Demon Possessed (19 page)

“Honestly? Right now I think you’re better off.”

They’d reached the bar. The demon behind it—one of Gunnar’s, she thought—poured her a gin and tonic, but before she could get it to her lips, someone touched her shoulder.

Leora.
Shit.

The girl’s wide blue eyes met hers without guile. She was wearing a dress almost the exact same color; the effect was to make her look like innocent youth on legs, and Megan feel like a crone in her own black sheath. All of her dresses were black, damn it. She hadn’t brought anything else. If she hadn’t been so busy being miserable and sick, she would have tried to run out and buy something, but as it was, she was just hoping desperately to make it through the evening without bursting into tears.

Her entire body hurt. Her chest felt as if a bomb had gone off inside it.

“Megan, I was hoping I could talk to you for a few minutes?”

Megan shot a desperate glance at Nick, but his lifted eyebrows indicated the same sort of helplessness she felt. To deny the girl would be rude, and demons were fairly obsessive about manners. On the other hand, though . . .

the thought of actually speaking to Leora made her palms sweat.

No real choice, though. So she nodded. “Sure.”

Leora led her off to the side, to the pole where she’d had her discussion with Greyson what felt like hundreds of years before. A new wound opened in her chest.

“My dad wanted me to talk to you,” Leora said. “He thought maybe if we got to know each other better, it would help.”

Oh, no. Oh no no nonononono. “I don’t think we have any issues that need helping.”

“Well, you know, he thought maybe if I talked to you, you could talk to Greyson. I mean, I’m not supposed to tell you that, I don’t think—I’m not very good at all of this stuff.” The blush on her cheeks was very becoming. Megan wanted to slap them. Not so much because she was angry but because it was the only way she could think of to make Leora stop talking.

“I think Greyson can make up his own mind about things.”

“Well, yeah, but my dad says it’s because of you that he hasn’t said yes yet, and . . . I’d really like him to. I think you and I could be really good friends. I don’t want to get in the way of what you two have, but I want to—”

Greyson walked in.

Leora hadn’t finished talking, but Megan heard her voice only as a dull buzz in the background. She was too busy staring, not sure if she was proud or furious that he looked perfectly elegant and well rested, as if not a thing had happened.

Leora followed her gaze. “Oh! There he is.”

He saw them. The faint down-twist of his mouth and wrinkle of his brow gave Megan some satisfaction but not much. She was just miserable, and things did not improve when he approached them.

“Ladies,” he said, with a fluid bow that raised her suspicions. “How lovely to see you both. I hope you’re not talking about me.”

Leora giggled. “Of course we are.”

He cocked his right eyebrow. “I assume you want me to ask what you’re saying? I won’t, you know.”

Megan’s suspicions were confirmed. He was drunk. He never behaved like some Regency ballroom rake unless he was completely plastered. She’d only seen him like this twice; it took a shitload of liquor to make a demon drunk, and he didn’t tend to drink that heavily. He must have spent the entire afternoon guzzling scotch.

Of course, she’d spent hers puking and sobbing. So she couldn’t help feeling he’d had the better idea.

Leora didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong. “You know we’ll tell you anyway.”

“Oh,
you
might,” he replied. Carter brought him another drink; he tossed it down his throat with an efficiency that made Megan wince. “But Megan? She’d never tell. And I’d certainly never ask her. Her responses to my questions are horrible.”

Megan choked out what she hoped was a close approximation of a lighthearted laugh. “Maybe you just don’t ask them correctly.”

“Maybe I don’t, at that. I always thought women found begging undignified. Looks like my suspicions were confirmed.”

“Maybe begging doesn’t mean anything when it feels like all the decisions are being made
for
us instead of
with
us.”

He scowled. “Seems to me the decision was entirely yours.”

“Oh, does it? Here I was thinking—”

Leora gave a delicate cough, more suggestion of a sound than an actual one. Megan practically jumped. She’d forgotten the girl was there.

“I think we’re ready to go in to dinner.” Leora pointed at the open double doors, at the others filing through them.

“Of course.” Greyson hesitated for such a brief time that Megan felt certain Leora hadn’t noticed it; then he offered Leora his arm. “Shall we?”

She giggled and took it, blushing again, while Megan wished desperately that an entire herd of angels or FBI agents or exorcists would burst into the room and end her misery right there.

No such luck. Instead she stood alone and watched the two of them sail off to the doors until Nick and Roc came to get her.

It wasn’t until she settled herself in her chair—blessedly they’d been shifted around for this meal, and Greyson was across from her rather than right beside her—that she realized the implications of her discussion with Leora.

Did Win truly believe she was the reason Greyson hadn’t agreed to marry his daughter? And did he want that marriage badly enough to kill for it?

Chapter Twenty

It was the longest meal of her life. The food was probably delicious. She didn’t taste a single bite of it, but she forced it down anyway for appearances. The others seemed to be enjoying it, so she figured she should too.

