“What the hell happened?” I asked no one in particular.

“The phone call I got,” Andy said. “It was from Raphael. He was ordered to take a new host so that Der Jäger could ride Dr. Neely to this meeting.”

“Why did you tell Neely you’d told me everything?”

“That’s what Raphael told me to tell him. He said Der Jäger wouldn’t give a damn, and I could use that as an excuse to ‘realize’ it wasn’t Raphael—while still letting Raphael keep his cover.”

Frighteningly enough, that made sense to me. “And how did Dominic end up getting shot?”

“When you stomped on Neely, Adam took a shot and missed. I was trying to keep Dominic and Brian out of the line of fire, but I’m still not up to full strength. Dom got in the way.”

And then Adam fired a second shot, killing Neely. I remembered how close together those two gunshots had come, and I felt a little queasy. I guess I was glad Adam was a demon, because a human might have had at least a moment or two of shock after accidentally shooting his lover, and that might have been enough to let Der Jäger recover.

We had lapsed into silence by the time Adam came back downstairs.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Resting comfortably,” Adam assured me.

I looked at Dr. Neely’s body. “And what are we going to do about him?”

“I’ll take care of him.” He looked grim. “I know where Adam hides the bodies, as it were.”

I shook my head. “Do me a favor and just call him your demon. It’s too weird to hear you talking about ‘Adam.’”

“Have you never known two people with the same name before?” he asked with a very Adam-esque grin.

I decided to let the subject drop, seeing as it wasn’t even remotely important. Of course, considering that what was of top importance right now was disposing of a dead body, I kinda wished we could stick to the unimportant stuff.

The only remotely good news was that for the moment, Der Jäger wasn’t on the Mortal Plain anymore. But I sure wished I knew how long that would last.

Not surprisingly, the police paid us a visit before long. There’d been a rumor of gunshots in the neighborhood, but when Adam explained it had been a car backfiring, the cops believed him. After all, he was a cop himself. Convenient at times.

Adam hauled the body down into the basement while Andy and I did our best to clean up the blood on the floor. Brian was still sitting in a chair, looking sick and shell-shocked. He hadn’t looked up or even blinked—as far as I could tell—when the police had come to the door. I wished I had some idea what to say to him. All that came to mind was something like “Welcome to my world,” but I figured that probably was insensitive.

I noticed with a chill that my hands weren’t shaking and I didn’t feel an urgent need to puke. I was cleaning up blood from the floor while Adam hid the body of a man he’d just killed, and I was taking it all in stride. How scary was that? I should have been as freaked out as Brian.

For a while, there was no sound except the sloshing of water and the rub of a scrub brush against the carpet. I didn’t think the carpet was salvageable. Yeah, we could get the worst of the blood out, but there would have to be a significant stain when we were done. And calling in a professional carpet cleaner wasn’t exactly an option. I kept scrubbing anyway.

“Why aren’t we calling the police?” Brian asked eventually.

I looked up from my scrubbing and saw that some color had returned to his face, and there was a spark of intelligence in his eyes again. At the moment, I wasn’t sure that was an improvement. Brian is very much a law-abiding citizen, and I worried we’d have a battle on our hands if we wanted to keep him from blabbing to the cops.

“Adam is the police,” I said, stalling while I tried to think of what to say.

Brian nodded. “And if I understand things correctly, he’s even now hiding the body of a man he just shot to death. What the hell is going on?”

I sighed. Beside me, Andy was studiously ignoring us, scrubbing away as if he couldn’t hear a word we said.

“There’s a reason I’ve been trying to keep you out of this,” I told him. “It’s…complicated. And we can’t afford to have the police involved.” I was having a hard enough time figuring out how to answer Brian’s questions. I couldn’t imagine how we could explain all this to the police. Not without drawing way too much attention to ourselves and making our lives even harder. Based on all the violence that had happened around me when Lugh had first taken over, I was probably already on some kind of secret police watch list.

“That’s not enough of an explanation,” Brian said sharply. “Stop putting me off and tell me what’s going on! I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping my mouth shut so far, but I’m not going to sit quietly by and watch a man get killed and do nothing!” Yeah, the color was coming back to his face, all right. He was turning an unattractive shade of red. “Not to mention that Dominic is now possessed by an illegal demon! Do you realize how many laws that demon just broke?”

I’d been so relieved that Dominic wasn’t going to die that I hadn’t even thought about that. Aside from the fact that Dom hadn’t signed all the appropriate consent forms, transferring via skin-to-skin contact was strictly forbidden, no matter what the reason. The general public found that comforting, though several advocacy groups for the sick and dying continually fought the law in court. I didn’t think that was a battle they’d win anytime soon. I was far from the only person who wasn’t as a general rule overly fond of demons.

“I’d rather he break laws than let Dominic die,” I said, my voice rising. I’d been doing pretty well at holding myself together up until then, but now something inside me snapped. “And he wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place if you two hadn’t come charging down the stairs like macho morons! What the hell were you thinking?”

Brian stood up, shoving the chair away from him. I wasn’t about to argue with him on my knees while holding a scrub brush, so I scrambled to my feet as well.

“We heard fucking gunshots!” Brian screamed at me, towering over me and leaning into my personal space. I flinched, because Brian almost never uses curse words. “What were we supposed to do?” he continued. “Cower upstairs like little girls?”

“Yes!” I answered, poking him in the chest for no good reason. “You should have stayed upstairs like we told you. You could have both gotten killed.”

“So could the three of you.”

“At least two of us had demons who could heal us, unlike—” I didn’t even realize what I was saying until Brian’s eyes widened with shock. I replayed my own words in my head, then felt the blood drain from my face.

Brian looked at Andy, who’d quit pretending to scrub the floor. “I thought…” Brian shook his head. “Your demon is gone! Or were you actually faking catatonia all that time?”

“No, my demon is gone,” Andy said, ignoring my pleading look.

I swallowed hard, my heart throbbing in my throat, as Brian stared at me in horror. I could see him struggling for words, failing to find them. And I knew that no matter how badly I wanted to protect him from the truth, there was no way I could hide anymore. Three cheers for my fucking subconscious!

“Yes, Brian,” I said. “I’m possessed. But it’s all very weird. My demon is kind of…hidden. He can’t seem to get control of me except when I’m sleeping. He’s one of the good guys, but there are a lot of people who want him dead.” I let out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you caught in the middle of this. My life isn’t my own right now.”

I watched Brian trying to absorb what I’d just told him. And failing. I’d left a hell of a lot out, but based on the almost glassy look in his eyes, I figured that was just as well.