Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7)
Rowland, Diana
For my completely awesome readers! Seriously, do you even know how surreal it is to go from being an unpopular bullied nerd to having fans? So, yeah, Petey and Carrie and Angela and you other jerks in junior high who picked on me to hell and back, suck it! Ha!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Huge quantities of grateful appreciation are due to everyone and everything that made this book possible. Many thanks to Jack Hoffstadt, Tara Zeller, Charlie Watson, @notaalanister, Riv Hellington, Gerard Bultman, the Twitter hivemind, Mary Robinette Kowal, Anna Hoffstadt, and Sherry Rowland for vast quantities of help, support, and useful information. Praise and awe go out to my brilliant cover artist, Dan dos Santos, and of course the people who take care of all the pesky details: Matt Bialer, Lindsay Ribar, Betsy Wollheim, Joshua Starr, Marylou Capes-Platt, and everyone at DAW and Penguin. You all make my life much more fun.
Chapter 1
Accessory after the fact. Principal to murder in the first degree. End of life as I know it. Death row.
Those thoughts ricocheted through my mind as Detective Vincent Pellini arranged a half-dozen photos on the diner table between us. I took a sip of iced tea in an attempt to cover my shock. It didn’t matter one bit that Pellini pointed to a man front and center in one of the photos rather than the hazy figures in the background. My entire focus locked onto the distant blurry image of me, caught on camera seconds before the execution-style murder of James Macklin Farouche, as I stood shoulder to shoulder with the equally blurry killer.
My eyes slid to the other photos—all most likely taken with cell phone cameras. Watery ripples of distortion or jagged bands of color marred each one, but a few aspects were clear enough. People running. Faces full of panic and fear. Strange purple fire on rubble.
And then there were the details that only someone who’d been at the scene would be able to identify. A circle twenty feet across of charred grass. A pond steaming after being boiled away. The melted remains of a tablet computer.
Pellini tapped the man in the photo—powerfully built, with fading red hair and a ripple of photographic distortion through his face. “Angus McDunn,” he said. “He’s still at large with no sightings.”
I pushed aside my half-eaten cheesy fries and clung to the hope that Pellini couldn’t possibly recognize me in the blurry picture. “Farouche’s right-hand man,” I said, oh-so-coolly. “I’ve seen him on the news.” Up close and personal, too. Only a few weeks ago McDunn had held a MAC-10 submachine gun on me as motivation to have a conversation with his boss.
The booth seat creaked beneath Pellini’s bulk as he shifted. “Yeah, but here’s the kicker,” he said. “McDunn is Boudreaux’s stepfather.”
“You’re shitting me.” I stared at Pellini and pushed down my selfish worries about pesky murder trials. Detective Marcel Boudreaux was Pellini’s partner, a weaselly piece of work I’d had the displeasure of knowing for years. Yet even though Boudreaux ranked right below Pellini on my asshole list, in this moment I felt for him. With his slight stature and surly attitude, he already caught more than his fair share of crap from other cops. Add in a felon stepdad in a high-profile case, and things were sure to get ugly.
“Serious as a heart attack,” Pellini said. He swiped a piece of sausage through the mustard on his plate and popped it into his mouth. A speck of yellow bobbed on his mustache as he chewed and swallowed.
“Damn. How’s he holding up?”
“Coping by concentrating on finding Farouche’s killer,” Pellini said. “He’s obsessed.”
I sucked down more iced tea. I’d never known either Pellini or Boudreaux to be obsessed with a case. Why the hell did his first obsession have to involve me? “It’s not in Beaulac PD jurisdiction,” I said. “Is he assisting the sheriff’s office?”
“He’s restricted from the official investigation because of his stepdad’s involvement, but it’s not stopping him from doing whatever he can.” Pellini picked up his napkin and, to my relief, wiped away the dab of mustard.
“Yeah, but why is he so worked up over this?” I frowned down at the photos. “I mean, the news reports say Farouche was involved in organized crime. Clearly, he wasn’t the saint everyone thought he was.”