She’d thought having Greyson opposite her would be easier than having him beside her. She was wrong. If he’d been next to her, she wouldn’t have had to see him every time she looked up from her plate. Looking to his right didn’t help, because Leora was there. Looking to his left was worse; Justine eyed her like a cat watching a broken-legged mouse.

In all it was an absolutely shitty evening, made only slightly worse by how vulnerable she felt—any one of these people could be plotting to kill her—and worse again by watching Greyson swallow scotch like water.

They’d just had their desserts placed in front of them—some sort of gooey cake covered with berries and whipped cream, which Megan couldn’t even think about attempting—when Winston cleared his throat.

“Last year we agreed that control of the lake-perimeter nightclubs would be shared equally by myself and Gunnar. I think he’ll agree it’s working well so far. But there’s a problem in the Boarwell area. We’ve had a few
rubendas
—employees in the clubs—disappear, and a chef at Galloway’s. Which has made the police nose around, as the chef was human.”

“You had a human employee?” Justine directed her question at Winston but didn’t stop staring at Megan. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

“He was an incredible chef,” Gunnar cut in. “You must have seen the review in the
Hot Spot
. Business doubled after we lured him away from—”

“There had to be one of us who could do just as well. Humans can’t be trusted. They shouldn’t be anywhere near us.”

Megan wasn’t sure who the rest of the table was staring at harder, herself or Greyson. The latter was inspecting the bottom of his empty glass with the sort of concentration most people reserved for lottery tickets or subpoenas, but he must have felt their gazes.

He sighed and looked up. “Now, Justine, let Winston finish speaking before you rush off on one of your little tirades, won’t you?”

Damn it. She should have spoken up, not him. She was letting herself get distracted. Not a good idea, especially not in this gathering.

Especially since that distraction—well, all of the distractions—had kept her from asking him the night before whether he thought Justine’s hatred of humans had led her to try to eliminate Megan not just from the demon world but from the land of the living entirely.

Okay, so now she had motives for two at the table. Who wanted to step up next?

Justine opened her mouth, her beautiful face

darkening, but Winston stepped in quickly, shooting Greyson a surprised glance as he did. “The point is, we have reason to believe they’re being attacked by another demon. So we’d like to nip this in the bud here. Have any of our rubendas been stepping on toes? Or is our arrangement causing problems with any of you? You all agreed last year to let us control the area.”

His voice stayed perfectly calm, almost affable, but his anger tickled cold on Megan’s skin.

The others were silent. Winston sighed. “Do we have a rogue demon in the area? Are any of you aware of any problems in other cities that may have been carried into ours?”

Greyson’s voice cut through the general demurrals of the others. “Why are you so sure it’s a demon?”

“What else could it be?” Gunnar pushed his empty plate away—the smear of fruit juice on it looked like blood—and leaned forward. “What else could attack us without our sensing it or being able to overpower it? Seven missing now. We’ve been on alert for weeks. Are you suggesting a human might have been able to sneak up on them and injure them?”

“It could be a witch,” Baylor Regis said. His gray eyes shifted toward Megan. “Has your witch friend been asking questions?”

“It’s not a witch,” Winston said dismissively. “We’ve performed a
betchimal
on all of them. They would have been aware—”

“Well, well,” Greyson drawled. “Been holding out on us, Win? You never mentioned you know how to do the
betchimal
.”

“Nobody asked me.” Winston seemed to realize this answer didn’t exactly satisfy the others; Baylor looked as if he wanted to slit Win’s and Gunnar’s throats. “I’ll be happy to teach you all, of course.”

“No need.” Greyson accepted yet another drink from an unobtrusive servant. “I can do it myself.”

What? He’d said—oh, of course. Tera had performed it on her that morning; he must have been listening. She wished she could add it to the long list of reasons to be angry at him, but she couldn’t; she wouldn’t have expected anything less, really.

“I’d certainly like to learn it,” Justine snapped. “Don’t speak for the rest of us, Grey.”

“I wouldn’t dream of speaking for you, Justine. I have far too much intelligence even to be capable of it.”

The entire table held its breath. Justine looked mollified for a second, then realized she’d been insulted; her face flushed, and her icy blast of rage almost knocked Megan out of her chair.

Shit, he really was wasted. She’d never seen him be so rude, at least not without an excellent reason.

“Good thing it wasn’t my intelligence you needed just before Christmas.” Justine’s eyes had gone so narrow they’d almost disappeared; for a second the beautiful woman disappeared, and something much less attractive sat in her place. “It’s—”

He yawned and turned away from her. “Win, you were saying nobody sensed their attacker? If they’ve disappeared, how would you know? Do you have a witness?”

“We did have one,” Gunnar said, after a pause. “He didn’t see anything but was close enough that the
betchimal
would have alerted him, had it been a witch. So a magical attacker, gone unsensed . . . it has to be another demon.”

“Not necessarily.” Greyson looked at her; their eyes met. Something flared in his, just for a second, and it was gone. “It could be an angel.”

