Hungry vultures kept watch on the hospital entrance, so I cruised around to the pharmacy where Miller had let me out the first time and parked. We must have been surfing the same wavelength, because he joined me a minute later. His first point of business was removing the White Horse magnets from the sides of his SUV and stowing them in the trunk. He slapped logos that read Thom’s Plumbing on each of our vehicles then slung a laptop bag over his shoulder and met me on the sidewalk.
“Do you have a way in?” He adjusted the strap while he scanned the area for roosting cameramen.
“Follow me.” I led him around back, waded into the bushes then hauled him along behind me. “Sit tight. We could be here awhile.”
Fifteen minutes later, a tall man with a vaporizer pen between his fingers emerged. The door hadn’t closed before he was sucking down lungfuls of aerosol and expelling white curls of mist through his nose that managed to remind me of Cole’s dragon. After the first several huffs, he exhaled with relief then wedged the brick into place and moseyed over to the usual alcove.
I gestured for Miller to follow, then led the charge through the back door. This time Ida wasn’t around to run interference, and we had to flash badges to assure the nurses who stopped us that we had a right to be in this section of the building. We zipped up to the fourth floor and eased into the hall. Three steps later, Miller stiffened beside me.
“Blood.” Chin tipped back, he breathed deep. “Santiago and Thom’s . . . and Jane’s.”
My feet wrested control away from my brain, and I bolted for her room. Miller caught me by the wrist and almost dislocated my shoulder hauling me a safe distance from the door.
“Let me go.” I snapped my hand up, applying pressure against his thumb and breaking his grip. “She’s hurt. We have to—”
“She’s the threat, Luce.” Pity filled his gaze, and his voice came out raw. “Think about it.”
Portia had told me only a higher demon could have savaged Thom and Santiago. Well, apparently, it didn’t get much higher than me. And Jane’s markings were a carbon copy of mine. Hers weren’t singularities like the others in the coterie but the full treatment. Meaning she must be from Otilla too.
“I’m an idiot.” I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my palm. “She’s like me, like Cole, like us.” I had known about demons for twenty-four hours, and my brain had been the consistency of oatmeal for a large portion of that time, but I couldn’t blame either of those for my willful ignorance. “The bruises. Goddamn it. Why didn’t I see this sooner?”
Better make that two months of brushing with bar soap.
“You didn’t know sooner.” Miller let me work it out on my own while keeping me corralled. “None of this is your fault.”
“All this time it’s been her.” From what I had observed of demons, they all cloaked themselves with humanity. Jane was the skin. The gator was her true face. Jane was the gator. The gator was Jane. Jane tried to kill me. “That bitch.” Fury crackled through my veins. “She punched holes through my house. Five minutes earlier, and Dad would have been home.” The demon had almost been too fast for me. He never would have made it across the field. “She could have killed him. She would have killed him.”
“We should have told you last night, but you were so hopeful.” He bowed his head. “We had no idea if Jane had been reborn the same blank slate as you. All we could do until we had proof was wait and watch. It’s the only reason Cole accepted the commission from your father.”
“The same as me,” I echoed, shoulder blades hitting the wall as that final puzzle piece snicked into place. The size of my hurt couldn’t be contained. It bled from my pores, a vicious ache that shattered me on a fundamental level. Family stood together. Family stuck up for each other. Family loved one another. Those were the lessons I had learned during my short human life, and she had blown them all to smithereens. “Jane is one of my sisters.”
“No.” Miller brushed his fingertips under my eyes to dry the tears I hadn’t noticed falling. “She’s one of Conquest’s sisters. War. Breaker of the Second Seal.” Preoccupied with the liquid on his fingertips, he sniffed them and then tasted the salty residue. “These are heart’s tears. They taste of pain and betrayal.”
“Does that mean you believe me?” I sniffled, unable to articulate what it would mean for at least one person to believe I was real, that I was Luce. “Cole called me a fiction, but I’m not. I’m me.”
“Cole has earned his right to bitterness where Conquest is concerned, and you may never outstretch her dark shadow with him. Perhaps that means his opinion of you, Luce—” he emphasized my name over hers “—is not the one you should hold closest to your heart.”
