Demon Marked

shrugged. “She lies, she manipulates. I don’t see the difference, personally.”
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “Perhaps not,” he agreed easily. He looked to Revoire, who was frowning at him—probably wondering if St. Croix was a demon—before addressing Taylor again. “If that is all . . . I don’t recall your name. Detective something or other, was it?”
    Oh, he was good. Playing up that British accent when she knew he’d spent over half his life in America. Deliberately shutting her out, pissing her off. Why?
    “Special Agent Taylor of Special Investigations. This is Special Agent Revoire. Do you have time to sit down for coffee, Mr. St. Croix?”
    “No.”
    She smiled pleasantly, but put steel in her voice. “Make time.”
    “Or what?” His gaze ran over her in a calculating assessment. “How could you possibly make it worth my time?”
    “Because we’ve just finished looking at photos from a recent crime scene. Frank and Caroline Boyle. I believe you know them?”
    Finally, a break in his shields. Just a fraction, but enough to feel his rage. His sadness. But no surprise.
    “Yes,” he said, and now there was bleakness beneath all of that coldness. “How did it happen?”
    Taylor suddenly understood that this was why he’d come to the sheriff’s office. He was looking for answers. He cared.
    She hadn’t expected that.
    “Steve Johnson, an old boyfriend of Rachel’s, did it . . . after he’d been visited by her ghost.”
    She saw the realization hit him. His dark brows lowered and his jaw hardened, cracking the icy cast of his expression.
    “A demon?”
    “Yes. We’re looking for her now.” She paused, hoping for any reaction, but didn’t get one. She’d have to try again. “Rosalia thought that you might have run into a demon lately.”
    “No. I just had questions.”
    “Questions that brought you to Duluth?”
    “I heard rumors that someone who looked like Rachel had been seen in the area. I never believed that she hadn’t become a Guardian. So I came looking, because when I find her, I can finally clear my name.” That cool amusement came sliding back. “I guess I’m not looking for a Guardian, but a demon. I don’t suppose that you’ve slain her yet?”
    “No.” Was he lying? Taylor couldn’t decide. He did have good reason to follow up on any rumors. “But we will. Do you plan to stay in town?”
    “Just long enough to make certain the ghost wasn’t the demon I’m looking for.”
    His mother. Though that demon wasn’t an excuse for him to grow up into such an asshole, she couldn’t blame St. Croix for wanting to slay her.
    “We’ll let you know if she is,” Taylor said.
    “Not if I find her first.”
    Taylor smiled thinly. “Good hunting, then.”
    He nodded and continued past her up the stairs. Taylor waited until he passed through the doors before looking to Revoire.
    “We need to contact SI. I want to know everything he did, looked at, bought, went online for in the past week. And we need a picture of Rachel Boyle.” The demon had probably changed her shape by now, but maybe not. “If the demon impersonated Rachel once, it might do it again—especially if the target is someone like St. Croix.”
    Rich, ruthless, probably on the edge of sanity after a childhood in a demon’s tender care. God knew how a man like that could be manipulated, or how dangerous he could be.
    “I thought for certain I’d finally run into Basriel.” Revoire shook his head. “He was human?”
    Barely. “Let’s go. We’ve got a demon to find, before Basriel does.”
    Or before Nicholas St. Croix did.
     
    Nicholas returned to the hotel. If the Guardians tailed him, they wouldn’t find a demon. They wouldn’t find any evidence that she’d stayed in the same room the night before. Hell, even the porn rental suggested that he’d been alone. He ate lunch and watched the financial news, then hit the gym for two hours, giving the Guardians time to conduct a search of his suite.
    If they were tailing him. Hopefully, they’d decided to focus on finding the demon who’d posed as Rachel, and hopefully they’d believed Nicholas when he’d told them Rosalia had been mistaken about his being with one. And if they hadn’t believed him, hopefully they thought he was such a dickhead bastard that he deserved whatever a demon did to him, and left him to it.
    He knew the Guardians didn’t work that way, though. Unfortunately, they even tried to save the bastards.
    In the