Pax Demonica (8 page)

“Protect it,” she whispered, leaning even closer so her mouth was near my ear.

“Get the knife away from him, or I swear I will end you.”

“You’ll do nothing to me while your child is at risk,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear it over Timmy’s whimpers. “But it is not me who is your enemy. I am nothing. Protect it with your life, because if the lock is opened, there will be no lives left to protect.”

With astonishing swiftness, she shifted the knife, moving it from Timmy’s neck to mine. We locked eyes, and I caught the minty scent of too much mouthwash. Then she turned, darted into the crowd, and was gone.

I dropped the carrot and clutched my son even tighter against my chest. In my arms, Timmy was still crying. Not because of the danger—I doubt he even knew there’d been a danger—but because of the noise and the crowd and the fact that everything was just too damn much.

I counted to five, allowing myself only that brief time to be horrified. Then I kissed his head and shifted him to my hip. As I did, I saw the produce lady looking at me, her brow knit in concern. I didn’t know if she’d seen the knife. But I knew she could tell I was scared.

Behind her, I saw the girl again. The one who looked like Allie. She stood on the far side of the produce stand, a stack of cantaloupe piled in front of her. She was staring right at me, not with the baffled expression of a shocked witness, but with the understanding countenance of someone who knew exactly what was going on.

Allie. Stuart
.

I clasped Timmy tight and bolted toward the exit, then stopped and doubled back. I’d forgotten the umbrella stroller.

I had no idea if demons had attacked Stuart and Allie, too. But I did know my husband. If they’d been ambushed, Stuart was going to be pissed, but he’d probably forgive an abandoned stroller. But if I left the stroller behind and all was well?

How the heck was I supposed to explain that?

“Mom!”
Allie squealed
the second I burst through the doors of the boutique. But it wasn’t terror that put that high pitch in her voice. It was lust.

Not for a boy. Not even for a dessert.

This was clothes lust.

She twisted and turned in front of a trifold mirror, trying to see the jacket from all angles. “Isn’t it awesome? And it’s just like yours.” She thrust out her arm to reveal a cuff that looked like it hung loose, but had a hidden interior cuff that clung to her wrist. The idea was to block the weather. I used it as part of a mechanism I’d hooked up for delivering a spring-loaded stiletto.

Stuart quirked a brow. “Practical clothing for the fashionable dem—”

“Go to Daddy,” I said quickly, releasing a squirming Timmy and giving his bottom a farewell pat.

“Sorry,” Stuart said, his glance darting quickly to the slender woman sorting inventory behind the nearby counter. “I am the very epitome of discretion.”

“So can I get it?” Allie asked. As far as I could tell, she’d been completely oblivious to my conversation with Stuart who, I noticed, hadn’t scooped up Timmy. Instead, he was fondling a finely crafted briefcase while our son plonked down on the floor and started digging through baskets filled with leather wallets.

I cleared my throat to get his attention and then looked pointedly at our busy little boy. Stuart shrugged guiltily, then retrieved the kid, who howled in protest and made a move to eat a billfold. I quelled my maternal urges and looked away, hoping that Stuart could wrangle the wallet free before we had to buy it.

“Mom!” Allie thrust her arms out, demanding my attention. “Hello? Can we get it?”

“How much?”

She shimmied out of it and started searching for a price tag which, naturally, she didn’t find. I asked the sales girl who, as far as I could tell, had decided we were nothing more than annoying tourists, and it was in her best interest to ignore us. Even my Italian didn’t loosen her up.

“Four hundred and twenty-five American dollars,” I told Allie, trying to not reveal my sticker shock to the girl while at the same time communicating to Allie that there was no way in hell she was getting that jacket.

“So can I get it?”

Apparently my communication skills left a lot to be desired.

“We’ll think about it,” I said. “Come on. It’s already past noon.”

“What’s for lunch?” Stuart asked as Allie sighed and moaned and made a show of returning the jacket to the rack.

I reached for the tote bag with the sausage and bread, then realized that I must have lost it at the market. “Ah, right. Well, I thought we’d go to this fabulous little café I remember near the Spanish Steps,” I said, leading my troops out the door. “Assuming it’s still there.”

“I thought we were picnicking.”

“That was my first plan,” I said brightly. “But the lines at the market were insane. And then I remembered the café and thought that would be a fabulous place to have our first Roman lunch. Besides, they have an amazing wine list. Or they did. Okay?”

“Sure,” Stuart said agreeably. Allie, however, was peering at me with much more comprehension.

What happened?
she mouthed.

I looked pointedly at Stuart, who was occupied with coaxing Tim back into the stroller.
Later
, I mouthed back.

Stuart didn’t notice our exchange, as he was already running down the itinerary he’d planned while I’d been in the market. “We can have lunch first, of course, but if we’re already in the area, I’d like to do as much as we can. The Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain. Maybe even the Colosseum and the Forum. What do you think?”

I thought it sounded like way too much for a family that included a toddler, but I kept that opinion to myself. The truth was, I wanted away from the
Borgo Pio
. I wanted to get lost in a crowd. I was feeling exposed—and that wasn’t a feeling I liked.

Not that there weren’t demons in all those places Stuart listed. In fact, there were probably more. You might think that the looming presence of St. Peter’s basilica would keep the nasties away, but you’d be wrong.

As a general rule, demons avoided places with a lot of holy relics and holy ground, but there were exceptions, and Rome was high on that list. Because while demons couldn’t walk on holy ground—not without a whole lot of pain—they’d endure the torment if there was something they really wanted. And Rome had a lot of stuff that demons wanted. Relics, icons, mystical doo-dads. Holy, yes. But black magic rituals usually required something sacred. And demons were all about the black magic. Which meant that Rome was the big leagues, and any self-respecting demon wanting to pull off something major was going to make a pilgrimage sooner or later.