I offered him a watery smile, certain any demon cred I had was ruined. Not that I minded all that much. I’d take blubbering human over stone-cold bitch any day. “You’re a good guy.”
His lips quirked. “For a demon?”
“Did you hear a qualifier?” He flushed and glanced away as an unsavory thought occurred to me. “If Jane is my sister, and she’s also the super gator, does that mean Conquest is a spring-loaded fish trap too?”
“No.” He dragged a hand over his mouth, as though unsure what or how much to tell me. “Jane mated the former general of Czar Astrakhan’s army, a Drosera by the name of Thanases. Otillians are chameleonic. It’s how they infiltrate the other terrenes with ease, how they spread their genetic material throughout the worlds, but there are limits.”
Chameleonic implied I was a shapeshifter of some kind. After Cole that shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. Maybe Cole was right. Maybe Luce was my skin suit. Maybe that’s why I didn’t identify with the woman in the mirror. Perhaps my truest self was the one invisible in this form.
What a terrifying thought.
“Each Otillian can possess only one core identity. Usually, they take the shape of their mate, and once the bond is permanent, they’re no longer able to shift to their birth form. War took Thanases’s form so they could . . . ” red splotches mottled his cheeks “ . . . procreate. He joined her coterie and travels with her.”
Demons wearing people suits. Demons wearing alligator suits. Sure. Why not? At least the latter was more palatable by human fashion standards.
“The super gator who almost bit off my head, the one swimming around Jane—War—that was him? Thanases?”
“He was protecting her.” Miller tilted his head. “Aren’t you going to ask what your true form resembles?”
Honest curiosity burned in the question, and I sensed its answer would render me to cinders.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll be able to sleep knowing I’m not going to shift into some villain from Peter Pan, and that’s good enough for me.”
The amusement dancing in his eyes hinted at pleasure over keeping the secret. I wondered if he thought I would enjoy the eventual revelation. I hated to burst his balloon, but if birthdays had taught me anything, it was that I didn’t deal with surprise well.
I nudged him aside with a gentle sweep of my arm. “The crime scene isn’t getting any fresher. Let’s go.”
After a lingering assessment, he nodded and let me take point. Having Miller at my back gave me the courage to grip the doorknob and wrench it open onto a bloodbath. Crimson smears covered the walls and floor. The sheets were soaked, and red tipped the glassy teeth of the shattered window.
“Let’s clear the room.” I checked the hall to ensure it had remained clear. “I go left. You go right.”
We entered together. I jerked aside the curtain hanging from the ceiling while Miller checked behind the door. We cleared the bathroom as a unit, as though we had worked together for years instead of minutes, then shut ourselves in the suite while I made the call down to the station to report Jane’s disappearance.
All the while, I wondered if it was smart leaving demon blood smeared across so many surfaces, but the cherry on top of today would be getting charged for evidence tampering by a pissed off police chief champing at the bit for revenge and a means of salvaging his career.
The first cop arrived less than five minutes later. He’d been one floor down, sitting with Buck’s sister while he was in surgery. The doctors were inserting a metal rod through his shattered femur, and I winced when he mentioned screws. Buck might never walk without a limp, and that was on me.
Shoving that guilt, that regret, down until I could breathe again, I focused on making an exit.
The lies I told the officer came easier. Maggie had been wrong about me. It turned out I was a good liar after all. Was my demon heritage to blame? Or was I simply getting better with practice? I didn’t want to think too hard about either option.
I told the officer I’d bumped into Miller in the elevator. I claimed he’d been on his way up to relieve Thom, that we had discovered the scene together and called it in immediately. After promising to fill out a report and fax it over from my shared home office—I wasn’t tempting fate by stepping foot inside the department today—he released us to get serious about locating Jane without thinking to ask where Thom had gone.
Figuring there was safety in numbers, I ditched Portia’s SUV and called shotgun in Miller’s. I had to move a tablet and a stack of papers out of my way first. The FBI logo winking up at me gave me pause, as did the six-by-nine copy of Robert Martin’s yearbook portrait and the candid shot of his vehicle. I climbed in and balanced the pile on my knees while I fastened my seatbelt. “How far did you get with the Kapoor situation before I called?”
