffee for you.”

Marion wrapped her fingers around her grandmother’s and gave her hand a little shake. “Marion Wilder.”

“Thomas,” Clarissa said, almost too soft to hear.

“I’m sorry?”

“Thomas. Your last name was supposed to be
Thomas
.”

Marion’s face furrowed with confusion as she drew her hand back. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else.”

In his periphery, Charles observed Claude moving to the front door. He didn’t close it, but he got in the way of it.

They weren’t going to let her run. They couldn’t, now. That shield was going to go at any time, and three of the people it was designed to shield her from would be locked in with her when it did.

Clarissa gave her head a slow shake. “No mistake. You’re a Thomas because of your daddy, and a Morton because of your momma. I don’t know any Wilders. That name is phony.”

Marion shifted her weight and turned to Charles again. “Um. Listen, if there’s a hotel nearby, I bet I can get them to let me check in early. Whenever I tell them I’m a truck driver, they take pity on me.” She laughed, but it was really more of a scoff. A bit dry, and perhaps tinged with fear.

Ariel slipped between Marion and Clarissa, and took back her towel. Dabbing her dripping hair, she turned to her sister.

Marion took a step back, but John’s hand was there, preventing farther passage. “Look at her,” he said softly.

Her amber eyes swiveled to the woman in front of her. “Okay. I see her.”

“What do you see?” John eased around her and settled at Ariel’s side, wrapping an arm around her neck.

Marion shrugged and jammed her hands into her pockets. “Pretty brunette.”

“That’s all?”

With the sisters standing so close together, their relationship would have been apparent to anyone with the gift of sight.

Clarissa eased into the cluster and thrust a picture frame toward Marion.

Charles recognized that frame. It contained the only picture he’d ever seen of Ariel and Marion’s parents together. They sat on the swing on Clarissa’s front porch with a toddler Ariel wedged between them.

Marion stared down at it, but didn’t take it. Just kept her hands tucked away, and swayed from side to side as if she were readying herself to bolt at the first opportunity.

“We’re not crazy, little girl,” Clarissa said. “This isn’t a game. Not a trap. We sent the boys out looking for you, and thank God Charles found you, because the world’s not a safe place for people like us.”

“Saying you’re not crazy doesn’t make it true,” Marion said. She pulled her right hand out of her pocket and fidgeted her shirt hem. Turning to Charles, she asked, “And what does she mean, they sent you out? Are you some kind of predator? Trying to find women to abduct for a cult or something?”

John scoffed. “I grew up in a cult, so trust me when I say this ain’t one.”

“Oh-kay, then.” Marion nodded. “So, what’s the deal, Charles? Going to lead me to my dungeon now and chain me to a radiator because you all think I’m some long-lost relative you really wanted back? Going to keep me locked up until someone comes looking for me and convinces you all that you’re insane and I’m just a truck driver from Ohio?”

He closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. “Marion, please.”

“Please, what? Going to tell me that if I’m a good girl and don’t give you any lip, you’ll let me have a corner of your bed? Perhaps let me to curl up at your feet like a little dog? I like kink as much as the next girl, but I would have never thought your tastes were
that
extreme.”

Fuck.

“Charles Edison, you look at me right now,” Clarissa hissed.

He had the woman by more than fifty years, yet when she used that tone, he fucking
obeyed
. He opened his eyes and schooled his expression to blankness. “Yes, Clarissa?”

“Don’t lie to me. Did you come on to my granddaughter?”

Well, he’d done a little more than that. As he pondered little white lies, Clarissa gave the top of his head a bop with the picture frame.

He looked to John and Claude, hoping the question was clear in his expression. Should he tell them that she was his mate?

Both shook their heads.

Not now
, came Claude’s warning.
Don’t pile on too much at once
.

“Granddaughter?” Marion scoffed and threw her hands up. “Lady, I’m sorry. Something is obviously very wrong with you all. But that’s okay. We can’t all be perfect. Lord knows I have my faults. I mean, hey—I had sex with
that
guy. At first I thought he was a truck-stop prostitute, but maybe that would have been better. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m sure you’re all very nice people, but I’m not who you think, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me go now.”

A bright flash of white light appeared near Claude at the front door, and a bespectacled man materialized, whistling the refrain from some Luke Bryan song as he teleported.

“You ready for work, Ariel? Jeez, it’s crowded in here,” Mark the Angel said. He scanned the room, and his perusal stopped at the newcomer. “Oops. Sorry. I didn’t sense any extra bodies in here before I made the jump.”

“That’s Marion,” Clarissa said, now wrapping her arms around the nearly-catatonic woman. “Charles found Marion. Her shield’s still on, so you probably wouldn’t have sensed her.”

Marion laughed and her eyes went wide. “I’m seeing things. The plane must have crashed, and I’m in purgatory or something. That must be it. I’ve always been a good girl. Besides the sex anyway, but—”

Clarissa gave her a squeeze. “Aw, baby, you’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive. Now there’s just the small matter of figuring out how to protect you from the demons that’ll catch a whiff of you soon enough. They just love the women in our family for some reason. We’re goddamned irresistible. Isn’t that right, John?”

