Page 10 of Demon Sworn
I land by the backdoor and text Zolroth to let me in. The menagerie would bark and howl up a storm if I came in through the garage or the front door, ready to greet the “new arrival.” But one of the million of them is always getting let in and out of our townhouse to pee, so they don’t give a crap about the backdoor.
Zolroth’s face is grim when I stomp in. It isn’t until he leaves the backdoor open that I even register the fact that Akor and Kastros have landed just behind me.
“You tell Raz?” I ask.
Zolroth nods, and I note that he’s showered and tossed on some casual khakis and a blue T-shirt. His eyes slide shiftily down the hall, because apparently, he sucks as much at this secretive detective shit as we do. “He’s with her.”
“Good.”
“I’ve been working in here so that she thinks I’m ironing.” It’s a good cover. Fucker is always ironing his shirts. Thinks the damned dry cleaners don’t get the lines crisp enough.
Zolroth leads us into the laundry room, which quickly gets crowded as shit with all of us and our wings. I retract mine, and Akor and Kastros follow suit. I stare at Zolroth, wishing I could just download everything he knows like a fucking computer so that I can piece this shit together faster. Get Adam backfaster.
Zolroth’s hand goes to the back of his neck, and he rubs the muscles. Not a good sign. “So, it looks like the bills for that apartment have been paid out of the new checking account that Katrina’s parents opened, and that all appears legit.”
Kastros growls next to me, a horrid, wordless noise emitting from his tongueless mouth.
Zolroth pulls his hand forward to hold up a single finger. “But here’s the thing, lads. When I checked their cellphone bills to see who the blighters might have called, their phones have hardly been used for weeks.”
Akor’s brow furrows. “What?”
Kastros signs,Not even for Among Us?
“Not everyone plays video games all day at school, Kastros.” Zolroth rolls eyes.
Kastros and I exchange glances. Posing as a student, Zolroth doesn’t always do the same things we do. But Kastros plays teacher and I pretend to care about counseling students through the worst moments of their tragic, upper-middle-class lives, which means we play that game almost daily while we’re trapped inside Katrina’s posh, little educational prison, waiting for our lady love to graduate.
“No social media?” I ask.
“No emails? Don’t they work and shit?” Akor asks.
“Nothing.” Zolroth’s voice is solemn.
Cold steals over my body, and I am incredibly glad I told Zolroth to sneak away from Katrina. Because this is bad. Very bad.
“How many hours a day does the average person spend on their phone?” I chew my lip as I ask the question.
Zolroth googles it. “Five and a half.” His face grows pale.
My wings burst back out as I stare at him, and his deep brown eyes reflect the same solemn realization I’m sure he sees in mine. I take a deep breath and try to speak as calmly and evenly as I can, though my chest feels like a damn cannonball just shot through it.
Even though Kastros is our former leader, even though Raz is typically our decision-maker, I feel certain I know what has to come next. It makes my stomach crackle and my knees grow stiff. I stare at Zolroth. “You stay here. We’re going back out and splitting up.”
Zolroth nods, and every eye in the room falls on me. I turn to the other two demons and keep my voice steady as I say, “We need to go out and search the morgues.”
* * *
The morgue isa dry sort of cold, not the kind that comes with snow, but the kind that comes in the desert, when the deadly heat flees only to be replaced by a cold that’s equally savage.
The sobbing of the coroner I freaked out when I walked in with wings and horns and shoved him clear across the floor is background music to the metallic slide of trays as I open one door, then another, searching each body, checking the tags that mark them. The only remnants of their life left are little scratches on paper that scream their name.
No.
No.
No.
None of the faces match the photo that Zolroth texted me of Katrina and her parents. None until… I pull out my phone to be sure, glancing from the smiling man on the screen to the sunken face in front of me.
