Page 14 of Demon's Mate
“Fine.” Onyx glanced up, eyes glinting. “But I want something out of you first.”
“Of course you do,” Ash muttered.
“Both of you.” Onyx cut his gaze to Dante.
“And what do you want?” Dante asked with a sigh.
Onyx flashed his fangs. Nothing good was about to come out of his mouth.
6
HARPER
Harper staredat the fountain in the plaza in front of the library. It was a gray day, but the water still glittered. A chill ran down his spine. He swore eyes were on him even though none of the people walking by could see him.
He was invisible, not even really there.
A man checked his pocket watch a few feet away. Beyond him, a boy sold newspapers, shouting the headlines. Harper couldn’t hear him. There was no sound in the memories of the past since stone couldn’t hear.
Harper concentrated on the people, looking for anyone that stood out. Beings with magic glowed faintly. Harper had seen several on his last trip. Demons were supposed to be blinding. That was how he’d know when he finally found one.
No one was even shimmering today.
Harper flicked his wrist and the scene before him sped up, people bustling by at double, then triple speed. He had no idea how long he stood there, but when a headache started behind his temple, he still hadn’t seen anything useful.
Harper closed his eyes and muttered an incantation. He gasped, blinked, and his bedroom ceiling appeared. He pushedhimself up, his mattress dipping. A glance at the door assured him it was still closed. He’d locked it magically. There was no way he’d risk Ollie coming in while he was on his hunt.
But Ollie had been out with a friend all afternoon, and the apartment was still quiet. Harper sat up and gulped the water he’d left on his bedside table, trying to wash the taste of stone from his tongue.
Once the water was gone, he packed his potion kit away, cleaning the glass vials and beakers with magic as he went. He checked his bag of ground stone. There was still way more than he wanted to look through.
Hunting the Hounds of Hell wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded. The Nightingale Coven was confident the Hounds had been in Shearwater Landing in the early nineteen hundreds due mostly to strange reports about seabirds. The coven suspected the Hounds, or at least one of them, was still here for the same reason. However, knowing they were in the city wasn’t much help.
No witch had any hope of tracking a demon with magic. Demons were much more powerful and could mask themselves completely from other magical beings. The Nightingales also had no idea what any of the Hounds looked like, which was understandable when they’d spent close to a thousand years in Hell before returning to this world.
So how was Harper supposed to find them? By sifting through the past.
His potion expertise allowed him to brew a complex concoction, unlocking stone memory. Harper had collected bits of paving stone from the plaza in front of the library, all of which had been laid when that part of the city was built, back when the demons were thought to have first settled here.
Brewing and ingesting the potion allowed Harper to look into the past and see everything the stones had seen. A stone’svision was pure and unaffected by illusion, making any magical being visible, even if they had been masking their magic when the stone originally saw them.
Harper was looking for the Hounds one hundred years ago, trusting that the glow of a demon would be impossible to miss among lesser beings. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use the stone to look through anything more modern. Recent memories were too fresh to have fully incorporated into the mineral structure.
He’d had no luck in the last year. The monotony sucked, and so did the potion’s taste, but he had to find the Hounds. He couldn’t let the Nightingale Coven find them.
Harper ate a peanut butter sandwich to wash away the remaining taste of old stone, staring out the window at the setting sun.
Would he be able to win the Hounds over after he found them?Ifhe found them, because it was starting to feel impossible.
Even if he spotted them in the past, it would be a lot of work to follow them through time. What if, in tailing them to find their home, the demons passed through a part of the city that had been completely rebuilt? He’d lose the trail.
That was a problem for another day.
If Harper ever found them, he’d tell the Hounds exactly what his coven had planned. It was a risk—not knowing how the Hounds would react—and a betrayal to Lucifer, whom Harper had sworn to serve, but Harper held no faith in that oath. He didn’t serve the Devil, his coven, or their aims.
Supposedly, the Hounds had escaped Hell, and Lucifer wanted them back. Arthur Nightingale wanted to deliver the Hounds to Lucifer to show his devotion and earn favor. Not that Arthur had ever met Lucifer. Satan didn’t bother with witches on Earth, as far as Harper could tell, but many of them stillserved him. They had Lucifer to thank for their power, so it made some sense.
But Harper was done with that life and ready to sell out his coven to the Hounds—if he found them. He’d show the Hounds he was on their side, let them know witches were using the past to hunt them in Lucifer’s name, and hopefully, they would appreciate the warning and leave the city.
