“This is for your silence about what we discussed,” he said, holding out the money. The demon pocketed it in a blink.
Not only were we letting the demon go free, we were paying him for telling us absolutely nothing. I gave a last disgusted shake of my head and turned around, heading for the exit.
I was about to yank open the door to the roof when the demon said, “You know, there is one other way you might be able to narrow down your search.”
I froze before slowly turning around. Ian’s brow arched, but the demon said nothing else. Instead, he stared at the lump of folded bills Ian was about to put back in his coat.
Ian snorted and peeled off another few. “This is all you get on good faith. Impress me, and you’ll get more.”
The demon pocketed the money before glancing around, as if fearing other demons would ascend from the floor of the roof. Then he lowered his voice.
“I’m not supposed to consort with vampires, but I like your style—and your money—so bring me one of the spelled vamps, and I’ll tell you the power required to conjure that sort of enchantment. You’ll know then if the demon who branded your boy is medium-level, a higher up, or one of the original Fallen.”
Ian pulled off a thick stack of bills. The demon’s eyes bugged, but before he could snatch it, Ian held it out of reach.
“If you’re truly able to determine the power level of Wraith’s brander, and help us find him or her, I’ll give you triple this. My word on it.”
The demon pulled out a piece of paper and pen, then scribbled on it. I came close enough to see that it was a series of symbols followed by the word “Balchezek.”
“My true name,” he said, holding it out to Ian. “Draw this in unsoiled blood, say my name three times, and I’ll appear.”
“Don’t you just have a cell phone number you can give us?” Demons and their love of bloody rituals.
He slid a jaded glance my way. “I’m guessing when you call, you’ll be pressed for time, so I’m giving you the no-waiting-required method. Besides, you never need to worry about coverage bars or dropped calls with this.”
Good point, but I had one more question. “By unsoiled blood, do you mean freshly shed instead of bagged plasma?”
Balchezek exchanged a glance with Ian, who rolled his eyes. “Times like this I feel old,” Ian muttered, to a grunt of agreement from the demon. “He means virgin’s blood.”
I bristled. “Are you trying to say that if a chick gives it up, she’s considered soiled? What kind of sexist bullshit is—”
“It can be male blood, too,” Balchezek said, winking at me. “Whatever turns you on.”
Twelve
IAN AND I had just made it back to our hotel room when Fabian appeared without so much as a chill in the air to warn of his presence.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for hours!”
“Sorry I’m late for curfew, Mom,” I mocked, then stilled at his expression. “What happened?”
The ghost looked so stricken I thought my knees might buckle. Was it Bones? Oh God, if something happened to him . . .
“Cat, you have been disowned,” Fabian said.
I waited a beat, but he didn’t follow that up with anything else. Amidst my overwhelming relief that no one was dead, I was confused. Especially when Ian muttered, “Bugger,” the same way someone else would say “fuck.”
“Um, I haven’t talked to my mother in two weeks, but we left things on good terms, and though my uncle and I aren’t speaking at the moment, I don’t think—”
“He means Crispin cut you off from his line,” Ian interrupted, shooting me a look filled with grimness and pity.
That jelly-kneed feeling returned with a vengeance. I sat down, trying to absorb the information without doing anything ridiculous, like crying.
It wasn’t fear that made my emotions reel with this news, though Bones cutting me off from his line was considered a worse punishment than execution, in the vampire world. It left me on the lowest level of undead society, fair game for anyone who wanted to mete out cruelty without chance of repercussions. No, that’s not what upset me the most. It was the knowledge that this was the closest Bones could come to divorcing me. Under vampire law, we would be married until one of us was all the way dead, but this was his public statement that I meant less than nothing to him. Hell, Mencheres hadn’t even cut off his former wife, Patra, before she died, and she’d been trying to kill him.
“You know this isn’t Crispin,” Ian said. He sat next to me and patted my leg in a kindly fashion. “Wraith should hope we find the demon who branded him. He’d die easier under that bloke’s hand than under Crispin’s when he’s back to himself and hears of this.”