Page 108 of Cold Curses

“Showing face,” Auto said, and I opened my eyes to find an animated assistant had appeared on the windshield.

“Hi. I’m Karen. How can I help?”

“You can’t. Go away.”

“Goodbye,” it said, and blinked off again.

And unlike Karen, I thought, our upstart wasn’t graceful in defeat. Not when she was incinerating dead demons.

The Auto rolled to a stop. I climbed out, closed the door, and, as I surveyed the house, imagined Karen giving me the middle finger as the vehicle drove away.

I walked up the sidewalk. The house was dark (again), and the front door wasn’t cracked open. There was no sign anyone had forced their way inside. I put an ear to it. Heard nothing.

I checked the door, found it locked. I very seriously considered breaking it open, but I didn’t want to jeopardize the CPD’s work by screwing up any evidence that might be in there. So I walkeddown the steps and, for the second time this week, stalked around to the back of Black’s house.

A light was on in the carriage house, the windows aglow with it.

I stuck to the shadows, crept toward it. And felt monster’s sudden alarm a millisecond too late.

Something hit me in the back—big and solid. I hit the ground and rolled, and found myself staring up at a demon. He was short and square of build, and all of him looked to be muscle. He had a humanoid face, but with squat, squarish features. The short black horns left no question about his demonic origins.

But I couldn’t feel his magic; there was no sourness in the air.

Why not?

He lifted his weapon—a literal two-by-four—to strike me again. I rolled onto my back and, when he came down to strike, kicked out and up. I didn’t quite hit my ultrasensitive target, but he was surprised enough by the move that he dropped the lumber, shifted to the side.

I could feel monster’s sudden and sharp rising energy now, and I wasn’t sure why it was agitated. Not, I thought, because of the demon, who had some moves, but seemed to be another minion. But I didn’t have time to think about it.

I took advantage of the demon’s loss of balance and jumped back to my feet, then spun into a kick that had the demon flying back. He fell to the ground, grunted, stood up.

“Not so fast,” I said, unsheathing my sword and advancing. I had him on the ground in two swipes, and this time, he didn’t get up.

Monster was still itchy, and I looked around and found Jonathan Black in the square of light cast by the carriage house.

“Good to see you alive,” I said, carefully wiping the blade of my sword. But I didn’t resheathe it. Not yet. “You’re a hard man to find.”

Black stared back at me with an unreadable expression.

Careful,monster said. And I trusted its judgment, even if I didn’t understand the situation.

“Since you’re walking around your own property, I guess I don’t need to ask if one of your clients is holding you hostage.” I gestured back to the demon on the ground. “What the hell is going on?”

“You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

I blinked at him. The sword was the only thing I had. “What?”

He strode toward me, and I raised my sword, kept it aimed at his heart, and decided to skip the preliminaries.

He didn’t look like a man who’d been held hostage or forced to do things against his will. He looked angry, and rage boiled in his magic, which felt different from how it had in the past. Newer somehow. More vibrant but less clean.

So I skipped the preliminaries.

“How did you know about the broken cornerstone?” I asked him.

He watched me for a moment, ignoring the sword pointed at his heart. “Because I fucking broke it.”

I stared at him. “What? Why would you do that?”