Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (46 page)

“Tough,” he said. “Sweetheart, I’m an incubus. When people ask me questions I don’t want to answer, I can easily make them forget they asked.”

“Men, too?”

“Men are easier than women.”

She tapped her heels against the table’s side, staring at him. His expression was utterly blank.

“You’re going to have to learn to trust me, Marion. I’ll take care of you.”

She wished she could. She wanted to. “I’m sure the spider said the same thing to the fly while inviting it to relax in its web.”

“I’m not trying to trap you.”

“But I am trapped, Charles. This is the first time I’ve been out since November and even if I got an inkling to run, I couldn’t get far.”

“It’s for the best. For your safety and the—”

She put up her hands. “Right, right. For the baby’s.” Where the hell was the doctor? The conversation was wearying, and she yearned for the safe haven that was her truck. She’d get in, lock the doors, and just drive until things made sense.

“I’m trying to fix things for you.”

“Don’t you mean for
us
? You just showed your hand, I guess. You’re planning to cut and run as soon as convenient. Unbelievable. You can go sow your oats, and I’ll be stuck in a tiny house with a squalling baby who’ll probably look just like you and your supernatural kin.”

The door creaked open, but she wasn’t done speaking her mind.

“You’re not welcome at my appointments anymore. I don’t need that stress.”

Dr. Ames stepped in and looked from Charles, who gave the doctor a frosty warning stare, to Marion.

Dr. Ames cleared his throat and patted the nearby wall blindly for a pair of nitrile gloves. “First-time parents, huh? Mrs. Wilder? Don’t fret about it. The hormones will let up a bit in the second trimester.”

Charles popped his knuckles and a shudder rolled through Marion. “Her name’s not
Wilder
.”

“Wilder’s been my name for twenty-five years.”

“Change it.”

“What to?”

“I can think of some things.”

“Should I come back in a moment?” Dr. Ames asked, pushing his gray bottle-brush eyebrows up higher.

“No, no. You should get used to it,” Marion said in a sunny voice. “This is our normal. I’m just preparing myself for him leaving me. He’s always running off and leaving me. What’s one more time? One day, I’m sure it’ll be for good. It’s probably in his genetic coding.”

Maybe it was all in her head, but she could almost feel the moment when something in Charles broke. His expression was neutral, but his warning from weeks ago slammed into her again. He’d said not to mess with psychics. The sour churning in her belly suggested he wasn’t laying psychic guilt on her, though. Her gut said,
Words hurt.

She sighed and waved Dr. Ames in.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know who she was apologizing to, but expelled the words for whoever needed them most.

Perhaps herself.

Charles grabbed his werewolf brother-in-law by the collar, and with John’s help, pulled Calvin more upright. He wasn’t drunk, but something in his lycanthrope biology screwed his spatial awareness to kingdom come following a teleport.

“Hey, y’all? Fuck that shit. Ain’t doing that again,” he drawled drowsily. “Next time we need to go extract some of your pseudo-demon kinfolk from sketchy situations, we’ll drive like normal people.” He cringed. “Normal
enough
people, anyway. Spring training’s about to start, and y’all are going to scramble my brains harder than my momma does her eggs.”

Julia freed her arm from crook of Claude’s and placed a hand on either side of her husband’s face, smiling at him. “You’re so sweet to tolerate my screwball family.”

Calvin shrugged. “You put up with mine, and they’re furry part-time.” He staggered toward the kitchen of the high-end mountain cabin with Julia on his heels. She called back to her brothers, “You need some help teleporting them back to Clarissa’s, John?”

“Nope,” John said. “I can take them both, but it’ll probably be the last thing I do today.” He crooked his elbows and looked at both Claude and Charles. “I think Clarissa’s making lasagna tonight, and I’d like to eat it. I haven’t been at home enough in the past few days, and I miss my woman. Hopefully, Marion won’t take offense to my insistence on sleeping in my own bed for a night.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that before we head that way.”

Claude started moving toward the door, patting his back pocket for the cigarettes that usually lived there, but Charles pulled him back.

“You, too. You both need to know this. Let’s do it on the move, though. I need to get some shit out of my apartment.”