John laughed and strode to the kitchen. “It’s true. Love you, Ariel. Go to work.”

“D-
demons
?” Marion whispered.

Clarissa squeezed Marion a little tighter, and rocked them in a bear hug. “Mm-hmm.”

“All of them … demons?”

“Oh. No. Mark’s an angel. Ariel’s angel, technically. They work together at an advertising agency.”

“And the rest?”

“Half-demons. Cambions. Well, I guess John’s not a cambion anymore. We don’t know what to call him. He got exorcised, so his touch won’t hurt ya. Should be safe for you to touch Claude—”

“No,” Charles said with a snarl.

Claude followed John into the kitchen, sticking his tongue out at Charles as he passed. “
Pute
.”

“Definitely don’t touch Charles from here on out. He can’t help it if he taints you.”

Marion’s small shoulders shook, and Clarissa clucked her tongue. “It’s okay. Happens to the best of us.”

“You had sex with a demon?” She asked it as if she were asking if her grandmother had picked up a bag of sugar at the grocery store, but the horror was evident in strained expression.

Clarissa shot daggers at Charles with her eyes. He knew that look—that was the
I’m going to fuck you up later
look, and he believed she could. After all, she’d done it to his father.

“No, honey. I didn’t. A demon killed my sister, and your parents killed that demon, and that’s why they’re on the run. And don’t feel too bad. He’s not just a demon. He’s an incubus. ”

“Incubus … you mean …” Her cheeks bloomed with red and eyes narrowed. Did she know what it meant?

Clarissa nodded. “Mm-hmm. Sex demon. Seduction’s what they’re good at. The lore is that they only take women in their sleep, but those are just stories. They’ll take you wherever they can get you.”

“Thanks a lot, Clarissa,” he muttered.

Marion pulled away from her grandmother and turned in a circle, looking as though she were in want of an exit.

“Oh my God, I’ve got to get out of here. This is fucking insane.”

Her breathing sped, and eyes went wide, and Charles took a reflexive step forward, intending to wrap calming arms around her, but Clarissa yanked Marion to her side.

“I bet you want to, but don’t touch him, Marion. You can’t touch him. He was playing fast and loose with you, and y’all shouldn’t risk being so near.”

“Fast and loose, huh?” Her bottom jaw ground and nostrils flared. “So it’s all been one big lie, Chucky? You did what you had to to get me to this place? ”

Charles took one angry step toward her, intending to pull her to him, but Clarissa’s angry glower warned him away.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Marion said. “Please let go of me.”

Growling, he stepped around the two and withdrew to the sanctity of the kitchen.

“Told you so,” John muttered from his spot near the coffeemaker.

Charles gripped the back of one of the cane-back chairs hard enough to hear it splinter. “I did what I had to.”

“No, you did what you
wanted
to, and if I have to be honest, I probably would have done the same thing.”

These people were out of their goddamned minds, if she could even
call
them people. She’d tried to make a run for it. That was her programming, after all, to run when things didn’t make good sense. It was why she’d tracked out of foster care at seventeen. But every time she tried to escape, there was someone in the way. She couldn’t even go to the bathroom without an escort, and that room only had one tiny window which she might have been able to squeeze through if it weren’t for the fact some smart aleck had nailed it shut—and
recently
, judging by the shine of the nail heads.

Maybe she’d died and this really was purgatory. It seemed insane enough.

She shook her head and stared out the kitchen window at the woman called Clarissa, who was hanging clothes on the line in the forty-degree weather.

She was pretty sure people in purgatory didn’t watch
Storage Wars
marathons, and wouldn’t the coffee have been less palatable?

The front door slammed shut, and Marion eased sideways a few steps to see into the front room.

She sighed. It was the brothers Grimm with Claude in the lead.

Well, Claude wasn’t so bad. His dark humor fell in line with her own, but she still couldn’t believe the guy was for real. He claimed to be more than two hundred years old, but he certainly didn’t look it. He dressed like the typical hipster computer geek type, complete with ratty Chucks and a faded concert T-shirt of a ’70s band that looked to be actually
vintage
, and not of the thrift store variety. She suspected he’d owned that shirt from the beginning.

He eased into the kitchen with his brothers on his heels and ruffled her short hair.

She sighed. One she could deal with, but
all
of them at once?

“Don’t say a word to me, Charles,” she warned. She picked up the bowl of unshelled pecans from the counter, grabbed the nutcracker—which made all three men take a few steps back—and carried them to the table.

Charles took the seat opposite her, as far away as he could get. John and Claude filled in on the other sides.

“Now that you’ve told me not to talk to you, then I
will
,” Charles said. His blue eyes held a malevolent glint as he shouldered his leather jacket off.

Blue wasn’t such a rare thing that she would have found it precious, but the clarity of it was so unusual. She thought if she stared, she’d be able to see into his soul and not just his optic nerve. They were the same eyes John had and Claude, sometimes. She didn’t understand it, but apparently Claude’s changed, depending on what sort of magic was cycling through him. Red for witch, but he’d been born with blue.