Page 3 of Dead Beat

“There you go, sweet boy.” Her eyes were glittering, full of tears. She looked both giddy and miserable. “Drink your fill.”

The baby latched and Darlington tried not to wretch at the sound of it suckling.

It was feeding on her joy, her desperation, and on her blood too.

Turner pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and took a shuddering breath. “What do we do?”

Alex tucked her hair behind her ears. “What we came here to do.” She strode to the front of the house without waiting to see if they would follow.

“She’s going to burn out,” Darlington said as Turner laid down a salt knot in case the demon tried to escape through the window.

“It’s her mission,” said Turner.

“We’re all responsible for getting this done.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. She’s been called.”

This again. Turner hadn’t relinquished his belief that this was some kind of holy war, and Darlington still didn’t know what to make of it. They needed the detective on their side, not just because of his preternatural ability to suss out the truth, that shockingly accurate prickle that was better than any lie detector, and not just because his position with the New Haven PD lent him authority that stretched beyond the reach of the university. They needed numbers. Holy war or back-alley brawl, they had too few soldiers for the fight to come.

They followed in Alex’s wake and joined her at the steps to the brownstone. Darlington could no longer tell if he was her shadow or a shadow cast over her, but they were all too tired, too hollowed out by the grim business of the hunt to think deeply on the roles they’d chosen.

Maybe Turner was right. Maybe they’d simply been called. It was a tempting thought, the idea that some wise and benevolent hand had brought them together to stand against the tide. But there was magic and then there was magical thinking. One might help them build a dam against the flood. The other would get them killed.

“Stay close,” Alex said, the words a bare rasp, as if she’d been shouting. She knew what was to come.

He might have said I will. He might have told her not to worry.

Instead, he let a growl rumble through him, the demon’s voice, the demon’s strength. Tonight she didn’t need the man. She needed to know the monster was near.

2

Ron Keep opened the door with the harried air of a man who didn’t want to be bothered—no, he did not want to sign a petition; no, he did not want his windows cleaned. He wore a snug sweater and collared shirt with his jeans and Sperrys, like a man auditioning for the role of sitcom dad.

“You left this on the stoop,” Alex said.

His eyes lit on the gleam of gold in her fingers, and he reached for the coin of compulsion in her hand. Magpie impulse. Human curiosity. Good old greed. She didn’t know why people reached for the coin, but they always did. The bit of persuasion magic was so valuable Alex almost didn’t want to release it, but she needed to keep moving or she would never see the end of this night. As soon as Keep’s hand closed over the coin, his face went slack.

“Daddy?”

The little boy was still at the table where his father had clearly told him to wait. Alex didn’t love that there would be an uncompelled witness to this, but no one believed kids anyway. She should know.

“It’s okay,” Alex lied. “We just need to see your brother.”

“I don’t have a brother.”

“He doesn’t have a brother,” Ron repeated, the coin nudging him past compliant to helpful.

“So what’s in the other room?”

“I don’t know. One day he … it was just … here.”

Alex had learned a few things about demons since she’d gone to hell and back. Sometimes they took the form of your deepest fear. Sometimes they became what you most desired. But the end result was always the same: They ate your heart.

“Stay right there,” Alex said to the little boy.

“Why?”

“Do you want your mother back?”