Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1) - Kel Carpenter Page 0,17

anyone and everyone for it.”

I had to work to keep a straight face and not reveal anything.

While he went by a different name, he was certainly the same man I had been looking for.

“Do you know where I could find him?” I asked her.

“Not a clue. He kept his life outside the coven a secret. He was paranoid that someone was after him. And us by extension,” her voice slowed. She blinked once. I knew the moment she put those two pieces together. “It was you.”

“I searched a long time for him, but I was under the impression he was dead—until I saw him last night.”

“Two nights ago,” she corrected.

“What?”

“It’s been two days. You were unconscious the first one.”

It was like an icy wave had hit me full on as I realized I’d been out for over thirty-six hours.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

This was not good.

If I’d been unconscious that long, it meant the demon was loose that long. The odds that my boss wasn’t aware that not only had I’d failed to kill the coven, but that I’d intentionally let them summon a demon was exponentially low at this point. I wouldn’t have time to play this off with Anders. There was likely already a price on my head.

I took a deep breath.

“You look like I feel,” the witch commented. I narrowed my eyes at her.

“I’d be wary of insulting me while I have this pointed at you,” I said. Her eyes slid to the gun, but some of the earlier fear had edged.

“You don’t want to kill me,” she said, sounding awfully sure of herself. “I won’t go so far as to say you need me, but you wouldn’t have brought me back if you just wanted to shoot me.”

“I was hired to kill you, you know?”

Surprise flickered in her eyes and a hint of fear returned to her expression.

“Not me specifically,” she said, like that made it better somehow.

“No, your coven. I was supposed to put all thirteen of you six feet under before you summoned the demon.” I motioned with the end of my gun and the rise and fall of her chest sped up. The pulse in her neck quickened. Her body told me all I needed to know about what she was feeling, but her face did not. She kept it guarded behind sickness and distrust.

“So why didn’t you?”

It was a simple question, really, with a simple answer.

“I was going to bargain for information from the demon and then kill you all, but I hadn’t realized the man I knew as Claude would be there.” I talked about her death as if it were the weather. For a moment, I wondered if that made me as bad as the monsters I hunted. Then I realized, of course I was as bad as them.

Much as I thought of myself as human, I wasn’t.

We were one and the same.

“But you didn’t.” Her eyebrows drew together. “You tried to get the demon to kill us instead, so you could go after Kenneth.”

I nodded. “I thought I could get the information I needed without having to rely on a creature that only might give me what I want. Demons are notoriously mercurial.”

“You gave up the bird in your hand for the two in the bush,” she said on a dry croak. “And now you have a demon hunting you, Kenneth du Lac is smoke in the wind, and my coven still lives. At least enough of it does. Whoever hired you had deep pockets and many eyes. They will know you failed by now.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, mildly impressed she’d been able to deduce as much in her current state.

“I heard what he asked for before you shot him. He wants you.” She looked me over, seeming to think about that before continuing. “And you ran. The demon isn’t going to just give up, you know?”

I tilted my head. “How much do you know about demons?”

A dry chuckle escaped her lips that quickly turned into a cough. After hacking for thirty-five seconds, she took a deep breath before saying, “Some. Not a lot. I get the impression you know more.” Her eyes dropped to my throat where the long-sleeved shirt covered me.

“Probably,” I murmured, picking at loose thread on my jeans.

“My coven, what’s left of it, will have assumed I’m on the run. If I’m not already excommunicated from my people, I will be by tomorrow.”

I lifted an eyebrow. While the thought hadn’t occurred to me yet,