“We need a distraction,” I said. “Something big that will draw everyone’s attention while we escape.”
“Something that doesn’t require Kastor’s presence, or that of his two top guards,” Grayson added. The elevator bonged as it came to a stop, and then the doors slid open. Finn led us back down the deserted hallway and into Kastor’s suite.
“Finn, do you have any idea where Maddy, Devi, and Reese are?” I asked as he locked the door of the sitting room behind us.
He shook his head. “They were tracking Grayson when I left. I told Maddock to stay away from Pandemonia at all costs. Considering how little he likes being ordered around, that probably means he’s right outside the gate.” He crossed into the bedroom and began rifling through Kastor’s dresser drawers. “But I have to hope he’s being smarter than that. We can’t count on their help.”
“Fire.” Grayson sank onto the loveseat, running one hand over the red velvet upholstery, and I glanced at her in question. “For the distraction. I suggest fire. They’re fascinated with it here, in case you haven’t noticed. They cook meat over open flames. They set alcoholic drinks on fire before they drink them. While you were in the kitchen at that last place, they offered Finn and me some kind of flambéed dessert. It was basically sugared bananas set on fire, then served over ice cream. It was good. But in an evil kind of way.” She shrugged, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. She was starting to sound more like herself and less like a kidnapping victim who’d just discovered her brother had been killed and possessed by their worst enemy.
Hopefully, seeing the demon run out of her brother’s body had helped with that.
“Hang on,” Finn called from the bedroom. “I have to get out of this shirt. It smells like whatever that demon sycophant in the gold bra spilled on me.” He shrugged out of Kastor’s button-up shirt and was reaching for a tee from the second drawer when the overhead light shone on his back, and I froze.
A jolt of astonishment shot through me, all warm and tingly. “Finn, wait!” I jogged into the bedroom, and Grayson glanced at me in surprise.
“What?” He frowned as I turned him by his shoulders.
“Grayson, look at this.” I touched the base of his spine, where a small but distinctive pale brown line had just begun to stretch toward his neck. It was only an inch and a half long, but I would have recognized that mark anywhere.
“But…” Grayson knelt for a closer look at her brother’s back. “But he’s infected. And that wasn’t there before. I saw Kastor change shirts earlier. Or yesterday. Or whenever that was.”
“There’s a mark on my back?” Finn asked. “Like the ones on yours?”
“Yes.” Grayson stood. “I thought only human carriers got that mark.”
I shrugged, frowning. “That’s what I thought too. Unless…” My eyes widened as the implication of Finn’s carrier mark finally sank in. “Carey’s not possessed anymore. Maybe this means the infection has been halted. I think that as long as Finn stays in Carey’s body…he’s just acarrier.”
“Wait, are you saying I can keep him?” Grayson’s eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them. “I mean, I know Carey’s dead, but he still looks like my brother, and Finn’s always been like a brother to me, so…this kind of fits.”
Finn pulled Kastor’s shirt on and smiled. “So you’re okay with this?” He spread her brother’s arms, and she stepped into the hug. “Because you only get to keep him as long as I get to keep him.” If Finn left Carey’s body for more than a few minutes, Carey’s organs would shut down and he would die.
“Keep him,” she sobbed against Finn’s shoulder. “This is what Carey would have wanted, considering the circumstances.”
When she finally let him go, Finn turned to me. “So, do you approve? Would you be okay with it if I looked like this for the rest of my life?” His green eyes were practically glowing. I could see how badly he wanted a body of his own, and an exorcist’s body was more than he’d ever hoped for, because he would never have stolen one from someone else.
I pulled him close, and my eyes closed when his hands slid slowly down my back. “It’s like this was meant to be.” I glanced at Grayson over his broad, firm shoulder and grinned. “Your brother’s not bad-looking. Now let’s see if we can get him out of here in one piece.”
“You’re sure about this?” I asked as Finn pulled a match from the box. The gasoline fumes were giving me a headache, and honestly, I knew we’d already gone too far to back out. But I had to ask.
“There is no building I’d rather burn.” He dropped the match onto the gasoline-soaked loveseat, then stepped back as it burst into flames. “Let’s go.” Finn ushered Grayson and me out the door and into the hall as flames crackled behind us, already well on their way to devouring Kastor’s apartment.
I’d never committed arson before, but evidently it reallywasas simple as “pour accelerant; light match.” Especially if leaving evidence wasn’t a concern.
We were much more concerned with leaving town.
On the bottom floor we lit secondary blazes in several custodial closets and unused offices, avoiding the kitchen and lobby areas, which were the only parts of the downstairs still regularly used.
Originally, there had probably been a sprinkler system and an alarm built into the hotel, but those had ceased functioning several decades earlier, by Finn’s best guess, so when we fled the burning hotel through a little-used side entrance, no one else had yet realized the building was on fire.
No alarm had been raised.
We took several narrow back alleys on our path away from the hotel, avoiding the crowds still gathered at the auction square and the outdoor market, and when we finally turned back to look up at the building in which Finn and Maddock had spent their childhood, the flames were just becoming visible through windows on the top floor.
“They’ll see that soon,” Grayson whispered, fear and awe echoing in her voice.
“And I’ll make sure they know exactly who’s to blame.”
We spun as one, startled by the voice behind us, to find an unfamiliar group of about a dozen fairly conservatively dressed demons facing us from the other end of the alley.
