Demon Night

slow.”
    A grimace pulled the boy’s face tight, and he had the sense to thread his apology through his psychic scent. “I never did like the tattoo on my ass.”
    With a sharp nod, Ethan said, “I don’t much care for it, neither. You got anything new on Legion or Sammael—or a response on those pictures I sent Lilith?”
    “Not a thing, and Lilith says that neither she nor Hugh recognize the MO. But they’ll call around a few vampire communities while she’s waiting for Michael to pop in.”
    Ethan suspected there wouldn’t be much. The heads of too few communities trusted SI enough yet to give out that kind of information. And in any case, vampire remains were easy to get rid of—it only took a moment in the sun to reduce them to ash. The communities might have had similar murders taking place without anyone knowing exactly how they had occurred.
    And there was no reason to have Jake hanging around waiting for something that wasn’t likely to come in. “Is there anything else pressing on your time?”
    “A big ugly negative on that, as well. Have you got something for me?”
    “That I do. There’s about an hour and a quarter until sunset—I need you with Charlie for an hour of it, or I won’t be any good to her by tomorrow. You’ll shield up my room, and make certain to fetch me if you have the faintest notion of trouble.”
    Jake’s brows shot up. “You can drift here? With everything around?”
    “Well, sure I can.” And a good thing, too. If he’d had to wait for the sterility of Caelum to settle down and release the buildup, he’d never be venturing far from a Gate. Ethan turned toward the door, then paused. Between the vampires, her sister, and their encounter outside, Charlie was fairly wound up as well.
    “Charlie likes to hit stuff,” Ethan added. “And I’d be much obliged if you gave her something to aim at.”

    When Jake had knocked on her door and invited her to a round of sparring on the deck, Charlie hadn’t been certain it would be a good idea. Going up against a Guardian seemed a pointless exercise—and that he’d known to ask her at all was just another reminder of how long they’d been watching her. It was frustrating, she decided, to be both grateful for and resentful of that surveillance.
    Ultimately, it was that same frustration that led her to change into her sports tank and yoga pants, and make her way down.
    Jake must have heard her coming, but his face was pensive until he saw her, and then he broke into a wide grin. “First rule of Guardian Fight Club is,” he said, hopping down from the deck railing, his jeans changing to a pair of track pants, “you don’t talk about Guardian Fight Club.”
    That was cute, though by all rights, nothing about him should have been. Young, yes—but he was tall and whipcord lean with muscle. Yet his exuberant energy and the way he was bouncing into his footwork, mock-punching the air, made her want to rub his shaved head.
    “I’ve heard that before,” Charlie said, and set her cell phone on the table.
    “In a theater? A real live theater?” His eyes widened and he tossed her the roll of tape that appeared in his palm.
    Charlie shook her head. “No, there was this guy I knew…” And she was already losing him. His brows were drawing down and she thought he looked ready to pull a DVD out, sit her down, and educate her. “Never mind. And yes, I’ve seen it.”
    He fell quiet as she began wrapping her knuckles, but when she glanced up she realized it was only because he was keeping himself from exploding with laughter.
    “What?” she asked warily.
    “I was trying to put you at ease, going to play it innocent and naïve, see how long it took you to catch on. Instead we ruined each other’s jokes.”
    “Oh.” She wound the tape around her hand a few more times. “Maybe we should have a signal, so we know whose turn it is to pull a story over on someone else. Obviously it won’t work on each other.”
    “You’re a smart lady, Charlie. I team up with you, and I might be able to pull one over on Drifter for once.”
    “You can’t now?” She jogged in place, rolling her shoulders. Lord, but this deck was incredible. Stretching and warming up in a gym that was lighted and clean, but always smelling slightly of body odor and sounding of thin carpeting and exercise equipment, couldn’t compare to the lake, the sun, the wind through the trees.
    “Not only was he my mentor for a while, I’ve been playing