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  Caleb frowned. “That was for us?”

  Between one moment and the next, Yuri was gone, and it was Dru who watched Caleb. His energy rolled over Caleb’s skin: immense, utterly different from even something like the grendel. Was this how Gray felt to an exorcist like John? “To prove to you we can hunt together again. Just as I kept the vila from fleeing, so you could catch her. I wished to show you. To remind you.” A slow smile spread over his face, revealing fangs. “Gray.”

  Gray pushed at Caleb impatiently, and he reluctantly gave way. “You wish to hunt together again?” Gray asked. Because of course that was what he would focus on.

  “I do.” Dru’s fangs flashed. “But Yuri says Caleb has many more questions. That this is natural for humans, to ask and ask and ask.”

  “Mortal nonsense,” Gray agreed.

  Dru tipped his head to one side, long, pale hair tumbling gracefully across his shoulder. Listening to Yuri? “Tomorrow evening. There is a bar at Queen St. and Prioleau. Yuri will buy the drinks.”

  Tell him I agree.

  “Caleb agrees.”

  “Good.” Dru hopped onto the rail, balancing with inhuman ease on the round metal bar. “Enjoy your dinner.”

  Then he dropped over the side into the marsh, and was gone.

  * * *

  “John’s going to freak when he finds out about this,” Caleb muttered aloud. Gray, not one to pass up a free meal, had happily polished off the ghoul. Now Caleb wandered idly, his head too full of everything that had happened to even consider going back to the condo.

  Another drakul. Another living drakul, the possibility of which had scared the shit out of the Vigilant, and for damned good reason.

  “No,” Gray said vehemently. “They did not have good reason. They feared us, and for what?”

  You do remember the part where we almost ate everyone on Fort Sumter, right?

  “But we did not.”

  Because of John.

  Gray brushed the thought aside. “They feared us before, when we had done nothing. SPECTR fears us now, even though we saved them. We cannot tell them about Drugoy and Yuri.”

  Caleb remembered how Ericsson and the other agent had talked about them. As though he and Gray were just things. There’d been no attempt to understand, to get to know them. Just revulsion.

  He could imagine how Ericsson and those like him would react to Dru easily enough. Caleb and Gray roamed free thanks to the role they’d played stopping Forsyth. Yuri and Dru didn’t have even that much to protect them.

  SPECTR would see them as something to be destroyed at all costs. And if Caleb and Gray didn’t go along, they’d be on the chopping block too.

  There was only one potential problem. I don’t know if John’s going to agree to hide Yuri and Dru. He’d do anything for us, but concealing something as potentially dangerous as another living drakul? That’s huge. John’s going to feel it’s his duty to report them.

  “Then we will not tell John.”

  Caleb came to a halt. The wind blew through the live oaks and rustled the palmettos: hot and sticky with humidity. You want to keep this a secret?

  “We kept our search for them from John, did we not?”

  Because it might cause John trouble. Especially with Barillo.

  “And has that changed?” Gray countered.

  Fuck. Caleb chewed on his lip uncertainly. He’d always thought that once they figured out what the not-demon was, they’d either take care of it themselves or ask John for guidance.

  “We did not realize it would be another like us. We did not realize it would be…him.”

  Yeah, and that’s something else that bothers me. Caleb shook his head. What are the odds that the one drakul we meet is your ex? Or whatever Dru had been to Gray.

  “I have seen much stranger coincidences in my time on this earth.”

  Maybe.

  Shit. Gray was right. If they told John, he’d definitely call in SPECTR. Best case scenario, Yuri and Dru would be forced to flee Charleston. And the one person who could answer Caleb’s questions—the one who really understood what it was like to live this way—would be gone.

  You’re right. Caleb couldn’t pass up this chance. Just one conversation with Yuri, and he’d already learned that he’d better be happy with looking twenty-six forever. God only knew what else Yuri could tell him, things Caleb hadn’t even thought to consider yet. We won’t tell John. Not now, anyway.

  “I am glad you are finally seeing sense.”

