Demon Marked

few moments, the Boyles would be able to look out of their living room windows and see the vehicle approaching. She still couldn’t picture their faces, but she could visualize the house. “It’s the Craftsman with the red door. The driveway is marked with a gated entrance between two brick columns—but the gate is always open, and there’s a concrete garden gnome on top of each column, because . . . because . . .”

“Because?”

Disappointment pierced her excitement. “I can’t remember why. They mean something, but I don’t know what. Will you ask them?”

He didn’t answer for a moment . . . and then several moments. Ash tried to recapture her anticipation. They were driving closer, closer—but no, something was wrong. Something was unfamiliar.

Nicholas began to slow. Ash shook her head.

“No, this is wrong. You’ve passed the house—”

“On purpose. Now sit up and take a look before it’s out of sight.”

Ash turned in the seat. Through the back window, everything appeared as she’d expected: the columns flanking the driveway and the snow piled around them, the gnomes, and farther back from the lane, the house and the red door.

A red door cordoned off with yellow police tape.

Her fingers tightened on the back of the seat. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” His voice had lowered to a murmur. As soon as the house was hidden behind a stand of pine trees, he stopped in the lane and cut the engine. “Can you hear anything?”

Only his heartbeat and hers and the ticking of the motor and a few winter birds and the cracking of branches beneath the ice and snow and the wind through the pine needles and the snuffling of some animal out in the woods and a neighbor’s dog scratching at a door and the tumbling of an electric clothes dryer—

No. She could focus. She had to focus on the Boyles’ house.

She recognized the sounds a moment later. “Two people are inside the house, talking,” she said softly. “I can’t make out what they are saying, but it’s definitely a man and a woman.”

“The Boyles?”

A man and a woman . . . maybe they were the Boyles. If so, they weren’t familiar.

The realization brought an unexpected lump to her throat. Their voices weren’t familiar.

“Ash?”

“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “They are—Wait.”

She frowned, listening. Had they gone so silent? Why couldn’t she hear anything at all from the house now?

Why didn’t she feel anything?

“They’re gone,” she whispered. “They’ve left.”

“In a car? There wasn’t one in the drive.”

No, there hadn’t been—and she hadn’t heard the garage door open, or an engine start. What the hell?

Frowning, she glanced back at Nicholas. “They’re simply gone. And there’s something more I just realized: I couldn’t sense them at all. Their emotions were blocked, like yours are. Actually, more than yours. I can feel the barrier you put up. I couldn’t feel theirs.”

“Fuck.” His heart sped up. “Guardians. We’ve got to go.”

“No!” Ash scrambled into the front seat, snatching the keys from the ignition before he could turn them. She didn’t give him time to become angry. Before he’d had more than a second to stare at the empty keyhole, she said, “Nicholas, something happened in that house. I need to know what.”

“The Boyles aren’t there.”

“No, because something happened. I have to know.” When he hesitated, she added, “Please.”

“The Guardians might come back. If they do, you’re dead.”

She didn’t care. “I need to look. Please.”

It didn’t matter if he agreed. In another second, she’d jump out into the snow and go, anyway. But he set his jaw and nodded, holding his hand out for the keys.

He needed to know, too, she realized. Discovery by the Guardians could jeopardize their bargain and his search for Madelyn, yet he’d agreed to go back to the house, anyway. Ash wished she could kiss him for that, but she settled for shutting up and letting him concentrate on reversing the SUV down the icy lane. He backed into the driveway, as if preparing for a quick getaway. Perhaps he was.

She leapt out before he cut the engine. Cold air bit into her face, her lungs. Her heel skidded out from under her, and the world seemed to twist, icy and dark and erupting with screams all around her, the dark tower spearing up into the red sky, not trees but worse, Lucifer looking down at them all, but he’d let her free and the agony would be over, and the screaming pain, her body gone, gone—

No. Ash planted her feet, stayed upright. Her stomach heaved up a scream, but it couldn’t get past the dread tightening her throat. The house was too still, too cold.

And she could smell the blood from here.

“Come on.” Nicholas caught her elbow, pulled her forward. He carried a crossbow, the bolt already loaded and ready.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.

“I know.”

She followed him to the porch, up the stairs. Nicholas swore at the locked front door. Ash found the key exactly where it should have been, beneath the blue cushion on the front porch swing. He took it from her without question, studying her face.

“Are you sure you want to go in?”

Ash couldn’t imagine what she looked like, that he had to ask that. “Yes.”

“You stay here until I’ve cleared the rooms, made sure no one is waiting.”

“No.”

He shook his head, but didn’t argue. The police tape ripped away easily. Opening the door, he took a step inside—and stopped. Though his shields, she sensed the hot burst of rage, the hard bitterness of grief.

No, no, no.

Nicholas backed up, began to turn. “Let’s go out—”

Ash ducked under his arm, was through the doorway before he could touch her, before he could stop her. Oh, God, she knew this house. The wooden floors polished to a high shine, the coatrack that looked like a bowling pin with arms, the pine chest beside it that was the perfect place to sit and remove a pair of boots. Emotions flooded her, so many things that she knew but couldn’t remember. She couldn’t breathe.

Then she did breathe, and smelled the blood again. She turned toward the living room and saw it.

The cornflower blue rug that should have been in the center of the living room was missing, and she knew, she knew that somewhere that rug had a huge, irregular stain on it. Because the rest of the blood was splattered and dried against the walls, across the marble fireplace, in handprints on the floor.

The scene blurred, and she suddenly wanted to stop feeling anything, wanted to go back to the way life had been at Nightingale House, where every emotion skimmed along the surface. Because now the emotions stabbed, and stabbed, and even though she held her stomach and tried to keep her guts in, she could feel how they ripped and tore with every drop of blood she saw in that room.

With her demon vision, she saw them all.

Then Nicholas was in front of her, holding her face, forcing her to see him. “Ash. We don’t know what happened here. Who it happened to. And whatever happened, they might have survived.”

She knew who it had happened to. She knew who’d been in this room. The knitting basket set beside the armchair and the haphazard tangle of a partially finished scarf told her that Rachel’s mother had been here. The tray tipped over next to the recliner, the scattered pieces of a model train said that Rachel’s father had been here, too.

“Ash.” He shook her a little, and with effort, she focused on him again. “I’m leaving you here to check the rest of the house. All right?”

No. But she nodded.