Claude tapped the toe of one of his Converse sneakers against the gleaming hardwoods to provide a soundtrack to his impatience. Smoking was really the only vice the guy had, and he tried to avoid it because Clarissa wouldn’t let him into the house if she smelled it on him. “What is it you want us to know? And you’re really inviting us into your lair?” He scoffed. “In the hundred years I’ve known you, I’ve never once seen where you live.”

That was because Charles hadn’t been doing much living.

“We’ll talk about it. John?” Charles held out his elbow to his brother, who clasped it. He turned his gaze to Claude again. “Please.”

Claude sighed and joined the trio. “You keeping secrets from me?”

“Not on purpose.” He relayed the address to John, and moments later, the three had teleported into Charles’s Philadelphia apartment.

He took a step back from his brothers, jamming his hands into his pockets as John and Claude turned slowly, taking in their surroundings.

“
Mon dieu
.” Claude’s eyes narrowed as his gaze landed on Charles. “How do you afford this? You’ve never taken on side jobs like me, and you never take victims’ money.”

The “this” in question was the top unit of a nineteenth-century walk-up. It was barely furnished, but comfortable enough for a man who spent most of his days stalking women at truck stops.

“Are you on the dole from
Papa
?”

“Fuck no.” At the very mention of their father, the skin of Charles’s left palm burned with a white hot intensity made him suck in air involuntarily. He closed his hand into a fist, covering his demonic mark, and gritted his teeth, riding out the pain.

Claude wrapped his hands around Charles’s fist and pried his fingers open. “Let me see it.”

“Why?” he said through his chattering teeth. Just because he was immortal didn’t mean he couldn’t feel pain. Pop usually didn’t resort to communicating through his mark, but he’d been ignoring summonses again—been blocking out his telepathic discourse. Pop did what he could to get attention when he wanted it, and if that meant having his children wish for dismemberment to ease the pain, so be it.

“Just open them. I can fix it.”

Slowly, Charles uncurled his fingers and Claude traced the tip of his index fingers over the burning blue mark.

The pain intensified, sending crackling heat up his arm, and Charles tried to draw back his hand.

“Hold him,” Claude said to John, and without hesitation, John gripped Charles’s forearm.

“Trai-
traitor
,” Charles accused through chattering teeth.

Claude muttered some words under his breath, and slowly, the lava in Charles’s veins cooled, the glowing blue mark dimmed. Claude wasn’t so much pushing the pain back as absorbing it, judging by the bead of sweat over his brow and the blood red cast of his eyes.

He dropped Charles’s hand and closed his eyes, still muttering.

Charles rubbed his palm over his pants leg, abrading the flesh against the rough fabric as Claude closed his eyes and whispered some incantation.

He’d seen Claude do a lot of magic before, but nothing like this.

Maybe they were both keeping secrets—or maybe they just hadn’t had reasons to share.

“You all right?” Charles asked when Claude wove a meandering path to the sofa.

Eyes closed again, Claude nodded. “He used to try that shit with me, right around the time I was with Laurette and didn’t heed his summons. I learned how to send him a reply in kind.”

“So, he’ll know you two are together at the moment,” John said. He perched on the chair arm near Claude and eyed his big brother, apprehension clear in his features. “That you did it.”

Claude shrugged, and then rolled his shoulders as if to loosen major kinks from his spine. “What’s a bit more trouble? So, Charles, why are we here?”

“Two reasons. I need to get some paperwork for my accountant, and—”

John snorted. “You have an accountant?”

“Calvin recommended him. Don’t interrupt. I’m scatterbrained enough as it is with everything going on.” He raked his fingers through his loose hair and paced in front of the empty bookcase. “I inherited a lot of money from my mother. It’s always made me uncomfortable given the circumstances of her death, so I never brought it up. I didn’t go to Princeton on a scholarship, you know?”

“All these years, and I thought you had women buying things for you like some sort of demonic gigolo,” Claude said, and his former good humor returned in the form of a churlish grin.

“No. The reason I’m telling you this now is because that expansion on Clarissa’s house needs to happen sooner rather than later, and you’re not going to be able to do it alone, John.”

“Right. I’ll outsource all the labor to the very first supernatural construction company I can find.”

