Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (81 page)

Gail gave her great-great-whatever a tiny nudge to the shoulder. “Isn’t there anything you can do to fix this?”

Agatha shook her head. “No. Just like your energy is incompatible with what she needs, so is my power. She’s not my progeny, so I can’t go tinkering with her hormones. I don’t mean that from a political standpoint, which doesn’t matter anyway since I’m no longer neutral. I literally can’t do anything.”

“But you know who can?”

“Honey, I do, but she won’t. She likes it this way. It keeps the wolf population up. I sort of envy her for that.”

Sweetie shuffled her feet to the deck door, her shoulders drawn low and chin to her chest. “Let me go toss a few things into a bag, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen minutes.” She slid the door closed and stomped down the deck steps.

Agatha turned to Claude and seemed to notice the mess for the first time. She waved her hand and righted things—not necessarily in the correct order, but at least it was all off the floor.

“What exactly does neutral mean?” Gail asked. “It doesn’t seem there are that many perks.”

“You’re right. It’s a club with limited membership advantages, though it hasn’t always been that way. Neutral simply means that you don’t interfere in the disputes of other supernatural beings, even if those disputes affect your family members. It also means you’re denied having any further offspring, should you have any. You’re basically retired and aren’t supposed to use your dominant power.” She rolled her eyes. “But most of us broke that rule.”

“That sounds positively barbaric,” Gail said.

“Well, of course it is. What do you expect from petty gods?” She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the door. “I suppose the one good thing about being neutral is that people didn’t pick fights with me just for the thrill of it. All sorts of beings are coming out of the woodwork wanting a piece of me. I had a very unpleasant run-in with a demon on the way here.”

She brushed some imaginary speck off her silk blouse.

“A demon? Papa?” Claude asked.

She sputtered her lips. “Bill and I have an agreement. Killing each other would be far too
bourgeoisie
and predictable, so we wouldn’t bother trying. Wasn’t him. It was definitely a demon of his type, though much weaker.”

“Weaker as in …”

“I bound her up in hail and wind, opened a hole to her Hell, and tossed her into it.” She patted down a sliver of hair that must have fallen out of place during her scuffle.

“Her?” Gail’s voice dripped with incredulity. Who could blame her?

“Oh, yes. They’re not all pretty boys, sweetheart. Most of the fallen ones came to Earth as males, but there are a few females left. Petty, vicious bitches …” Her gray eyes had taken on a malevolent glint, and Claude wondered what Agatha had endured in her countless millennia before going neutral. He definitely didn’t want to get on her bad side now that her hands were unbound and she could really make him
hurt
if she felt like it.

She snapped her fingers. “I got so distracted that I almost forgot why I popped over here. I’ve been doing some investigation of my own about the magic traces left at the warehouse and the residual magic left on your clothes from after the attack, Claude.”

“Really?” He shuffled his notes atop the table, looking for what had been the topmost page. “I hit a wall, so I’m interested in hearing what you found out.”

“Well, first and foremost, we can eliminate from the suspect list anyone related to me, which I’ve already established are very few people. It’s just Gail and Ellery, their mother, her brother and nephews, their mother’s father, a childless uncle, and a great-aunt in a nursing home. The great-aunt’s children have no magical inclination. Totally bred out in that line.” She sighed, shook her head, and counted off on her fingers. “Usually, we god-types can
taste
the flavor of magic and figure out which family tree it shook out of. That’s why I know Claude is descended from Erzulie Yeux Rouge. I knew her briefly.”

Well, that explained a lot. He couldn’t deny the irony of the fact that that he was descended from a voodoo goddess known for avenging unfaithful lovers. He was a fucking incubus. How many women had he led astray from their committed relationships in the past? Too many to count. No wonder he’d grown tired of the gig.

“So, whose magic are you tasting?”

Agatha’s forehead furrowed and lips parted, but no words came out. She closed her mouth, shook her head, and pulled a chair out from the table. Sitting, she laced her fingers together. “I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know something, but it’s for good reason at least. The witch is from the line of some newer god.”

“Wait.” Gail walked to the back of Claude’s chair and gripped the top. “Gods are still being made?”