  Yeah, yeah. Don’t let it go to your head. Caleb took a deep breath and started walking again. And tried to ignore the little worm of guilt squirming in his chest.

  * * *

  “What is this all about?” asked the young man who answered the front door of the apartment not far from campus.

  Not far, and yet a world away. Given the shabby exterior and cracked parking lot, John wondered if he might be a scholarship student. The digging he’d been able to do into the campus online suggested they set aside a handful of places each year for “poor and underprivileged students.”

  “Arthur Inverness?” John asked. At his nod, John flashed his badge. “SPECTR. I’m Special Agent Starkweather, and this is Agent Rand. Can we come in?”

  Inverness’s gaze went to the green arm band on Karl’s suit, which identified him as an empath. Even though Inverness was a registered exorcist himself, a look of fear and revulsion flickered across his face. John clenched his jaw and worked to keep his own emotions calm. Karl knew better than anyone how badly empaths were treated; he didn’t need John giving him a second dose of anger to deal with on top of his own.

  “Sure,” Inverness said warily. He took a step back, beckoning them into the dim interior. A whiff of garbage drifted from the overflowing can in the kitchen directly off the main room. Pizza boxes covered most of a coffee table, and posters of bands and scantily clad women papered the walls. “My roommates aren’t here right now.”

  “You’re the one we want to talk to,” John replied as he took a seat on the couch Inverness indicated. The couch’s springs were long worn out, and cigarette holes showed on the worn brown upholstery. Karl settled beside him, and Inverness took a chair several feet away, perching nervously on the very edge.

  “What’s this about?” Inverness fished out his wallet. “I’ve got my registration card, and I filled out the change of address paperwork before I moved to Charleston.”

  “You’re an exorcist, correct?” John asked, though he knew the answer already.

  Inverness showed him the registration card with its purple band around the edges. “That’s right. What’s this about?”

  No sense beating around the bush. Certainly not with Karl there to let him know if Inverness told the truth or not. “Have you ever summoned an NHE?”

  “No!” Inverness’s face went white, and he almost dropped his wallet. “Did someone say I did? Because they were lying.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Karl said.

  “That’s right!” Inverness exclaimed. His fear of Karl’s empathic ability had, predictably, turned to gratitude. “Listen to him. I haven’t summoned any demons, or banished any, or had anything to do with the damned things.”

  Inverness’s talent was undoubtedly much smaller than John’s. Far too weak to do anything useful with, or else he would have been snapped up by SPECTR as a teen. Still, an exorcist’s gifts weren’t like telekinesis, or pyrokinesis, or any of the rest. They had no other real practical application beyond interacting with NHEs.

  What would it be like, to let the gift rot inside, unused? To know it had to remain that way, or else someone with a badge and a gun would come knocking on your door?

  John thrust the thought aside. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I don’t suppose you know anyone who has recently summoned or interacted with an NHE?”

  “No,” Inverness said vehemently. “Wait—is this about the…whatever it was? The thing I sensed? How the hell did you know?”

  John glanced at Karl, who looked equally baffled. “What did you sense?” John asked.

  Inverness slumped back and ran a hand over his jaw. “Fuck, I don’t know. I was out on the Battery with my parents. Place was packed with tourists, but they’d never been to Charleston, so I wanted to show them the sights. And that’s when I felt…it.”

  John leaned forward. The Battery wasn’t anywhere near the campus, but that didn’t mean the grendel hadn’t been roaming around. Or that Inverness hadn’t brushed up against some other faust. “Can you describe what you sensed?”

  “Something big.” Inverness swallowed. “That was my first impression. That there was…I don’t know, a predator nearby, like a grizzly or something. I can barely manipulate etheric energy at all, and I’ve never sensed an NHE from a distance before. I don’t know what the fuck it was, but you’d better believe I grabbed my parents and ran.”

  “I see,” John said, though he didn’t. It could have been the grendel, but he doubted it now. Someone with Inverness’s level of talent wasn’t likely to sense an unmanifested NHE, even one as powerful as a grendel.