“I got in and got out with what we needed before he cleared the first-floor residents.” Miller smiled like the cat who ate the canary. “Turns out the apartment complex has been undergoing renovations. The day the incident was reported, only one section of balconies was accessible. The lower floors had all been sandblasted and repainted. Their balconies were covered in plastic sheeting and taped off besides. That left the fourth floor as the only viable option. All I had to do was beat Kapoor there and canvas the residents with apartments facing the road. I found Mr. Arnold Brashear on my second knock.”
“Smart,” I praised him. “Very smart.”
“I was prepared to tell him I worked for White Horse and that we had taken on the Claremont case, but he was happy to invite me in and chat me up without me flashing my credentials.” He tapped the photo. “He positively ID’d Robert Martin and his vehicle.”
“Kapoor won’t be far behind. Once he catches wind of the APB out on Martin, he’ll want to seize control of Maggie’s case and tie them together as tightly as possible.” Miller rolled his hand, waiting for me to elaborate. “Turns out Maggie made a call the night she disappeared. She left a voicemail IDing Robert Martin as the man who drove her to the clinic. Proof he was the last person to see her.” Not that we’d had much doubt about his involvement. What we lacked was motive. “What are the odds Jane is involved in these disappearances?”
“High,” he said without missing a beat. “Chances are good she’s been studying you since her breach. That explains how she knew to go for Maggie, but not why she chose the Claremont girl.”
“I have a theory about that.” I massaged my aching forehead, each thought a shard of glass embedded in my temples. “War recreated my—breach?” He nodded that I had it right. “She wanted to draw me out, see what makes me tick.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“Think about it. As well documented as my case was, she had step-by-step instructions. The Claremont girl was bait. War used the high-profile disappearance to catch my attention.” She and Angel shared a similar build and hair color. That must have been intentional. “All she had to do once Rixton and I were assigned to the case was dunk herself in the swamp that night, ensuring no one could tell more than she was a female in distress. She was hedging her bets. Between the case and the link to my past, she was guaranteed I would show up or hear about it and hunt her down afterward.”
“Initiating first contact allowed her to manipulate the circumstances, ensuring a favorable outcome,” he murmured.
“I was so desperate for answers that I welcomed her. Heck, my dad hired a security detail for her.” A chill settled in my bones, and I had my phone in hand and his number dialed before Miller’s lips parted. I held up my finger and didn’t breathe until his voice came on the line. “Dad?”
“Hey, baby girl.” A television blared in the background, the sports announcer’s voice familiar. “Hold on.” He covered the mouthpiece and called, “Harry, turn that down. Luce is on the phone.”
“You’re with Uncle Harold?” I melted into my seat with gratitude he had taken my advice. “Good. Stay put. Don’t go home yet. It’s not safe.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” His voice went stern. “Where are you?”
“I’m following a lead on Maggie’s case. I’m with Miller, from White Horse. There was an incident at the hospital. Jane is missing.” His shouted what made my eardrum ring. “We have people on it. There’s no reason for you to get involved at this juncture. I called the station, and Miller called Cole. We’ve got the situation covered.”
“Where is Cole?” He heaped a whole lot of suspicion into three little words.
“Not here.” I sank my nails into my palm. “I haven’t seen him for a few hours. Listen, that doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that I’m fine, and I’ve got someone watching my back. Just stay with Uncle Harold, okay? Don’t go out after dark, and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if y’all finished watching the ballgame with a couple of shotguns on the table next to the pita chips and hummus.” A twinge hit me as I remembered I had no idea if mine had been retrieved. I was attached to that gun, damn it. “Promise?”
“I don’t like this,” he grumped. “You will explain yourself. I’ll give you twenty-four hours, and I expect contact every eight hours, or I’m coming after you.” He made it an order. “Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I couldn’t fight my smile. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
We each ended the call before the other heaped on more ultimatums.
Miller cocked his head, staring at the phone with curiosity. “You really love him, don’t you?”
“He’s my dad.” I let him hear my fierce pride in the man who had raised me. “He’s the best man I know, and I would do anything to live up to his expectations.”
After absorbing my declaration, Miller pulled out of the parking lot. “What’s our next move?”
“We go after Robert Martin.” It was the only option available to us that made sense. “He’s in this up to his neck, and War needs a safe haven to run to while she recovers from her injuries. As chewed up as Thom and Santiago were, there’s no way she slipped past them without sustaining damage.”
