Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (62 page)

Papa didn’t give a single shit about innocent bystanders, but he did value his own life. He wouldn’t dare confront Claude now, and had always avoided it in the past. They only communicated through telepathy. Telepathy was a handy thing, but most supernaturals with the gift had a limited capacity for it. Claude used it with his father, his siblings, and the rare angel or two. It only worked with angels because his father had once been one. When Claude blocked him out mentally, the ancient demon would lower himself to send a terse text message.

He knew that the only reason Claude ever did what he asked in the first place was because of Claude’s mark. Papa gave it to him at birth at his mother’s demand. No, not demand—her
force
. Her power had been terrifying, and she’d been the only mortal to ever force the demon Gulielmus to obey. He hadn’t wanted her as a consort, and she sure as shit didn’t want him, either, but she wanted his seed—for her son to have his mark. She’d never told Claude why, although he’d asked.

That mark, etched into his palm, called all the demon power to the surface so that it may be called upon. That mark tied Claude to his father, whether he wanted it or not.

Claude didn’t want it, and neither did Papa, but they were stuck together. Father and son.

Partners and enemies.

Each would kill the other if provoked. Claude couldn’t initiate a tussle, though he wanted to. His brothers wouldn’t let him—they said he had to be better than that.

Gail moaned with pleasure as she heeled off her clogs, and then pulled her feet up to the sofa. “Damn, those dogs can bark.”

Her toes wriggled inside her striped socks.

Blue and white stripes, just like that scarf Laurette had knit for him a hundred and fifty years ago. He lost that scarf in the fire she’d burned in, but Gail wouldn’t have known that. She wouldn’t have Laurette’s memories.

“Don’t tell me you have a foot fetish,” Gail said with a laugh. He must have been staring too long.

He pulled his gaze up to her smiling face. “You … like blue?” Besides her jeans, the color didn’t exist elsewhere on her outfit. He didn’t know much about fashion, but as far as he knew, women generally matched things.

“Mmm…” She wriggled her toes again. “Funnily enough, no. Not on its own, but for some reason, I’ve only ever liked it in stripes. This may sound crazy, but I order these socks in bulk. I have four pairs left from the last pack. This is my third pack since graduating from cooking school. Weird, huh?”

He struggled to swallow the lump in his throat, suspecting her predilection wasn’t a coincidence. His girl was in there somewhere, hidden behind brand-new armor. “Yeah. Weird.”

“So, come on. Show me what you can do.” Gail put her drink on the coffee table and rubbed her palms together in anticipation.

Claude raised one dark eyebrow speculatively. “You really want me to do magic tricks?”

“Absolutely, I do. What? Can’t do them under command? That’s okay. I know some people clam up under pressure. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She leaned against the sofa’s armrest and crossed her arms over her chest, grinning.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re seriously trying to bait me?”

“Is it working?”

“No. Besides, magic is generally an instinctive thing for me. I don’t have to think that hard at it. I just—” He snapped his fingers, and the cabinet door she’d left open when grabbing the glasses shut softly. “Do it. Actually, the gestures are unnecessary. They’re mostly for finesse.” He picked up his glass and sipped it as causally as he pleased as the stack of magazines on the table shuffled and fanned.

“Hmm.” He slid out a
Victoria’s Secret
catalogue, and she snatched it out of his hands before he could open it. Typical man.

She dropped the catalogue onto the floor and pushed it beneath the sofa with her foot. Those glossy rags set up standards of beauty no typical woman could live up to—especially not her—and she was lucky to have one good meal a day and spent most hours on her feet. If he were interested in women who were perfectly cinched and smooth, he’d be in for a major disappointment when she took her clothes off.

If
she took them off. With all the talk of magic, her libido was cooling. That was probably a good thing. Any guy worth screwing would call her for a second date.

The cordless phone bleated from the counter, and her breath caught like it did every time it rang. No one called her on that phone anymore except for one person, but she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it.

It rang, and rang.

Claude leaned forward and caught her in his gaze. “Are you going to answer that,
chéri
? It’s got a ring that could wake the dead.”

