Demon Night

talked partnerships—but my da, once he realized it’d mean people coming and going, the mountain getting torn up, he just backed away from it. And nothing much happened for eight or nine years, except Caleb and I both went east to study, and then came back west to work.”
    “And Caleb started practicing law?”
    Ethan nodded. “I didn’t want to be cooped up in an office, but he thought it was all right. And after Caleb and I had gone, my da and ma had begun taking on more help, using the land a bit more, making it a working concern. So they were supporting a few families—and my da had grown real attached to the property. But the mines in the area, they were hitting some hard times, and my da was getting pressure from Billings to sell the rights to that lode.”
    “But he didn’t?”
    “No. And both Caleb and I had to step in a couple of times when the hassling got bad. Billings was sending in thugs to spook the women, poisoning some of the livestock. But there wasn’t much proof. And we weren’t getting much sympathy from the town, because so many of them wanted the mountainside opened so as they could keep working. Caleb and I went in and warned Billings several times, telling him to back away—but there wasn’t much else to do. And for a while, it died down.”
    Ethan picked up another rock but didn’t toss it. He looked at it lying in his palm before he closed his hand. “And then I got word that my ma had been hurt. A couple of Billings’s men had come upon her when she was alone, and—” Dust was falling from between his fingers, and his voice was strained when he continued, “And they hurt her real bad. But she hung on…as long as she could.”
    His throat worked, and he shook out the handful of dust. Her chest aching, Charlie watched him struggle for his next words. He finally met her eyes.
    “You look awful torn up, Charlie,” he said hoarsely. “You want to come over here so I can comfort you a bit?”
    She was in his arms less than a second later, and he was holding on to her tight, burying his face in her hair. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Son of a bitch. A hundred and twenty years, and it still rips my guts.”
    Her fingers curled in his shirt. “Ethan, I’m so sorry,” she whispered against his throat. “I shouldn’t have asked—”
    She broke off as he pulled back, shaking his head.
    “No.” His thumbs smoothed across her cheeks, wiped away the wet from her skin. “She ought to be remembered. And she ought to be cried over.” He drew a long, shuddering breath. “We did, Charlie, but then we got to work. She’d told us not to go off half-cocked—told us to do right by her. And so we did. All by the book. And when Caleb and I were done, we had a right solid case. Not just against those that was hired, but Billings, too. But Billings had real deep pockets, and he bought himself a jury. And my da…” His brow furrowed. “After my ma passed, I can’t call what my da was doing ‘living.’ And on the day Billings and his men were acquitted, my da took a walk out to where she was buried, and he didn’t come back in.” Another breath shook from his chest. “My da sure taught me a real good lesson about what it means to love a woman so powerfully, Charlie.”
    That to let himself feel so much was inevitably self-destructive? What was safe then—friendships and fuck buddies?
    But contemplating it would only hurt, and this was about Ethan, not her. She laid her cheek over his heart again, held on. “What did you and Caleb do?”
    “We went off half-cocked. Made certain each one of those men wouldn’t be hurting a woman again. But we let them live, because that was worse than dying. Then we tried to go after Billings.”
    “Tried?”
    She felt his nod, and looked up at him as he said, “He knew we were coming, and we weren’t just coming to hurt him. Because he may not have been one of those who’d murdered my ma, but he ordered it, and we had every intention of stringing him up. So he got out of there, and under a whole lot of protection. When we realized we wouldn’t be able to reach him, we targeted what would hurt him the most, and what he’d killed my ma over: his money. For a long while, we didn’t take anything but what was his—and we took a lot of it.”
    She smiled a little at the note of satisfaction in his voice. “When did you realize he was a demon?”
    Ethan’s brows shot up. “A demon? No, Charlie—Billings was