Demon Night

back at the lake with Jake, and the house shielded.”
    “Even if she can’t get out tonight, she’ll know that I need to speak with her as soon as possible. So she might call as soon as she’s alone in the morning.”
    Ethan narrowed his eyes, as if he was considering it. “If she finds a note without you there to explain it, first thing she’d do is take it to Sammael, get his opinion.”
    “Maybe, unless I say on the note that she shouldn’t. I could leave it on her fridge, the stickies—okay, no, Dylan would see it. Or her bathroom, tucked in her birth control, because he’d never look there, and she takes it right before bed. And I really, really want to visit that bathroom.”
    He grinned, then opened his door. “I don’t suppose we’d lose anything by it.”
    Although Charlie had a key, Ethan got her in just as quickly—without setting off the alarm or entering the code into the system. Her note filled four stickies. Ethan carefully read it through before she folded the stickies up tight, put them in the birth control compact, then stood the last little unicorn on the top of it.
    Butterflies were rioting in her stomach and her hands were trembling when they got back to the truck, but the helpless feeling had passed. It wasn’t much, but it had been something .
    “I’m going to throw up,” she announced as he pulled into the street, but a few blocks later she pointed out a Burgerville and ordered a cheeseburger, rings, and a shake at the drive-thru.
    And then everything in her froze when Ethan’s battered leather wallet appeared in his hand. She watched him pay with an old-fashioned twenty and take the grease-stained bag.
    She waited until he’d driven out of the line. “Can I see that?”
    He looked from her face to the wallet, and his eyes closed. “Damnation. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
    “What am I thinking?” she asked quietly.
    “Hell if I know…that I’ve been lying to you about everything. That I kissed you to get that money into your hand. That I’ve been using my Gift for thieving. Just whatever it is, it’s not how it really is.”
    She opened up the wallet. Most of the bills had faint ink stains. If Old Matthew hadn’t pointed them out, she’d never have paid attention to them. “Then how is it? Is it stolen?”
    “That it is. And after he’d been convicted, this was scheduled to be destroyed. I took it before it went into the incinerator.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it was the most harmless way of obtaining resources—it wasn’t taken from anyone, hurting their business or their life, and no one ever missed it.” He frowned and glanced over at her. “Before Special Investigations, Guardians didn’t have an Earth-based center of operations, but we had to work here, sometimes acting like humans—and having that human cover meant we needed money. But we don’t have jobs, or inheritances, or any of the material things that we had when we were human. I got six thousand dollars of usable cash out of it, divided it between five Guardians, and I’ve been spending my portion for fifteen years. And I won’t feel a lick of guilt for it, Charlie—except that it’s upsetting you.”
    “No, that makes sense, I just…” She shook her head. “That was you at Cole’s?”
    “Yes. Mostly, I was there to watch over you.”
    He didn’t say what the other part was, and she slowly unwrapped her burger. Even with her emotions spinning, she was hungry, and it gave her a reason to be quiet as she thought it over.
    They were crossing the floating bridge over Lake Washington when she realized that she wasn’t getting anywhere just thinking. “So you can change shape?”
    “Not all that well,” he said wryly.
    Then she hadn’t been crazy, thinking he’d grown while he’d been talking to her. “And you could rob banks, if you wanted to.”
    He glanced away from the road. “Well, sure I could. Getting through locks has always been my one thing—what I do best. Are you asking me to get you something, Charlie?”
    She dipped her head, smiling as she took a bite of an onion ring. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he looked forward again with a deep sigh.
    “I’d be willing to do just about anything for one of those,” he said. “But I promise I won’t steal any from you.”
    She set the fast-food bag in the middle of the seat, and he reached in. “Take all you want. I shouldn’t be eating them, anyway.”
    He finished the first one and went back for