To be fair, it wasn’t all about the snatching of holy items and the desecration of sacred places. It was also about being close to the enemy. If the Church was training Demon Hunters, well, it only made sense for the demons to hang around and try to learn as much as they could about our elite little force.

Those, at least, were the commonly accepted explanations for Rome’s rather hefty demon population. Personally, I thought the real reason was something deeper. I hadn’t delved too far into the psychology of demons, but I’d been around long enough to pick up on some truisms. And the biggie? Demons wanted what they couldn’t have—they wanted to experience humanity. What’s more human than faith? We could go our whole lives without ever truly knowing that something greater waits for us beyond the curtain of death, and yet we still believed. We still had
faith
.

I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know that there were unseen things that shared the world with us. Dark and scary things that lived in the ether and sought a toe-hold on this life. I knew because I saw. And because I’d seen the darkness, my faith in the light was strong, and I’d clung to it with desperate determination.

But I’d often wondered if my faith would have been so strong if I’d lived a different life. If I’d been another Kate growing up in the Midwest, going to church, playing on a farm. If I’d never seen a real demon and my fears about what might be hiding in the closet never came true. I liked to think that I would believe just the same, but I didn’t know if that that was true. And whenever I met a person with true, deep faith, I knew that I’d encountered the heart of what made us all truly human.

“Kate?” Stuart thrust his arm out, stopping me before I walked into traffic. “Where are you?”

“Sorry. I was just—memories. It’s great to be back, but a little weird, too.”

“I’m glad we came. I want to share this with you. Timmy, too, even though he won’t remember the trip.”

“No,” I laughed. “He won’t. Allie refuses to believe that she ever had a crush on Captain Hook. But then I whip out those pictures from when she was three, and suddenly I have a whole cache of prom night bribery photos. It’s awesome.”

“Pictures!” Allie blurted from behind us. “I forgot my camera!”

“I thought that was one of the reasons we bought you an iPhone,” I said. “It has a camera built in.”

“Mo-
om
. Hello? Rome. I want the real camera. I want to be able to zoom and do effects and all that stuff. I mean, I schlepped it all the way here and I promised Daddy I’d take a bunch of awesome photos, so. . .”

She trailed off, and I sucked in a breath. Her father had bought her the camera—a fancy Nikon—as a present for the trip that, I was certain, was also supposed to assuage his guilt for leaving San Diablo. I wasn’t sure how his guilt was doing, but I did know that Allie loved the camera.

“Fine,” I said because what else could I say? I pointed down the street to the subway station. “We’ll meet you guys right there,” I said. “We should be back in less than ten minutes.”

“So?” Allie said as we hurried back to the B&B. “You haven’t changed your mind about telling me, right?”

“I haven’t,” I said, then brought her up to date.

“But what is ‘it’?” she asked. “A key, right? Because she mentioned a lock?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“So it was probably stolen from the cathedral, don’t you think?”

I
did
think, actually, and I was impressed that my daughter made the jump. “What makes you think so?”

“Duvall was on the plane,” she said. “I mean, he came from California all the way here, right?”

“So you think Duvall had our mystery key?”

“I dunno. What I really think is that he assumed
you
had it. Like that’s why he was on the plane. To follow you.”

“You might be right.” I glanced at my watch. Not yet one. “Laura’s probably still asleep, but once she checks out Duvall’s background, maybe we’ll know more.”

“What’s that going to tell us? I mean, by the time we saw him, he was already a demon. Does it really matter what his body was doing before that?”

She had a point, but I didn’t want to admit it. That’s me, the eternal optimist. Fortunately, I was saved from answering by the fact that we’d arrived back at the B&B. “Where’s your camera?”

“In my backpack.”

“You gave it to Stuart on the plane so he could switch out the batteries.”

“And he gave it back.”

I handed her the key to the room Stuart and I shared. “Just in case I’m right.”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue as she sprinted for the stairs. I watched her go, tapped my foot, then glanced at my watch. Stuart and Timmy were perfectly safe (I told myself) but I still wanted to hurry back to them.

“Katherine?”

I jumped, then turned to find Mrs. Micari behind me, her hands hidden under a dishtowel.

“You are back so soon.” Her gaze darted from me to the stairs and then back to me again. “Is something wrong?”

“Not a thing. Allie just forgot her camera.”

“Ah, I see.” Her lips pulled into a thin line.

“Is that a problem?”

She waved my words away as if they were the silliest thing she’d ever heard. “Is nothing. The cleaning. I have just waxed the bathroom floors.” Her tone was casual and the tight lines of her face disappeared so completely that I had to wonder if I’d imagined them.

“Signora,” I began, but that’s as far as I got before I was interrupted by the high, powerful punch of Allie’s scream.

And this time, I knew it wasn’t about a jacket.

Chapter 7

I
took the stairs three at a time
and found Allie standing in the middle of my ransacked room. Every single piece of luggage had been opened. Every single item of clothing had been tossed out. Drawers hung open and empty. The mattress lay askew, most of its bulk now held up by the floor.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even curse. Because what the hell was there to say?

“I don’t think they even took anything,” Allie whispered. She thrust her hand toward me and I saw the camera, the brand new Nikon that Eric had bought for her. Definitely not the kind of thing your average thief would pass up.

“It was on the floor, just right there on the floor,” Allie said. “Like they couldn’t care less.”

I was certain she was right—demons weren’t big on scrapbooking, and they rarely have Facebook pages.

From behind us, Mrs. Micari drew in a sharp breath. I whipped around to face her. “What the hell did you do?”