“It can go to voicemail. It’s not important.” Nothing Shaun wanted was ever important. He alternated between pleading and mocking, begging for her company and criticizing her for her inadequacies. “
I just need to hold you
,” he’d say one day, and “
No one else will put up with you
,” he’d say the next.

She could unplug the phone, change the number. But maybe she kept the line open to punish herself for being with him. How could she have been so desperate?

She sighed and ground the heels of her palms against her tired eyes. “So, you just think it, and you can do it?”

“Like I said, there’s not a whole lot of thinking involved. Just like me turning my head or cracking my knuckles. Most things, I don’t plan. I just do. My magic is just an extension of my other senses, and mostly just saves me a lot of energy having to fetch things.”

Totally different from her. He talked about saving energy, but for her, magic took more energy than she could spare. “When did you figure out you could do that?” Her voice came out sounding quietly reverent, which was a tone she didn’t even use with her demanding, exacting maternal grandmother—the self-appointed head of her little family.

He shrugged. “I’ve always been able to do that. Or rather, I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t.”

“Huh.” That was unusual. Most witches didn’t come into their power until around puberty. “Both of your parents are witches? They must be powerful.”

He slumped down lower on his end of the sofa and raked his hands through his curls. “Well, my mother has been dead for quite some time.”

“Oh.” She reached for his wrist and pulled his hand onto her lap, patting it lamely. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, it’s been a very long time, and yes, my mother was very powerful. Because of that, she doesn’t really … go away.”

Gail gasped before she could suppress it. “You mean, she haunts you?”

“No, she’s not disjointed in that way. She practiced some magic even I wouldn’t touch. I don’t know how much of that is responsible for me being what I am, but one of my neat tricks is having connection to the dead.”

“You’re a medium?”

“Mmm …” He turned her palm over and traced her lifeline ever so gently with the tip of his index finger. She giggled and tried to curl her fingers over it, but he lifted her hand to his lips yet again and kissed it.

He didn’t push magic into her this time, though, unless seduction counted as a form of dark art. His gaze was fixed on hers as he skimmed his lips back and forth from the heel of her palm to the base of her middle finger. His breath tickled the middle of her hand just before he laid a kiss in it and closed her fingers over it.

Her cheeks burned hot from his unexpected flirtation, and she felt like a girl of fourteen instead of a grown-ass woman of nearly thirty.

He set her hand onto his lap, and ignored her distress—her ragged breaths through parted lips.

“I guess I’m a medium. Part medium, part necromancer.”

She pulled her hand back and sat on both as if she feared she wouldn’t be able to control them. “You raise the dead?”

“As little as possible,
chéri
.”

He had to be telling the truth. There was no flinch, no hitch in his voice, no visual tics whatsoever. A man who could commune with the dead more than likely had incalculable control over the living, too, and she’d brought him home. Ellery was going to shit a brick, assuming Gail got out of this alive.

Her gut must have lied to her again. It lied about Shaun, and it had lied about Claude, too. This guy wasn’t safe. No fucking way. Her grandmother used to tell her and Ellery that neither of them had enough sense to pour piss out a boot, and while Gail liked to think that wasn’t true, sometimes she wondered if that old battle-ax had it right all along.

She needed to get this guy out of her apartment, and fast.

A fluffy orange-and-white ball of fur bounded off the sofa back and landed on Claude’s lap, yawning.

Claude startled then hissed as Candy Corn stretched and likely dug her untrimmed nails into thighs of Claude’s blue jeans.

“Good for him,” Gail muttered under her breath as the cat kneaded and clawed. She hoped the little beast scratched him bloody.

Candy Corn turned a slow circle atop her guest’s lap and plopped her fat, furry ass down for a rest. Extending her forearm in front of her face, she licked her fur leisurely, the same spot again and again, while her purring subroutine loaded.

“Traitorous little fuck.”

“You have a familiar?” Claude asked, voice pinched.

“She’s your familiar now if you want her. Take her. She eats half a can of smelly wet stuff every morning and as much kibble as she can tolerate. Half of it she’ll yak up on your bedspread.”

