He reached for the phone and looked at a list of names and numbers.Before he would call replacements, the demon reached into the man’s chest and squeezed his heart.He gasped, shock on his face.
The demon inhaled his pain.Die, Mundane.Die by my hand, and no one will know any better.
The man dropped to his knees and collapsed, claimed by the heart attack.Sed ran to the door and locked it just as someone approached with a stack of books.The woman tried the door, peered in, and then with a shrug, dropped the books into the metal bin.The demon thought about sliding his materialized hand out of the rotating bin and grabbing her.How amusing it would be to see her expression of horror.
Alas, he had to follow the rules if he hoped to gain freedom.He flicked off the light switches at the front and made his way to his target.The one hecouldtorment.
* * *
Ruby’s brainwas literally buzzing.Hah, I knew he put some funky drug in the air.
Except that didn’t explain the killer orb.That was no hallucination, nor was Mon’s death.And she didn’t feel high or dizzy or otherwise altered.Her rash was flaring big time, though.God, it felt like ants crawledbeneathher skin.She even checked, expecting to see creatures crawling under the red skin.Nothing, thank goodness.
She’d barely taken time to enjoy the smell of the books, a scent she found oddly comforting, on her way to the bulky machines at the back of the building.Why had she never thought to look at the old newspaper stories dating back to the time of the boating accident?
She stopped at the headline: family perishes at sea.
This was it.To the side was a picture of all three of them, posing at what looked like a picnic.Despite the ache in her heart and the pit in her stomach, she plunged in.Her father, Justin Winston, was obviously doing well in whatever job he’d been working on—something to do with physics—as the boat was described as a yacht.The Yard certainly wouldn’t fund such a thing.
The press played it up as another mysterious Devil’s Triangle disappearance.Investigators speculated that it was either an accidental explosion, rogue wave, or pirates.Some debris had been found floating in the area where the EPIRB, Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, had signaled the sinking of the yacht but not much else.
Thefamily’sdisappearance.It hit her then, that she was included in the missing and presumed dead.There was no mention of her rescue.At the time, she was Ruby Winston.Mon adopted her and, as Cyntag had pointed out, immediately changed her name for some legal reason she had never questioned.
Because he was hiding you?
She’d been a distraught nine-year-old and had just gone along: name change, Mon’s move into a new neighborhood, and his continuing touring, bringing them back to Miami every two weeks but leaving again soon after.The way he’d set up the Yard so it wasn’t in her name until she turned eighteen.It also explained why she couldn’t get her belongings or visit her friends.All those things she’d accepted and forgotten about.Until now.
It also explained why her grandfather kept his distance, something that had always hurt.But that would mean Cyntag was telling the truth, and that was, well, insane.She flipped through the follow-up articles and was even more stunned: her father painted a villain, having sabotaged the physics work he had been doing at SUNLAB.One theory was that he’d stolen his research to sell to the highest bidder.Another was that he’d gone on a rampage before taking his family to sea to their deaths.
No way.The man she remembered was kind and soft-spoken.Never once had she seen him lose his temper, and, God no, he wouldn’t have killed his family.
So the alternative was… someone had killed her parents.All these horrible allegations were a setup to cover the murders.It sounded as crazy as anything else she’d heard that day.
She sat back in the chair, feeling so cold she was shivering.Howhadshe survived?She remembered being on the boat, the jarring thud that knocked her out.The next thing she knew, she was at Brom’s, about to get the worst news of her life.
As she absently rubbed her neck, she realized she was still feeling the weird warmth.She searched for nearby vents.Except it was summer and the heat wouldn’t be on.Something odd prickled through her.This library branch was a small building, but it was eerily quiet.Though sunlight came through the windows near her, the interior looked dim.The electricity hadn’t gone out, or the microfiche machine would have died.
Earlier she’d heard a couple of thumps and someone coughing violently, but now she heard nothing but a low-level hissing.She lurched to her feet.Danger bristled up the back of her neck.Her rash felt as though it was literally on fire.
A shadow moved in the corner of her eye.She twisted to the right.Nothing.Or maybe itwassomething, like that creature in Cyntag’s office.
“Allander?”
She reached for the gun she still had tucked into the holster inside her waistband, keeping it down as she walked to the middle of the library.The fluorescent panels were dark, yet lights twinkled from a computer behind the check-out desk.
More eerily, not one person in sight.She raised the gun, ready to shoot.Something knocked it out of her hand, sending it skidding across the carpet.Something she couldn’t see.
Hell.
That weird little creature would have no reason to do that.
Hot breath pulsed against her neck.She spun around, banging into the end of a book aisle.The gun lay only a few feet away, but what good was the damned thing going to be if she couldn’tseewhat threatened her?
You cannot see…
The shadow moved again.She strained her eyes, trying to discern an outline, anything.It, whatever it was, shoved her.She felt pressure against her upper chest a second before she tumbled backward to the floor.
Not small like Allander.
