Secrets of the Demon (Kara Gillian 3)

“And what’s your cover story going to be for Eilahn here?” Zack asked with a nod toward the demon.

Crap. I hadn’t thought about that. “Um, a visiting cousin or something.”

“If I might make a suggestion?” Zack said. “If she’s here to protect you, then she’ll need to be in a position to be near you fairly often.”

I set my half-eaten burger down. “So she needs to be a cop or something.” Maybe Crawford could figure out a way to get her hired? But then how would she get through the background check? I’d have to get a whole identity forged for her, and I had only the barest idea of how to go about doing that. I could probably scrounge up some contacts, but it would take time and be risky.

“It’ll be too difficult to get her hired on with your department,” Zack continued in an echo of my thoughts. “With any department, for that matter, and you don’t have the luxury of time to do anything that requires detailed work. The easiest thing to do would be to have her be another member of our task force.”

I glanced at Eilahn to see how she was handling being talked about, but she seemed unconcerned, leaning against the wall with her thumbs tucked into the pockets of her jeans. Apparently she recognized that Zack had been through this before and was willing to benefit from his experience. Or least that was my assumption. At some point I was going to pin Zack down and squeeze more info from him.

“Great,” I said, “so she’ll be another FBI agent.”

But Zack shook his head. “No, still too easy to check that. Easier to make her foreign—here on an exchange program, or that sort of thing.” He flicked a glance at the silent demon. “That will also help cover any slips she makes with regards to culture or social stuff.”

I slid a look to Ryan. He was focused on Zack, and he had an odd expression on his face as if he was trying to remember something. Zack suddenly grinned cheekily. “I knew all those suspense thrillers would pay off!”

The confusion cleared from Ryan’s eyes as he smiled. A strange chill crawled down my back. So, if Zack is also Ryan’s guardian, is part of his duty making sure that Ryan doesn’t remember whatever it is he’s not supposed to remember? Is he a guardian or a prison guard? Or was the line between guard and guardian a fine one? Like a reverse Stockholm syndrome.

My appetite had disappeared, so I left the rest of my burger and excused myself to the hallway to call Crawford. When I pulled my phone out I realized that I’d several missed calls from him, and I groaned. Great, I wrecked my car and didn’t show up for work. Nice way to earn points with the rank.

“Goddamn it, Kara!” he said when he answered, in lieu of hello or anything of that ilk. “What the fuck is going on? Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry, Sarge. I’m okay. Had an unwelcome visitor last night.” I paused. “Ten-twelve?” Ten-twelve was the code for “Can you talk freely/are you alone?”

I heard a shuffling and then the closing of a door. “Okay, go ahead,” he said.

I gave him a quick rundown of what happened at my house last night, leaving out the part about being woken up by a demonic lord. Crawford was handling the woo-woo stuff all right so far, but I didn’t think he was quite ready for the bit about me summoning demons.

He muttered something foul. “All right, we’ll come up with something to explain what happened to your car. Do you know who sent that thing after you?”

“We have a pretty strong theory, but, well, we’ve run into a snag.”

“Go on.”

“I have no idea how to get a warrant that accuses someone of committing murder using an arcane construct,” I said sourly.

“Well, shit.”

“We’re trying to put together a plan,” I continued. “It would help if you were a part of it, but it might not, um, follow procedure.”

He was silent for several heartbeats. “Then it sounds like you might have need for me.”

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “We’re holed up at Ryan’s place. I’ll text you the address.”

“I’ll be on my way as soon as I get it.”

I disconnected and walked back to the living room. “Sarge is on board. Where the fuck are we?”

Ryan laughed and rattled off an address that I recognized as being even more out in the boonies than my own house. I quickly sent the text to Crawford, then plopped back down on the couch and concentrated on eating. No matter what course of action we decided on, I had a feeling I was going to need all available energy.

Crawford arrived about twenty minutes later, which gave me enough time to finish my burger and even finally pull a brush through the snarled mess that was my hair.

I introduced Eilahn and Crawford, quickly glossing over where she was from and why she was here. He gave her a gruff greeting, shook her hand, and then ignored her so studiously and carefully that it would have been insulting in any other circumstance. However, I was pretty sure that Crawford had somehow figured out that he didn’t really want to know too much more about her. Crawford’s tenuous acceptance of my weirdness seemed to include an instinct to not ask questions unless it was absolutely necessary.

Probably a damn smart move on his part.

“I think the first thing we have to do is find the golem and destroy it,” I said, once we’d all settled in the living room. “Then we can deal with Ben Moran without worrying about silly things like getting smacked by a giant clay monster.”