Demon Night

note beneath it. “I’m well aware of what can happen when someone is locked inside the spell with a demon or a vampire, and a Guardian can’t get to her.”
    Lilith slanted a glance at Castleford, as if to see his reaction. She probably couldn’t read Charlie’s face much better than Ethan did.
    “No, Miss Charlie,” Ethan said. “Agent Milton’s wondering what you want out of it.”
    “Oh.” Charlie blinked. “Am I supposed to bluff and hold out for a million dollars? No one’s going to believe it. The second someone needed the help, I’d be doing it anyway.”
    Ethan looked down at his boots, fighting his laugh. No, he reckoned Charlie couldn’t offer an ultimatum to save her life. “We ain’t talking trading, Charlie, because we ain’t much for bargains when they matter. We’re talking payment. Putting you on retainer, so to speak.”
    When she shook her head, he fully expected her to refuse and to declare that she didn’t need anything. But her brows knitted, and a moment later she said, “I’m sure there’s something I could use. Let me think about it for a while.”
    “You probably won’t want to wait too long,” Lilith said. “Savi called us just after sunset, saying that Sammael checked out of the hotel. So she looked, and you didn’t yet have an e-mail from Jane. Then Savi tried the phone Drifter gave to Jane, but she hasn’t gotten any response but voice mail.”
    Charlie paled, turned to look up at Ethan. “I’m going to see if anything’s come in since then. Or try her number at Legion. Maybe she just forgot, is still at work.”
    Ethan nodded, had to unclench his jaw before he said, “Jake? You give her any help she needs.” He waited until the door closed behind them. “I can’t see as anything called for how abruptly you laid that on her.”
    Lilith frowned. “And here I thought that you had a brain to go with those pretty eyes, Drifter. Two minutes with her told me that’s how she’d prefer it; if I thought she’d wanted coddling, I’d have let Hugh tell her.”
    “I’d have been as blunt,” Castleford said.
    “All right.” Ethan took a deep breath. “You ain’t wrong about her. I’m just feeling awful protective.”
    “Half a second told me that,” Lilith said. “Now, do you want to know what the Scrolls told us about your nephilim friend in Seattle? Or do you want to wait?”
    Even if Charlie managed to connect with Jane, Ethan figured he wouldn’t be long in San Francisco, and he’d rather be as prepared as possible to face it again.
    “Let’s hear it now,” Ethan said.
    “First,” Castleford said, “there’s no mention of a prophecy, or the grigori. Neither does it explain how the nephilim were created.”
    “Don’t matter much to me, anyway. I ain’t looking to make more, but to kill one.”
    Lilith pulled her heel up onto the edge of the desk. “That’ll be the difficult part, because there’s no mention of any weaknesses, like sunlight or hellhound venom. They must have been incredibly powerful if it took both Lucifer’s and Belial’s demons to imprison them.”
    “Considering I’m only alive because Jake teleported me out, that don’t surprise me a bit. If I do happen to encounter it again, I’ll be calling Selah for backup.”
    Selah could teleport in—and, given a few extra seconds, bring other Guardians with her.
    Castleford nodded. “We’ll alert everyone active, let them know what she might be carrying them into.”
    “All right,” Ethan said. “Do the Scrolls say what sets it off?”
    “Lucifer used the nephilim to enforce the Rules,” Lilith said, frowning slightly when Sir Pup lifted his heads and a growl rumbled from his chest. She leaned forward to scratch at his neck. “How isn’t exactly clear. But when a demon obstructed free will or harmed a human, a nephil was called, teleporting out of Hell to slay him.”
    That fit what Ethan had seen; once Jane had set her mind on going to Charlie and the demon had held her back, the air had been humming with that odd psychic energy. “But it didn’t stink as if it had just come in from Hell.”
    Castleford hesitated, then shook his head. “The Scrolls suggest that the nephil possessed a human, and used that body when it was on Earth—just long enough that the nephil could kill the demon. Then it was called back to Hell.”
    “Which doesn’t make sense,” Lilith said, turning to Castleford. Her tone suggested they’d already discussed this detail at