I realized I was holding my breath. “You died.”
“So they tell me. And it wasn’t pretty. Where I ended up, I mean.” She shivered a little, her eyes cutting away from mine. Then she shoved the saltshaker away and drew her hands through her short hair. “Anyway, when I woke up, I was in the hospital, and Clarence was there. He said I was getting a second chance.”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “You woke up in your own body?”
She looked at me like I was from Mars. “Uh, yeah.”
“What about your parents? Your friends?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Haven’t seen my parents since I was fifteen, so going on ten years now. Still see my friends sometimes, but we have a different groove going on now, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of all the friends I’d left behind. “I know.”
“Pretty fucked-up, huh? But you know what they say about mysterious ways. And here I am now, ready to whup some demon ass.” She reached her arms out, clasped her hands, and cracked her knuckles. “Gotta say, I thought you’d be a little more badass.”
I lifted my brows. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on! That demon was about to whup your pretty little hide. If I hadn’t showed up when I did, you and Little Bit would be nothing but a stain on the concrete.”
I couldn’t deny she had a point. “You didn’t catch me at my best.”
“Guess not.” She nodded at Rose, who had looked up with interest. Not at me or Kiera, but at the waitress, who was now delivering our food. “What’s the story with the kid? The demons want her. I got that. But what are you doing with her? Just protecting her, or is there more going on?”
The waitress’s eyes went wide, at least until Kiera tilted her head up and stared the girl down. Then she spun around and hurried off, glancing once back over her shoulder before sidling up near the burly cook who’d started coming our way earlier.
I eyed them for a moment, then decided that neither appeared to be about to kick us out, call the cops, or contact the local psychiatric ward. “She’s my sister,” I said. Since Clarence already knew the scoop, I didn’t figure there was any harm in telling Kiera.
“No shit?” She shot another glance toward Rose, then frowned. “So, what? You drag her around on missions and stuff?”
“Not as a general rule, no.”
“But today’s an exception because?”
“Because it’s national Bring Your Sister to Work Day,” I snapped. “What’s the deal with all the questions?”
She leaned back, hands up, eyes wide. “Shit, chill. Sorry.” She took another bite of pie, chewed, swallowed, and pointed her fork at me. “So what do you say? Let’s go see what you’ve got going on.”
“You want to go kill demons?”
“No, I wanna go kick puppies,” she retorted. “Hell, yeah.”
“Oh.” I considered that. “So, where exactly does one go to find a demon?”
She shook her head, as if baffled by my very existence.
“Damn, you are green. I thought I was getting paired with some big-shot superchick. What were they doing, hiding you under a log?”
“Something like that,” I admitted. “I started out with a mission. Very top secret. Not a lot of opportunity to go out looking for demons on my own.”
“Right,” she said, with a knowing nod. “You were out there keeping those sons of bitches from opening the Ninth Gate. You’re like a legend now among us soldiers.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help the quick swell of pride. Pride, then guilt. Because I hadn’t really done a good thing. I’d done a crap thing, and from the way Kiera was looking at me, she didn’t know it. To her, I was some sort of hero.
Except even that probably wasn’t true, was it? More likely, she was in on the whole big thing. And to her, I was the biggest sort of fool.
ELEVEN
“This probably isn’t the best time to go demon-baiting,” I said, casting a significant look toward Rose as we climbed back into Kiera’s Pontiac.
“The hell it’s not. The beasties have been buzzing lately. The convergence is coming up, and they can feel it, and they’re all rooting for their buddies to find the
Oris Clef
and open the gates up wide. Fortunately, we’re not going to let that happen.” She raised a hand and waited for me to meet it with a high five, which I did. Why not? That was my plan, too, after all.
“I’m all for the killing demons and stopping the convergence plan,” I admitted. “But that wasn’t actually my point.” I cocked my head toward the backseat and Rose, remembering what I’d promised my mom and thinking that rabble-rousing the demon population wasn’t high on the Keep Your Sister Safe list.
Then again, neither was getting her infected with a demon’s essence.
