Page 60 of Demon Hunter

Ian’s leading Raum toward the kitchen, and I seize the opportunity to grab Marc’s arm—then let it go when he looks at my hand like it might be radioactive. “I need to talk to you,” I hiss.

“Are you certain?”

Am I— “Of course I’m fuckingcertain!” Jesus Christ, how does Ian put up with this guy? “We have to be quick, because nobody can know about this.”

His brows draw together. “Oh?”

“Did you turn me into a demon?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Marc truly flustered. His jaw actually drops. “I beg your pardon?”

“Since you did your thing and healed me, I’ve got superpowers or something. Did you turn me into a demon? I’m not accusing you of doing it on purpose,” I add. I need him on my side right now. “But if you did, accidentally, I need to know.”

“Nothing I do is accidental, Matthias. But no, I didnot… I won’t even say it. The idea is too ridiculous for words.”

I eye him. If he’s telling the truth—and I think he is—then that means I’m either in a coma or have head trauma. Or I’m in a coma and coma-dream Marc is lying. But then, that would make me a demon in a coma, and while I’m in the coma Dylan won’t leave me because he doesn’t know I’m a demon. But because I’m in the coma, we’re not really together anyway… except within the coma itself.

And I still don’t know if I’m in a coma or if I need to seek medical attention.

“Did you say you think you have superpowers?” Marc asks. “What makes you think that?”

I heave a sigh, my shoulders drooping, and lean against the wall. “I don’t think it, Iknowit. I can hear sounds I shouldn’t be able to, and smell things… and I’m a lot stronger now. Like, I know you said you healed me back to how I was before the beating, but I’m in even better shape than then and I can deadlift twice my body weight without even trying.”

Marc’s eyes narrow. “Hmm. I did notice in San Francisco that you were behaving oddly. But… why would you think you’d been turned into a demon? That’s not even possible,” he scoffs.

Since he’s my best bet at answers, I ignore the disrespect. “I was working with three scenarios: You’d turned me into a demon; I have head trauma and am imagining the superpowers; and I’m actually in a coma right now and none of this is real.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re not a demon. I’m offended that you believe I would miss something as obvious as head trauma when I healed you. And you are not in a coma.”

“That’s what someone who was in my coma dream would say,” I argue, but he ignores me.

“May I offer a fourth option?”

I flip a hand, expecting him to say something mean about humans.

“You’ve evolved ahead of your time.”

Chapter 26

Dylan

“It’s the same,”I insist. “I didn’t spend enough time looking at it before—not with the right focus. But whoever wrote the code for this website also wrote the code for the fake job sheet that set up Matt’s attack.”

Raum tilts his head. “I beg your pardon?”

“Matt was badly beaten earlier this month,” Marc explains. “He would have died had I not healed him.” There’s something a little too pointed in the way he says it, and Matt wraps his arms around himself. He’s been acting even weirder since I called them all back in here—maybe something happened while they were gone?

I’ll think about it later. “We were able to prove that the attack was deliberately planned, but not by whom. Now we know that whoever it is has some connection to the demon trafficking activity.”

“Are we sure?” Ian asks. “Don’t most companies hire people to design their websites?”

I shrug. “Yes, but it seems like a helluva coincidence that this company, whose head office site has been used repeatedly to summon demons, just happened to hire a website designer who knows about the Collective and set a hunter up to be murdered.Plus, most third-party web designers have it in their contracts that they can say they designed the site—usually it’s a note with a hyperlink in the footer. Free advertising. Nine times out of ten, if you see a site that doesn’t have that, it’s because it was designed in-house.”

“Is web design one of the services SuperTask offers?” Matt asks, speaking for the first time since they all came back in.

“No. But if they only have one person capable of it, and they’re trying to keep an eye on us via the internet, it would make sense not to split that person’s focus. Not to mention all the stuff they’d need to do to stay ahead of the government.”

“The government?” Raum parrots. “Your government knows about Crmærdinesgh?” He looks at Marc. “I was under a different impression.”

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