Demon Night

infuriated him.
    “That’s nothing.” Jake stood up, retrieved his CD from the player. “I tried to kiss him.”
    Lilith pursed her lips, her eyes alight with interest. “I don’t suppose you’d reenact it with Drifter?”
    They left her office on her sigh of disappointment, but Ethan’s good humor fled when he felt the hesitation in Jake’s psychic scent, then the younger Guardian’s quick blocks.
    Ethan stopped in the middle of the hallway, turned. “Spit it out.”
    Jake’s jaw clenched briefly and regret darkened his face. “I found the data you requested.”
    Ethan’s gaze fell to the paper that appeared in his hand. He swallowed past the sudden chokehold on his throat and read the header as he unfolded it. “Arizona State Library?”
    “In their microfiche. There wasn’t much. Just this short mention, from a Wilmont newsletter dated August 1886.”
    The month after he and Caleb had ridden into Eden. Ethan frowned, shook his head. “Wilmont? That’s east of Tucson. I told him to head west.”
    “That’s why it took me so long to find it. I was looking in the wrong direction.”
    Jake was correct; there wasn’t much. Just a single line: Caleb McCabe, murder and thievery. Hanged.
    Ethan vanished the paper before it crumpled in his fist. The goddamned fool. He should have gone west.

CHAPTER 4
    “So, you remind me about lunch, but it’s you who forgets—Jesus, Charlie!” Jane abandoned her superior tone when she finally opened the door wide enough to see her. “Get in here. Did you put ice on it down at the gym? Did you forget to duck or forget to weave?”
    “Neither.” Charlie self-consciously lifted her hand to her face. A dark bruise flared from cheekbone to jaw. “I ran into a wall.”
    Jane rolled her eyes, grabbed Charlie’s hand, and pulled her down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlie dragged her feet on the hardwood floors, smiling for the first time since she’d woken—late—and found the feather gone. She’d looked for almost forty-five minutes before giving up, missing her regular workout routine—though her frantic search through her blankets and throughout the apartment had left her almost as sweaty, and halfway to tears.
    She hadn’t predicted Jane would assume the bruise came from kickboxing, but it saved Charlie from making up a story she’d believe.
    With the feather missing, Charlie wasn’t quite certain she believed the story anymore.
    “Ice isn’t going to work,” she said when Jane pushed her onto a chair at the dining room table and headed for the freezer. “This is from yesterday.”
    “Oh.” Jane tossed a handful of ice into the sink and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Then why were you late? And I called you about five times this morning.”
    “Really? I didn’t—” Charlie pulled out her cell and frowned down at the display. Five voice messages. She’d checked before leaving her place. There hadn’t been any calls then, and she hadn’t felt it vibrate on the bus ride from Capitol Hill to Queen Anne, or on the short hike up Jane’s street. “Okay, weird. The radio station was out, too, because my alarm didn’t work. I woke up to static around eleven thirty.” She glanced back up at Jane. “Did you cut your hair? Without me?”
    Jane’s hair had been on the verge of shaggy last weekend. Rich chestnut highlights streaked through the brown strands now, and they perfectly framed her small, pointed chin and large green eyes.
    “Yes.” A light blush stained Jane’s cheeks. “Sorry. I’d planned to wait for our usual salon day, but Dylan purchased a couple of hours at a spa and arranged the time off from work as a gift—”
    “No, it’s okay. I didn’t mean—” Charlie shook her head, immediately feeling like a bitch. “I was just surprised.”
    “You like it?”
    “You look like an elf. But it’s cute.”
    “Cute? I was hoping for ravishing.”
    Charlie dragged her fingers through the thick, messy tumble of her hair. “That’s me. You can have cute.”
    “Thanks a lot. Your roots are starting to show.”
    “I’m trying to convince everyone that I have hidden depths.”
    “You’ll have to grow it out at least another inch to even begin to persuade anyone.”
    There was only one response to that: a fuck you combined with the flip of her middle finger, and then wondering how a minute in Jane’s presence turned them into giggling thirteen-and fifteen-year-old girls.
    Those had been the best years. Before their