Kiera dug the keys out of her pocket and started the engine. “Oh, please. What? You think seeing a demon turn to goo is going to scar her for life? From what you’ve said, she’s seen worse. Probably be damned cathartic for her.”
When she put it that way, I had to agree.
“Besides,” she continued, “we’re fighting the good fight here. I mean, hell. Forget shielding the kid. You should be training her.”
And, once again, she had a point.
Still, every decision I’d made since I’d gone out to kill Lucas Johnson had somehow been tied to me watching out for Rose. How could I justify all my efforts to protect her if I was going to turn around and thrust her into the middle of the fray?
I couldn’t—which meant I needed to say no-go to the demon-hunting thing. I needed to be the responsible big sis. And I needed to get my kid sister (and her hitchhiking demon companion) home and into bed.
I knew it, but somehow I couldn’t do it. Because once the idea had been planted in my head—once I was thinking about the kill and the dark and that somber, sensual rush that came right after my blade cut them down to goo—well, by then I couldn’t seem to do anything else.
I needed the kill. I craved the dark. And I hated myself for what I’d become.
I should go home. I should march through the door, plunk myself down on the couch, and tune the television to the Disney Channel. I needed saccharin to counteract the tug of the demonic inside me. Because it was there, that dark, and it wanted to be fed.
And damned if I didn’t want to feed it.
We drove back the way we’d come, all three of us in the car so tense, I’m surprised the windows didn’t fog up. But we saw no sign of the warrior demon.
“Looks like our demon friend is long gone,” I said.
In the backseat, Rose drew her legs up onto the seat and hugged her knees to her chest. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes eerie in the reflected light of the dashboard. She didn’t have to speak; I knew what she was thinking. That demon might be gone, but there was still another right there with us, alive inside of her.
I reached back, wanting to take her hand and offer some sort of comfort, but she shifted away, turning on the seat so that my fingertips only brushed her knee. I pulled back, rebuffed and uncertain.
I was distracted from my own self-loathing by the sight of my bike, splayed out at the side of the road, wounded but apparently untouched.
“Later,” Kiera said, watching me eyeing it. “We’ll catch it on the flip side.”
“I’m tired,” Rose said. “Can’t we just go?”
I wanted to say yes, to be responsible. So help me, I wanted to tell Kiera to pull over, then plunk Rose on the back of the bike and speed off toward Boarhurst. But I didn’t, because I was hard up by then. I’d gotten the idea of a hit in my system, and I wasn’t backing away. Not then. Not even for Rose.
“Soon,” I said. “This is important.” And it was. Every kill made me stronger, right? And if warrior dude was any indication of the kind of demons that were in store for me now, I needed all the strength I could get.
All true . . . and at the same time, all utter bullshit. Because right then, it wasn’t strength I was craving. Not by a long shot.
I had Kiera stop just long enough to retrieve Rose’s duffel, then we were on our way again. It wasn’t even ten when Kiera eased the car into a slot in front of the gray façade of a club that had no visible signage. But despite the early hour, I saw a couple of junkies finalizing a deal in the shadows near the front door, and a drunk couple getting so down and dirty with copping a feel that even I was about to get embarrassed. And, honestly, considering all I’ve done in my twenty-six years—and Alice’s twenty-two—it takes a lot to get me embarrassed.
“I love this place,” Kiera said, killing the engine and opening her door. “It’s got atmosphere.”
In the backseat, Rose’s eyes were wide. “Don’t look at anything,” I said, channeling a responsible sister for a few seconds. “And anything you do see, I want you to forget by morning.”
Either my words or my tone broke the spell, and she rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m fourteen, Lil. I’m not a baby.”
“I’m just trying to make sure you’re fourteen going on fifteen, and not thirty.”
“A little late for that,” she said, and I had to silently concede the point. She’d been through hell, and she’d grown up fast. And maybe I couldn’t turn back the clock, but I was damn sure going to try.
The door was manned by a beefy guy with arms so thick he couldn’t actually put his hands down by his side. He gave Rose the evil eye, then shook his head. “ID. And it better not be fake.”
