“Did Hugh tell you about our empathic talent?” Gwen’s nod seemed to please Eloise. “Good. Well, the link between us didn’t go away, even after my death. Not even when my memories of my previous life got stripped from me. I could stillfeelhim, so a few months into my afterlife assignment, I got curious and followed the emotional thread connecting us.”
Sometimes, Hugh had told Gwen,I trick myself into thinking I can sense her.
He’d called it self-delusion, but no. Against all odds, he’d truly been feeling his sister’s love and her newfound happiness in her afterlife assignment. Gwen wished he knew that.
“No one can see or hear me up above except Dottie and the other guardian demons, so snooping was really easy.” Eloise lifted a shoulder. “Eventually, I found my brother. Figured out his name. Then I snooped some more and had Dottie work her old-werewolf-biddy connections, and I figured out who he was and what I’d done.”
She paused, lips thinning. “Also what I supposedlyintendedto do before I was killed.”
“You weren’t going to kill the CEO or his fixer?” Gwen asked, curious.
“I’ll cop to the arson and property damage, but not attempted murder.” Her dark eyes clouded with thought. “I would have left them alive. Singed, but alive. Probably.”
From what Hugh had told Gwen, she couldn’t really blame Eloise for the impulse to exact some sort of vengeance on her client. “I apologize for interrupting your train of thought. You were talking about…”
“Oh, yeah.” Eloise straightened, gaze sharpening once more. “As I was doing all that research, I began to remember my old life, and I started mainlining all the gossip about my brother. And just this week, I heard your name for the first time in almost twenty years.”
Gwen sighed. “My verification test.”
“Hugh felt awful about the whole incident. Agonized about you for weeks.” Eloise gave her a sympathetic pat on the arm. “Anyway, Dottie follows all the latest gossip about Supernatural and Enhanced celebrities. When she told me Hugh physicallyfoughtfor his disreputable—no offense; I consider that a high compliment—oracle girlfriend named Gwen, I knew exactly who you were. Then she told me how he supposedly tried to kill you by setting his apartment on fire, which is utter bullshit. He’d never do anything like that. The murdery bit, I mean, not the fighting-for-his-true-love part.”
Gwen couldn’t argue with her there. Not only because Hugh trulywouldn’tmurder a girlfriend, however disreputable, but also because Eloise wasn’t pausing long enough between sentences to allow for any interruption.
Until, at last, the demon took a breath after asking, “He did battle a troll for you, right? That wasn’t just a wild rumor?”
“Yes. Kind of.” They were getting off track here. Again. “Maybe we should focus on—”
“That’s amazing.” Sisterly pride shone in faux Marlee’s expression. “Then I heard you’d disappeared and Hugh was searching everywhere for you.”
Gwen perked up. “Really?”
“He’s been absolutely frantic for days.” Eloise’s hand pressed over her heart, as if she were sensing her brother’s anxiety. “I felt so terrible for you both. And just a few minutes ago, I was chatting with one of Death’s administrative assistants as I turned in my report, and she said there were rumors that trespassers had infiltrated the Realm somewhere. Then she told me freakingoraclesmight be involved, and my ownmothermight be teleporting them down here.”
The demon’s elegant fingers curled into loose fists. “Mom had been spotted somewhere she didn’t belong, and one of the vampire IT gals scented an unfamiliar seer in that same area. I put two and two together, and it equaledmy twin’s girlfriend maybe got kidnapped, possibly by my mom. So I took a little walkabout this morning in my bodiless form and watched a masked dude marching a poor, bedraggled oracle from one room to another. Then I found…” Her nod indicated the cubicle farm. “All of you. And once I understood what was happening, if not why—because that’s a real freaking mystery to me, Gwen—I needed tofigure out what to do. I decided I should talk to you before taking any further action. And luckily enough, I had a way to do that without drawing too much suspicion.”
Was the entire rambling conversation taking far too long? Of course. But this was Eloise’s story. Gwen was just living in it.
“Last year, I saved poor Dottie from choking on a bone by telling her how to Heimlich herself.” Eloise’s headshake looked resigned. “I’ve warned her to stop eating snakes, but does she listen to me?”
Gwen didn’t know how to respond to that.
“No, she does not,” the demon answered for herself. “Anyway, because she was so grateful, she got me a good-quality glamour. One that changes appearance depending on what’s needed. You know, to help with future snooping efforts aboveground, assuming I eventually get to live again.”
Apparently reading Gwen’s utter confusion as to how, exactly, that had even been possible, she explained the logistics of her acquisition. “My spirit aboveground can’t carry physical objects, obviously, so one of Dottie’s awesome crone friends managed to plant the glamour’s containment pouch inside an unwitting demon lawyer’s suit. He brought it into the Realm Below, where I reclaimed it from him on my weekly report day.”
Matilda—who’d undoubtedly eavesdropped on the entire conversation—appeared in the open doorway to the bathroom. Even though she’d clearly and correctly concluded that their visitor didn’t intend to kill Gwen, she still appeared worried about something. Raising her index finger, she rotated it in awrap it upsignal, but Eloise was too lost in her memories to notice.
“The lawyer thought I was coming on to him. Ugh.” Her slim, straight nose wrinkled. “I mean, I slept with him anyway,because those pretty-boy demon looks are hard to resist, but it wasn’t good. At all. Demons are rarely enjoyable in bed. Don’t tell me either way, Gwen, but for your sake, I certainly hope my brother’s an exception.”
Her cheeks flaming hot with embarrassment, Gwen found herself too tongue-tied to interject. Even though Matilda circled her forefinger a second time, more emphatically, before disappearing from the doorway.
“I keep the glamour by my body, hidden in my dorm room, so I had it handy today. I made myself look like my mother, walked a zillion miles in her physical form to find this room again, greeted the guards like my mother would—with indifference and minimal courtesy—and searched for you to confirm your presence. And here you are! Appearing…” Eloise visibly hunted for a polite descriptor. “Mostly alive!”
“Wait.” Increasingly desperate, Gwen finally managed to cut in. “Eloise, I think the guards are getting suspicious. If they come back here, what are you going to do?”
“Pretend to be my mother and talk them around?” She shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “If that doesn’t work, I can always teleport to my dorm and take the portal back above. No one can find me there.”
Again: How was that even possible? “Hugh said half-demons couldn’t teleport.”
