“As long as you live here, I look after you too. And so do my sisters. That’s how it is.”
For a moment, for the short silence that followed, I thought maybe I’d gotten through to her. Thought she was starting to understand what it meant to be a part of this town. What it meant to have other people willing to do good for one another because it was the right thing to do no matter where any of us had come from.
I thought for half a second, that the glimmer in her eyes was realization. If she could understand I was here to help her live a good life, that I would stand with her, and stand up for her, maybe it would be the first step on the path to learning how she could do the same for her fellow Ordinarians.
Then a knock on the door brought Hogan and Crow laughing out of the kitchen, and whatever glimmer I’d seen in her eyes was gone.
Chapter Ten
“Bathin,”Hogan said from the living room. “Come on in. Want some bread?”
“You do,” Crow said. “You want the one with pickles.”
“Delaney called me over,” Bathin said, “but I could eat. Is Delaney out back?”
“Bedroom, I think,” Hogan said. “I’ll get you a slice.”
Bathin’s heavy footsteps grew louder down the hall, and then he was in the bedroom doorway, squinting against the drunken punch color scheme.
“Delaney,” he said, his voice a deep baritone. “Mother.” Little more venom in that word.
“Now you visit me?” she said. “All this time I’ve been here, alone, and you couldn’t even stop eating those cats to come see your own mother?”
“I saw you yesterday,” he said to his mother, then to me: “I don’t eat the cats.”
I knew that. Myra had shown me several pictures of him lounging on the couch at her place, looking comfortable among the doilies and lace of her decor, his legs kicked out. There’d be a cat sleeping in his lap, one snuggled under his arm, and one across his shoulders, head tucked in under his ear.
Bathin always looked relaxed and happy, and I liked seeing him that way.
Especially since I knew how much my sister loved him.
“I need you to take your mother’s ring.”
Xtelle made a sound like an angry goose.
Bathin was very still for a moment. Then a small smile curved the corner of his lips. “Do you, now?”
“No!” Xtelle said. “I forbid it.”
“You can’t keep a weapon that powerful with you while you’re in Ordinary,” I repeated. “There’s simply no need for it. And if it were stolen, or fell into the wrong hands, we would have all kinds of problems to deal with.”
“Who would steal it from me? They’d disintegrate the moment they touched it.”
“One, people disintegrating would also be a problem. Two, there are magic users in town. Vampires, and other creatures who are not quite alive, might be able to handle a demon ring just fine. Does the power of the ring only work for you?”
Narrow eyes again as she worked through which would get her what she wanted: a lie or the truth.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “As far as I am aware, I am the only demon who can access the power in the ring.”
I shot a look at Bathin.
He nodded. “It tracks. Demons are pretty good about locking that kind of thing down.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“She wouldn’t allow the power in the ring to be used against her. None of the other weapons she’s forged can be used by anyone except who she intends to use them,” he continued.
“She made this?”
