Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1) - Kel Carpenter Page 0,44

even have that might be in touch with him is Anders. It’s a start. If it doesn’t work, we come up with another plan and another plan and another plan—until it does.”

“Lucifer isn’t the only demon in the city,” she said.

I stopped mid-step down the hall and turned to look at her.

“What?”

“I know you heard me. You hear better than any human. Lucifer isn’t the only demon in the city—and he isn’t the only demon after you. We can use that.”

My tongue traced the edge of my teeth as I debated. Nathalie stood at the end of the hall, arms crossed and hip cocked. She leaned against the wall and tilted her head, a curtain of warm brown hair spilling over one shoulder.

“I’m listening.”

She flashed me a Cheshire smile.

My heart dropped. I had a feeling that whatever plan she was concocting was going to make mine seem sane.

“One demon wants to kill you. The other has a vested interest in keeping you alive.” She looked me up and down once as she said it.

“We don’t know that,” I said, the tone of my voice warning her.

Too bad she wasn’t going to listen.

“Oh no,” she laughed as she said the words. “Neither of us is stupid, Piper. You were alone in that room for ten minutes with him, and not a scratch was on you when Barry and I got you out. He might be hunting you, but he doesn’t want you dead.” She gave me a pointed look, and I rolled my eyes, trying to dismiss it even as my heart started to beat erratically.

“Maybe,” I said apathetically, shrugging one shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter why he wants you, but he does. Probably as much as the other one wants you dead. I vote we use that. Use him. Who better to kill a demon than another demon?”

The shit-eating grin on her face said she was pretty damn proud of herself.

I pressed my lips together, not wanting to praise her further . . . because it was a good plan. Or at least the makings of one.

Instead, I took a step toward her, and motioned vaguely with one hand. “So tell me, how would we go about using one demon to kill the other?”

As impossible as it should have been, her smile widened.

My heart thumped again. Dread thickened in my gut.

“By doing what you do best,” she said. I lifted a brow in question. “We lay a trap to lure our prey using just the right bait.”

The look she gave me made her intention clear.

Me. I was the bait.

Goddamnit.

16

It was late by the time we finished hatching our plan, and by the end, it was good.

This was going to work.

It had to.

At least that’s what I told myself as I laid down in the musty, old twin bed that smelled of cedar balls and cinnamon apples. I pulled the sheet up around my breasts and turned, flicking my wet hair behind me as I tried to get comfortable.

Despite the restlessness inside me, sleep wasn’t hard to come by.

I knew it had come when I saw the flickering candlelight of a chandelier.

Church pews surrounded me, pushed to the side. A circle was drawn, and blood ran around the edges, but where it came from wasn’t clear. There were no hooded figures this time. No athames. No chanting. If anything, it was eerily silent.

“I wondered how long it would be before you fell asleep,” a voice said behind me. It was shadows and night. Winter skies and mercury. The sting of a knife pressed intimately to skin.

“Why are you here?” I asked, without turning to face him. I didn’t want to look this time, cowardice as it may have been. Looking at him did things to me. It was painful and pleasurable, and I wanted no part.

“I told you last time,” he said. I sensed him walking around the edge of the circle. Drawing near. Was he in it? Or outside of it? I wasn’t sure.

“I didn’t ask how you were here,” I said, looking at the ceiling. “I asked why.” It wasn’t stained glass, but instead a painting. Or rather, many of them. Pictures of Christ and his angels. Of Mother Mary.

The world as we knew it didn’t believe in a singular religion. That changed the day the president was killed by a witch on live television. All the faith in the world couldn’t have saved him from it. The Secret Service was wiped out at the same time. One by one, supes