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“Blood,” she said. “Skin and hair and nails too, sometimes, but mostly blood. That’s how they had us seal the demons in.”
Chapter Three
Rose
“How close will we be able to get to the demon without provoking it?” I asked.
Investigator Ruiz glanced back from where she was sitting in the front passenger seat of the jeep. The breeze from the partly open window ruffled her black pixie cut. “The enforcers who’ve been in the field monitoring the demon have managed to stay within about a hundred feet. I wouldn’t recommend getting any closer unless you think you’re ready to take it on.”
Beside me in the back, Justin Brimsey made a faint snorting sound. The head of Unsparked Relations had opted to come with me on this scouting mission, and I was getting the impression it was because he didn’t entirely trust me to handle myself properly out there. As if it were so bizarre to say I’d like to get a look at the thing we were trying to stop before making definite plans to tackle it.
At least I was pretty sure Ruiz was on my side. We’d first met when she was inquiring about the witches who’d suddenly left their homes to take shelter on my estate, and I hadn’t always been capable of being up front with her. But when I’d needed back-up on the Frankfords’ property by the Cliff, she’d come. She was the one who’d arrested Charles Frankford.
Pebbles rattled against the jeep’s undercarriage. The driver wasn’t pushing our speed on the country lanes near the coast where the demon was still lurking, but the roads weren’t the best maintained I’d ever driven on. The breeze was warm and slightly damp, even though the sun was shining overhead. It carried a bit of ocean salt.
“You said you wanted to observe the thing, Lady Hallowell,” Brimsey said. “I hope you intend to restrict yourself to that. You can hardly be prepared to engage.”
“I’m not planning on trying to ‘engage’,” I said, suppressing a prickle of irritation. “I know my limitations.”
He made another of those derisive sounds. “Oh, do you?” he muttered.
I shifted in my seat to face him. We had farther to go before we’d be in sight of the demon. Maybe it’d be better to tacklethisproblem before it went any farther, and without my consorts here to have to listen to whatever garbage he was going to say about them.
“If you have an issue with me, why don’t we hash that out now, Mr. Brimsey?” I said. “The Assembly called me here asking for my help. I’m not sure what I could have done wrong before now in your eyes. I did everything I could to expose the Frankfords’ crimes to the Assembly as soon as I knew about them. I didn’t take any risks without feeling they were my only real option—you can be sure of that.”
Brimsey eyed me warily for a moment, his lips pursing. He had a burly frame, but it wasn’t all muscle by any means. Jowls were starting to form on either side of his rounded jaw.
“It’s not clear to me that your decisions in regards to your consorting stayed within the realm of necessity,” he said.
I would have liked for him to have said something different, but I couldn’t pretend I was surprised. “You lead the Unsparked Relations Division,” I pointed out. “Out of anyone, shouldn’t you have a little respect for the unsparked?”
He grimaced. “I maintain the divide between witching society and theirs—andthatis out of necessity. Do you have any idea the complications that arise when they come across proof of our activities?”
“My consorts haven’t caused any complications.”
“Yet.”
“And it didn’t use to be unheard of for witches and unsparked men to mix,” I said. “There’s been a campaign, probably involving the Frankfords but going back at least a few generations, to destroy all evidence of those relationships. But the history is there. I’m not the only one who’s seen scraps they missed.”
“That may be the case,” Brimsey said. “I doubt there have been many witches at any time who took not just one unsparked consort but five, though. What necessity prompted that?”
I opened my mouth, paused, and closed it again. What could I possibly say that would make him understand? Maybe nothing.
I gave it a try anyway. “Are you consorted, Mr. Brimsey?”
His eyes narrowed. “I am. To one woman, who has no other consorts.”
“Do you love your wife?”
He stared at me for a moment before sputtering, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question,” I said. “Hopefully it’s not too difficult.”
“Of course it’s not. I wouldn’t be consorted to her if there were no love between us.”
“All right. Can you explain exactly why you feel that way about her? The feelings that made you want to tie your life to hers?”
His jaw worked. He looked away from me, scowling. “We’re well-suited for each other. I’m not going to get into private details.”
