Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (48 page)

Maybe Charles was capable of love, too. She
could
love him. Maybe she already did a little, but she couldn’t be sure if it was real or some spillover from all that lust.

“I hope the ocean’s warm,” Ariel said. She pulled the straps of her hemp tote up to her shoulder and stood.

Marion shoved back from the table and grabbed the chair arms to stand, when a strong arm pressed at her back, aiding her up.

Without thought, she grabbed a butter knife from her place setting, and spun, pressing the dull tip against the handsome young man’s sternum. “Back up.”

He put up his hands, backed up a pace, and grinned so his smile reached his eyes. “I’m so sorry. You looked like you could use a bit of help, and I acted without remembering some ladies don’t like having their personal space broached.”

Pressing her shaking left hand over her racing heart, she blew out a breath and relaxed her grip on the utensil. She let it fall to her plate and swallowed down her nerves.

Relax.

What was wrong with her? She’d never done that before, not even during all those years on the road. Maybe it was the baby and all those extra hormones making her jumpy.

“It’s all right,” she said, and looked to Ariel and Julia for reassurance. If they were calm, she could be, too. She couldn’t trust her gut lately.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Julia asked. She narrowed her eyes and laid her head to the side.

“I don’t think so,” he said, never losing that easy grin. He was cute in a preppy college boy kind of way. He had close-cropped reddish-brown hair, storm cloud gray eyes, and high coloring as if he’d just finished a swim or a run. He was certainly dressed for it in his Hilfiger shorts and loose tank. “I’d remember a face like yours.”

She giggled, obviously flattered, but eased away from the table. “Come on, Marion. I see a clear spot up the beach.”

Ariel stepped off the restaurant deck after her, casting one last look over her shoulder at Marion to mouth,
Come on
.

Marion turned back the stranger and gave him a little finger wave. “Uh, thanks for the help. Or rather, the attempt to help.”

He performed a gallant bow. “Of course. So, your name is Marion, is it?”

Groaning, she pressed the heels of her palms against her spine’s base and tried to quiet her back’s roar of pain. “God, are you going to tell me you had a grandmother named that or something? I get that all the time. I may start going by my middle name. Nah. Middle name’s not much better. What were my parents thinking? Marion
Aoife
.” She scoffed. “Why not just spell it E-v-a? I’ll have to ask them what they were smoking.”

Why was her gut still knotted up? She hadn’t felt this out of sorts since that time she’d had to carry a double-sized load across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge during a blinding hailstorm.

Maybe it was the way he rarely blinked.

Or maybe she’d just eaten too many clams.

Julia hadn’t noticed anything amiss about him, and of all people, she should have.

Pull it together, girl.

He shook his head, and pursed his lips. He rocked on his heels a few beats, and then said, “A grandmother? No. Stepmother, though.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s a wonderful person.”

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. My father has always had questionable taste.”

“All righty, then. Nice talking to you.”
Weirdo.
She hopped down to the sand and started picking across the beach toward Ariel and Julia, glad to put the conversation behind her.

When she looked back, the man was still smiling, but now he stood with one hand wedged in his shorts pocket while the other fiddled with a cell phone.

Why worry about demons when plain ol’ humans were nutty enough?

Charles and Claude waited until the ladies had disappeared up the beach, and when Ross put his phone to his ear, they made their move.

Charles reached in and deftly plucked the phone from his hand, disconnecting the call before the person on the other end answered.

Claude wrapped his arm around his nephew as if to hug him, and jabbed a syringe into his side.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ross asked as he tried to squirm away. Claude patted his shoulder, and murmured a few words that had Ross breathing through his mouth and swooning on his feet.

“Fa-fa-fa-fa …”

“That’s right, little boy. You’re just tired. Had too much sun. Uncle Claude’s going to see you up to your room.”

He helped the smaller down off the deck and cast a look back at Charles. “Go deal with your woman. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

“Yeah.”