  Could it have been Gray? The Battery wasn’t far from the condo. “When was this? Do you remember the date?”

  “Sure. Weekend before last. Saturday, because that’s the only full day my parents were here.”

  Not Gray, then. They’d spent that weekend on Isle of Palms, tracking the alligator therianthrope.

  So what had it been?

  “I didn’t report it, because I didn’t know what to say,” Inverness went on. “I don’t know what it was, or who the source was in the crowd. I figured it was best to just forget about it and leave it to you Specs.” He frowned. “So that’s not why you’re here?”

  John rose to his feet. “I’m afr
aid not. One last question: did you know either Derek Scheffler or Brice Wilkinson?”

  “Derek? He’s the guy who was killed the other day, right?” Inverness shook his head. “Never met him. And I’ve got no clue as to the other one.”

  Karl nodded, and John made his way to the door. Inverness trailed after them. “Thank you for your help.” John took out his card. “If you sense anything else out of the ordinary, call this number, day or night.”

  Once they were back in the car, John said, “So no lies?”

  Karl shook his head. “He believed every word he told us, at any rate.” He hesitated. “What do you think he sensed on the Battery?”

  No doubt Karl had picked up John’s concern over that part of the story. “I have no idea.” John cranked the car. “But the way things have been going lately, I’m afraid it’s nothing good.”

  Chapter 6

  Caleb and Zahira sat in the back of a small lecture hall, while sobbing students shared their memories of Derek Scheffler.

  While John interviewed more exorcists, Caleb and Zahira had returned to campus, for yet another fruitless day of searching for any sign of the grendel. When they’d spotted a flyer for a memorial for Scheffler being held by the frat he’d belonged to, the opportunity had seemed too good to pass up.

  Unfortunately, no one in Scheffler’s family seemed to be in attendance. The coach had already refused to talk to them, citing student privacy regulations. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t talk to Scheffler’s friends.

  A few of Scheffler’s tennis teammates spoke, along with Scheffler’s girlfriend, but mostly the memorial consisted of his frat brothers reminiscing over the good times. Or some sanitized version thereof, where they spent all day helping little old ladies across the street and didn’t even know what the word “kegger” meant. They all looked rich as fuck—even their haircuts probably cost a few hundred bucks a pop.

  Zahira listened intently, then leaned over and whispered to Caleb, “I say we talk to the best friend. Hunter Pochron.”

  “What does he hunt? Is it demons?”

  The only thing this guy hunts is sorority babes. Pochron had spoken first, identifying himself as the one to organize the memorial. He had perfect brown hair, kissed by the sun, and teeth so white Caleb worried the people in the front row would be struck blind.

  When the memorial finally ended, everyone began to shuffle out. Pochron lingered, shaking hands and conversing sorrowfully. Once the crowd thinned out, Zahira led the way to the front.

  “Hunter Pochron?” she asked.

  He turned, got a good look at them both, and his smile faded. “Who are you?”

  From what Caleb had seen of the student body, there weren’t many brown-skinned women in hijabs, let alone long haired goths, roaming around campus. Certainly not together. Zahira pulled out her badge. “Special Agent Noorzai, SPECTR. This is Mr. Jansen. We have a few questions for you.”

  Pochron glanced at the others around them and nodded. “I’ll catch up with you guys at the bar.” He turned back to them. “We figured that would be a good place to keep swapping stories about Derek.”

  “I’m sure it’s what he would have wanted,” Caleb said.

  “Exactly,” Pochron agreed. “So why do you need to talk to me? Have you found the killer?”

  “We’re pursuing every available lead,” Zahira replied. “Even the most unlikely ones.” She took out her notebook. “The memorial was lovely, by the way. It sounds like Mr. Scheffler will be missed by a great many people.”

  Pochron’s eyes grew misty. “Yeah. Derek was the best, you know?” He looked away, clearly struggling to hold in tears. “The sort of guy who’d do anything for a friend. And when he was on the court…he was going to be one of those players where even people who don’t care about tennis know his name. The next Roger Federer.”

