Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (41 page)

A week into her little “vacation,” however, loneliness was the furthest thing from her mind. The house was constantly thrumming with voices and bodies, but those people could leave.

She couldn’t.

She began to feel a bit stir-crazy. Grabbing Ariel’s arm before she teleported out of the house with Mark, she pleaded, “You’ve got to take me with you. I
need
to go somewhere.”

Ariel’s eyes rounded a smidge and before she could finish drawing in the air to refuse her, Marion put her hands up and sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I have no shield. If I leave the property, I trip the demon radar.”

Not that she understood the seriousness of the situation, but if Mark said it was true, she felt maybe she should at least pretend to make it a consideration.

“I know you’re bored, Marion. You’re used to being out on the road, but we haven’t yet figured out any way to keep you in stealth mode that comes close to what the angels did before you were born.”

Marion turned to Mark. “Why can’t they just do that again?”

“Let’s just say our side overstepped their bounds by doing that in the first place. The two sides are supposed to balance, and we’re only supposed to intercede when the other side steps too far over the battle lines. Things were more or less even when your parents ran, but they were bringing a new party into the equation and we didn’t think that would be fair to you. Ariel had guardians because we knew the demons would hold a grudge. Maybe they wouldn’t bother Clarissa because she’s known to be dangerous, but Ariel was out of the loop … like you were.”

“But, really, what’s the worst that could happen if I drive into Jacksonville and go people-watching at Wally World? What would they
really
do to me?”

John popped in, holding a brown paper grocery sack in his arm. Seeing Ariel there, he walked over and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Figured you’d be gone.”

“I’m going. Marion’s getting cabin fever, and Mark and I are explaining what the demons would do if they caught her.”

John’s mouth made an “O” shape.

“What?” Marion asked, nudging him.

“Well, that depends on the kind of demon. An incubus like Gulielmus wouldn’t do you any physical harm, but he’d earmark your soul for Hell and possibly make you his eternal sex slave. Assuming they don’t ransom you to the
big guy
.” He made quote marks with his free hand when speaking those last words. “He’s still pissed about that demon he lost. Now, there’s a variety of other sorts of demons that may want to play with you, and that’s just counting the ones clumped into the Judeo-Christian framework. There’s shit out there you wouldn’t believe.”

Sure, they kept saying that, but was she supposed to just trust it? “But I can’t just
stay
here for the rest of my life. I’ve got to go out and live, or what’s the point?”

“We’ve got a nine o’clock meeting, so let’s hash this out later, okay? I’ll do some thinking during my lunch break,” Ariel said.

Marion sighed and waved.

Ariel and Mark vanished, and John wrapped his arm around Marion’s shoulder and guided her toward the kitchen.

“I know it sucks, Marion. But Claude’s trying to find something. He’s got a pretty extensive library of arcane reference books, and if there’s a solution, he’ll be the one to find it. If not, he has some”—John set down the bag and added in a mumble under his breath—“nontraditional research strategies. And the three of us have a plot in place that may fix some things. Just be patient.”

“Right. Patient. Where’s—” She was going to say “Charles,” but before she could get the word out, Clarissa stomped up the back deck steps and pulled the door open, bearing a basket of brown eggs from her hens.

She couldn’t really work a traditional job. To start, she’d been on Social Security before Gulielmus changed her, and she couldn’t very well go back out into the workforce without arousing all sorts of suspicion about her age and appearance. She’d had to give up all of her local haunts—her hairdresser, and even her longtime church—in order to avoid people who would have remembered how she’d looked as a younger woman. So, now she did what she could to supplement her income. Ariel and John more or less took care of her, but there were always extra mouths to feed. Various angels, shapeshifters, and other non-specified supernatural beings popped in and out, using the house as a sort of corporate water cooler.

Marion had had to adapt, and fast. Hard, though, when people like Ariel and Mark’s boss Agatha loomed nearby, staring at her like she were a State Fair sow, pondering her quirks. Agatha usually grunted and strolled off with her tea, saying nothing. She never did anything, and Ariel said that was typical for the old girl. She was a neutral rogue and wasn’t allowed to take sides. She’d even let Gulielmus kidnap Ariel from work once, but she and Ariel were cool about it now.

