Demon Crossings (10 page)

He took it in stride, holding up one hand and staring them down until he had their attention and their silence. “Everybody help yourself to coffee and food and then find a seat. You’ll all have your say. Nothing’s been decided yet.” He looked directly at Grace. “At least nothing that can’t be unchanged once Grace has a chance to hear what you have to say.”

The others started to move off but the gym teacher stood his ground. He looked like he’d been built once but all that muscle was rounding to fat. He crossed his arms over his puffed out chest and said, “This girl—”

Aiden didn’t let him finish. “I said sit down, Bill. You’ll have your turn just like everyone else.”

Bill’s beady eyes got beadier. “Not everyone is here.”

A muscle ticked in Aiden’s jaw. “It’s a fair enough representation, especially when, in the end, it’s not really your decision to make.”

“What you do affects all of us.”

“Sit.” Aiden didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t have to. That one word sounded sharp as a gunshot across Bill’s plaintive whine. “Or leave. Those are your choices. Pick one or I’ll pick it for you.”

Bill moved to take a seat but when his gaze met Grace’s, he glared at her as if
she
was the one who’d stuck the stick up his ass. While Aiden and Bill faced off, Christian and Fen had been carting in a stack of folding chairs and setting them up around the living room. The others had all obviously been here before and made themselves at home, helping themselves to drinks and food. Christian set out a tray of bagels and a few tubs of cream cheese along with a big glass mixing bowl filled with fresh strawberries.

Within a few minutes everyone was sitting down staring speculatively at Grace. She hated being the center of attention and it would have spoiled her appetite if she hadn’t been starving. She could feel a headache coming on and it was only going to get worse. So she ignored all the curious looks and reached for a plain bagel. She wanted it toasted but she’d eat it raw if she had to.

Ripping off a piece with her fingers and shoving it in her mouth, she waved off the cream cheese Elin offered. Her gift was acting up, throwing her off balance, and she didn’t like the undercurrents of tension she was picking up from the room. She didn’t like that she was picking up anything at all. This place, this town or these people made her unusually sensitive. She felt rubbed raw and horribly vulnerable.

Christian wedged himself between her and Rane, making everybody on the couch shift to make room for him, and Fen sat at her feet, resting his back against the couch’s arm, his shoulder pressed against her leg. It was strangely reassuring and gradually Grace found herself relaxing as everyone else settled in.

Aiden was the only one from the original group to remain standing. His gaze touched briefly on her before he turned to address the others. “I don’t know what you’ve heard so I’ll start from the beginning. This is Grace. She’s a seer and a private investigator. She was able to track Maia here and I believe she’s willing to help me find Hallie.” His eyes locked on hers and something flickered in their depths, too fast for her to read. She curled her toes into the rug and Fen patted the top of her foot. “But she doesn’t understand what that means yet. She wasn’t raised Clan and she doesn’t know the risks or understand the stakes.”

“Oh, honey.” The soccer mom pressed a hand to her chest. “Your parents never told you? Didn’t they know how dangerous it would be for you to remain ignorant and then…what about the rest of your family?”

The last thing Grace wanted to talk about now was her family—or lack thereof. Especially not to strangers. She looked to Aiden for help and he said, “The past doesn’t matter as much as getting her up to speed now.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “I was attempting to do that before everyone came along to…help. Is she a Norn, Lois?”

It took Grace a moment to realize he was addressing the soccer mom. This was his witch? Lois’s lips thinned but she nodded slowly. “Oh, most definitely. But also human. Possibly too human to survive the crossing. Can’t say for certain.”

Something in the set of Aiden’s shoulders said he was disappointed by her answer but he only said, “We’ll take her to the gate when the portal is nearer to opening and see if she can ride the currents. Yes, Bill?”

“You don’t have a son, Aiden,” Bill said in a nasal whine. “There’s no one to take up the post if you die.”

“Hey,” Christian objected.

Bill turned his glare on him. “You and your sister are the only other huntsmen we have. Your nephews are three and five years old.” To Aiden, he said, “And there’s no one left of your line. We need you. You’re too valuable to waste on a suicide mission.”