“I agree on all points.” He picked up speed. “You mind doing the legwork to pin him down?”
The urge to call in and ask for backup twitched in my fingers, but this wasn’t my case. The department, and soon the FBI, would be searching for Martin. Thanks to our pit stop at the hospital, they had gotten a head start on the manhunt. Meaning we might be picking through their sloppy seconds or even thirds.
“Not at all.” I dialed up the front office at the John W. Rosen Elementary School and waited for the secretary to answer. “Hey, Megan. It’s Luce Boudreau. Can you do a favor for me?”
“The police are here,” Megan blurted. “They’re in a meeting with Principal Higgins.”
That right there was why I made her my first call. Small towns do love their gossip.
“I’m calling in relation to that.” Sort of. “Can you tell me if Robert Martin is on the campus?”
“Sure thing.” She pitched her voice low. “The police already had me check his records. He’s been absent for the last two days. It’s odd because he otherwise had perfect attendance. Five years, and he never called in. He didn’t this time either. He just didn’t show up for his class.” She hesitated. “Should I be telling you this? Are you sure you wouldn’t like to talk to one of the officers?”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt.” I thumbed through the stack of papers on my lap and found what I needed. Martin’s home address was on the second page of the file Miller had compiled. “Thanks for your help.”
I ended the call before I got caught buttering up the staff.
“He’s not at work,” I told Miller. “Looks like we’re making a house call.” Martin’s neighborhood was part of the beat I shared with Rixton. I could have navigated there with my eyes shut. Since Miller didn’t stop me, I flipped through the rest of the materials on my lap. “What’s this?”
“A copy of the crime-scene photos from where the severed leg was recovered. Took me longer than expected to gain access to those files.” His turn-of-phrase had me thinking his methods might not be exactly legal. Oblivious to me mentally sticking fingers in my ears, because I did not want details, he continued, “I was printing the set when you called. I brought them along just in case.”
“You’re hoping I can ID it if it’s Maggie’s.” I thumbed the yellow tab and reached for that calm, cold place in my middle. Pulse steady, I turned the page and studied the image. “No jewelry, birthmarks or—wait. There’s mud on the toes, but see this? They’re painted.”
“Okay.” He sounded unconvinced. “What does that matter?”
“Maggie is allergic to the dibutyl phthalate in regular nail polish, and she can’t sit still long enough to apply water-based polishes. They’re more, well, watery.” I tapped the image. “These toes are painted, that means they aren’t hers.”
The grim set of his jaw told me he had followed that information to its logical conclusion. “Then there’s a good chance it belongs to Angel Claremont.”
The cold, rational part of my mind agreed, and it wasn’t bothered by the butchery. Emotion was required before regret or disgust or sorrow could manifest, and I had yet to shrug back into that frame of mind. As I thawed, I found no scrap of happiness over Maggie being spared. A young woman had, at best, lost a limb. At worst, she had lost her life, chopped up for spare parts War sprinkled like breadcrumbs in a trail I was meant to follow.
“Do you think she’s alive?” I forced myself to ask him. I trusted his gut more than mine right now.
“Yes.” His thumbs kneaded the steering wheel. “War will have done her homework. She’ll know there are tests that can determine if the victim was alive when the leg was severed. She’ll want you to hope.”
I braced my head against the window and zoned out while he drove. All these years, I had pined for answers. Ignorance had been bliss, but I’d had tunnel vision and hadn’t enjoyed that window of happiness. Thanks to history lessons with Portia and Cole, I possessed more information than I could process. My brain rebelled against the volume I had absorbed, the knowledge so foreign and impossible as to be alien.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Miller parked on the curb in front of a modest house in an older subdivision that fit with what I knew about Robert Martin. No crime scene tape clung to the doorway, and I spotted no signs of forced entry. The Feds must not have breached the house, hoping he might return here. Or perhaps they might have temporarily dismissed the location after learning he’d had two days in which to disappear. Maybe they knew something we didn’t. Probably a lot of somethings, actually. The quiet street might also indicate a dispute over where the department’s jurisdiction ended and the FBI’s began. Maggie was still Canton PD’s case, after all.
