Page 14 of Bold Mercy

Chapter Nine

I looked for the spirit who’d trailed Georgia and Andrew as I left the building, but I saw no sign of him. “He might have gone back to the apartment,” I told Rick. “This is not usual ghost behavior.” I grabbed my supplies from my car, buckling on my belt and checking briefly to make sure it was loaded with everything I might need to deal with a couple of spirits. I wore my vest and my demon blade even inside my office, so I was about as protected as I could get.

Heritage Towers was only half a block away, so we didn’t drive. I kept an eye out for the spirit as we walked, focusing on the job at hand, but in the back of my mind was the nagging realization that it would soon be dark, though it was only four o’clock. November brought the darkness in more than one way, the bitch.

And darkness would bring Avis Vine.

“How will you send the ghosts back?” Rick asked. “Don’t you usually have to find what’s tethering them here and burn it?”

“There are all sorts of ways to “kill” a spirit,” I told him, attempting to slow my walk a little. The detective was just slightly breathless, which reminded me once again that he wasn’t completely healed. I patted my belt. “Traps are one. It doesn’t sound like they’re lost or stuck. It sounds like they came through deliberately and fixated on the baby.”

“They can just come through? Visit whenever they want?”

“Not normally,” I answered, noting the sheen of sweat on his face, “but this is fucking November.” I hesitated. “Rick…”

“I’m fine,” he growled.

Awesome.

“Here’s the office. Can you get maintenance to open the apartment door?” I didn’t want to go up and bang on the door, hoping the spirits would let us in. That’d attract too much attention.

Cindy lived on the fourth floor. Luckily, the elevators were in working order, because no way in hell could the detective have climbed the stairs. I watched him as we crowded into the small elevator with maintenance, and though he kept his face carefully blank as he spoke with the other man, I could see the tiny lines of pain around his eyes. He should have been resting and recovering from the horror of the vampires, not dealing with ghosts and serial killers.

“It’s too much,” I said suddenly, then felt my face warm when both men stopped their conversation to stare at me.

“What’s that, honey?” the maintenance man asked.

I glared at him, but then the elevator bumped to a stop, the doors slid open, and I hurried out into a too-warm hallway that smelled of onions and bleach. I was eager to deal with the spirits and get back to the office before darkness covered the city.

The detective gave a perfunctory knock on the door, and when no one answered, he nodded at the maintenance man. “Open it.”

The baby was crying. His wails sounded weak, as though he’d been crying for a while, but no one else made a sound. Rick and I slipped into the apartment, gently closing the door before the curious maintenance man could join us.

“Let me know what you need,” Rick said.

“I will.” The door opened into the empty living room. The TV was on, but muted, and the mess lent credence to Georgia’s claims that they’d been knocked around by the spirits. The coffee table was turned on its side, a playpen was smashed, and the wall clock hung askew. A few framed photos lay on the floor, their glass shattered. And the only sound was the unceasing cries of a distressed baby boy.

“They’re in one of the bedrooms,” Rick said. We peered into the tiny kitchen, and without asking me if we might need it, he grabbed a box of salt from an open shelf on the wall.

He’d brightened, despite the awfulness of the situation. Rick, whether he knew it or not, was really beginning to love ghost hunting with me.

There were three closed doors in the short hallway, and the baby’s cries, suddenly muffled, were coming from the room at the end. I didn’t hesitate, but strode to the door, Rick at my heels, and shoved it open.

The scene that greeted me wasn’t unexpected, really, but for one thing. A female sat on a rocking chair, holding a blanket-wrapped baby. A man stood at her side, his hand on her shoulder. Two humans—Cindy and her husband—sat on the floor on the other side of the bed, their backs against the wall, pale, terrified, and bloody.

I smiled as anger rose inside me. Feral anger. “We’re here to help, Cindy. I’m Kait Silver, and this is Detective Moreno. We’re going to get you your baby and send these two assholes back to hell.”

“Hell?” Rick asked. “Not ghosts?”

“Oh no,” I said, almost gently. “They’re not ghosts at all. They’re demons.” And that filled my demon-hating heart with a dark killing joy. It was a mixture of emotions and desires from me, my wolf, and my psycho, different and separate from the strange power the vampire council had either activated or created inside me. I hated demons even more than vampires.

I pulled my blade and both demons gasped, realizing immediately what it was I held. The female clutched the delicate bundle more tightly to her chest, and the male threw himself in front of her, his arms wide, knees bent, hissing like a crazed snake.

“One question before I kill you both,” I said, genuinely curious. “Why haven’t you left already?”

“Because of me,” someone said, and I whirled, crouching, my demon blade at the ready, to face a person I hadn’t even been aware of.

Another female, though she was not human, and she was definitely not a demon. Wings, tattered and drooping, swept the floor behind her.