“Sure. Just because we’re old as dirt doesn’t mean we don’t have sex drives.”

“I don’t want to think about that. That’s like imagining my grandparents getting it on.”

Agatha lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug. “Anyhow, the magic definitely bore a taste of witch and not a demigod, which would be how Charles would get classified, in spite of his demon half.” She added that last bit in a mumble. “We’re talking at a least a dozen generations of separation. Maybe twenty. Far less than are between you and me, though, Gail.”

Gail’s swallow was loud enough for Claude to hear. He reached back and grabbed her left hand.

“So, that automatically makes whoever it is more powerful than me?”

Agatha scrunched her face as if she’d been brought a pair of knock-off Louboutins to try on. “I didn’t insinuate that. Stop trying to read between the lines. Whoever it is is dangerous because of the way he or she uses magic, and not because of the amount of magic they possess. This person knows how to borrow.”

“I figured,” Claude said.

“You guessed that? How? Walk me through it,” Gail said.

“I’ll explain it to you later.”

“No, explain it to me right now.”

“It’s too complicated.”

“Too complicated for an
idiot
, you mean.”

He ground his fists against his closed eyes and let out a breath. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

“I’m obviously behind the curve here, yet when I try to play catch-up, all I get is
I’ll tell you later
or
don’t worry about it
. If I wanted to be treated like I was stupid, I would have stayed with my ex-husband. At least he let me know what he thought about me in plain language instead of putting off the insult until later.”

She tossed her dish towel onto the kitchen table and stormed from the room. She pounded up the stairs, and seconds later, the guest room door slammed.

“Fuck.” He put his face on the table and banged his forehead against it repeatedly. “This isn’t going to work.”

“I don’t know if it is or isn’t, but I’m vested in your success for obvious reasons.” Agatha patted his left shoulder reassuringly—sweetly, even—and just when he’d relaxed a notch, her pat turned into a muscle-deflating clench that had him grabbing the table edge. “Don’t mistake me, Claude. I may be too lazy to try to kill your father, but if you hurt Gail, I will personally select a bull to charge you and castrate you on the point of its horns. No, scratch that. I’ll come up with something much, much worse. Fire isn’t one of my toys, but I can learn new tricks.” She patted his head.

“Where were you when her ex-husband was shredding her self-esteem?”

“Like I said, my hands were tied.” She cracked her knuckles and eased away from the chair. “They’re not anymore. If I’m going to play the game and pay the consequences for being out and picking sides again, I’m going to give people a
reason
to hate me. Give me a couple of days. I’ve got something fabulous planned for Mr. Townsend. I’ve been working this one up for two years now, and it’s a doozy.” Her laugh was cold enough to freeze Hell over twice.

Goddamn
.

“You are absolutely insane,” he said.

“Oh, I’m not insane. Maybe I have some unresolved issues, but who doesn’t?”

He couldn’t argue. He sure as shit had his, one of them being upstairs cursing his name loud enough for people down in Myrtle Beach to hear.

Gail’s body shook so violently that in five minutes, she’d become exhausted. Horny and exhausted, a combination that left her feeling intensely dissatisfied and a lot pissed off. She couldn’t do anything for it, though, at least not at the moment. Even standing as far from the gathering of incubi as she could, the cumulative effect of all that energy licked at her all the way from the middle of the barn.

Clarissa’s house had become too crowded with all the men returning at once—plus Gulielmus and Jason—so when she called a meeting, she directed everyone out to the old barn. As it had been when Gail and Claude had stumbled into it last week, it was empty save for several bags of chicken feed. Those inclined to sit had dragged in lawn chairs.

The big, beautiful demon Gulielmus chose to stand, grinding his teeth and working his gaze over every inch of the structure as if its mere existence offended his sensibilities.

Marion sidled up close to Gail, shifted Ruby to her other hip, and whispered, “He hasn’t been on this property since Ariel and John hooked up. The place is warded out the wazoo, so demons like him are generally barred from entering the premises unless they intend the occupants no ill will.”

“Let me guess. He always intends ill will.”