Weirdos.

“I’ve got three dozen here,” Clarissa said. “I think I’ll have two left to sell.”

“Who the hell is going to eat a dozen eggs?” Marion asked, already reaching for the mixing bowl.

John could really put ’em away, but that was an excessive amount even for him.

“Oh. Charles is here. He was parking the car in the barn when I left the coop. Looks like a new car. Shiny, and has thirty-day tags. Wonder what that means. Hmm.”

Marion shifted her weight and ground her teeth. The first words out of his mouth had better be, “Happy belated birthday. Sorry to bring you here and then leave you here like a pile of dirty laundry.”

She couldn’t believe how wrong her gut had been about that guy. Slimeball.

“You keep cracking those eggs, little girl,” Clarissa scolded. She rooted through John’s sack and pulled out a couple of pounds of country bacon. “Y’all are going to have to cope. You’re grown-ups. Act like it.”

“But—”

“Nope. Don’t care.” She set the heavy cast-iron skillet on the stovetop and began the artful arrangement of bacon slices within. “Y’all may be on the outs, but these boys are the closest things to grandsons I’m ever going to get. Play nice.”

“I’m holding out for a DNA test, because I really can’t believe if I’m your granddaughter, you’d really choose them over me.”

“Hi, I’m still in here,” John said from the coffeemaker.

Clarissa fisted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at her. “There’s no choice. I’m an old lady. I don’t have to choose. I get whatever I want.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Charles said as he entered from the deck. He heeled off his boots and set a couple of canvas bags near the end of the counter. “If so, I would be drowning in good favor right now. I’ve got you by, what, fifty, sixty years?”

“Let’s not do that math.”

Fifty years?
Marion nearly smashed the egg she was cracking onto the counter.
That would make him at least a hundred and fifteen.

She cut her gaze toward him bending over the bags and pulling out package after package of pastries. How long did cambions live? John, she knew for a fact, was the age he looked—not quite thirty. Claude was over two hundred. Why hadn’t she given any thought to Charles’s age? He was old enough to be her great-great-great-grandfather.

What a weird dynamic. No one couldn’t say that Clarissa didn’t have the grandmother thing down pat, but the fact she was technically
younger
than her adopted grandchildren made Marion’s head swim.

“Oh, God,” Marion said, stomach churning with distress. She was going to need another bottle of that chalky antacid soon, at the rate she was going.

“Any news from Big Daddy G?” John asked.

“Well …” Charles reached past Marion for the breadbasket, narrowly avoiding skimming her arm, but seeming not to pay much attention to her besides that.

Rude.
Stomach concerns aside, she reached for the whisk. Two could play the you’re-nothing-to-me game.

He’d been playing it for a week, after all.

“No. I really thought one of us would hear from him by now since we pulled Krista out of the compound.”

“Refresh my memory, John,” Momma said. “Which one is Krista?”

“My second-oldest sister. The order goes Me, Julia, Krista, and then there’s Molly, who’s two. Krista was the most pressing concern. She just turned eighteen, and she’s so sweet. Would hate for G to get his hands on her. She hasn’t demonstrated any powers as of yet.”

“Where’d you put her?”

John grinned and rocked back on his heels. “In a convent down in New Orleans. It was Claude’s idea. She’ll be okay there for a while, but those nuns are expecting a hell of a payback. I wonder how many exorcisms he’ll have to perform for them. His mother used to do it for them back in the day. They’re tuned into the supernatural shit.”

Marion ceased her violent whisking, and really paid attention now. “Demons can walk into holy places?” she asked with a tinge of incredulity.

“Depends on their intent,” Charles answered.

She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and wouldn’t look at him. They were doing so well. Why’d he have to go and address her directly? That made things awkward.

“Marion,” he said, and sighed. “You’re being childish.”

She lowed her gaze to him and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m sure you think so, Father Time.”

