Demon Marked

weekend getaway that Rachel never got to have.

She supposed some people were driven by less.

Did it bother him that a demon touched Rachel’s things now? Trying to determine his mood by studying his features proved a futile exercise. Was he aware of her scrutiny, or did he simply sit stone-faced all the time?

Ash waited for a crack in his expression, but it didn’t come. And she’d never tried to sense someone’s emotions before, but that proved futile, too. The door he’d erected still blocked Nicholas’s emotions from her. The flight attendants’ and the pilots’ feelings filled her senses with their various and ever- changing flavors, but she couldn’t taste Nicholas’s at all.

Without looking up at her, he said, “Did you learn anything from those?”

Ash glanced at the dress and shoes. “Not about Rachel.”

She’d only learned more about him. And though she had little use for Nicholas St. Croix aside from the money and information he might offer, that didn’t mean she didn’t find him . . . interesting.

Unlike her emotions, Ash’s curiosity remained strong. Right now, Nicholas had piqued that curiosity. She wanted to know more—especially if learning about him told her more about Rachel.

“You seem to be a cold, vengeful, unfriendly sort of man, Nicholas.”

“You noticed.” His tone suggested boredom and his attention remained on his computer screen, but Ash suspected that he’d focused completely on her. “Will you tell me now that I shouldn’t be obsessed with revenge?”

“Why would I care about that?” How strange. Whether he pursued revenge or not wasn’t any business of hers, except that now she was bound to help him. Other than that, it didn’t matter if he did. “I want to know more about Rachel. So I wondered if she liked you, even though you’re not very likable.”

He glanced up then, his gaze assessing—as if calculating his response, Ash realized. What would he come up with?

To her surprise, he came up with an answer. “No. She didn’t like me, not at the beginning. Madelyn told her too much about me.”

“Madelyn told her lies?”

“No, the truth. Madelyn told Rachel that I intended to destroy Wells-Down—and destroy her—in any way that I could.”

“So you were just as bent on revenge before Rachel died as you are now,” Ash observed. “And just as unlikable. But you changed Rachel’s feelings toward you.”

Icy amusement touched his mouth. “I can be charming.”

Ash didn’t doubt it. Though he was cold now, she thought Nicholas St. Croix could probably pretend to feel something when it was convenient. He’d know how to flatter a woman, to make her feel special. He’d calculate her every reaction, and add her response to a reservoir of data that he could use to further his agenda.

“She loved you.”

Though the icy amusement didn’t leave his expression, Ash sensed a hardening within him, as if he’d put another lock on the door separating her from his emotions. That, she thought, was his true response. He showed her one reaction, and although the hardness didn’t feel any warmer than his amusement and she had no idea what lay beyond that barrier he’d erected, the very act of strengthening that barrier told her enough. Some deep emotion lay within him, and he felt a need to hide it from her.

“Yes,” he said easily. “She did love me.”

“I suppose she must have. The police report said she threw herself in front of you.” That sounded like love —a rather dramatic, soap-opera sort of love, at least. Ash had her doubts. “What really happened? Who really fired the gun? You said that Rachel blocked Madelyn’s shot—but I can’t believe Madelyn tried to shoot you. It would break the Rules.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think I lied about not killing Rachel?”

“Yes.” Ash could almost feel Madelyn’s strong fingers digging into her arms, shaking her. Don’t break the Rules. Don’t! “Madelyn warned me not to kill anyone. It’s one of the few things I remember from before Nightingale House. So I can’t believe that she’d be foolish enough to shoot you.”

“I see.” He gave her that assessing stare again before abruptly continuing, “Madelyn didn’t break the Rules when she fired the gun. I gave her permission to shoot me.”

What? Ash hadn’t expected that. Astonishment leapt through her, new and intriguing. But as much as she wanted to concentrate on the feeling, his admission proved more fascinating.

“You told Madelyn to kill you? Why would you do that?”

“When I swung by Madelyn’s house that evening to pick her up after work, Rachel invited me in. Madelyn was still in the office upstairs.”

“Did you know Madelyn was there, too?”

His thin smile could have been a yes or a no, and Ash couldn’t decide which was more likely: She believed that Nicholas would have relished the confrontation with Madelyn, and she believed that Nicholas hated his mother enough that he wouldn’t have entered the house if he’d known she was there.

In the end, she supposed it didn’t matter. He’d gone in.

“Madelyn and I argued, of course.” He said it casually, setting aside his computer and sitting back, as if settling in for a comfortable chat. “Madelyn drew a gun from her desk, and I told her: Shoot me, then. You’ve wanted to get rid of me for twenty years. So do it. She did, but Rachel got in between. Then they disappeared.”

So he had given permission. But why? He’d been determined to destroy Madelyn, not himself.

“You didn’t think she’d really do it,” Ash guessed.

“No, I didn’t. Pulling out that gun seemed like a rash, hysterical move, but Madelyn isn’t impulsive— everything she does is calculated. She’d lose her company if she murdered me, and Madelyn wouldn’t risk that. So I assumed she only meant to frighten me.”

“So you egged her on.”

“Yes. Now I know that a demon wouldn’t resist a free pass to kill a human. Getting rid of the evidence would be easy—and it would have been her word against Rachel’s.”

But Rachel had thrown herself between them, instead. Sacrificing herself wouldn’t have been the same as giving Madelyn permission to kill her—and so Madelyn had still broken the Rules, Ash realized. Was that why they’d disappeared?

“What are the consequences if a demon kills a human?”

“The consequences before the portals to Hell were closed, or the consequences now?”

“What portals to Hell?”

As if her question frustrated him, his jaw clenched. “The Gates between Earth and Hell,” he said. “They closed three years ago.”

After Madelyn had shot Rachel and broken the Rules. “So what should have happened to Madelyn six years ago?”

“She’d have been either punished in Hell or killed.”

“And now? What if I deny a human’s free will?”

“Are you planning on doing that?” He must have thought she wouldn’t; he didn’t wait for her answer. “With the Gates shut, you can’t be taken back to Hell, so Rosalia and her partner would hunt you down. They’d have a psychic lock on you as soon as you broke the Rules, and they wouldn’t stop until you were dead.”

Punished or dead. With those as her only options, it was best just to heed Madelyn’s warning, and not break the Rules.

Not that Ash felt a particular urge to break them, anyway. Strange, wasn’t that? As a demon, shouldn’t she be plotting how to kill or maim him?

At the very least, shouldn’t she be trying to make him cry?

What would a demon do? Ash couldn’t answer that. Nicholas didn’t seem to subscribe to the “demons are rebels with a cause” interpretation that she remembered from several books and movies, so she must be the “utterly evil and corrupt” variety. But if that were so, shouldn’t every step she took and word she spoke all be designed to bring about Nicholas’s eventual destruction? Shouldn’t it be instinctive?

Or was Nicholas completely wrong about demons?