Demon Forged

a car moving across a massive bridge corroding in tiny bits and rivets that she could feel to her bones.
    “Are you going to be carsick?”
    “No.”
    Taylor clearly didn’t believe her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. You don’t eat, so nothing would come up.”
    Irena didn’t tell her that she had eaten that morning. The bites she’d taken of the animals’ hearts were lodged in her stomach, doing whatever it was her Guardian guts did to food.
    “I am not sick.”
    “Okay.” Taylor slanted another glance at her, then poked at something on her door. The window beside Irena slid down.
    Irena tilted her face into the wind. After a few minutes, Taylor shivered and the heater blasted.
    “Did you read Wren’s file?”
    “No,” Irena said, and opened her eyes as the acceleration changed. They drove uphill now, where mansions clung like fat vultures overlooking the bay.
    Taylor reached behind her, brought a folder up front. “Can you take a look?”
    Irena opened to a photo of a woman with the sort of pale blond hair that she often saw on children, but rarely on adults. Her gray eyes were flat and piercing, her face composed in the strong, fierce angles of a Nordic ancestry. Irena recognized the warrior in those eyes and that face, but she couldn’t see deeper.
    Irena found Wren’s statistics and converted the numbers. She and Taylor were almost the same height; Wren would tower over them both.
    “She is very tall. Should I be taller?”
    “Why? You’re already like a mob enforcer.”
    “I’m like a what?”
    “A really big guy. One who’s always ready to crack heads. It’s the way you move—No, that isn’t right.” Taylor’s forehead creased and she gave Irena a once-over. “Scratch that. It’s the way people move around you. Even the Guardians at SI. They give you room, and watch you out of the corners of their eyes. Like you take up a lot of space.”
    That amused her. “So should I take up more space when we meet Wren?”
    “For the intimidation factor?” Taylor considered it, then shook her head. “She’ll already be on the defensive. We’ll try to appear non-threatening. Demure.”
    Irena snorted and read on. It took longer than just the look Taylor had probably anticipated, but Irena made her way through the thin file. There wasn’t much more than Lilith had told them. Wren had lived in foster care until she’d entered the military, and gone on to the Central Intelligence Agency. Little information existed about her activities there, and no indication about why she’d quit. After leaving the CIA, she’d trained at a butling academy in the Netherlands.
    Irena frowned. “What is a butling academy?”
    “She’s a butler. You know, they open the door, look down their nose. Sounds about right for a family like Julia Stafford’s. New money, so they try to put on the class.” Taylor pulled a coffee cup from the holder between the seats, sipped, and grimaced. “Jesus. I thought this was bad when it was hot.”
    “They burnt it,” Irena said, and tapped the side of her nose when Taylor looked at her. “What do you know of Julia Stafford’s family?”
    “Three generations back, they were bootlegging. Then they got into real estate—some of it legit—and Hollywood during the 50s. That’s where they got most of their money, but there was some gambling in Vegas during the 60s and 70s, drugs, ties to the mob. Her dad and her uncles are all politicians now, mostly state and city level. But one of them is a governor, and there’s a cousin in Congress. They don’t have so many ties to gambling—it’s all in oil and land. But that taint is still there, so they’ve got to keep up appearances. She went to a good school, got a law degree, served on charities, boards—but of course, nothing controversial.”
    Irena nodded. “So Julia Stafford had resources and connections, but Rael can hold her family over her head if he needs to.” An advantage for the demon, both ways.
    Taylor pushed her cup back into the holder, fumbling until the paper folded and she smashed it in. “I guess. What I see is a demon who fashions himself as the everyman who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and who got lucky enough to marry the princess who turned some bad history around. Now they’ve got a butler and a house on the hill. It’s all America, baby, and they are proof of the dream. Who wouldn’t vote for that?”
    Irena thought her answer was too obvious, and so she remained