Ace continued to scan the pages. “That’s all I have here about him. I guess demons stopped mentioning him about a month and a half after his arrival.” Ace grabbed another notebook and flipped through the pages. “I do think I jotted something else in another volume…”
The door pushed open and Chad walked in as a wolf with his head hanging down and tail tucked. He trudged over to the side of the bed and hopped up beside Declan. His eyes met mine, and he laid his muzzle on my arm.
“I don’t blame you for what happened, Chad.” I scratched behind his ears. “As far as I’m concerned, you and Ace saved my ass back there.”
Jasper harrumphed but turned toward the door as a soft knock rattled the wood.
“Come in, Lucas,” Jasper said.
Lucas stepped into the room and gave me a small smile before sitting on the bed next to my feet. For some strange reason, I followed a sudden urge to poke Lucas’ back with my toes.
He pivoted toward me. “Hey. You doing okay?”
“Better now.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you went through hell today.” Lucas pulled his mother’s ring off, and he tucked it in his pocket before his soft hands came down and encircled my ankle. Lucas pulled my foot into his lap, and his thumb kneaded into my arch.
“Not that I’m complaining, because I’m definitely not, but I was poking you with my toes to pester you, not to guilt you into a foot massage.” I felt the need to say it, but the last thing on earth I wanted Lucas to do was to stop. He kneaded into my tense muscles, working his thumb up the arch and to the pad. Sensation thrummed up through my foot, and my toes tingled.
“This isn’t a foot massage,” Lucas said with a smile, “It’s a serious medical procedure to reduce stress.”
“Oh, okay, Dr. Wolf,” I said through a chuckle. “I’ll take whatever you prescribe.”
“Get a room,” Declan muttered, but he only squeezed me tighter to his chest.
The position I found myself in was all a little surreal. I had one hand scratching Chad’s wolf ears while Declan held me, and Lucas massaged my feet. And yet, it was the kind of surreal I could get used to.
“The only other note I have about the memory eater is that a demon said that she thought it was best if he never came out of the fairgrounds—or the demon district where most of them live,” Ace said. He closed his notebook and sighed. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed over his eyes before putting them back on. “Well, we don’t have much to go on if we’re going to convince him to take a man’s memories.”
I slumped back against Declan, and even the magic Lucas was working on my foot couldn’t lessen the stress that was spiking through me. It had seemed like such a good solution, but even I wasn’t desperate enough to summon an unknown demon and hope for the best.
Declan leaned into my ear and whispered, “Wait for it…”
Almost as if they rehearsed this bit, Ace said, “Well, maybe there is something to go on. First fact, I’ve never heard of a demon species that is associated with manipulating memories of the past—most mind manipulation is to do with the present or future. The major powers are some variation of deceiving, tempting, merrymaking, and mischief-making type of thing. The second peculiarity is that different classifications of demons feed on different human emotions— the major food groups for them are what you’d expect, lust, pride, envy, wrath, idleness...”
“Greed and gluttony,” I suggested when he paused.
Ace glanced back at me, and he rubbed his brow. “Exactly. It’s unheard of that a demon would never leave the fairgrounds, and that’s why I noted it.”
“Where are the fairgrounds?” I asked.
“On the edge of town,” Lucas said as he worked his magic into my toes. “If you look out behind the Sanguine Inn, you’ll see the remains of a broken Ferris Wheel. Only demons go in there.”
“Which brings me to point of peculiarity three, demons can’t feed on each other, so they go out of their compound to eat. They feed on customers at their hotel chain, they come to the bars, or the sex demons throw orgies in our living room type of thing.”
Chad grunted.
“Which brings us to our most important question, how is the memory eater eating…? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He’s eating memories?” Declan asked, sounding unsure.
Ace shook his head. “No. Demons can only eat emotions.”
“Is it possible that he’s not a demon?” I asked.
Ace pointed at me and his eyes lit up with more excitement than I’d ever seen in him. “You’re a fucking genius.”
“I am?” I asked, taken a little aback.
“The memory eater isn’t a demon.”
All around the room, the men glanced at each other.
“Please explain your thinking to me,” Jasper said. “I was under the impression that they only let demons into the fairgrounds.”
Ace rubbed his temples. “Could everyone just give me a moment to think. I’m right there.”
“I know of one other living thing that’s in the demon compound,” Lucas said as he worked his fingers between my toes. “They have pets—I’ve treated a couple.”
“I’ve caught some strange creatures in the woods—foxes with three tails, this miniature fire breathing lion with a goat head coming from its back and a head that tried to bite me. I always just release them back into the woods around the town.”
“That is a chimera,” Lucas
