Demon Marked

certain that she made her way to the main offices without tumbling over.
    Since then, reports of falling spires and collapsing arches had been delivered to SI with increasing regularity, and the Guardians’ growing terror and desperation pressed like a knife against Ash’s tongue. She couldn’t feel the desperation herself, but she understood theirs. Two enormous paintings of the realm hung in Lilith’s office, an unimaginably beautiful city of sparkling marble domes and columned temples, set against the bluest sky Ash had ever seen. She also understood that their horror didn’t just stem from the shattering of that beautiful realm, but that the destruction was connected to Michael, too—who was being tortured in the frozen field.
    That horrified Ash. And though she’d gladly have given Lilith and Hugh information when they asked how Lucifer had brought her out of the frozen field, she had nothing to tell them. Ash simply didn’t know.
    Now, with her mind blocked, she waited for the various scans—temperature, fingerprints, retinal—to finish confirming her identity before forming her wings and heading toward the gym. The offices were busy, as they always were, with voices coming from every side. She’d learned to push them into the background, and typically only noticed when someone spoke her name.
    Today, it wasn’t her name that caught her attention, but a thread through the jumble of noise that made her breath stop, her heart pound.
    —St. Croix attempted to contact her yesterday—
    That was Taylor’s voice, but it wasn’t coming from the direction of the offices. Ash turned down the hallway to the tech room, where Taylor and Lilith stood behind a Guardian sitting at a long table topped by monitors and keyboards. Sir Pup trotted ahead to meet Lilith, who greeted him with a smile and a scratch at his ears.
    At the computer, Jake glanced over at Ash. “You came back just in time. Whenever Lilith stands this close to me, I get the feeling that she’s going to start using me as her dog and rub my head, instead.”
    “You wish, pup.”
    “No, I don’t. I really, really don’t.” He put a protective hand over his shaved hair and edged away. “Sir Pup would probably bite my face off out of jealousy.”
    Ash thought the laughing chuff from the hellhound sounded like agreement. Taylor’s lips curved faintly in response, but not enough that Ash considered it a smile. Of late, everything about the woman seemed faint, and though Ash couldn’t see any measurable physical change, the impression of Taylor’s fragility increased with every report of a cracked column and crumbling dome, as if she stood on the verge of collapsing herself.
    From what Ash knew of Taylor, it wouldn’t happen. The former detective would continue standing upright through sheer will—and chase down demons while doing it. Hopefully, that demon would soon be the one Ash most wanted to die.
    “Was that Madelyn you were speaking about?” When all three lifted their brows in unison, Ash clarified, “I heard Taylor say that Nicholas tried to contact someone. Me? Because if he was, then that wasn’t Nicholas. He wouldn’t risk me like that. It would have to be Madelyn, fishing.”
    “It was St. Croix,” Lilith said. “But he was trying to reach Rosalia.”
    The disappointment that slid across her chest didn’t make sense. It was best that he didn’t try to contact her. Still, Ash wished to hear the sound of his voice, the rough start of his laugh.
    It wasn’t all disappointment, though. There was also relief. “So that means you know where he is, and that he’s okay.”
    “He’s all right,” Jake said. “And we’ve had a rough idea of his whereabouts since he left the cabin.”
    “Oh. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
    “You didn’t ask.”
    “I didn’t think anyone would know.”
    But no, that wasn’t precisely it. After all, the Guardians had found them at the cabin by sending Sir Pup after Nicholas’s scent trail, all the way from Minnesota. Their computer techs had unearthed texts sent to unregistered phones. So, yes, if they wanted to, they could track Nicholas.
    Yet now that she thought about it, everyone had carefully avoided any mention of Nicholas at all—so she’d equated their silence on the topic with a lack of information, a sign that they’d had nothing to give. They’d offered everything else so readily, so why not—
    Oh. Oh. All right, so her emotions had taken a dive as soon as she’d