  Caleb resisted pointing out he’d never heard of Federer. “Right. So he was a great guy. Everybody loved him.”

  Pochron nodded. “Yeah. He was so much fun to be around.”

  “So he didn’t have anyone who would want to do him harm?” Zahira asked.

  Pochron’s expression shifted into one of disapproval. “Of course not.”

  “And he never got in any sort of trouble?” Caleb asked.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Scheffler took a step back from them. “I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but Derek was the best. He sure as fuck didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

  “No one’s saying he did,” Zahira replied soothingly. “We’re only looking into every possible option.”

  “Wasting taxpayer money is what you’re doing.” A sneer crept over his lips. “Investigating Derek, instead of going out and finding his killer. Do you know who my father is?”

  Caleb bit his tongue; John would be proud of his restraint. Zahira kept her face carefully neutral as well. “We have to look into all possible lines of investigation, sir. Lives are at stake. Did Mr. Scheffler know the former Dean of Student Affairs? Mr. Wilkinson?”

  Pochron’s expression darkened. “Fuck off. I’ve got nothing more to say to you people.”

  “If you change your mind,” Zahira began and held out a card.

  Pochron tore it out of her hand and threw it on the ground. A moment later, he’d stormed out, leaving them alone in the lecture hall.

  Caleb exchanged a look with Zahira. “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

  “Agreed.” A furrow appeared between her brows. “Then again, people do have a tendency to get defensive about the dead. Anything that suggests they weren’t a perfect angel can feel like disrespect.”

  “I get that,” Caleb said. His own brother had been part of an anti-paranormal hate group. Not the way he’d wanted to remember Ben.

  “But it is the path he chose. Surely it would be disrespectful to deny what he wished to do.”

  Yeah, that’s not how it works. People don’t want to remember uncomfortable facts. Especially about someone they loved.

  “Ah. Mortal nonsense.”

  They left the lecture hall and descended the steps from the academic building. Pochron was still in sight, striding rapidly away with his hands shoved in his pockets. The evening air was just starting to cool off, and the campus seemed mostly deserted. Not many night courses at a swanky place like this.

  “So what next?” Caleb asked. They crossed a brick patio with a large gazebo in the center. The gazebo’s concrete dome was held up by thick pillars; it looked like the sort of place students would relax between classes.

  “We report back to John, and hope he had better luck,” she said.

  Right. Then Caleb had to come up with some excuse to slip away. Yuri would be waiting for him, and that wasn’t an appointment he could afford to miss. One good thing about John going off with Karl to harass anyone registered as an exorcist: Caleb hadn’t had to spend the day feeling guilty about hiding Yuri and Dru.

  The scent of marshy rot and old blood came to him on the breeze.

  Caleb froze, nostrils flaring. Zahira glanced at him worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s here,” Caleb said. “The grendel.”

  Zahira instantly went on alert. “Where?”

  Caleb shook his head, scanning the area as he did so. Oh hell, Pochron—the guy might be a douche, but they had to warn him there was a killer in the area.

  Except Pochron was no longer in sight.

  Shit. Maybe he’d just turned off or gone behind a tree during the seconds Caleb had glanced down at Zahira. “Just follow us,” he said, and broke into a run.

  The grendel’s scent grew stronger and stronger. “It is near.”

  Caleb’s teeth burned, and his fingertips ached, Gray riding the fine line of manifestation. The wind kicked up, but it wasn’t the only thing that sent his long hair unspooling behind him like a black spill of ink. Hold on, Gray, damn it. If Pochron sees you, he’ll freak out and cause even more trouble for us.

  “Where is it?” Zahira called behind him.

  “I don’t know.” The scent was overwhelming, saturating the air. So where the hell was the thing?

  Caleb stopped, turning around in circles, and felt Gray’s impatience clawing at the underside of his skin.

  “We’ve got to be right on top of it,” he said, baffled. Zahira cast about, her Glock drawn and ready.