I scrubbed my face. “Why are you guys helping me?” I asked the car. I’d asked both friends this before, but then I’d still been human. Now there was no denying what I was—the queen of hell sent to earth.
“Because we’re your friends, and when all is said and done, we will fall on the right side of history,” Leanne said.
Slowly I lifted my head, my heart thumping like mad. “What have you seen?”
She met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Nothing I can speak of in great detail.”
Oliver coughed, “Copout,” into his hand.
She glared at him. “Every detail I reveal can and will change the future, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. If we want it to go our way, you’ll both have to trust me.”
“That’s fine,” I said. I was used to working with cryptic messages. “Where are we going?”
“We’re meeting with Andre—I think.”
Andre. The thought of him was a punch to the gut. I’d obviously not been myself because he should’ve—would’ve—been the first person I visited. It felt like a fog was lifting around my heart, my feelings for him rushed in. Suddenly, seeing him seemed paramount.
“What do you mean you think?” I asked.
“The seer’s shroud is still in Andre’s system, as it is in Oliver’s and mine, so I can’t foresee his future. Now that you’ve died, I can see yours, and in it we meet with someone whose future I can’t see.”
“So Andre knows I’m alive?”
Oliver snorted. “Footage of you is all over the news. He’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss it.”
Or dead.
No, I couldn’t think like that. Of course, telling myself this didn’t stop my rising panic.
Focus on other things.
Focus—on—other—things.
“Who’s car is this?” I asked running my hand over the seat’s plush fabric.
“No one’s,” Leanne replied. “Paul conjured it.” Paul was Oliver’s roommate. In the past, he’d conjured clothes for us, but nothing close to a running vehicle.
“He was able to conjure an entire car?” I didn’t attempt to hide my shock.
“My BBF is literally the mother of demons,” Oliver said, “and she’s surprised someone can conjure a car.”
“But,” I said, “he made a car out of nothing.”
“And you made demons out of a couple drops of blood,” Oliver said, checking out his lilac fingernails. “You all are special snowflakes, m’kay? Hey, you know next time, when you spill some more blood, could you try calling up some incubi?”
“Oliver!” I shoved him lightly on the shoulder. “Those things want your soul.”
“Not as much as they want my—”
I slapped a hand over his mouth. “Please, let’s not,” I said. “I can only handle so much trauma in one evening.”
He began to pry my fingers away.
“Are you done?”
He held up three fingers—the scout’s honor symbol.
Reluctantly, I let my hand fall.
“—big, glittery cock!”
I couldn’t help it; my face flushed at his words. “Oli-ver, ewwww.”
Oliver laughed. “Still such a prude.” He swiveled in his seat to face me. When he saw my pink cheeks, he squealed. “And my baby can blush again! All is not lost after all.”
Andre
He’d lost her. The demon had landed somewhere in this neighborhood, and when he’d taken to the sky again, it was without Gabrielle. A quick search of the neighborhood hadn’t turned up his soulmate.
Andre gnashed his teeth together. This would be so much easier if they still had their bond. Now he had to make a decision: search the neighborhood again or follow the demon. And with each second that ticked by, the creature moved farther and farther away from them.
He ran a hand through his hair and swore. “Follow the demon,” he finally ordered his driver.
This had better work out.
Andre pulled a gun from the car’s center console and leaned out the window. The creature soared a football field length ahead of them. Well within his range. He lined up the gun’s sights and fired.
The bullet hit the creature just left of where his heart should be—if demons had them. Even from here he could hear the demon’s shriek. Andre pulled the trigger twice more, clipping the creature’s wings. It continued to fly, its movements jerky, but it was quickly losing altitude.
Andre shot it again, this time hitting a wing joint, and the creature crumpled in the sky, its body plummeting to earth.
“Move it,” Andre said, not tearing his gaze away from the demon.
They tracked it down to an open field. Andre stepped out of the car and stalked over to his prey, the wind whipping his coat and hair. He still loosely held his gun, and he rubbed the trigger tenderly. It had been a very long evening, and without Gabrielle nestled in his heart, the humanity he’d slowly been reclaiming was now long gone.
As soon as the demon caught sight of him, it rose to its feet. Andre lifted the gun and shot the thing in the kneecap. It screeched, falling back to the ground.
“If you try to fly away, I’ll shoot your wing bones. Again.” Not that the creature would necessarily be able to fly, considering how badly wounded he already was. But Andre had never been around one of these things long enough to know whether they regenerated.