Fabian already floated by the car, to my relief. He would come with us while his ghostly girlfriend, Elisabeth, stayed here to keep an eye on things. “Get in,” I whispered at him.
Fabian disappeared and then reappeared in the backseat in the time it took me to blink. I pulled out of the driveway nice and slow, no telltale squealing of tires or flying gravel to betray my sense of urgency. Denise was also so tense that I couldn’t hear a word of her thoughts. A good thing, too, since if I couldn’t, then Mencheres and Bones couldn’t, either, and they wouldn’t relay anything to Wraith. Only when we were miles away did my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel lessen.
“Ian’s got a theory about what’s going on,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Well?” she prodded.
I got onto the freeway, heading toward Asheville. “You’re not going to like it, because it means that neither of us can go back.”
“What? No!” she said at once. “I’m not leaving Spade with some dick that’s got him acting like a robot for God knows what reason—”
“You think I like leaving Bones?” I cut her off. “I know exactly how hard this is, but if we ever want to see our husbands without them being the equivalent of Wraith’s wind-up toys, we need to work together.”
Her mouth remained mulishly set, but she asked, “What’s Ian’s theory?” without further argument.
I sighed and reached out, pulling up the sleeve of Denise’s cardigan to expose the dark, star-shaped marking on her forearm.
“Wraith’s spell is rooted in demonic magic, and the reason he can wield it is because under his long lacy sleeves, we think he has a pair of demon brands, too.”
Denise paled until our skin tones almost matched. I returned my attention to the road, not wanting to add to my woes with a high-speed collision.
Fabian recovered first. “If Wraith was also branded by a demon, then like Denise, he now has all the powers of that demon. He’ll be almost impossible to kill!”
“Bull’s-eye,” I noted dryly.
“We have a knife made of demon bone. Stab it through his eyes and he’ll die, same as I would,” Denise said, still sounding dazed by the information.
I gave her a jaded glance. “Where’s that knife now, huh?”
“Spade has it locked up for safety reasons,” she murmured, then added, “I don’t know where, and I can’t ask with him being all spell-addled. Fuck!”
I nodded. “That’s just what I’ve been saying.”
Fabian cleared his throat, which, for someone lacking a physical esophagus, was his way of politely telling us to pay attention.
“That could be, ah, rectified.”
I met his gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you think so, because part of our plan involves you helping us search Spade’s many houses to find it.”
A delicate cough. “That’s not necessary. The same, ahem, material is right here.”
“Fabian, get to the point, please? Your beating around the bush isn’t making any sense,” I said, exasperated.
“Yes it is,” Denise replied, drawing out each word. “He means we have all the demon bone we need in my body.”
Nine
IAN’S BROWS SHOT up. I repeated my statement more slowly, regretting this course of action but agreeing that it was necessary.
“We need to cut something off Denise and use her bones to make a weapon against Wraith.”
“Oh, I heard you the first time.” Ian’s mouth twisted as he looked at Denise. “I was just pondering how much your husband will beat my arse when he’s back to himself and hears about this.”
“Believe me, I won’t tell him if you won’t,” she replied with a touch of grim humor. Then her tone hardened. “But this changes things. We’ll carve two knives, and you’ll take one while I’ll take the other, because I’m going back to Spade.”
“You can’t. If Wraith finds out you’re like him, he’ll kill you on the spot!” I snapped.
“Better if we find a way to lure the others away from him first and then attack him,” Ian said, backing me up.
Denise let out a snort. “You guys are forgetting what happened when I killed the demon who branded me. It made everything he’d done to me permanent. If we kill Wraith without undoing his spell first, we risk everyone staying exactly as they are for the rest of their lives.”
The truth of that rolled over me like an avalanche. I’d thought it would be hard getting Wraith away from the equivalent of five bespelled vampire bodyguards so we could stab his eyes out, but what we’d need to do instead made that seem easy.
I let out a groan. “We have to find the demon that branded him, and hope to God he wants his power back.”
Ian snorted. “Poor analogy, Reaper.”