Demon Night

spell.” He glanced over her head. “Jake? You want to show her what they look like?”
    Charlie blinked and turned. Instinctively, she kicked at the floor, but Ethan caught her before her chair skidded across the room, away from the huge hulking monster Jake had become: pale and hairless, with membranous wings, pointed ears, and fangs twice as long as hers.
    Then he was Jake again.
    Ethan’s hands smoothed over her arms. “Easy, Charlie. Hell, I should have prepared you for that.” His apology was almost lost below the choking noises he made, keeping his amusement in check.
    She couldn’t stop hers; now that the scare had passed, fear bubbled into laughter, and she said, “I saw that movie a couple of years ago. He wasn’t that big, and his fangs were—” She held two fingers below her front teeth.
    “All of that stuff is bullshit. The movies, the stories. They’re just bits of the truth that humans have picked up over the years.” Ethan held her gaze, and his palms ran the length of her arms again, warming her skin. “You ready to make a few calls?”
    To Jane, and then Old Matthew. Her stomach ached, but she nodded. “Yes.”
    “We’ve got soundproofed rooms if you don’t want to be overheard,” he said. “But if it’s all right with you, I’d like to listen in.”
    “You might as well.” She glanced at the computer, and offered him a shaky smile. “It’ll probably be for you, anyway.”

    Charlie hadn’t been far off; Jane never asked for him, but the call wasn’t much about Charlie, either.
    Ethan watched her sit at a desk and smile her way through the conversation. She barely got a word in edgewise, but her fingers were busy. She fiddled through a small box of paper clips, straightening them out and lining them up in front of her, then using her ID card like a plow and pushing the pile around the desktop.
    Sammael had done a damn good job of latching onto Jane where she was most vulnerable—and most ambitious. And wrapping both the research and Charlie’s vampirism up into one goal meant that Jane was more excited about what her work might do for her sister than concerned about finding out how her sister was doing now.
    Ethan reckoned Jane asked all the right questions—how was Charlie doing, did she have a place to stay, was she feeding—but Jane didn’t listen to the answers all that well. Instead, she went on about everything she’d learned…and everything Sammael had told her.
    Some of the information she relayed might have been new to Charlie, but not most of it—and there was nothing that Ethan hadn’t already known or already figured.
    Yes, Sammael was playing Jane real well.
    And no matter how often Charlie called herself slow, she surely wasn’t about this. Her face wasn’t giving much away when she finally disconnected, but he could hear the hurt and frustration in her voice when she said, “It doesn’t even matter what Sammael did to me, to all of those others. Or rather, it matters —but she just rationalizes it so that she doesn’t feel like shit that she’s still there, and so that she doesn’t hate herself for it. Because she just can’t cut herself off from him, can she?”
    “No.”
    She met his gaze and flushed, as if struck by guilt that she’d been critical of her sister. “I know she’s doing what she thinks is best, but—”
    “You also reckon she ain’t thinking with her head.”
    She struggled with that before admitting, “No. She’s probably not.” She closed her eyes, and the tired smile curving her lips tugged at his chest. “Okay. Old Matthew now.”
    A call that would force her to take another emotional beating. The dread was already dripping heavy from her psyche, and he saw the way she bolstered herself, staring at the phone as if it was an opponent to be defeated.
    “Charlie.” He dropped into the chair beside hers, swiveled her to face him, and scooted forward until his knees bumped up against the front of her seat. “Just wait another day.”
    He couldn’t fight this for her. But maybe he could find some way to lessen the blow.
    She firmed her lips and shook her head. But she held on to his hand when the old man answered, her fingers closing on Ethan’s with crushing strength when a long pause followed her rough greeting.
    “Well, Charlie—since you’re calling, I’ll assume it means you aren’t coming in again.”
    “I’m not.” She couldn’t seem to get any more out.
    There was another silence, until Old