AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Carter was wearing a burgundy smoking jacket over a pair of spotless black trousers. We were dressed in blood, dirt, and, no doubt, ghoul innards. “Are you sure? We might accidentally stain your upholstery.”
He laughed, his voice musical. “Don’t worry about it. I have the cleaners in every month or two. I receive a number of guests who don’t even understand the concept of taking a shower.”
We settled onto the sofa and chairs that were spread throughout the room, and Carter snapped his fingers. A lovely young woman, delicate and thin and possibly part Chinese, slipped into the room. She waited silently.
“Kim, bring us some tea, please. And,” he glanced at me, “a goblet of warmed blood.” When I started to protest, he waved me down. “Nonsense. My hospitality will never be called into question. Not while I’m alive.”
He slid into the chair nearest me and leaned back, resting his cane against the arm of the wooden frame. “Vanzir leads me to believe you’re facing a Karsetii demon.” He sounded almost eager.
I glanced at the others. Camille gave me a slight nod. “Yeah. We drove off the hive mother, but I don’t trust that she’s gone for good. We think we know who’s summoning her, though, and we’re wondering if you might have any records indicating demonic activity around a certain area of Seattle going back, oh—say one hundred years or so?”
Carter gazed in my eyes. He looked old behind that youngish face, and a little bit tired. “I arrived here when Seattle was young. I came in from the East Coast and started a printing company. Ran a couple of the very first newspapers in town, then decided to fade away and reinvent myself as someone new. Naturally, the populace wouldn’t have looked too kindly on me if they’d found out I was a demon.”
“Then you’ve been here for a long time,” I said. Carter fascinated me. I knew he was Demonkin, but he didn’t feel like any other demon I’d ever met—Vanzir and Rozurial included. I wondered just what type he was, but it seemed rude to ask.
“Yes, I’ve watched the city grow and evolve. My company was located in the Seattle Underground before she was underground.” Carter flashed me a dazzling smile. Good teeth, that was for sure. “I’m able to cloak my horns when I know a stranger’s coming, but I generally don’t speak to many people and have since then grown used to a life of solitude.”
“What do you do now to support yourself?” Morio leaned back, eying Carter closely. I watched the fox demon; he seemed wary but not closed off. Morio had good instincts, and I trusted them.
“I run an Internet research business. I’m a virtual research assistant for a number of college professors and scientists. I make a good wage that more than pays my bills. No one bothers me.”
Just then, the lovely Kim returned, bearing a tray filled with cups, saucers, and a pot of tea. She had remembered to add a goblet of blood, and I accepted it rather self-consciously. I didn’t really like drinking in front of others because I knew it made some people queasy, but I didn’t want to appear churlish. I sniffed at the blood. Fresh. My fangs began to extend as the hunger in my stomach grew, and I quickly took a sip, forcing myself to center again.
As Kim handed out the teacups, I watched Carter watch her. At first, I’d thought she was his maid, but there was more going on there than just a master-servant relationship. He was gentle when he spoke with her, and gracious, even though his manner was quietly imperative.
As she finished, he said, “Thank you. Go to bed now and sleep safe.”
She ducked her head to him, then just as silently backed out of the room. I cocked my head, curious.
“You wonder what she’s doing here, don’t you?” Carter said.
Startled, I nodded. “Yeah, actually. She’s human?”
“Human, yes, but only half. Her mother was a demon—a succubus, but a weak one. Her father was human. Kim’s mother had no use for the child and was in the process of selling her on the open market when I happened to notice. Kim is twenty-two now, so this was . . . oh . . . twenty-one years ago or so. Several of the demons bidding for her were . . . distasteful. I knew she’d have a short, miserable life with them, so I outbid them, bought her, and brought her here.”
Everyone stared at him. Morio was nodding. Camille and Delilah both looked a little shocked. Rozurial just listened.
“Were you planning on keeping her?” I asked.
“No, not really.” He shook his head. “At first I was planning to leave her on the doorstep of a church, but then I realized that her half-demon nature would doom her if they tried to bring her up human. She’d either end up in a mental institution or she’d end up in jail. So I hired a nanny and brought her up myself. I look on her like she’s my own daughter. Kim is mute; she’s never spoken a word, and we don’t know why. The healer I engaged thinks it might be some genetic mutation that occurred from her mixed parentage. She knows sign language, though, and she can hear without a problem. I keep encouraging her to go away to college, but she prefers to stay home and take care of the apartment.”
Kim looked old enough to be his wife, but if he harbored such thoughts about her, they weren’t apparent.
“What area do you want information about? The city as a whole, or one specific neighborhood?” Carter finished his tea and rose, crossing to the bookshelf where he pored through titles until he found a large leather-bound book. He opened it, setting it on the coffee table. The book was an atlas, filled with holograms. Maps of the city. Magical, no doubt.
I gave him the cross streets nearest Harold’s house. That was as much as Carter needed to know for the moment. He seemed on the up-and-up, though I wondered why he’d chosen to live Earthside, and why for so long, but you never knew. With demons, you just couldn’t take unnecessary risks.
Carter glanced at the map, tracing routes with his fingertip. Then he stopped, looked at the page with a peculiar frown, and limped over to a filing cabinet that stood next to his desk. He shuffled through a thick row of neatly lined files, withdrew a folder, and carried it back to his chair. He handed it to me.
“I think this might contain the information you’re looking for,” he said, pressing his lips together grimly. “I have the feeling you’re looking for a particular name, and you’re likely to find it in there.”
As I spread the file folder on my knees and opened it, Camille and Delilah peered over my shoulders. The folder was filled with neatly typed reports, old newspaper clippings—some from the Seattle Tattler, I noticed—and a few scattered photographs. I began to shuffle through the pages.
Two pictures of what looked like a red-eyed, horned troll rustling through what appeared to be a corner park. A blurry photograph that looked reminiscent of the ghouls we’d met in the cemetery, only they were crossing through a backyard, and—hello? What was this? A picture of Harold’s house, complete with a dark cloud overhead. Only that cloud was no cloud. It was some sort of demonic haze. Even though the picture was dated as being taken twenty years ago, I could still feel the aura flicker off the photograph.
I slowly handed the picture to Camille and picked up the thick sheaf of reports. As I flipped through them, I saw that they were each documented by date, address, and type of encounter. There were seven pages with Harold’s address on it, and the dates went back to around 1920. The reports ranged from mild demonic auras being sensed to a period during the 1960s where there was a surge of power spikes noted by whoever had been keeping track of this project. Which brought me to . . .
“Carter, why do you have all this? All these reports?”