I eyed Kiera, who was clearly thinking that he would be a good subject on whom to practice her knife skills. Rather than deal with the inconvenience of a homicide investigation, I sidled up close and turned on the charm. Or I tried to. The truth is that despite having absorbed the essence of an incubus, I hadn’t yet mastered the control aspect of my newfound sexual prowess.
My lack of skill, however, was not an issue. Either enough sex-goddess aura oozed out without me trying, or the guy was too damn horny to care. But when I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear that I would be really, really,
really
grateful if he let the girl in with me, he complied without complaint. True, he squeezed my ass, but he didn’t complain, and he let us pass. Kiera gave me a questioning look, but I just lifted a shoulder, shook my ass, and led the parade inside. Some tricks it was better not to share.
The club was the kind of place that can only be described as seedy. Actually, that’s not true. It could also be described as dark, dangerous, smelly, and loud. In other words, exactly the kind of place responsible care-takers did not take fourteen-year-old girls. And although that twinge of guilt once again settled over me, I shoved it down with brutish finality. I’d made the decision, we were there, and that was that.
I led our little group to a booth in the back that smelled of sex and alcohol, and we slid in, risking half a dozen communicable diseases as we did. I took a quick look at Rose, mostly to assuage my guilt, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if she looked completely freaked-out. As far as I was concerned, we were there to stay.
Fortunately, guilt wasn’t an issue. Rose didn’t look freaked; on the contrary, she looked fascinated. And, yeah, there was a little bit of guilt associated with that—this was a world I’d never wanted Rose to glimpse—but at least she wasn’t cowering in fear and disgust.
More than that, she seemed truly to be Rose. Her eyes were clear, her body not shaking, and when she looked at me with that soft little smile I knew so well, my heart almost melted. Johnson was nowhere in sight, and even as I celebrated that little tidbit, I also couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. Because he’d be back. And I figured it would be sooner rather than later.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. Her life was in a complete shambles, and a lot of the blame fell on me. But right then, I was just glad to have my sister back.
“We’re never gonna get a waitress,” Kiera said, sliding back out of the booth. “Tequila for me. Coke for the kid. What do you want?”
“Tequila,” I said. “And thanks.”
She sauntered over to the bar, then squeezed in next to a tall blonde desperately in need of a bra.
I edged sideways and regarded my sister. “You never asked,” I said.
Her head tilted to the side. “Asked what?”
“How come I’m in another body.” I looked over at Kiera to make sure she wasn’t on her way back. “You were screaming, and Johnson was inside you, and you called me Lily. You
knew
, Rose. How did you know?”
When she frowned, a little crease appeared over her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. I just . . . I just knew.”
“What else do you know?”
She pressed her lips together, and I saw her eyes begin to glisten. “I know a lot of stuff,” she said, her voice drawing down to a whisper. “Stuff I don’t think he wants me to know.”
I fought the urge to hug myself against a sudden chill. “Like what?”
She leaned forward. “He called. That night you died. He called a man named Egan and told him it was time. Told him to go fetch Alice.”
I made a muffled sound and realized my hand was up over my mouth.
I was right.
Lucas had been playing both sides, helping to fulfill the prophecy so that in the end his boss could use me to find the
Oris Clef
. I was still a pawn in some massive celestial game, but at least now I knew the score.
“What else?” I asked, but her eyes were wide and she shook her head. “Can’t talk,” she said, then pressed a finger over her lips even as her other hand pressed flat against her chest. “He’s always listening.”
I forced my face to stay bland, refusing to let her see the depth of my disgust that a creature as vile as Johnson was inside her. It didn’t matter, though. That same disgust ate at her already, and when she blinked, two fat tears spilled out. I held out my arms, and she slid into them, then her head pressed against my shoulder.
“Why is this happening to us?” she asked, but I could only shake my head.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s because we’re dirty,” she said, in a voice not her own. A voice that sent chills up my spine. “Dirty, filthy, little bitch-whore girls.”