Kastor had left the building.
“Finn!” I whispered urgently, racing across the room toward the door. “Take Carey’s body!”
“But it’s infected,” Grayson hissed.
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t start showing symptoms for at least a day, and Finn can leave it whenever he wants.”
But as long as he wore Kastor’s face, we had the keys to the kingdom.
Carey’s eyes opened, and they were Finn-green. The strength and beauty that had looked cold and arrogant on Kastor suddenly looked warm and…hungry for me.
My heart leapt into my throat, and the thrill of a minor victory mingled seamlessly with my delight and relief at seeing him again. Even in a body that had been trying to kill me seconds earlier.
We adapt quickly or we die. I was more than willing to take the demons’ lead on that one.
“Brilliant as usual, Nina.” Finn reached for me and I helped him up. Then he pulled me close for a kiss I didn’t want to end, even though his beautiful new mouth tasted like whiskey.
“That issostrange!” Grayson stepped closer and ran one hand down his cheek, staring up at him. “You look like Carey, and you sound like Carey.” Her eyes watered again. “At least, more like Carey than Kastor did. But you’re clearly Finn.”
“Yes. It’s both weird and wonderful. And I’m sorry about your brother.” I tugged them both toward the door. “But we have to get to Kastor and his guards before they can tell anyone what’s going on.” I let them go and threw open the door just in time to see several men disappear into a stairwell at the other end of the hall.
“Come on!” Finn raced down the hall with Grayson and me on his heels, and his new speed and strength caught me by surprise, even though I’d known what Carey’s body was capable of. We gained ground on the stairs, and when Finn got within reach of the closest, he grabbed the man by the back of his neck. “Heads up!” He turned and threw the demon up the stairwell toward me.
The guard landed on his back on the stairs, and I heard the distinct crack of bone. He screamed, and when I knelt to slam my flaming palm down on his chest, his pitch reached an inhuman range. In seconds his newly stolen body was dead and the demon was cast out of our world.
Grayson raced past me, and seconds later Finn shouted “Heads up!” again. A second demon flew toward us, and Grayson pressed her back to the wall of the stairwell just in time to avoid being flattened. I raced down the steps toward them both, my hand already in flames again, but Grayson dropped onto him without a moment’s hesitation, her own fire already ready to go.
She was a natural. And it probably didn’t hurt that she’d spent the past year watching her friends and surrogate family do that very thing on a daily basis.
We took off after Finn again and found him frying a third demon, as the fourth disappeared through a metal door into another part of the building. I leapt over them both onto the first-floor landing, then threw open the door and stepped into a hallway lined with closed doors.
The hall was empty.
“Damn it!” I stepped back into the stairway. “The last one got away.”
“So, was one of these Kastor?” Grayson gestured up the stairwell toward the three burned-out bodies.
Finn shrugged Carey’s broad shoulders. “There’s a seventy-five percent chance the answer is yes, but we won’t know unless we find the one that got away. Maybe not even then.” Because even if we caught Kastor, he probably wouldn’t admit who he was.
“Doesn’t matter whether he got away or not,” I said. “What matters is thatwehave Kastor’s face. And I know just how to put it to use.”
Finn pressed me against the kitchen counter, his hands at my waist. His breath stirred my hair, and I breathed him in, marveling at his new scent. His new build. Yes, his body had once belonged to our greatest enemy, but before that, it had belonged to Carey James, an innocent and, by all accounts, noble fellow exorcist, who’d loved his sister as much as I’d loved mine.
I couldn’t imagine a better home for Finn’s spirit, even if it was only temporary.
His lips brushed my ear, and warmth trailed down from the point of contact to settle into my stomach. “I was really hoping you had something more personal in mind when you said you knew how to put me to use,” he said as Grayson finished filling the third small spray bottle, then turned off the kitchen sink.
“I would have if I’d said ‘you.’ ” I stood on my toes for a kiss, but it was really his arms around me that I loved most. Melanie’s death had been devastating, and there’d been no real time yet to mourn. But going through that without him was even harder. “But I didn’t say ‘Finn,’ I said ‘Kastor.’ ”
I took one of the three cylindrical plastic bottles and handed another to him. “Okay. Cheers.” I lifted my bottle, and Grayson and Finn both tapped theirs against mine. Then we each took a big drink, but rather than swallow the water, we swished it in our mouths, then spat it carefully back into the bottle.
“This issogross,” Grayson said, holding her bottle up for a repetition of the process.
“This is biological warfare.” At my signal, we all three drank, swished, and spat again. Then we screwed the spray nozzle lids on our bottles and shook them up to spread the germs.
“Are you sure this will work?” Finn gave his an experimental spray into an industrial-sized drawer full of silverware.
“No, but I spent hours considering every possible manner of distribution, and what I learned from Nedes is that transmission through shared bodily fluids is the fastest, most effective means of infection.” Unfortunately, that meant that Finn wouldn’t have much time in Carey’s infected body. “So other than kissing everyone in Pandemonia, this is the best I could come up with. But if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”