Aiden inclined his head. “Your concern has been duly noted, Bill, and I thank you for it.”

“I
am
concerned. The whole town is. It’s been hard enough to keep the fault contained without the humans becoming suspicious and that’s with a full hunt. What happens when there are too few of you to catch the demons before they make too big of a mess for me to clean up?”

Christian tipped his head toward Grace and said in an undertone, “Bill’s the town mayor. He’s responsible for public relations. Like an overfed terrier, he’ll yap until Aiden gets tired of it and puts him in his place.”

Aiden shrugged. “We’ll do as we’ve always done. Someone falls and another will have to step up and take his place. We do that until there’s no one to stand or we merge with another clan.”

“We’d lose everything in a merger,” Bill muttered.

“You know we would ride with you if we could, Aiden,” one of the young men said, and the other punched his arm, saying something under his breath. “What?
I
would anyway. But it’s not the same. I can’t glamour anyone. I can’t feel the surges and I can’t track a demon.” He glanced at Grace and quickly away, but not before she saw a flash of resentment. “We need you. I’m sorry about Hallie, we all are, but even if it’s true and she is alive…it’s been a whole year.” His friend punched him again, harder this time. “No one wants to say it but it needs to be said. If she’s alive, she’s not sane.”

Grace wished she hadn’t been looking at Aiden right then. His expression remained as passive as ever, but she saw the tiny flinch at the corners of his eyes. The stiff set of his shoulders and the way his hand started to fist before he forced it to relax.

“Sane or not,” he said, “I want her back. If she’s alive, I’m going in.”

The other man looked at Grace from under the brim of his Cardinals hat. “Are you sure she’s alive? I mean really sure.”

Grace swallowed the chunk of bagel lodged in her throat. “I’m sure.”

The man nodded and looked at Aiden. “When I found you in the woods last month, I thought you were dead. It’s worse every time. They expect you now.
You
even said that time was an ambush.”

As if he sensed a weakness, Bill leaned forward in his chair, making the wood creak. “We all depend on you for our survival. One of these times you cross over, you’re not going to make it back or you’ll be injured so badly you won’t be able to lead the hunt. Your responsibility is to protect the portal, not wage a war on the other side.”

She thought Aiden was going to deck him. He would hate that, losing control. She knew it instinctively and so, before she thought it through, she cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. She quashed the panic bubbling up in her stomach. “How did you know what decision I was going to make before I even heard the question?”

Fen glanced over his shoulder. “Small town. They probably know what brand of tampons you use by now.”

She nudged him with her knee and he grinned into his cup. “Okay. Why is Aiden the only one still looking for Hallie? She’s just a little girl. If it’s as bad as you say, how could you all just leave her there?”

Christian touched her shoulder. “The first couple of months we went looking for her…oh, a half dozen times. We lost one of the hunters and two hounds. After that long without finding a trace of her, we thought she had to be dead. She was taken by demons. You’ve seen them. No one believed she’d survive this long.” He grimaced. “I guess in some ways it was easier to think that. Even if we’d known for sure that she was still alive, we had no way to find her. So when you showed up and people found out you’d come for Maia, well, it wasn’t hard to piece that together and see how it would play out. Aiden wouldn’t give you up easy.”

“Give me up?”

“He’d do anything to get Hallie back.” Christian meant it as a warning—she didn’t need to be a psychic to see that. Later, she’d have to find a way to ask him what exactly she needed to know.

For now, she only said, “I’m going. If he can get me across I’m willing to try to find her.”

“Even after what you saw last night?” Elin asked, but everyone continued to watch Grace, waiting for her answer.

“Yes.”

Bill swore under his breath and rocked back in his chair.

Lois frowned. “Honey, without your family here, someone has to look out for you. Aiden, well he’s a good man but you can’t trust his perspective on this. We’re talking about his little girl and all of this has been very hard on him.”

Yeah, I bet.
Grace dealt with the distraught parents of missing children all the time in her line of work. But to know who—what—had taken his child and still not be able to reach her had to have torn him apart. She looked around the room. Aiden, well, she didn’t know him very well but she thought she understood him well enough to know that if he hadn’t been responsible for these people too, he never would have made it back the first time. He would have followed his daughter into hell and been swallowed up along with her.

