Demon Marked

entered the house if he’d known she was there.
    In the end, she supposed it didn’t matter. He’d gone in.
    “Madelyn and I argued, of course.” He said it casually, setting aside his computer and sitting back, as if settling in for a comfortable chat. “Madelyn drew a gun from her desk, and I told her: Shoot me, then. You’ve wanted to get rid of me for twenty years. So do it. She did, but Rachel got in between. Then they disappeared.”
    So he had given permission. But why? He’d been determined to destroy Madelyn, not himself.
    “You didn’t think she’d really do it,” Ash guessed.
    “No, I didn’t. Pulling out that gun seemed like a rash, hysterical move, but Madelyn isn’t impulsive—everything she does is calculated. She’d lose her company if she murdered me, and Madelyn wouldn’t risk that. So I assumed she only meant to frighten me.”
    “So you egged her on.”
    “Yes. Now I know that a demon wouldn’t resist a free pass to kill a human. Getting rid of the evidence would be easy—and it would have been her word against Rachel’s.”
    But Rachel had thrown herself between them, instead. Sacrificing herself wouldn’t have been the same as giving Madelyn permission to kill her—and so Madelyn had still broken the Rules, Ash realized. Was that why they’d disappeared?
    “What are the consequences if a demon kills a human?”
    “The consequences before the portals to Hell were closed, or the consequences now?”
    “What portals to Hell?”
    As if her question frustrated him, his jaw clenched. “The Gates between Earth and Hell,” he said. “They closed three years ago.”
    After Madelyn had shot Rachel and broken the Rules. “So what should have happened to Madelyn six years ago?”
    “She’d have been either punished in Hell or killed.”
    “And now? What if I deny a human’s free will?”
    “Are you planning on doing that?” He must have thought she wouldn’t; he didn’t wait for her answer. “With the Gates shut, you can’t be taken back to Hell, so Rosalia and her partner would hunt you down. They’d have a psychic lock on you as soon as you broke the Rules, and they wouldn’t stop until you were dead.”
    Punished or dead. With those as her only options, it was best just to heed Madelyn’s warning, and not break the Rules.
    Not that Ash felt a particular urge to break them, anyway. Strange, wasn’t that? As a demon, shouldn’t she be plotting how to kill or maim him?
    At the very least, shouldn’t she be trying to make him cry?
    What would a demon do? Ash couldn’t answer that. Nicholas didn’t seem to subscribe to the “demons are rebels with a cause” interpretation that she remembered from several books and movies, so she must be the “utterly evil and corrupt” variety. But if that were so, shouldn’t every step she took and word she spoke all be designed to bring about Nicholas’s eventual destruction? Shouldn’t it be instinctive?
    Or was Nicholas completely wrong about demons?
    She frowned at him. “If I’m a demon, why aren’t I plotting your downfall?”
    “Because we have a bargain,” he said. “If you don’t help me, you’re screwed.”
    “But why aren’t I already making plans for after we fulfill our parts of the bargain?” If Ash could have been disappointed in herself, she would have been. She obviously suffered from a severe lack of initiative. “I must be a shortsighted demon.”
    “Good.” A spark of genuine humor seemed to flash across his expression before he added, “But I’ll assume that you’re only saying that to mislead me.”
    “To lure you into complacency?”
    No doubt of his amusement now. He smiled, just a tilt at the corners of his lips, but it didn’t seem cold at all.
    “Yes,” he said.
    So, a demon misled men to make them feel safe. She’d have to use that tactic after she recalled how to be a demon.
    How did her amnesia fit, anyway? “Do you suppose my memory loss is part of an elaborate demonic scheme?”
    “Yes,” he said—still smiling, but Ash could see that he meant it. “I’d have to be an idiot to believe that everything a demon said and did wasn’t designed to fulfill some other motive.”
    “I must be an idiot demon, not to have some other motive.”
    Nicholas arched a brow, as if in silent agreement that she might be an idiot. Ash arched hers in response, and felt her mouth curve. Smiling, if only a little.
    Oh. She knew this emotion: amusement. A pleasant feeling, really,