Demon Marked

wait. He pulled out his mobile, powered it down.
    “Thank you,” she said, surprising him. “I don’t look forward to being killed on sight.”
    By the Guardians. Would Madelyn kill her, too? Nicholas didn’t think so. Madelyn wouldn’t have left the demon at Nightingale House unless she had some use for her. Considering the demon’s resemblance to Rachel, that use probably involved some scheme to tear Nicholas’s heart out.
    If this demon didn’t slay him through song first. She jabbed the radio button again, and the dial scanned through the frequencies before coming back to the same station. It must have been pissing her off. Her gaze actually left the road long enough for her to cast a deadly stare at the console.
    Hell, any more force in those jabs, and she might stab her finger through it. “You don’t like country?”
    Rachel had. She’d often joked that she was the only woman in England who had Martina McBride sitting next to Marilyn Manson in her music collection.
    “Like? That doesn’t matter. Only ‘familiar’ does—and I don’t know this song.”
    “You knew the others that have been playing?”
    “Yes. Most of them. And when I didn’t, I could find another station playing something else that I knew.” Her eyes began to glow faintly red. “I can’t find anything now.”
    “But you remember the music.”
    “As soon as I hear it, yes. I didn’t know it before that—or didn’t know that I knew it. But as soon as the song starts, I remember the lyrics, the singer. And I don’t forget again.” She pressed “seek” again, this time with less force. “But sometimes, it’s more than just knowing the words. Some songs, it’s like there’s more there, some other memory attached, and I can almost . . . touch it.”
    All right. Nicholas understood that. He couldn’t hear the Rolling Stones without remembering his mother dancing in the kitchen. Not Madelyn, but his mother. After the demon had wormed her way into their family, it had been all classical, all the time—to soothe his father’s nerves, she’d said. Now, Nicholas recognized a thousand changes that she’d wrought when she’d taken his mother’s place, claiming that everything she’d done had been to help his father. The demon bitch.
    The Stones sure as hell couldn’t tell him where his mother’s body lay now. “You’ve spent the whole night listening for familiar songs?”
    The crimson faded from her eyes. “Yes.”
    Strange. He didn’t know what to make of that—or of her. Her every response seemed wiped of any emotion, yet she was actively searching for those connections?
    “I should have spent the night plotting against you, I know,” she added.
    He laughed, damn it.
    The demon didn’t even crack a smile. Peering ahead through the snow, she said, “The road sign says gas and food at the next exit. I know you’re hungry.”
    Had she been listening to his stomach? “Not hungry enough to eat the shit they pass through a drive-up window.”
    He’d spent the past few years training—learning to fight, making himself strong, preparing himself to face Madelyn. Now wasn’t the time to start shoving crap into his body.
    “Maybe we can find a grocery. Or if you can hang on a few hours, there’s an all-organic diner at a truck stop north of Chicago that serves—” She cut herself off. Her mouth remained open, as if in surprise. When she continued, her voice barely rose above a whisper. “Great omelets. They serve great omelets. And before you ask, I don’t know how I know that.”
    Nicholas hadn’t been going to ask. He was too damn unsettled. This demon wasn’t Rachel . . . but he’d heard about that diner before.
    The demon stared ahead. “This part of the highway isn’t familiar, but I can almost picture the road from Chicago to Duluth, the same way I can remember a scene from a book or a movie after I think about it. But I don’t remember being there. And no, I can’t explain it.”
    Nicholas couldn’t, either—at least, he couldn’t explain why this demon would know that stretch of highway. He knew why Rachel would, though.
    “Rachel finished her masters’ degree at The Kellogg School,” he said. “She drove back to her parents’ house during breaks, on some weekends.”
    “Oh.” That was all she said for several seconds. Then, “Kellogg has a good program. One of the best in the country.”
    Frustration exploded through him. That was her response? About a fucking business