Damn that woman. What the hell was she thinking? And Ariel and Julia, too? Well, John and Calvin would have to straighten them out later. He’d told her she was always being watched—that she couldn’t go far without someone alerting him she’d left, and good thing, too. They may have sneaked out from under Clarissa’s nose, but a certain wind deity who
technically
wasn’t allowed to pick sides had no qualms about tailing Marion on occasion. Agatha apparently got bored and needed stuff to do, and she found the Morton women more entertaining than anything on television.

He heeled off his shoes and carried them as made his way across the beach. He was surprised it had taken Ross so long to show up. He’d been anxious for months, worrying Ross would hone in on Marion while she took her daring little walks down the country road Clarissa’s property sat on. She never got far, but far enough away from the protective barriers that she could have been a sitting duck.

He’d balked at Clarissa about it, and she’d said, “Let the girl have some freedom. At least the illusion of it,” but he hadn’t been happy about it. He couldn’t be with her all the time, not while he and his brothers were doing the supernatural security guard thing. They were doing the equivalent of moving chess pieces across the board while their opponent had his back turned. All those grown children Pop had waiting in the wings to herd into the sex demon ranks were currently inaccessible. If he had known that using his Cupid-esque gifts would make people do favors for him they normally wouldn’t, he would have switched teams long ago.

He, Claude, and John had relocated thirteen of Pop’s kids in three months, and they’d all had to kiss a lot of ass to make it happen. Pop had a reputation, even amongst non-demon supernaturals, and people generally didn’t want to consort with his children. Charles had tried offering them money, but once they learned who his mother had been, they became quite compliant. Funny that people didn’t fear him when he was the bearer of love. Lust, you could stumble onto anywhere. Love, well, that was a rare element.

Claude, who’d encountered Ross on a few occasions in the past, shook some information out of his witchy grapevine. Apparently, the quarter-demon liked to run his mouth, and that was why they knew he planned to stalk Ariel and Clarissa, thinking Charles would eventually come around.

Now that Ross not only had proof of Marion’s existence, but also that Julia frequented Clarissa’s place, there was no way Charles could let the little brat loose. He was willing, up to a certain point, to let bygones be bygones, but apparently Ross was a sniveling little snitch. The number he’d punched into his phone was Pop’s.

The fact he had to use a phone was a good thing, though. That meant he didn’t have a psychic link with the big guy. Pop couldn’t locate him or transmit information instantly.

Good
.

Charles sneaked up behind the ladies with as much stealth as a man of six-and-a-half feet was capable of and laid a hand on Julia’s back.

She jumped and clutched her chest. “Crap! Don’t kill me.”

No wonder Calvin was so protective of her. She had no danger instincts whatsoever.

Marion, however, he wasn’t so sure of. She’d surprised him. He’d seen her grab that useless butter knife, yet Julia hadn’t even batted an eye about Ross entering their proximity.

Marion groaned. “Damn.”

“You gonna tell on us?” Ariel asked, and she kept rubbing sunscreen onto her arm.

“Yes,” he said. “You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

“Can we at least get some sun before you shoo us on home? We’ve come this far.”

He sighed and dropped his shoes onto the corner of their large blanket. “An hour.”

“Yay!” Julia exclaimed, clapping her hands.

“Turn up that shield of yours, Julia. Let’s not broadcast to every supernatural being on the beach that we’re here.”

“You got it, bro.” She scooted over and made Charles a bit of room on the blanket.

He would have rather sat next to Marion, but as far as she knew, they couldn’t touch. Given the argument he figured they had coming up, he didn’t want to push it, anyway. At this point, everyone knew the moratorium was off
except
Marion. It seemed everyone was holding their breath, waiting for them to finally embrace and get the awkwardness out of the way, but for the moment it was easier to maintain the status quo. Seeing as how she kept icing him out of even simple conversations, he didn’t think she’d believe him if he told her. After all, she didn’t believe the fated mate thing, either. It was sort of a big deal, and he wouldn’t blame her for being extra cautious. It was her soul at stake.

