Page 38

I sighed and drank. Even my coffee was letting me down. “My head knows ya’re right. The rest of me will catch up eventually. Thanks for the pep talk. It didn’t help, but at least ya tried.”

Conn shrugged. “Do you want me to reschedule our visit?”

I shook my head. “No, I want to find those women. I gave my word.”

“Can I do anything to help you personally? I would get Lilith to put a compulsion on you to make you forget the old Rasmus, but you know they don’t last. The first one you tried barely lasted six hours.”

A reluctant laugh escaped me. “Yes, I remember, and then I dismembered the demon who did it to me and forced him to spend an entire year regenerating.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t do that to Lilith because I like her too much. She told me who the father of her child was.”

Conn smiled at the news. “It was my suggestion that she reveal the truth to you. You’ve replaced me as her role model.”

I lifted both hands and smirked at him. “How could she not love me best? Just look at how role-model awesome I’m being this morning.”

Conn chuckled at my sarcastic reply to his compliment. “The guardians have destroyed entire civilizations, Aran. You’re holding your own with them and that’s no small thing.”

I smiled. “Yer faith in me is humbling. Ya’re an imperial demon without compare, my friend.”

“Yes, I know,” Conn said, flashing me an evil smile that didn’t look natural on the human version of his face. It would have looked perfect on his demon one, though.

And Conn was right. No matter how my imperial demon familiar appeared to me, I always knew who he was. It made no sense why that was so much harder to do with the new version of Rasmus.

It just was.

* * *

A woman openedthe door before we even knocked. Her troubled gaze instantly met mine. The Salem police hadn’t given her any reason to keep hoping and it showed in her expression. The missing woman was twenty-three and definitely could have left of her own volition.

Then I thought of Ma calling me in a panic not so long ago because Fiona wasn’t responding to either of us. I thought of myself storming into Jack’s house to find my only child curled up in her bed because she’d been defenseless against the ones who made her unconscious and unable to function.

I hadn’t seen Fiona as a twenty-year-old adult at that moment. She might as well have been ten or two for all the power she’d had against her father.

So yes, in this woman’s shoes, I’d also be letting anyone still looking for my daughter into my house. The woman hadn’t asked questions or even for ID, but Ben had paved our way. I could see our new handler having to do that a lot for us.

“Are you Ms. Malcom?” Conn asked, speaking softly in a low, consoling voice.

She nodded and swallowed hard.

“Thanks for seeing us,” Conn said. “We’re Agents Conn and Aran O’Malley.”

I smiled at the woman. “My brother loves to point that out to people as if they can’t tell we’re related.”

The woman smiled but didn’t respond to my teasing. “Come in. I’ve found something of Lina’s that I think you can use.” She looked at Conn as she closed the door behind us. “It’s a hairbrush with strands of hair in it. I know you said not to clean it, so I didn’t.”

“A hairbrush with her hair is perfect,” Conn said.

Could Ben find us a lab that could do some DNA testing if we needed to do that? If I found a dead person instead of a live one when I scryed for Lina, we were going to need to back her death up with concrete proof that humans like Mrs. Malcom would expect.

The woman grabbed a plastic bag from the hallway table and handed it to Conn. “I put my hand inside the bag and picked up the hairbrush without touching it just like you told me to.”

Conn smiled in approval. “Thank you for taking those precautions. It was important to keep your DNA off the item.”

“Do you need me to answer any questions? I have an appointment to get to shortly. You said this wouldn’t take long.”

Whether or not Conn had queries in mind, I had to ask the obvious question because I couldn’t tell from energy alone. It was rare, but it happened. Maybe Lina had been adopted.

“Are ya her biological mother?” I asked.

The woman shrugged as she answered. “I gave birth to Lina, but she never really cared about our family connection. She came out unhappy and stayed that way all her life. The day she disappeared, she came home early from work, packed a few things, and refused to say where she was going or when she would return.”