Whatever the reason for our good fortune, we planned on making the most of the opportunity.
“Sit tight.” Miller claimed the laptop. “Let me email Cole our coordinates and attach the Martin files.”
Used to covering my and Rixton’s bacon with dispatch before exiting the vehicle to answer a call, I sat tight and scanned the area for signs one of the harbingers of the apocalypse was bedding down in the nondescript house, that a super gator might be prowling the backyard or that kidnap victims might be held inside, but the blandness of the neighborhood made it impossible to imagine anything so extraordinary might occur here.
War had chosen her mark well. Given her name, I assumed strategy was her strength, and she had certainly flexed those muscles so far. She had fooled us. Me most of all.
“Ready?” Miller muted his phone, and I did the same. We got out, and he circled around and opened the SUV’s rear hatch. He lifted the flap covering the tire well and withdrew handguns from a padded case for each of us. “Here’s an extra clip.”
“I can appreciate a guy willing to share his toys.” Grateful as I was to be armed, my fingers itched for my service weapon. “I’ll circle around back and—”
“No.” He slammed the hatch and paced up the sidewalk. “We go in through the front. Together.”
I caught up to him. “We do that, and we risk her slipping out the back.”
“We don’t do that, and we’re toast. Cole is the only one of us who can take on a daughter of Otilla and live to tell the tale.” He deferred to me. “Unless you’re willing to unpack Conquest?”
“That’s not an option.” I hoped I was telling us both the truth. I wanted her buried so deep nothing short of my death would unleash her. “We’ll do this your way. The victims are our primary concern.”
“Wrong.” He edged in front of me when we reached the door. “Staying alive is our primary concern.”
Live to fight another day was solid advice, and I couldn’t argue against his logic even when a part of me hissed running was cowardice.
“You want to do the honors?” He glanced over his shoulder while pounding his fist against the door. “People respond better to pretty women with badges.”
Unsure I believed him on either point, I lifted my badge and held it up to the peephole. “Officer Luce Boudreau with the Canton Police Department.” I gave it a full minute. “Mr. Martin, we need to ask you some questions. Open the door.”
Miller paused his banging and leaned closer, pressing his ear against the wood. “I hear movement. No footsteps. Scraping.” His nostrils flared as he pressed his nose to the seam in the door, and his pupils dilated. “I smell old blood.”
“Check it.” I trained my weapon on the door at chest height. We didn’t get lucky with the lock. It was engaged. That meant we couldn’t fudge our way inside by claiming it had been open when we arrived. Odds were good we weren’t the first to give it a spin, but we would be the last. I turned Miller’s earlier question around on him. “You want to do the honors?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He used his shoulder as a battering ram, and wood splintered. “It’s coming from over here.”
The interior was as bland and tidy as the exterior. Standing in the living room, I couldn’t hear or smell what had set Miller on high alert. I let him lead with his keen nose and sharp ears while covering us from the rear. Ambush was a popular wartime tactic for a good reason. What some might view as cowardice, others considered the best use of resources, even if the supply expended was human life.
After clearing the house, we entered the garage. The space hadn’t been converted structurally, but pegboard covered the walls, and interlocking foam squares cushioned the concrete floor. Tools hung from hooks, and a large workbench occupied the center of the space. Next to that Martin had peeled up a four-by-four section of foam, and under that we discovered a hatch set into the foundation.
I spat out a curse. “It’s an in-ground storm shelter.”
“That’s a thing in garages?” He squatted and tested the latch then ran his finger over a keyhole. “This unit is new. The manufacturing date and brand is printed right here on this sticker.”
“From what I remember, these units run larger than typical shelters. The capacity is around eight to ten people.” He quirked up an eyebrow. “Dad went through a baby proofing phase after my adoption was finalized. Part of his upgrades to the house included us sitting through a presentation on these things. They’re usually added-on after construction, and that jacks up the cost.” I toed the edge with my shoe. “The installers cut through the slab with a diamond blade wet saw, use a backhoe to scoop out all the dirt then lower the unit into place and bolt it down. All without wrecking the garage.”
“What I’m hearing is this will require finesse.”
“Finesse. I like that.” I shot him a grin. “How good are you at safe-cracking?”
