“Oh come now, Grey, there’s no need to rush off like that, is there?”
Megan opened her eyes. Maldon was smiling, the empty glass still clutched in his hand. Jesus, had he licked it clean?
“You got what you wanted, Orion.”
“Oh yes, I did.”
His laughter followed them up the stairs.
Her healed hand still tingled a little, an irritating itch under the skin she couldn’t scratch, as she lay in bed later with Greyson’s chest against her back and his strong arms encircling her body. The bulky forms of Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud rested in front of the window, horned silhouettes against the curtains.
Her father was dead.
Funny, it wasn’t until now, as she lay thinking of what the next day held, that it really hit her. They hadn’t been close, not in years.
But in those dim, long-forgotten years of her early childhood, he’d been someone special and so had she. He’d taken her out for long rides in the car. He’d carried her on his shoulders to watch the Fourth of July parade in the center of town. He’d bought ice cream and candy and smiled and laughed. He’d called her his little girl.
She thought she’d mourned those years a long time ago, but it seemed there was still something left of them in her heart after all, because the dim, tobacco-stained wallpaper blurred with her tears and her throat ached. She’d been someone’s beloved daughter once. When did that change? When did she become an embarrassment, something to be hidden?
Not just when Harlan Trooper died. It started long before that. She couldn’t help thinking that if she could figure it out, she would find something important. Something related to why she was here now, why she felt so cold inside despite the heat of Greyson’s body wrapped around her.
She wondered if she’d given up first. If her parents had turned from her because she’d pulled away from them, retreating into a world where the emotions of others didn’t color her thoughts, where touching people didn’t put confusing pictures in her head, because there were no people to touch.
Was she still hiding? She’d become a counselor. Her job was to help people, to reach out to them and try to heal their pain.
But part of that meant shutting herself off from them, meant tuning out of their lives the minute they walked out the door, and not thinking of them again until their next sessions.
Part of that meant comforting herself with the thought that she was a good person because she helped people, not a cold person who didn’t care what happened to them. It gave her license to stay uninvolved.
Greyson had asked her once why she did what she did when she knew better than anyone how cruel and inhumane people really were in their hearts.
She didn’t know if she had a good answer for that anymore, because she didn’t know if her choice of profession was really as altruistic as she’d imagined. If that little second heart, that little bit of the Accuser, had nestled beneath her ribs for fifteen years…who was to say she hadn’t been feeding on her clients since the day she started working?
Who was to say she really wasn’t someone so…so bad, her own parents couldn’t even love her? She shivered.
Greyson’s arms tightened around her. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. Mostly.”
It wasn’t a question she could ask, not with the boys so close by. She opened her mouth to say it was nothing, but instead she asked, “What do you feed on?”
He didn’t move, didn’t change his position at all, which in itself told her the question had thrown him. “What do you mean?”
“You heard me.”
“You mean vregonis in general, or me specifically?”
“Both.”
“A lot of us smoke.”
“But you don’t. Not often.” She knew he did sometimes—though not generally around her—but she’d never really thought of it as something he would do for…well, for his health. The thought would have amused her if she wasn’t so nervous.
“Not as a rule, no. Too obvious.”
“But, I mean, how does it…work?”
“It’s energy.” He shifted position, leaning back a little to glance at the brothers. They hadn’t moved. “Some things have more than others, but we all need to consume some of it. Like calories, but power instead.”
“So earlier, with Maldon…it was energy he wanted or just blood? I mean, do blood demons just feed on blood, or do they get energy from other places too?”
“He wanted blood.”
“Because he’s a blood demon or because—”
“Blood demons like blood.”
She ignored the flatness of his tone. “But the other night when you got shot…is one of your demons a blood demon? Because he wanted your blood, remember?”
He paused. “Some demons consider it a…an honor, to be allowed blood. An intimacy.”
It fell into place then. His refusal to look at her, his tension, his anger—it had seemed excessive, hadn’t it, over something that hadn’t appealed to her but hadn’t seemed like such a huge thing, especially not in the demon world.
“He took something intimate from me,” she whispered, turning so she could look at him. When he didn’t reply, she continued. “Something you’ve never had.”
Silence stretched between them, prickly and rough, before he spoke. “Yes.”
“Do you, I mean—”
“Why Miss Chase, are you trying to seduce me?” He smiled, but she hadn’t missed the quick gleam of red in his eyes before he blinked. “Don’t worry about it, Meg. It’s not a necessity. It’s not something I think about.”
He’d never really lied to her before. She had no idea if he’d just started.
The lukewarm water in the shower did nothing to improve her mood in the morning, nor did Greyson’s snide comments about the quality of the room or the stagnant sodium odor of the boys’ fast-food breakfasts. She just wanted to get the day over with so the next day would end too and she could go home.
At least she’d remembered her own toiletries and, even better, at least Spud was waiting with hair dryer and brush when she stepped out of the dingy bathroom. She might be a pariah, but she didn’t have to look like one.
Megan had never considered herself a vain person, or one for whom appearances were that important. But she couldn’t help feeling a little smug. With the exception of Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud, who always looked like they were about to start cleaning their fingernails with knives, everyone she was bringing to this funeral was eminently presentable. She was the least attractive of the bunch.
The thought might have made her smile on any other day, when the memories of last night and her own confusion didn’t hang over her like carcasses in a butcher-shop window. Instead she watched herself solemnly in the mirror while Spud fixed her hair, and wished she was somewhere else, anywhere else. That it was this time next week—which she realized with a shock would be the day after Christmas—and she was alone in the woods with Greyson, drinking cocktails and watching the fire with his head in her lap.
She kept that image in her mind, focused on it, and held it there while she put on her dress and shoes, while she sat on the edge of the bed and watched Greyson shave, while they drove to the church, the brothers following in her car.
The white cross reaching into the winter-gray sky reminded her, with a sharp stab of humiliation, of her adventure at Holy Innocents the night before. It felt as if years had passed since then, but she didn’t think she would ever forget the image of the priest turning his back on her. Just as well, really. In the hard light of day she couldn’t imagine what she’d thought she would gain from it. If God really had power over demons, her escorts wouldn’t be preparing to walk into United Methodist with her.
If God really had power over demons, she wouldn’t be able to walk in herself. It had been foolish, really, one last momentary childish desire for reassurance, and if life had taught her anything it was that looking for others to help her gained her nothing.