Demon Marked

Because there are a few other things that simply don’t make sense. One is Cawthorne’s suicide only a week after Ash left Nightingale House. Strange, don’t you think, that someone entered Madelyn’s code into her town house security system that same night?”
    Ash lifted her head. “Cawthorne killed himself?”
    “Nicholas didn’t tell you? He knew. His private investigator told him the same day you arrived in America.” Lilith caught his look and grinned. “You’d be amazed at how good some vampires are at hacking computer and phone systems. And you knew that Madelyn was probably looking for her, didn’t you?”
    “I knew it was possible.”
    “You counted on it. That’s what made her so useful. And then there’s the matter of the two demons running around with Rachel’s face—one of them a ghost. That didn’t make any sense, either, not at first. Not until I thought about Madelyn, and what I know of demons, and how she’d tried to get her hands on Ash.”
    “A ghost?” Ash’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What ghost? Rachel’s a ghost, too?”
    “Oh, Nicholas. You didn’t tell her that, either? Considering that they’re her parents, don’t you think she deserved to know?”
    God. And he suddenly knew: Lilith had said that she didn’t want to kill Ash, but that she’d sacrifice one to save many. And she was. But she didn’t plan to sacrifice Ash.
    In order to persuade Ash to come with her, she was sacrificing Nicholas.
    “Nicholas?” Ash looked up at him, her expression a mixture of wariness and confusion. “What do I deserve to know?”
    He couldn’t answer, not yet. Tightening his arms around her, he desperately tried to think of some way to put it that wasn’t damning.
    There wasn’t one. It was damning. And it was true.
    “A demon took Rachel’s face and goaded Steve Johnson into killing her parents.”
    Horror climbed into her expression. Not anger at him. Not yet. “A demon? The one who attacked us in Duluth?”
    He picked his words carefully. “I don’t know—”
    “Lie.”
    Nicholas ground his teeth, faced the man. “I don’t know for certain !”
    “Who?” Ash’s voice brought him back to her. “Who?”
    He’d never wanted to lie so badly. He couldn’t. Not now—and not because Hugh was listening. He simply couldn’t look into her eyes and pretend he didn’t know. “Madelyn. Madelyn killed them.”
    Everything in her face stilled. The hold of her fingers slackened. “You knew this and didn’t tell me?”
    “I didn’t know they were your parents.”
    “But you knew they mattered. That they were important to me.”
    He wanted to plead ignorance. To say he didn’t know, that he hadn’t believed it, that he’d thought she was a demon who couldn’t truly feel, that it was all a trick.
    But he’d known. He’d held her while she sobbed for parents she couldn’t remember, and he’d known that emotion was real.
    “Yes,” he said. “I knew.”
    “So you brought her out here,” Lilith said. “And you waited for Madelyn to come to you.”
    He looked into Ash’s face. He couldn’t read all of the emotions there, but he recognized pain, horror, disbelief. God. She had to know everything had changed.
    “Yes—”
    “Truth.”
    “But not now ! Goddammit, I wouldn’t have used you as bait now! I can only think of protecting you.”
    And silence. Awful silence.
    Ash’s hands dropped away from his waist. And though the wall prevented her from backing away, he could feel her withdrawing.
    “Ash,” he pled softly. “Please. Believe me. Believe me.”
    Her voice was wooden, her face stone. “I don’t know what to believe, Nicholas.”
    “I swear my only thought was protecting you,” he said, but there was only more damning silence from Hugh. Did Ash see what they were doing? “They want you to leave with them, or he would say that is the truth, too.”
    “We can train her to protect herself far better than you can, Nicholas,” Lilith said. “You’re only a man who needs to eat, to sleep. You can’t protect her all the time. Can you? Because all it would take is a word from her, a letter sent, a shout from down the street, and Ash is lost to you.”
    Would it be that easy? Suddenly stricken, Nicholas looked down at her. Completely naked, she stood with her face set and her eyes averted from his, and though he knew Ash didn’t care that the others saw her nude, though he knew her strength, she suddenly seemed so exposed, so