“I don’t need a familiar.” He tipped his body, obviously trying to convey an inhospitable atmosphere to the cat, but she didn’t move. She dug those claws in deeper and cast Claude an annoyed look. He sat. She resumed her cleaning. “And if she’s yours, you’re stuck with her until one of you dies.”

“Maybe she’ll choke on a mouse or something.”

Candy Corn stopped licking long enough to give Gail a long blink, then resumed her meticulous bathing.

“Where’d you get her?”

“My grandmother had a litter. She picked out cats for all of her grandchildren who didn’t already have familiars. Most of us didn’t want one.”

“I can understand why.”

“Yeah. Well, she’s old school and she’s big on pets, I guess. That cat’s great-great-great-great-grandkitty came into our family years ago, and my grandmother’s been doling out cats to witches all her life. Anyway, when she gave me and my sister ours, she told us that perhaps the cats would be more street smart than we were, and that we should try to learn from the little pissers.”

“I can tell you have a lot of affection for your familiar.” He gave the cat the tiniest pat on the top of her head, and the purring became downright bombastic. Candy Corn stretched up and tried to mash her furry kitty head against his hand.

“We get along just fine most of the time, but here’s the thing. That cat is supposed to tell me who I shouldn’t trust.”

“Oh, yeah?” He tried to nudge Candy Corn off his lap once more, this time with more force.

Candy Corn nipped at the hand he pushed her with, and he sighed.

She wasn’t going
anydamnwhere
.

“You sound as though you believe such a thing is possible.”

“You know damn well it is as much as I do. I didn’t want to believe it at first. Candy Corn told me in bites, scratches, and hisses that I shouldn’t have married my ex-husband, but back then, I didn’t think it was possible for a cat to be that astute. And he was so fucking nice, you know?”

“Mm-hmm.” Claude’s jaw twitched at the hinges.

What was up with that? He didn’t even know the guy.

“Well, she called it. Candy Corn was right, and I didn’t listen to her. Ever since then, she’s had a fine damn time reminding me. When I need her, she stays far away. She holes up in the bathroom and won’t get out of her litter box. She just keeps scratching and scratching, flinging litter around. So, surprise, surprise, you’re here and she’s emerged from her throne room to give you the greeting you apparently deserve. Hooray.”

Candy Corn’s eyelids went heavy with contented sleepiness.

Fucking cat.

What was she going to do now? She’d wanted to get this necromancer out of her apartment, but her familiar had rolled out the figurative fur-covered red carpet for him.

Boo.

“Is she just going to stay like this, or should I shoo her away?”

Claude seemed genuinely distressed by the overweight feline on his lap. His nostrils flared, and breathing sped.

“You’re not allergic, are you?”

“No, but I prefer not to have a cat be the arbiter of whether or not I’m worthy to be in your presence.”

“Hey, if it were up to me, I’d keep your gin and send you home. You mess with dead things, and I don’t like that.”

That was wild magic: the shit she’d been taught to avoid because witches lost themselves to it. Once they gave into it just once, they couldn’t stop. Witches who used wild magic got shunned. Gail didn’t give a shit about being shunned because she already had been. That hadn’t changed her ingrained principles any, though.

He ground out an exasperated groan and pounded the left armrest. “I said I do it as little as possible, and only in very controlled circumstances. I don’t exactly go into graveyards and raise revenants. Even if that weren’t beyond my capabilities, I wouldn’t do it. I think that most of the time, the dead should
stay
dead. I …” His brow furrowed upon uttering that profession, and his lips, parted as though he had more to say, formed no more words.

Curiosity was probably going to be her final undoing one day, but right now, she had to know what the handsome, dangerous witch was thinking—what he was holding back.

Carefully, she passed her hand in front of Candy Corn and gave Claude’s knee a little a little squeeze. “Tell me.”

“I …” He forced out a long exhale and gently scooped the cat into his arms. He set her on the floor, and when she poised to jump right back up onto his lap, he stood. He paced in front of the coffee table with his hands clasped at his back. “I have so much to tell you, Gail.”

“Tell
me
? Hey, you don’t have to use me for your come-to-Jesus confession. You raise a dead body here and there? Okay, that’s between you and whatever or whomever you worship.”