He’d come back because he was responsible for protecting them too. And now they thought they owned him. These people, the ones who were here today anyway, like Bill and Mrs. I’m-Only-Concerned-for-Your-Safety-Honey were selfish enough that they’d come to talk him out of taking the one shot he had of getting his daughter back alive.

Grace met Aiden’s gaze, which hadn’t wavered. He was letting everybody else have their say, she realized. He wanted her to know exactly what she was getting herself into. “Whenever you think we’re ready to go,” she told him. “I’m with you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bill snapped.

Christian stretched his arm out behind her on the couch and cupped her shoulder.

Fen laughed. “Bill, you’ve never been closer to a demon than the dead one you helped me toss in the incinerator last week and that nearly made you crap your pants. The first one Grace came across, she killed herself.”

The young men looked at her with grudging approval. The one wearing the baseball cap said to Aiden, “We actually didn’t come to talk anyone out of anything. We just wondered if you might need someone to, you know, watch after things while you were gone.”

Aiden almost smiled. “We’ll come up with a plan for that, for the possibility too that I won’t make it back, and we’ll get a group together to watch the fault while we’re gone. I’ll make sure both of you are a part of it.”

The blond nodded and the younger one beamed. At least someone could find something to be happy about in all this.

“Let the girl think about it, Aiden,” Lois said. “No matter what she says, she’s had a shock and she shouldn’t be making decisions in her state.”

“Especially if they’re not the decisions you want to hear, eh, Auntie Lois?” Rane asked sweetly, but anyone with ears could hear the venom on her tongue.

Lois’s motherly look cracked for an instant. “There’s too much at stake to make such a hasty decision. A lot of people have already died trying to get Hallie back. How many do we need to lose before we say enough?”

“I’m not asking anyone else to go with me,” Aiden said quietly.

“Only the girl?” Lois asked suspiciously.

Fen growled, the low vibration running up her leg from where it was pressed to his shoulder. Christian and the twins spoke at the same time. “We’re going too. You’ll need all of us on this run and you know it.”

Aiden finally sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll see.”

And then, he turned to Grace. “A word with you?”

She followed Aiden onto the back porch. He braced his arms against the railing and looked out over the fields. “You don’t have to make a decision yet. I didn’t plan to rush you.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about? I’m not changing my mind. It was made up since…I guess since I saw the picture.”

The muscles in his back tightened and then gradually eased. “I didn’t think they’d make it out here so soon. I thought I’d have more time. I asked you out here because you looked like you needed the air and this will give them a chance to finish their food and get the hell out.” He turned his head to pin her with a sharp look. “They make you nervous.”

Sure, everybody did. She shrugged. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“But you’re willing to face down a horde of fire demons?”

She didn’t want to hurt him but she didn’t want him to think she didn’t see what she was getting herself into either. “She’s alive, Aiden, I know that for certain and she’s…scared. I can’t walk away.”

“You were leaving town.”

She winced and looked down at the painted floorboards. Neat and clean and well-tended, no split wood or peeling paint. She never would have gone outside barefoot as a child, even on the stoop of the apartment. Who knew what you might have stepped on out there?

“I was scared too. And I’d never had a vision like that before, strong but with no clear direction. I thought…I hoped it was wrong, an effect of the head injury or something. I’m still not completely sure I’ll be able to track her. So—yeah—I was leaving. I planned to check out police reports and birth records to see if I could find out what happened but…”

“So you were scared and running. Now you believe our story and you’ve changed your mind.” He turned and leaned against the railing. “To my knowledge, no one’s ever been reassured by the sight of a fire demon.”

“You didn’t run from them,” she pointed out. “You killed them all.”

He paused. “I might not be able to protect you. What they told you in there was true. I nearly died the last time and I can heal faster than you…well, maybe. Fuck. There’s still so much we don’t know about you. We’ll have to figure out your limits before we go in. All this talk and you might be too human to even make the crossing. I don’t want you agreeing to this thinking it’ll be easy or that I’m overstating the danger.”