“Just coffee, thanks.” Though she craved one of their margaritas like there was no tomorrow.
The woman turned and beamed at Quentin. “And you?”
He had yet to take his eyes—and that glare—off Amber. “The same,” he said softly.
“You got it, hon.” The woman gave another furtive glance at their two guests and hurried off.
“She can see you guys,” Amber said to them.
“That’s Sarah.” Dora looked at her as though she were a long-lost daughter, and Amber guessed that she did that a lot. “She’s a darling girl. Been in town for a couple of months. Works breakfast at The Java Junction and lunch here at the Tavern. I hope she stays.”
Recognition hadn’t flashed across Sarah’s face, so Amber guessed the server could see ghosts, for lack of a better word, but—like many eyewitness accounts—could only see them as a misty gray presence. Or even a slight shift in the shadows. Amber had never been able to see them until she died, and her aunt Charley had brought her back from the afterworld. When she woke up, she could suddenly see them in all their glory. And hear them. And play checkers with them, though she had to move the pieces for both players. Until Kyle came along, that is.
It was almost worth that horrible death.
Almost.
But enough about that. She glanced back at Quentin. “Okay, first things first,” she said as they waited for their food. Then she realized that she had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start.
A scythe-shaped brow inched up as Quentin waited for her interrogation.
“Right.” She filled her lungs. Where to start? “Okay, how about you tell me how you became a demon hunter?”
He lifted a shoulder and signed, “I work for the Vatican.”
She blinked, taking a moment to absorb that information. “The…the Vatican?”
“Yes.”
“As in the pope? Smoke signals? The Sistine Chapel?”
“Yes. You know how the Vatican was watching us all back then?”
“I do.” Amber’s mother had told her. They’d mostly been watching her aunt Charley, what with her being part grim reaper and part god. And her uncle Reyes, aka the son of Satan and also a god. But they’d also been watching Amber. Probably because of the early signs of her clairvoyance. Admittedly, that fact freaked her out a little. If they knew how much her abilities had grown since then, they’d probably still be watching her. Then again, maybe they were. She would have no way of knowing.
“They recruited me when I was at Gallaudet,” he signed.
“They recruited you?”
“Yes. Into a unit called La Guardia Segreta.”
“The Secret Guard. They hunt demons?”
“Among other things. They mostly investigate supernatural events.”
Sarah brought their coffee, slipped Quentin a flirtatious smile, then went to take the order of a man who’d taken the table next to them. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, a straw hat, and a long, gray ponytail—definitely a local.
“Okay,” Amber said to Quentin. “Why you?”
He tipped his head to one side. “You would have to ask them.”
“So, they recruited you, and you just up and left?”
He didn’t answer. As usual. All she knew from back then was that Quentin had been found unconscious and was in the hospital. She and her mom had flown to DC that night, and she sat by his side for two days. When he woke, she knew. Something had changed. Something was different. He’d become a different person while at college.
A month later, he took his finals and was due home, when he sent her an email telling her that he wouldn’t be on the flight. Nothing else. No explanation. No goodbye. No closure.
She’d tried calling. She was ashamed to say she’d called hundreds of times over the next few days. But he refused to answer, and eventually, shut off his phone. Amber was so devastated she almost didn’t graduate high school. It took an intervention from both the living and the dead to get her back on track.
She ended up graduating a semester early and getting accepted into some of the best schools in the Southwest, but her heart was set on the East Coast for some reason. No, not for some reason. She knew why. He was on the East Coast. At least, she’d thought he was.
One weekend when she could no longer stand it, she’d hopped on a train in New York and went to DC, even though she knew that he was no longer there. She stumbled upon a couple of his friends at Gallaudet. He’d been gone for over a year at that point, but they remembered the event quite vividly. He was there one day and gone the next. He just packed up his things in the middle of the night and left without so much as a by your leave.
The pain of that time was still raw, even now. Amber and Quentin had been best friends for years. And then they were more. She’d given her heart to him. For him to just leave like that…
Obviously, there was more to the story, but why didn’t he just tell her? She could’ve helped. He’d chosen not to tell her the truth, and he would have to live with that. She was nowhere near forgiving him. The fact that she craved him like an addict craved their next fix meant nothing.
Then again, it wasn’t as if he’d asked for her forgiveness. He watched her from behind the depths of his shimmering blue eyes. Waited for her to reach whatever conclusion she was going to reach because he clearly wasn’t going to explain himself.
The sting in her chest felt like an angry hornets’ nest. She took a sip of coffee and then asked rather pettily, “Why are you signing? You speak perfectly well, Quentin. I’ve heard you.”
“How about we get off of me and back to the business at hand?” he said. With his voice. Not his hands. He dropped the charade and refocused on Dora. “Why did that demon choose you?”
Surprised at becoming the center of attention, the woman blinked at him. “I have no idea.
“Dora, did the demon actually attack you?”
“Well…” She seemed to think for a bit. “I don’t know. I mean, it was just there and…and then I fell. I’m just not sure.”
Dora looked at Quentin. “That’s odd, right? I mean, it didn’t attack the first responders at the scene, either. In fact, the only one it has actually attacked is you. It doesn’t like you.”
Quentin turned to look out the window. “It doesn’t like what’s inside me.”
Fighting to keep her cool—could he really be opening up?—Amber leaned forward. “What’s inside you?”
The wary gaze he leveled on her spoke volumes. “Anger. Frustration. A thundering resentment I can hardly contain.”
She sank back in her chair, disappointment chafing every molecule in her body. He didn’t trust her.
“Why are we back on me when a demon is killing people?”
He had a point. “I just can’t figure out why it’s so volatile.”
“Demon?” Quentin said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. At least, he’d mastered the language.
“No, there’s more. I can’t describe it. It’s like…” She looked at him. “Well, it’s like anger. Frustration. A thundering resentment he can hardly contain.” Then it hit her. Control. The demon was being controlled by someone very much like Quentin was being controlled, at least in part, by the entity inside him. Only a loss of control would bring about that kind of resentment. That kind of bitterness. “You said you’ve been tracking the demon. How?”