That was what Roman was asking for, no matter how lightly he said the word. His gaze held an ancient gravity.

My steps slowed, then stopped. He continued a pace before stopping himself. I kept my gaze on his shoulder. Even if he hadn’t been a vampire, with a vampire’s hypnotic stare, I wouldn’t have wanted to meet those hard, fierce eyes.

I swallowed and hoped my voice worked. “In my world, loyalty is earned. Not given away.”

“And I will earn yours by protecting you and your people from this creature.”

A lurch of déjà vu made me think, I’m right back where I started. Begging someone else to take care of me. To protect me. When I’d worked so hard to learn how to do it myself.

“You’re asking me to submit.”

He frowned. “Nothing so drastic as that. I’m not asking you to give up your authority.”

He might not have picked up on the importance of that word—submit, submissive—and the shades of meaning that would be clear to anyone who’d been part of a werewolf pack. Or maybe he understood perfectly well what he was asking me to do. Maybe that was exactly what he wanted.

“I can’t answer you right now,” I said, hoping that no one else died, hoping that Mick would forgive me. “I need to talk to the others.”

“You lead this pack. They trust you to decide for them.”

“I don’t lead my pack that way.”

“Ah, one of these newfangled modern werewolves.”

I managed a thin smile. “That’s me.”

“I’m baffled by this city’s leaders’ refusal to take decisive action,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “But not really. Is there some way I can get in touch with you when I’ve made a decision?”

“No need. I’ll find you.”

I didn’t like that at all.

His face was angular, full of shadows in the odd nighttime lights from porches, from streetlights shrouded by bare trees. His eyes gleamed, and he frowned.

“You’ve seen what this thing can do. You don’t have a lot of time to decide.”

The hard sell, like this was buying a used car. But he almost had me cowed. I didn’t want to argue with him anymore. “I know,” I said.

He marched away, shoulders square, arms straight, tails of his coat rippling behind him. His steps were like drumbeats. Entranced by this image of determination, I watched. He never turned a corner. He was a small shadow, far ahead, when I went back to my car.

Chapter 14

I didn’t have a lot of time to spare, so I didn’t wait until morning to call Jules to get an update on the Paradox crew. For half a second, I worried about waking him up.

“Yeah?” he said curtly but not at all sleepily. These guys were used to keeping nocturnal hours.

“Are you guys still in town?” I said.

“What? Kitty? What’s wrong?”

I hadn’t considered how I must sound: desperate, angry, fierce. Panicked. “I really need you not to leave town. I need your help.”

He let out a sigh. “We’re still here. Gary’s out of the hospital, but he’s still resting. We’re supposed to take a flight out tomorrow.”

“I’ve gotten some information,” I said, aware of how much I would have to leave out. But I didn’t want to have to explain Roman to him. And I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about Mick. Or maybe I didn’t want to scare Jules off. “I’ve been told it’s a demon.”

“Are you joking?” he said, half laughing.

“Oh, yeah, because I would totally joke about something like this,” I said, spitting out the sarcasm.

“It’s just that... demons. That’s really getting into the lunatic fringe. But I think maybe your local Catholic priest can help you out. Do up a nice little exorcism for you.”

“That’s funny. I never really thought of Catholics as lunatic fringe. I thought that was you guys.”

“You’re not exactly middle-of-mainstream yourself.”

And I liked it that way. “It’s just that we’ve been trying to figure out what this thing is, and I got a lead that said demon. Thought you’d like to know.”

“But what are we supposed to do about a demon ?”

We scoff at what we don’t understand. I had clearly stepped outside Jules’s comfort zone. “Jules, let me talk to Tina.”

“I’m sure she knows ever so much more about demons than I do.”

“Maybe she doesn’t, but I bet she doesn’t talk at me like I’m an idiot.” I smiled when I said it. Made me sound like a bitch. It was my radio-show voice.

The phone shifted, and then Tina said, “Yeah?”

“Here I was thinking Jules was starting to like me,” I said.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s pretty invested in keeping up his front. What did you say to get him riled up?”

“Demon.”

“Demon?” she said with a nervous chuckle.

“So. Do you know anything about repelling demons?”

“Don’t demons usually possess people? Spinning heads, projectile vomiting, that sort of thing,” she said.

“I don’t know anything about it. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“I don’t know anything about it, either.”

“But you talked to it! Or it talked to you, through the board. Didn’t that tell you anything ?”

“It told me that this is way too big for me to deal with.”

Deep breath. Keep it together. “Okay. You guys had your equipment monitoring the séance at New Moon, right? Have you looked over the recordings at all? Were you able to collect any data from the fire?”

“We gave copies of the video footage to the fire investigator,” Tina said.

“But they’re not looking for the things you’d be looking for. Didn’t it occur to you to look for anything weird in the footage, anything to explain what happened?”

“Mostly we were worried about Gary,” she said.

Fair enough. “There’s got to be something, and we can cross-reference anything having to do with demons—”

“The chances are really slim we’ll even find anything. They always are.”

“I don’t have a choice. It’s getting worse.”