They sat in silence for a while, avoiding each other’s gazes. Ariel plugged her ear buds in and queued up something in her MP3 player before lying back. Julia rolled over, splayed a much-abused paperback atop the blanket, and furrowed her forehead as she began to silently read.

Marion drummed her fingers atop her thighs and chewed the inside of her mouth.

“Whose idea was it?” he asked when she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with conversation.

She shrugged and pulled her wide-brimmed straw hat a bit lower so he couldn’t see her eyes. “Can’t remember. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I see. And are a couple of hours on the beach worth your life?”

“Come on, don’t add to my guilt. Nothing happened besides some weirdo getting too friendly at the restaurant. He gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

The hair on the back of Charles’s neck prickled. The fact she could sense something was amiss might cause problems down the line. He’d have to have a little talk again with oh-so-coy Clarissa about just what she was. He wasn’t buying the
little bit psychic
bullshit, and Claude had confirmed in no uncertain terms they weren’t witches.

Julia looked up. “What’d he say to you?”

“It was just general oversharing. I think he needs a few hours on a shrink’s couch or a long phone call to his mommy.”

Charles ran a hand through his loose hair and blew out a breath. He had no idea who Ross’s
mommy
was. Even knowing his approximate age didn’t help. Charles had been a fairly young incubus at that point, and everything from back then was one testosterone- and magic-laden blur. He had to have been conceived around the time his mother was killed, and that had been one of his blackest periods.

“You said
heebie-jeebies
,” he said. “In what way?”

“I don’t know,” Marion said. “I can’t explain it. When he got within a couple of feet of me, all of a sudden my stomach knotted up. A little voice in my head said there was something wrong with him.”

Julia closed her book and looked up at Charles.

He gave his head a small shake.

What are you hiding?

He squinted at her.
Since when can you communicate this way?

I guess I could all along. John taught me how
. She cut her gaze over to Marion beside her, who was now peeling her clingy white T-shirt off to expose an overstretched tank top. Of course she didn’t have a bathing suit. When would she have had a chance to get one? He hated that she couldn’t be out and about when she was such an extrovert. The supernatural types cycling in and out of Clarissa’s house kept her entertained to some degree, but there was nothing like going out to seek your own fun.

He had to fix this for her—was
trying
to.

Julia gave his arm a nudge.
Tell me.

He leaned back, put his palms in the sand, and fixed his gaze on the water ahead again.
If you tell her this, I’ll see to it that Calvin never lets you out of his sight. You’ll have so many werewolves circling you, you’ll think you’ve died and reincarnated as the goddess Lupa. You’ll never stop finding bits of fur floating in your coffee. You want that?

Don’t be a douche. Tell me
.

In his periphery, he saw her pick up her book and hold it in front of her face.
That man back at the restaurant is one-quarter demon, and he seemed to hit Marion’s radar stronger than he hit yours.

Julia gasped.
Where’d he go? I thought something was off about him, but figured it was because he looked a bit familiar.

Claude is dealing with him for the moment. And I’m not surprised he looked familiar to you because he’s my son.

“Oh, crap!”

Marion and Ariel turned to look at Julia.

Charles sighed.

Julia chuckled nervously. “Sorry, girls, I just remembered I forgot to set the DVR for Calvin’s game. His team got new uniforms. Sexy tight pants.”

Smooth.

Sorry.
Julia fidgeted the end of her braid and murmured, “Oh, crap. Oh, crap,” again and again under her breath, and Marion looked over Julia’s reclining form at him.

“You two telepathing?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a word,” he said, trying for blasé and likely failing. “What makes you ask that?”

She rested her hands atop her protruding belly and rubbed. He wanted to add his hand to the pile, to feel their daughter’s movement, but he wouldn’t dare. He wanted to just go on and
tell
her already, but every time he considered it, his courage fled.

“I’ve been noticing some coincidences lately. I can usually tell when John and Claude are doing it because neither of them can keep a straight face when they’re talking. Makes me never want to ask them what they have on their minds, because it’s likely gross.”

“Probably,” Ariel said blithely.