Marion chuckled. “He usually does, but we have common enemy for the moment, so I guess this is the closest to a truce as we’re going to get.”

“It’s happening again—the sexual starvation. Perhaps this sounds borderline hysterical, but right now my body is telling me that I need sex the way a person in the desert needs water.”

Marion whistled low. “Well, let’s count. We’ve got four male cambions and the mac daddy incubus within a fifteen-foot radius. That’d cause pretty much anyone sexual distress.”

“Why isn’t it bothering
you
, then?”

“Oh, it is, though probably not in the same way since Charles and I are psychically bound. I must say, though, that when he wears his hair loose like that, it makes me want to take him home and tie him to headboard. I bought a satin blindfold last week I could finally take out of the packaging. Yeah, I’d—” She dragged her tongue across her lips and stared lustily at her husband. “Hey, hold Ruby.”

“No! Snap out of it. If I’m not getting any, no one is.”

Marion guffawed. “We’ll see how long that lasts. There’ll be a fucking revolt. If I don’t kill you, Ariel will. Maybe we’ll tag team.”

“I can’t take this.”

“Okay, look. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Just compartmentalize, okay? Think of it this way. Claude is your dude. Your old man. Your boo-thang.”

Now it was Gail’s turn to guffaw. Marion needed to take a little break from her brand new hip-hop obsession. “Claude is the pain in my ass.”

Marion canted her head to the side and grinned at her. “Yet you’re still here in Mortonland.” She scrunched her little pixie nose. “Or is it Mortonville today? Eh. As I was saying, Claude’s yours. Gulielmus, beautiful hunk of evil that he is, could potentially be your father-in-law one day.”

The grip of arousal eased somewhat.

“John and Charles are both taken.”

Yeah, Gail didn’t do married men. Absolute deal-breaker.

“I don’t know what Jason’s deal is, but still. That’s three out of four you can’t and don’t want to touch.”

That analysis did seem to help douse the flames somewhat, but then she looked at Claude and they flared right back up.

She’d never known grungy could be her type until she’d met him. He made holey T-shirts and ratty sneakers look artistically stylish. He always wore his jeans slung a bit low, and imagining them sliding the rest of the way down was no hardship. And of course, there was that perfect face she wasn’t sure she wanted to punch or sit on.

She whimpered, and Marion gave her a hard nudge to the ribs.

“You’re mad at him, remember? Use that. Use that anger.”

“I think my anger makes him hotter.” The last thing she needed was to have sex with him again. That seemed to be their cycle—argue, fuck, go adventuring. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Okay, try this. Think about something other than how he looks. Close your eyes and think about … magic. Unpack some of the things you’ve learned in the past couple of weeks. Ruby likes when you tickle her with static.”

Gail closed her eyes and did as the woman suggested. Her inheritance was air and wind, and she imagined it blowing through her, cleansing her. It was her blood and her nourishment. It was her magic, should she ever master it. The wind could cause untold destruction, but it could also push clouds away from the sun.

At that, she smiled.

“Uh, Gail?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re off the ground, honey.”

“What?”

“Uh …”

“Open your eyes,
chéri
.” That last reverent voice wasn’t Marion’s, but Claude’s.

She opened her eyes to meet his and mused at the fact she was looking down at him. Had he shrank?

He pointed to the ground, and smirked.

She looked at it, realized she was floating a couple of feet off the ground, and naturally, immediately re-introduced herself to the ground, ass-first. “
Oophf
! How’d I do that?”

“That’s all on you. You did that all on your own.”

“I can’t …
float
. That’s just …” Maybe she
could
float. Hadn’t scaling that building been easier than it should have been for someone whose diet consisted mostly of barbecue sandwiches and Cheerwine cocktails?

“Well, you just did.” He left her there on her ass and rejoined his father, brothers, Clarissa, and Agatha in the barn center.

“That is so fucking cool!” Marion reached her free hand down and Gail grabbed it, accepting her aid. “You know, Charles is descended from an erote on his mother’s side. The erotes were winged love gods in the Greek pantheon. I asked him a few months ago if he’d ever
tried
flying, and he gave me a long blink before walking away. He wouldn’t even try.”