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“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?”
His gaze flickered my way, and the mild demeanor fell away. I found myself gazing into a swirling pool of colors, falling quickly as he sucked me in. For the first time since my early days as a vampire, I found myself gasping for breath as I tried to push his energy back. It swept over me like a wave, dragging me like a riptide, compelling me to follow. I had to go to him. I stood, taking a hesitant, unwilling step forward, and then found Morio and Camille standing between the demon and me.
“Pull it in, dude, or lose it,” Camille said. “I can feel what you’re doing, and you do it again—to any of us—and you’re dead.”
“Don’t toy with me, little girl,” he said in a neutral tone. “You don’t have the power to stop me.” But the drive to obey was gone, and Carter was back to the mild-mannered demon we’d first met.
“What the fuck was that about?” I raised my hand, wanting to strike at him. The last person to force me to do anything was dust and ashes now. “I don’t like being forced. Get it? And don’t ever, ever underestimate us. We’re stronger than we look.”
Carter held up his hand. “Enough with the histrionics. I have no intention of making you do anything. I’m just answering your question. Let it be enough that I watch. I observe. I keep the records. And I fly beneath Shadow Wing’s radar. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, not fully, but what I did understand from his little display was that he wasn’t one of Shadow Wing’s puppets. No, he was a lot older than I’d first thought, and his power rivaled the strongest vampire’s I’d ever met. And yet he sat here, in a dingy apartment in a bad neighborhood of Seattle, with a foster daughter named Kim and a brace on his leg. There was far more to Carter than met the eye, but he wasn’t going to reveal his secrets easily. And for some reason, he was helping us.
I picked up the reports. “Can we get copies of these?”
He stood and held out his hand. “Give them to me.”
