Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

wool, my favorite. I let the tears come for the first time since I’d been abducted, silent and hot on my face, leaving a trail of moisture and mascara against Will’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” I choked. “I made a mess of everything.”

“Don’t talk,” Will whispered, kissing the top of my head, holding me in a viselike grip that his slim frame belied. “Don’t say anything. Just let me hold you and convince myself you’re really here.”

I breathed in Will’s scent, soap and aftershave and the sharp prickle of magick underneath, from the curse running in his blood. “It’s good to be home,” I whispered.

“Good to have you,” Will said, finally releasing me. “Jesus, doll, you look like death warmed over.”

“Feel like it, too,” I said.

“How about a bath and a change of clothes?” Will said. “My loft is closer.”

I shouldered the bag with Grigorii Belikov’s laptop inside. That, I’d made sure to retrieve before Masha and I left the lab. I only regretted that it wasn’t Grigorii and Dr. Gorshkov, in handcuffs. “Fine,” I said. “Lead the way.”

Will got us back to his condo without breaking any major traffic laws and started a bath for me with the frilly kind of soap for bubbles, before sitting on the toilet lid as I stripped off my clothes painfully. “I’ll run a load of laundry,” he said. “You should have plenty of stuff to wear from the last time you were over.”

“Burn those fucking clothes,” I said. “They smell like death.”

Will’s eyes narrowed at the sight of my ribs, which had grown a spectacular blue-purple bruise, like a cluster of exotic orchids under my skin. “Who did that to you?”

“Something that’s dead now,” I said honestly. Will passed a hand through his hair, his gesture of nervousness, his tell. I’d missed it so much that I had to restrain myself from kissing him, bruising him in turn.

“I said I wasn’t going to ask myself what happened when you were abducted. I said I was going to wait and let you tell me when you were ready.”

I paused, in my bra and jeans. “Will…”

“I drove myself crazy during the time you were gone,” he said. “Thinking about what I knew about the trafficking rings the ATF had been involved in busting, and thinking about you with Dmitri Sandovsky.”

That was all it took. I started to cry, my face crumpling up like I was five.

“N-nothing…” I started. “Nothing happened … He’s dead, Will.”

“Oh, Christ,” Will said, coming to me and pulling me to his chest. “I’m so sorry, Luna. What an asshole thing to say.”

I looked at my bloodstained toes, at the Majolica pattern on the tiles on Will’s bathroom floor. Memories flooded back, the were sending them to me as vividly as if they were still happening. The crate. The man in my cell after Grigorii had decided to dispose of me. The sound his neck had made, snapping in the small space.

Dmitri’s last breath, as his fingers slipped off of my skin.

I’ve killed people before, good shootings all, and I still always felt the bottomless pit just beyond my toes. Now, I felt nothing. I didn’t have remorse. I didn’t have anything inside me except a monster and an empty place where everything else used to be.

Will let me go, holding me at arm’s length. “Just tell me what to do, Luna.”

“I need to be alone,” I said, wrapping my arms around me. “It’s not you, it’s just … I haven’t had privacy for weeks. Could you…?”

Will nodded, jumping up too quickly, almost tangling in his own legs. “Of course. Of course I can.” He backed out and shut the door, which I locked. Not because I didn’t feel safe with Will, but because it was the first time I’d been able to do it since Nikolai Rostov had kidnapped me.

I slipped out of my clothes, kicking them into the corner, and proceeded to scrub every inch of my skin that didn’t hurt too much to accept soap and water.

While I scrubbed, I thought. Thinking may not have been my best course of action at the time, but I couldn’t stop my mind from unspooling once Will set me on the trail.

I’d killed someone in cold blood, purely for survival, and I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it. He was a rapist who got his rocks off with girls who were too scared or used up to fight back, true, but he was still dead and I was still the instrument of his passing.

What mattered more was that I’d let the were take me again and again, and I hadn’t fought it, hadn’t tried to bring the beast under the control of my human side like I’d done so successfully for the past year. I’d let the monster run, and I’d enjoyed it.

Will could never know.

That decision settled like a small smooth stone in my gut. I kicked out the plug on the tub and stepped out, wrapping myself up in towels. The steam drifted around me and I scrubbed off the mirror with one palm.

Lily Dubois was standing behind me, reflected in the mirror.

I started, jerking around to find the space behind me empty. When I looked back at the steamy glass, she was still there. “Mirrors used to be made of silver,” she said. “My mom told me. Good thing for you they stopped doing that, huh?”

“Lily…” I said.

“I told you I wasn’t going away,” she snarled. “I’m a restless fucking spirit and you’re the poor bastard that I’m going to haunt until I get some fucking justice.”

This was different than the dreams, than something I could brush off or chalk up to fatigue or fear. I was awake—I had the pruny fingers and toes to show for it.

“Lily…” I sighed again, and dropped my gaze from the glass. “I’m listening,” I said.

“You want to bring me justice,” Lily stated. “And if that’s really true, you might want to get off your dumb cop ass and start looking a