Calliope fed on life force, and on the goodness of youth. It wasn’t impossible to believe Mayhew had been doing something similar. When he’d stolen my memories, I remembered feeling something escape my body like a breath.
What if it hadn’t just been my memories, but a part of my soul?
By taking little bits from many different girls, he could have continued taking only slivers of life essence without actually killing anyone for decades. I’d looked into missing persons and homicide reports in the Columbia campus area dating back to Mayhew’s arrival, but they weren’t as substantial as I’d anticipated. It seemed like Mayhew the demon hadn’t actually started killing his victims until recently. My best guess was he’d gotten more and more desperate lately to return home, and it had made him sloppy. Girls ended up dead, and that was how he’d been found out.
Who knew how long he could have carried on with his feedings if only he’d left the girls alive? I wasn’t sure what I’d have preferred. Too many lives had been lost in such a short period of time. Was their sacrifice worth it to know a demon was no longer in our midst?
There was no easy answer.
Stranger still, I never regained my memory of the missing hour in Mayhew’s office. It still nagged me constantly, the wonder over what had happened and why I’d gotten years’ worth of missing memories back, but not that scant hour.
Cedes walked with me back to my car, her hand wrapped around the inside of my elbow. Instead of asking me any of the questions that must have nagged at her, she asked me the hardest question of all. “Are you okay?”
When I looked at her, I forced a smile and squeezed her hand. “I’m getting there.”
The truth was, I was so far from okay I didn’t know what okay looked like anymore. Both of the officers who’d died in the supposed fire had families. One had just had a new baby a few months earlier. I had read their obituaries about a hundred times.
And Gabriel—for all his wrongs—had just been a stupid young man who’d made a mistake. He’d been taken in by a demon, and though it was his own weakness that had allowed it, it didn’t mean he deserved to die. During the day, when I slept, I was haunted by the sounds of his screams.
I dropped Mercedes off with the promise we would have a tequila-filled evening very soon. Before I pulled away she made me swear I would talk to Tyler. There was only so much she could explain, and his questions wouldn’t wait as long as hers.
At home I parked behind Desmond’s car and sat in the warm interior of my BMW for a few quiet minutes.
Ever since my little swim in the Hudson, I couldn’t seem to get warm enough. Desmond told me I wrapped myself around him while we slept. I lifted my palms from the steering wheel and looked at them. There were no visible burn scars from the sword. When I’d woken the night after my fight with Mayhew, the sword had freed itself from my grip and my hands were healed.
I’d gone back to Koreatown to talk to the ogre, but the shop was empty. I had to wonder if he’d run because of me and the sword. It certainly cast a dark pall over the future if I could make an ancient fae bolt for the hills without even threatening him.
Things didn’t get much better when I finally called Grandmere to tell her what had happened and fill her in on my new engagement. When I explained the precarious position of Lucas’s leadership, I hadn’t been able to help asking her about Callum. My grandmere was French, and quiet wasn’t a word I would typically use to describe her. But when I told her Callum was making a play for Lucas’s territory, she had fallen so silent I thought the call had dropped. When she did finally speak, I almost wished she hadn’t.
“You stay clear of him, Secret,” she had warned. “He’s not your maman, but he is no less dangerous. You tell that man of yours to do whatever it takes to get out of this without Callum getting mad. Promise me.”
Promises were made, but they weren’t mine to keep. Lucas hadn’t heard from Callum since Ben and Amelia had come to the gala, but I didn’t think we’d seen the last of my uncle or his people.
I sighed and flattened my palms, studying the lines that Calliope told me represented two destinies. Then I balled my hands up into fists. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed I had any destiny, let alone two of them.
Bundling myself in my coat, I fin
ally got out of the car and dashed for my apartment door. Inside, the smell of burnt demon head was still a lingering reminder of what had happened. After the head had been incinerated, I’d poked it once to see if Mayhew would open his eyes again. It had dissolved into black goo, and now I had a permanent ring in my pink bathtub.
My shoes and coat formed a messy pile in the entrance, but I didn’t bother picking them up. Desmond was sitting on the loveseat, his feet on top of The Sunday Times as he played Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox. Of all the things I’d expected my architect boyfriend to bring with him when he moved in, the Xbox hadn’t been one of them. But as it turned out, all twenty-seven-year-old men have an inner teenager. Even werewolves.
When I sat next to him, his on-screen persona—aptly also named Desmond—was busy slitting throats.
“How was it?” he asked, never turning his eyes from the television.
“It was a funeral.” I shrugged. “It was depressing.”
He paused the game and looked at me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I started to say no but then stopped myself. “Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“I was relieved.”
He arched a brow but didn’t say anything.
“I was relieved because I was going to Gabriel’s funeral, not yours.” I rested my head against his shoulder, and he put the controller on the coffee table, before wrapping me in a Desmond-patented hug. Breathing in his scent, tasting the lime on my tongue, I felt safe for the first time in weeks.