“There’s no reason we can’t have a civilized discourse.”

“We should have had that discourse a week ago before we bumped uglies.”

John whistled low and made a not-so-stealthy retreat from the kitchen.

Charles huffed. “You really want to go there right now?”

“How ’bout you
don’t
?” Clarissa said, standing between the two of them.

Marion got on tiptoes and peered at her—her
whatever
he was over the top of her grandmother’s head. “Yeah, I do want to go there. I so want to go there, Charles. Let’s talk about that and what you did to me.”

“What I
did
to you?” His voice took on an extra-low rumble and his face flushed red.

“That’s right. I’m not convinced we would have had sex if there wasn’t magic in play.”

Clarissa sputtered her lips, plugged her ears, and shuffled toward the living room with Claude on her heels.

Charles blinked.

“No response to that, huh? Point proven, I guess.”

“You’ve proven nothing.” He took one long step closer and leaned in close so the hairs on her ear stood on end with his proximity.

She turned, putting her back to him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Making a point, since you failed to. Tell me something. Do you want to fuck me right now?”

“What?” She wheezed, and she patted blindly for the egg bowl in front of her.

“Simple question. Do you?”

Finding the whisk, she wrapped her fingers around the wooden handle and pulled the bowl closer. “N-no. I actually don’t.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you’re sad I can’t touch you.” He shifted behind her, and now leaned in to her other ear. “You like it because I know what you want, even if you don’t, isn’t that right?”

“You’re insane.” He was raising all sorts of panic alarms in her body, and his proximity kept sending uncomfortable shivers down her spine.

She needed to move away from him, out of his field of gravity where breathing was so damn hard. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference and you know it. You want me, and it’s not because I’m making you want me.”

“You should think about bottling some of that ego and selling it. You’d make a mint.” The words had come out of her mouth, but she wasn’t sure she believed them herself. Sure, he had a hell of a lot of swagger, but hubris?

No. She hadn’t seen that yet.

“It’s not ego, Marion. It’s simple psychology. There’s no magic involved here, although it pleases me to know you think it was that good.”

Suddenly, she found concentrating very difficult. Of
course
it was that good. “Please move.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Her reflex was to tell him
Because I fucking said so
, but she needed him to understand that she wasn’t just some petty, vengeful female. He needed to own up for what he did; or at least, what she
thought
he did. She drew in a deep breath. “Because you being so close makes me uncomfortable.”

“That’s interesting, because if I had bound you up in magic last week, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to resist me. There’d be no discomfort. You’d just lay yourself down for the slaughter.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not doing it now.”

He scoffed. “I imagine you’re immune to my ever-so-charming aura, or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion. You wouldn’t know your own name, your age, or the current host of
America’s Most Wanted
. Isn’t that perfectly serendipitous?”

“
America’s Most Wanted
is off the air. What is it with you boys and that show? And how is my lucidity a serendipitous thing?”

He stepped away and all that luscious heat on her neck receded. She spun around and watched him walk to the table. He pulled out the chair he’d formerly occupied and sank into it.

“Answer me!”

He pulled that knavish grin and tented his fingers as Clarissa, Claude, and John filed back into the kitchen.

She growled and attacked the eggs with gusto.

“Y’all gonna behave now?” Clarissa asked.

Charles made a conceding bow. “I apologize for my behavior. I can’t speak for Marion, but I’m sure she’s equally repentant.”

Marion turned her back so no one could see her baring her teeth.

“Charles,” Claude asked, “is
Papa
still keeping that redhead?”

“Yeah. I went by the coffee shop where she worked when I was in Idaho locking up the house. She’s enraptured, just like they always are. She was basically a robot. I’m certain she’ll tell him she saw me, and he’ll go and shake you-know-who out of his hiding hole to crack the whip on me.”

Who was
you-know-who
? She looked to Clarissa for clarification, but Clarissa shrugged.

“He does like them dumb, doesn’t he?” John asked.

Marion turned around and cocked an eyebrow at her soon-to-be brother-in-law. “But your mother—
mothers
—”