The house creaked behind us, the protest of old floorboards under new weight, and I whirled toward the door, raised my gun and waited. A full minute lapsed before my arms got shaky. Taut with nerves, I had reached the edge of my endurance for the day. I was about to suggest we sweep the house again when a boxy tomcat with lush midnight fur strutted out with a smirking twitch of his whiskers. His tail, what was left of it, pointed straight up in the air. Scars crisscrossed his face, and his eyes gleamed emerald in the low light. All of that I could overlook except for . . . those.
“Miller?” I kept the gun trained on the demon cat. “Is this a friend of yours?”
“Meow.”
“Think about it,” he said, a smile in his voice. “It’ll come to you.”
“Me-ow.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” The cat gazed up at me in expectation. “What does he want?”
Almost on cue, he tensed his hind legs and leapt. At the midpoint of his arc, delicate black wings unfurled from his back, and he flapped with feline laziness, expending only the exact amount of effort required to perch on my shoulder. Much to my surprise, he weighed about as much as the cockatoo who had once failed Maggie’s audition as class pet due to her allergies.
“Thom.” It hit me in a sudden rush. “Thom the Tomcat. Funny.”
First Cole’s leonine dragon and now a feathered kitty cat.
Obviously Conquest had a type. Great. My terrifying inner demon was a crazy cat lady.
“You look well enough.” I rubbed his ears. “Portia was on the nose about how fast you’d heal.”
How she’d earned that information made my gut twist, so I locked those thoughts away for later examination too. All the while wondering how many skeletons my mental closet could hold before exploding.
“Thom’s the most resilient of us,” Miller confided. “He’s had about nine thousand lives and counting.”
Despite Miller’s grim warnings about their demonic forms, there was nothing terrifying about the demon cat. He was kind of adorable in a rough and tumble way. Even Cole, whose dragon awestruck me, didn’t inspire the same urge to cuddle.
“You’re a cute little fella,” I cooed at the kitty, who purred back and butted his head against my jaw. Cole must have forwarded Miller’s email to the others, and they had dispatched Thom, the demonic equivalent of an EMT. “Thanks for coming to lend a paw.”
Miller, who had set about attempting to pick the lock, let the tools go limp in his hand. He watched me scratch under Thom’s chin, his lips set in a grim line. He ducked his head when he caught me staring and resumed his task. The muscles in his shoulders tensed, and something told me not to press him.
“What are our options for getting the hatch open?” Normal shelters weren’t built with these kinds of exterior locking mechanisms. They were constructed with the understanding the people inside would be the ones sliding the bars or flipping the latches into place. Screwing up my courage, I asked the question I hadn’t braved since entering the garage. “Can you still hear them?”
“Yes.” He traced the seam with a fingertip. “It’s not soundproof.” His eyelashes lowered. “I can hear a heartbeat.”
“Singular.” My heart plummeted as fast as a stone hurled down a well. “Not plural.”
“The blood scent is freshest here. One of the victims bled out, recently.” He lifted a mat and peered underneath. “He was neat. Kept his mess contained, his workstation tidy. He messed up with the concrete. It’s porous, absorbs like a sponge, and he didn’t seal the raw seams.”
“So either one of them is . . . ” I couldn’t say the word. “Or one was moved to a separate location.”
“I can rip it off the hinges,” he offered. “It’ll be hard to explain to the Feds later.”
No harder than explaining what we were doing here or how we got in through the ruined front door.
“Do it.” The victim was in imminent danger. That was all the permission my conscience required to act. “What do you need?”
Miller angled his face away. “For you to step inside the house and shut the door.”
“There’s plenty of room.” I backed up a few steps. “I’ll just hang over here out of the way.”
“I’ll have to complete a partial shift.” Turn his head any farther, and it would pop right off his neck. “You don’t want to see that.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to see that.”
“I’m not afraid.” I stood my ground. “I trust you, Miller.”
A shudder rippled through him as though my words had broken him. “No.” He hesitated. “I value our friendship too much for you to see what I really am.”
Sharp claws pierced my shoulder as Thom kicked off me and fluttered to the ground. Stubby tail up, he yowled imperiously until I followed him. At his urging, I shut the door and left the man I was starting to consider a friend alone to deal with his personal demon.