It took a moment for his words to register in her head. She was too busy trying to keep the spasm of sharp pain his gaze had summoned from showing on her face and too busy trying to keep her mind from worrying at Justine’s last sentence like a pit bull with a rodent. Which was just what it felt like: something dirty and riddled with sickness being tugged, a bit at a time, from the depths of her memory.

“What the hell would an angel be doing here?” Gunnar said. “I thought Vergadering had wiped most of them out, and they’d gone into hiding.”

“Oh, there’s one here. I saw it this morning.” Greyson lifted his glass, nodded at a servant. Megan wondered if he would be able to stand when this hellish meal finally reached a conclusion.

Of course, if he wasn’t, little Leora would probably be perfectly happy to help him back to his suite. Now, there was a cheerful thought.

What the hell had Justine done for him? Just before Christmas . . . he wouldn’t be where he was ?

Templeton Black had died just before Christmas.

But that was a suicide. He’d left a note and everything. Tera said Vergadering didn’t suspect any foul play. Surely if there had been reason to suspect any, they would have suspected it. They suspected just about everyone, of everything.

What difference did it make? It was over between them. Done. He wasn’t her concern anymore.

She wondered if any sentence she’d ever uttered to herself had hurt more. No, it didn’t seem so. That was a personal best in the pain and misery department.

“You saw it?” Winston’s face—always susceptible to coloring, the way all blood demons seemed to be—went bright red. If he’d had a beard, he would have looked like a very angry Santa Claus. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“I believe I just did.”

“Yes, but—yes. I would have thought you would tell us sooner.”

Greyson shrugged. “I would have thought you’d have mentioned your
rubendas
going missing sooner, Win. Want to explain why you didn’t?”

“That’s different. That’s private business.”

“You thought there was a rogue demon in the city, and you didn’t warn the rest of us.” Baylor glared at Winston and Gunnar each in turn, like a teacher trying to figure out who threw the spitball when her back was turned. “Grey is right. You should have told us before this.”

“We weren’t sure what it was,” Gunnar said. His black hair was slipping from its Gordon Gekko sweep-back; he reached up to try to push it out of his eyes but only succeeded in making it worse. Gunnar didn’t handle stress well. “We didn’t want to alarm anyone.”

Justine licked whipped cream off her fingers. “That was totally irresponsible.”

“And totally our business,” Winston replied. “Have any of the rest of you had issues? No? Then it doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me. You let the rest of us take a risk.” Justine’s impressive bosom heaved.

“We take risks every day. We’re taking a risk even bringing this up. What if it’s one of you, trying to start a war?”

“If it is one of us,” Justine said nastily, “it’s probably Greyson. He’s the one giving us all some bullshit story about an angel.”

“He’s not.” Here, at last, was something Megan felt qualified to comment on. “I saw it too. And I—I felt it last night. It attacked me.”

She wanted to look at him, to see if she’d done the right thing. She refused to let herself. What she said and did wasn’t his business anymore either. Which was the way he wanted it, as he’d proven the minute he’d said “I’ll think about it” to Winston.

Winston, who looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “You felt it? You can feel it?”

Of course. Not “It attacked you?” Not “Are you okay?” But “You can feel it?” The others leaned forward—all except Greyson, of course, who was fiddling with his cell phone—making her feel as if she was in an interrogation room from an old TV cop show, with a bright naked lightbulb in her face.

“It feels like an absence,” she said finally. “Like an empty space. I think the Yezer can feel it too, if they focus.”

“Particularly if it travels on the psychic plane,” Greyson added. “But I don’t think it’s doing much of that.”

Gunnar pushed his hair back again. “Oh? Why not?”

“I think it’s found several people to use as shields.”

“Like who?”

He hesitated. “It seemed particularly interested in that reverend person over at the Windbreaker. That’s where we saw it. Megan seemed to think it was feeding on the gullible little crowd, which makes sense, if you think about it. Zealots like that, desperate to believe . . . ripe for the picking, really.”

“Perhaps I’m in the wrong business,” Baylor said.

Greyson raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you are.”

Another uneasy hush around the table. Megan waited for someone to call him on his rudeness, but no one did. Funny, that.

Win cleared his throat. “The point is, I suppose, that this angel is here. And it may be after us. Is that correct?”

There were general nods around the table.

“I have my Yezer on the alert,” Megan said.

“But we don’t just want to sit and wait for it to attack us. We want to find a way to solve the problem,” Win said. “Since you and Greyson saw it, why don’t you two see what you can come up with? We’ll all think tonight, and we’ll meet in the afternoon to go over plans. You two will have something for us then, I hope?”

Okay. Maybe nobody else felt awkward—she was fairly certain Greyson was incapable of feeling anything at that point—but she certainly did.

But she was pretending nothing was wrong. Vulnerability was not her friend in this situation, and she wouldn’t show any. So she smiled, as if that was a great idea, and nodded, and very carefully avoided looking at Greyson.