She saw a flash of her and Cyn fighting together, and then the vision disappeared. Brom had backed away. The parasite’s hand was nearly touching hers.
Cyn pulled Ruby closer, his arm going over her shoulders. “Brom, what can we do to help you? I don’t know much about parasitic demons.”
Brom shook his head and made those horrible sounds she’d heard earlier. “J…J…”
“Justin? Is that what you’re saying?” Ruby asked.
The parasite tightened its hold around Brom’s throat, cutting off even those words. And then they both simply disappeared.
“What happened?” Ruby asked.
Cyn swiped his hands through the area where Brom had been standing. “The demon either cast an illusion of invisibility or took him somewhere else. I don’t feel him so I’m thinking it’s the latter.”
She kept staring at the place where Brom had been. “Those pictures, people dying.”
“That’s the future,” Cyn said. “And we have to stop it.”
We. She and Cyn. No. She pulled the book out of the car, set it on the hood, and opened it to the sketch that was supposed to symbolize her and Cyn. Mon had translated it to a dance. Like she would dance with Cyn.
She turned to him. “Mon knew what you’d done. That’s why he hated you, isn’t it?”
Cyn nodded. “Brom understood that I was only a weapon, and he was grateful that I saved you. Not so Moncrief. We didn’t have the kind of history Brom and I had.”
“Of course Mon wouldn’t want to turn me over to you when I was thirteen. You’re the reason I was orphaned!”
She saw a fleeting shadow of regret. “He found that problematic, yes.”
“Problematic.” She laughed at the absurdity of Cyn’s understatement. She couldn’t bear to look at him another moment, turning the pages instead. But she couldn’t not look at him. “You tell me to put aside my emotions, control them. That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have any.” The acidic words tingled on her tongue. “Do you?”
She wanted him to admit that he did.
“No.”
But she heard it, a sliver of rawness in the word. Grayson had picked up his feelings, though he hadn’t said exactly what those feelings were. And she had seen Cyn’s surrender. Even if he wouldn’t admit it.
She wouldn’t kill him. As if you could, her inner voice taunted. She would simply walk away from him, because the thought of that obviously caused him distress. Probably because it would compromise his role as her protector.
The thought empowered her. For about two seconds. She wasn’t experienced enough to handle demons and tulpas and God knew what else would appear. She did need him, damn it. And it wasn’t only her life at stake here. So she would focus, just as he said, until they killed Mr. Smith.
There, that’s being logical and in control of my emotions.
No matter what, she would not let her anger or her heart soften to this cold killer. She turned back to the book. The word Doom had appeared since the last time they’d looked. “Mon called the three-headed monster in his fairy tales Black Doom. All those people dying, that really is doom.”
“And your destiny is to stop it.”
She walked back to the Yard, intent on finding out Darren’s last name.
Cyn’s footsteps were soft on the stairs below her. She had wanted her parents’ killer. When she reached the top of the steps, she turned back to him.
“Thank you for not…for stopping when you did.”
A clear lance of pain crossed his expression. “I shouldn’t have let it get that far between us. Another example of letting emotions overrule logic.”
“What emotions? You just said you feel nothing.”
His mouth tightened, revealing his lie.
“Tell me, Cyn, what emotions do you have as far as I’m concerned? Am I this obligation you carry because you made me an orphan? Because I’m a helpless newbie? Or were you just horny?”
“It was part Dragon. The rest…doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
She turned and went inside, pulling out the box of pictures Mon or Brom had managed to take from the house. She dropped to the floor and dumped them out to search through them faster. Seeing those pictures of happy times tore at her heart.
“Here they are.” Ruby held up a picture of the couple who had been so close to her family. Whose house she remembered spending so much time at. Darren was a plain-looking man, wearing thick glasses and a warm smile. His wife was nicely dressed and wore lots of jewelry. Other photos showed the couples in Halloween costumes and sharing a Christmas meal.
Ruby rubbed her finger over the photograph. “I wondered why they, of all people, didn’t come to see me after the accident.” It had made her feel as though there was something wrong with her or that maybe people blamed her. Now she knew better, but to a grieving kid who’d lost everything, it made perfect sense.
She turned the picture over, finding their names marked through in black. “Sweeney.” The name came to her, dredged from memory. “I’m pretty sure it’s Sweeney.”
“Good job,” he said, and she realized she was looking at him, sharing the triumph of remembering.
She got up and turned on her computer, staring at the screen as it booted up. Her Dragon, the traitor, pulled toward Cyn.
No. Not him, she told it.
But it purred. Purred!
Well, hadn’t Cyn said they were fueled by instinct and lust? That was for damned sure.
She clicked on several links, but they weren’t the Darren she looked for. “There’s not much on the Internet about him, other than a bunch of those find-a-person sites.”
The sound of cell phone keys beeping had her turning around. Cyn stared at the floor as he waited for someone to answer. “Hey, it’s Cyn. I need you to look up a Deuce named Darren Sweeney. Find out everything you can about him.”
While he waited for the person on the other end to retrieve the information, his gaze drifted to the pictures. One was of Ruby as a child, hugging a dog. He shifted his entire body away, and then she heard someone talking. Cyn said, “Great. And when you get a chance, could you look up a defunct lab called SUNLAB? I need to know who owned it. Thanks.” He walked to the computer and gestured for her to move so he could sit down.
“Please, be my guest.” Damn it, he should be contrite, not silently ordering her around. Why wasn’t he trying to prove he wasn’t coldhearted and ruthless? Or begging her forgiveness?
Would you forgive him?
Hell, no.
He went to one of the map sites and typed in an address. “Darren’s a Deuce, which fits our profile. He’s been married to Magda for thirty-two years, no children. And he’s self-employed, lists his occupation as a physics research consultant.” Cyn was zooming in on a house with the satellite view. A separate building sat several yards behind the residence. “Maybe that’s where he does his research.”
She twisted the fabric of her shirt. “It hurts my stomach to think that Darren could be behind this.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “He’s the one person we know about who was involved in your father’s work. And who could reasonably replicate it. Before we approach him, we’re going to do a little investigating. We wait for them to leave and then we find out what kind of physics research he’s doing.”