Demon Forged

for moment. Then the demon recovered, and looked across the table.
    “Please remember what I said about Maggie. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
    He left. Alejandro followed him to the door, and watched until the demon reached the hub and turned for the exit. He looked over at Irena.
    You don’t have your cell phone? he signed.
    It’s in my cache.
    Where the device was absolutely useless. But he let it go. Trouble darkened her eyes—he didn’t think Rael had been the cause. The demon had only been the recipient of her frustration.
    What has happened?
    The Prague community is gone.
    Christ. The nephilim?
    No. They have always left bodies, and I couldn’t find any sign of the vampires—dead or alive.
    And Deacon is missing as well?
    No one in the nearby communities has heard from him. Do you have any thoughts on what has happened to them? No.
    Guilt weighed heavily in her psychic scent. Alejandro signed, Ames-Beaumont and Savitri are scheduled to be here after sunset. We’ll use their contacts. Perhaps they will uncover something.
    At the table, Preston cleared his throat. They both glanced his way.
    “So . . . is anyone else sitting here wondering if maybe we are looking in the wrong direction?”
    Irena frowned. Alejandro quickly summarized Rael’s visit.
    “Oh.” Irena turned back to the detectives and sighed. “He is very good at what he does.”
    “Maybe. So he sets Wren up in the most obvious way, then comes to argue against it. Why?”
    “Because playing with us gives him pleasure,” Alejandro said.
    Taylor’s gaze was steady. “There’s no doubt in your mind? Castleford couldn’t have misread the video or Wren?”
    “No,” he and Irena said together. She continued, “Demons were made to create doubt. That is what they do. And so Rael has.”
    Taylor and Preston exchanged a glance. Alejandro couldn’t read that look, but they seemed to settle something between them when Taylor shrugged.
    Irena must have thought so, too. She turned back to him. “Rael was surprised to see Khavi. Did he not know she was alive?”
    Alejandro didn’t think Rael had known. But he was more interested in the demon’s reaction to Irena’s appearance. “He was surprised to see Khavi and you.”
    He watched her take that in. Alejandro had wondered that morning, during Rael’s conversation with Taylor, if the demon had known of the nephilim’s attack on Irena. He hadn’t been sure then, but seeing Rael’s surprise here had erased his uncertainty.
    Irena’s brow creased as she asked the same question that plagued him. “How did he know?”
    Taylor stood. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, and we’re going to leave you to figure it out. We’ve got some things back at the station to take care of.”
    Sundown was in less than an hour. Taylor wouldn’t be leaving here without protection.
    Alejandro met Irena’s eyes. She raised her brows, silently asking if he had other obligations. He shook his head. “Have you had an opportunity to speak with Jake?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Then I will accompany her,” Alejandro said.
    Taylor sighed.
    Irena laughed and started for the door. Her fingers trailed a warm path over his hand as she passed him. “You’ll meet me in Caelum afterward?”
    “Yes.”
    Until then, he’d work through the gnawing suspicion that Rael had been behind the nephilim’s attack on Irena, and decide whether the suspicion had teeth or if it was a distraction to be ignored.
    That morning in the federal building plaza, the idea had bit and he’d dismissed it as impossible. Because the prophecy said Belial would only rise to the throne after the nephilim were destroyed, Belial’s demons—and therefore Rael, Belial’s lieutenant—were enemies of the nephilim. But after witnessing Rael’s reaction to Khavi and learning they’d once been friendly, his suspicion had taken hold again. Rael’s pleasure upon seeing Khavi was genuine.
    It made Alejandro wonder if the demon’s best memories were several thousand years old.
    Taylor and Preston spoke little as he rode with them across the city. With new eyes, he reexamined pieces that shouldn’t have fit, turned each one, and watched them fall into place.
    Rael had loved a woman. Alejandro briefly considered Khavi, but Rael’s response to her had been wrong. Even a demon, seeing the woman he’d loved for the first time in more than two millennia, would have wanted to go to her. He’d want to touch her, to confirm she