He steps into my lap, rubbing his head against me to help calm me down.
“Thanks,” I say when he lets me know he’ll take Freya and Pandora and patrol the woods as soon as we get home. My stomach grumbles, reminding me that I need to go grocery shopping. I call Kristy on my way, and the call goes straight to voicemail.
“She’s been spending a lot of time at the Covenstead lately,” I say out loud to Binx. I not-so-secretly want her and Evander to get together. My best friend and my older brother…sounds like a romance novel waiting to happen, I know.
And it would be awesome.
Evander and I started referring to each other as brother and sister only a few months after Tabatha unofficially adopted me. I never thought about the legalities of anything back then, and to this day I have no idea how William Martin went about selling me. I’m assuming he kept up the pretense I was at home, or that I had to be shipped off to some school for troubled youth, which means he lied on his taxes, claiming me as a dependent. I’m sure there’s a way to use that against him, but at this point, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Demonic fish.
And it’s going to drive me to the point of insanity to sit back and do nothing. The guilt alone is enough to make me crack, and it’s not like I’m in short supply of it already. I’m keeping too many secrets, from not letting Abby know she almost died to not cluing in any of my friends on the angel-business that’s been going on.
And the longer I keep these things from them, the harder it’s going to be to tell them.
“Dammit,” I mutter, slowing to a stop at a light. It’s a chilly, overcast day, yet people are out and about, walking around Thorne Hill totally clueless to what really happened days ago.
“They didn’t kill her on Samhain,” I muse, unable to stop thinking about it. For years, this was what I did: read about a weird case like this in the paper and handle it. I know there are many, many more demonic killings than I can handle, but seeing one right in front of me, in my own fucking town, and then doing nothing goes against every fiber of my being.
It nags at me the entire time I’m grocery shopping, and I load my cart up with extra junk food to emotionally eat later as the guilt chips away at me.I shut the door with my food, setting the last grocery bag on the kitchen floor. “Hey,” I call through the house. Lucas is probably in the office again, finding another multi-million-dollar property to buy so he can sell it years later and turn a huge profit. “I heard something funny while I was out.”
I wash my hands and then start unloading the groceries. Lucas comes into the kitchen and helps me put the food away.
“What was it?” he asks.
“A body was found in the nature park. Missing its heart. So, not funny, but definitely demonic.”
Lucas takes a bag of chips out of the cloth bag and waits for me to go on. He knows me well.
“It’s probably the same demon who killed those deer and ate their hearts. And this woman—Gloria—was tied up, which usually means some sort of ritual was done prior to removing the heart.”
“Was she sacrificed on Halloween?” he asks, careful to keep his voice level.
“She was killed before then. Her body was found over a week ago. The police of course have no leads, because they have no idea what they’re up against." I hold up my hand, stopping Lucas before he even starts. “But I’m not getting involved. I need to stay far away from all cosmic forces, and keep the attention far, far away from me. Plus, we know it’s risky.” I lower my hand to my stomach. “And I also want to take a nap.”
“But?”
“But what?” I open the pantry.
“But you want to go after the demon.”
“Of course I do,” I tell him, seeing no point in hiding it. “I’ve been hunting demons long enough to know that when you find a demon who kills for some sort of ritual, they’ll strike again.”
“Surely the council members from your coven will look into it.”
I make a face. “They stay out of nonmagical affairs, and this woman was a non. If the demon started targeting witches, they’d do something, but we both know how slow to respond they are when it comes to shit like this.”
“So, they’ll allow a demon to roam the woods?”
I put a bag of rice into the panty. “Witches aren’t really hunters in that sense. They protect the Ley line and guard the secrets of magic and all that wizard-sounding stuff, but they don’t know how to go after and hunt demons. I’m the odd man out in my coven when it comes to tracking and killing demons. It makes sense now, given who my father is. Most other witches avoid demons as much as possible. They’re dangerous and we’re taught how to defend ourselves if need be, but not how to hunt.”