Demon Night

the sound I associate with the thing easier than I do the actual word or name.” She kept her focus on her hands as she dried the tweezers and replaced them in the makeup bag. Hopefully, the threat of a unibrow would overpower the memory of where they’d been. “They teach you that in conservatory—mnemonic devices so that you don’t forget the lyrics, or where to come in. Except words don’t pull so easily for me. Not unless you set them to music.” She pursed her lips, finally glanced up at him, and was glad he wasn’t staring at her throat. “I can’t spell, either.”
    “Hell, Charlie, ‘reckon’ and ‘ain’t’ trip off my tongue like I was born saying them, but the truth is, my ma would have whupped me something fierce if she’d ever heard me speak like this.” He smiled when she laughed, and it softened his face, as if mention of his mother had struck a sweet memory. His fingers began working up his shirtfront. “But it served me well to start, and I don’t figure I’ll stop anytime soon. My ma ain’t going to protest, at any rate—and I can sum up my human life by saying that I was born on Beacon Hill in 1854, where I learned to talk a certain way, but by the time I died thirty-two years later in a no-account Arizona town, I had speaking habits that would make my parents roll in their graves.”
    That didn’t add up to as little as he claimed, but though she was curious, Charlie let it go. She didn’t like to talk about the details of her life, either. And when she did, she just twisted them up into barely believable stories.
    Ethan had already heard several of them.
    She waited a beat, then said, “There’s a painting up in one of the bedrooms.”
    His hands stilled in the middle of tucking in his shirt, and then he finished it and slowly drew his suspenders up. “I figured you’d seen the one in the living room. Savi at the poker table with the novices—and me.”
    Charlie slid off the island. “I missed that one.” Of course, by the time she’d come back downstairs she hadn’t been seeing much at all.
    She heard the pad of his feet as he followed after her; in the hallway, it changed to the tread of boots. “I’d have told you, Charlie, but—”
    “I wouldn’t have believed you.”
    She looked over her shoulder in time to see the quirk of his lips. “For that reason, too,” he said. “But mostly we don’t tell anyone unless it’s necessary. And I’d hoped we’d clear all of this up without it ever coming to the point where I had to tell you.”
    “But you’ll show Jane and Dylan what you are tomorrow—in case they need evidence?”
    The painting was huge, but in shadow—her lamp was across the room, and one of the wooden posts that divided the living areas blocked the light. Charlie stopped in front of it, and realized that Ethan hadn’t yet responded.
    She looked around for him, saw him at the wall panel. She had to blink at the sudden illumination; his features were grim as he made his way to her side.
    “You do plan on telling them?” If he didn’t, Charlie would. She just didn’t know if she could convince them.
    “We’ll show Jane,” he finally said. “In the morning I’ll drive us on over, and we’ll talk to her.”
    “Okay.” The tension drained from her. “Drive in what?”
    “I’ve got that truck stored away. Haven’t used it in a decade or so, but it should run.” It took her a second to realize he meant stored in that place he vanished things to, not somewhere in the city—but before she could wrap her head around the concept of it, he began to point out the participants in the painting. “You’ve seen Savi. Jake’s to her left—you’ll meet him tomorrow—and Becca, Mackenzie, Pim, and Randall on the other side.”
    Ethan was depicted at the far left, leaning back in his chair, his long legs in an easy sprawl and his thumbs hooked into his suspenders just above his waist. Though his expression didn’t show it, everything about his posture suggested that he was heartily enjoying himself.
    She made herself study the others. The small, dark woman from Cole’s had been caught in a laughing pose, and her fangs gleamed. No one else had his mouth open, though a couple were smiling. There weren’t any drinks on the table—or any snacks. “Are they all vampires?”
    “Just Savi and Mackenzie. The others are novices—Guardians in their first hundred years of training. Used to be, they were taught in Caelum, but now a human