“No need to be cheeky. Regular workers can do the job just fine and I’ll spend whatever it takes to get them done and off the property quickly.”

“Why?” Claude asked. “Why is that a priority?”

“I’m not going to beat around the bush. That bounty-hunting demon got too close to Marion last week after her blood draw, and I couldn’t sleep for two days after finding out.”

“You mean that appointment Julia couldn’t go to?”

“Yeah. Clarissa sniffed the guy out and took care of him without Marion being wise to it, but if he can find her, then I know others will, too. She needs to stay on Clarissa’s property, and we’ll have to figure something else out for her prenatal care.”

Claude made a chuffing noise and leaned back against the sofa, crossing his legs at the ankles atop the coffee table. “You gonna tell that girl she can’t even leave the house for doctor’s appointments? You done lost your mind.”

“Maybe I’ll have you tell her.”

“Squash that noise. Your woman, your problem.”

“I’ll remember that. But look, the other thing is Ross is becoming increasingly erratic, and he’s dropped his psychic shield against me. I don’t think he realizes he’s done it. He’s a far weaker psychic than any of us are, so he probably doesn’t know he’s transmitting on all frequencies.”

“What’s he up to?” John asked, squinting out the window at the busy street below.

“He’s got a one-track mind. He’s only interested in pleasing Pop, and he’d do anything to gain his favor.”

“The favor none of us reasonable sorts want anymore,” Claude said.

“He doesn’t dwell much on Marion, but he’s trailing her parents. Got close a couple of times. I can sense his emotions. They oscillate so violently, the highs and lows. Marion doesn’t seem to be so important to him yet, but I don’t know how long that’ll last, especially if that hunter shared info with others. Word will get around that she’s alive, and any demon worth his salt will sniff around Clarissa’s area.”

“It’s the obvious place to look,” John said.

“Just tell us what you need to do, and we’ll work it out.” Claude stretched out on the sofa, cradling his head atop entwined fingers. He closed his eyes and added on the tail of a yawn, “Better hurry up and get what you came here for. We ain’t that hard to find right now given the magic I just played with. I’m not really in the mood to have a pissing contest with
Papa
, so let’s go before he gets out of whatever woman he’s taken for the day.”

Charles grunted and turned on his heel toward the bedroom. Claude was right. The last thing they needed was a confrontation, but as he turned the doorknob he wondered if pitted against each other, whether Pop would be more formidable, or Charles’s cunning half-witch brother.

He hoped he never had to find out.

• • •

Marion’s plan had been to give her baby daddy a swift kick to one of his shins, but before she could clear the ten feet between the front door and the kitchen archway, John picked her up under her arms as if she weighed nothing and plopped her onto a chair.

“Chill out, sissy,” he said. “You said you’d be cool.” He kept his hands planted atop her shoulders as if she were going to bolt.

Well. Yeah. She would have if she thought she’d get very far.

“I am cool,” she lied through clenched teeth.

“That’s usually what Ariel says when she means the exact opposite.”

She opened her mouth to protest the comparison, but closed it, figuring it’d be a case of the lady protesting too much. While she and Ariel had wholly different personalities, they did share enough traits to know that some quirks were just genetic.

She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. Opening them again, she forced her gaze toward Charles and said in the calmest voice she could manage, “You cancelled my appointments. I got the letter yesterday, and I’m betting you’re to blame.”

He didn’t so much as flinch or even blink. “Yes, I did.”

“Why? And
how
? You had no right.”

“Why? Because you’re in danger. How?” One of his dark eyebrows inched up. “I think I’ve already explained that I don’t generally have difficulties convincing people to do things for me.”

“Oh, I see.” She didn’t want to think about that—what he’d had to do or say to bend that appointment clerk to his will. She just bet the poor woman damn near melted in her cheap swivel chair under the influence of that sensuous baritone voice. The woman might have even felt a surge of heat spreading from her heart down to things much lower. Her breath might have caught, and perhaps she’d fanned herself with her hand until he went away.

Marion jammed her hands into the pockets of her bathrobe upon realizing she was doing the exact same thing right then. Damned pregnancy hot flashes.