Demon Marked

picked up a file from her desk and tossed it to Taylor.

“We found St. Croix’s demon.”

Taylor opened the file to a picture from airport security in New York. Crap resolution, but clear enough to identify them both. “What name did she use?”

“She went through as Rachel Boyle. Straight on through. She was flagged as missing, not dead—but she’s obviously not missing anymore, is she? She’s never been charged with anything, and she’s a citizen, so they basically just said, ‘Come on in.’ Idiots.”

“Why would a demon use an airport at all?” Taylor wondered.

“Maybe she’s trying to convince St. Croix that she’s human,” Lilith said. “But I don’t think so. He wouldn’t fall for that, and she’s got symbols all over her. So maybe he didn’t trust her not to drop him.”

Castleford frowned. “Boyle. The same as the double murders Taylor was looking at?”

“The same,” Taylor confirmed. “We saw her tonight. She wore the markings then, too, but St. Croix called her Ash.”

“So St. Croix went to Duluth?” He exchanged a glance with Lilith. “With the demon who was pretending to be Rachel’s ghost?”

Lilith shook her head. “That makes no sense. No sense at all.”

They’d only heard the beginning of it. “Let me tell you the rest,” Taylor said.

She relayed the meeting with St. Croix outside of the sheriff’s office, the burst of grief that had led them to the snow-covered field, Nicholas’s defense of the demon.

“This is the crazy part, and I’m not really clear on it, because as soon as I saw her, Michael jumped in and began steering the boat,” Taylor told them. “And he was . . . angry. Not at the demon, but that kind of anger that comes from realizing that something is completely fucked up, and someone got hurt, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Then he told St. Croix that she was ours.”

“As in, ‘ours to kill’?” Lilith asked.

“No. As in, ‘she belongs to the Guardians.’” Taylor took in their confusion. “Rachel Boyle died saving St. Croix’s life, remember.”

“Then she was supposed to be a Guardian,” Castleford said.

“So how is she a demon, instead?”

“No, that’s the wrong question,” Lilith said. “It’s not: How did she go from being a Guardian to a demon? There’d have to be more steps. And the first: Why isn’t she a Guardian?”

Castleford nodded slowly, as if in dawning realization. “A bargain.”

Taylor shook her head. “I’m not following either of you.”

Lilith sat forward. “It’s like this: The only way Michael wouldn’t have been called to transform her into a Guardian is if there was a prior hold on her soul. She must have broken a bargain—probably a bargain with St. Croix’s mother.”

“That would put her in the frozen field when she died,” Castleford picked up the rest. “Her soul, anyway. Just like Michael’s soul is in the frozen field, but his body is in your cache.”

In Taylor’s cache, and marked up with symbols that completed the psychic connection between them . . . and allowed for an eventual rejoining of his body and soul after he was released from Hell.

“St. Croix said that Rachel’s body vanished. You think his mother had it in her cache?”

Lilith nodded. “And she would be in Hell, enduring her punishment for killing a human. So Rachel’s soul is in the frozen field, her body is in a demon’s cache . . . and Lucifer has access to both. So he makes a halfling out of her.”

All right. Taylor could follow that far. Lucifer had pulled Rachel out of the frozen field, reunited body and soul, and then Rachel had completed the ritual that turned her into a demon. What she couldn’t understand was Why?

Lilith didn’t have an answer for that. “I have no idea. Obviously for some purpose. But I don’t know what.”

“Some kind of spell?” Taylor suggested. “The symbols on her face made Michael uneasy.”

Lilith squinted at the airport photos, before shaking her head. “Even magnified, I wouldn’t be able to read these. They’re too pixelated. But symbols are part of the transformation ritual. I had them all over me. They defined my powers, my bargain with Lucifer, my name. They’re normal. I only wonder why she doesn’t hide them.”

“The symbols I saw called for something to open.”

“To open?” Lilith grimaced. “Not so normal. And Michael didn’t like them, either?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay. So let’s assume that whatever Lucifer wants, he’s going to get it through Rachel Boyle. The question is: Does Rachel share Lucifer’s purpose? Does St. Croix?”

Castleford turned to Taylor. “Did you get a look inside her mind?”

“Yes, actually. A clear one.” Which, thinking about it now, was strange. Beyond even “normal” strange. “And I do mean clear. I’ve never touched a mind like hers. She’s wide open. And there’s no conflict in her. Her emotions sang like pure notes.”

Even children felt more of a push and pull—between love and resentment, between desire for an object versus a desire to please.

“Demons aren’t conflicted,” Castleford said.

“But they’re malevolent. She wasn’t. There was only grief, confusion, pain—and joy, when St. Croix came for her.”

“And what does he feel?”

“I couldn’t get into his head. But he’d have killed me for her.”

“So if we want to get to her, we have to get around him . . . and he’s familiar with the Rules.” Lilith considered that. “All right. And you say he called her Ash?”

“Yes.”

“So Lucifer took her name and gave her a new one. If her emotions are that clear, too, he might have taken more than her name. Memories, associations—especially if they are connected to strong emotions—he might have taken all of that. If she’s only just been transformed—and that would also explain why she couldn’t fly into the U.S. by herself—she wouldn’t have had time to create those new emotional connections yet. All those conflicting feelings that muddy everything up.” Lilith heaved a long breath. “Which means that now is a good time to recruit her.”

Both Taylor and Castleford stared at her.

“What? Halflings aren’t the same as demons.”

“I know that better than anyone,” Castleford said. “But there’s the matter of her bargain. She’d have vowed to serve and obey Lucifer during the ritual. We wouldn’t be able to trust her.”

Lilith shook her head. “Probably not sworn to obey Lucifer. Not with the Gates closed. He’d have bound her to someone else, someone who probably was charged to carry through whatever purpose he had in mind.”

“St. Croix?”

“No.” Castleford didn’t hesitate. “Not a human. A demon. And he probably bound that demon to him, to make certain whatever he wanted from them was followed through.”

“So we just have to kill the demon she’s bound to,” Lilith said. “And she’s free.”

“And Lucifer’s purpose thwarted,” Castleford added.

“Always fun, the thwarting. So we should definitely bring her in.” Lilith pursed her lips. “Does anyone know where she is?”

CHAPTER 11

Nicholas thought he’d had enough of snow, but it wasn’t so damn bad when it meant traveling by