Demon Night

hero.”
    “Well, I didn’t take you for the type of guy to go flying around looking for vampires to shoot.”
    “No. Demons need shooting more than vampires do.”
    Humor had slipped into his tone. His quick answers were usually accompanied by it, and apparently he’d decided to play along. A tall tale to him, truth to her—but his response made it less frightening, easing her tension, and she laughed softly.
    It was one of the few noises she could make that wasn’t much different before the accident.
    Most of her life had revolved around voices. Studying them, perfecting hers. They could be as distinctive as a face, and when she’d heard the first Easy, Charlie , it had been familiar. Low, warmed by deep amber tones, and roughened with a hint of oak.
    “He sounded exactly like you. The pitch, the resonance. But he didn’t talk like you.”
    “No, Miss Charlie, I reckon he didn’t. Most flying men of my acquaintance are Easterners, and liable to talk like a book.” Ethan’s drawl thickened, and Charlie grinned, reaching forward to stab out the cigarette.
    “Anyway, that’s why I’m home early.” She ran the feather between her fingers. The quill’s surface was rounded and smooth, the end a blunt point. “Did you get in tonight?”
    “That I did.”
    “San Francisco again?”
    “Yes. And a handful of other cities.”
    She didn’t know exactly what Ethan did for Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals, but she couldn’t see why they’d relocate him to Seattle when he spent most of his time in California and the rest hopping around the country—but it wasn’t for her to decide, anyway. “Did you eat, or get to the store? Old Matthew sent me home with a box, but I wasn’t hungry. I could toss it over.”
    “I’m settled, Charlie.”
    “Okay.” She tickled the underside of her chin with the tip of the feather, looking at the wall and wishing—not for the first time—that she could see through it.
    But perhaps it was best she couldn’t. Not yet, not until she was steady. Strong.
    With a long sigh, she stood and scooped the pack of smokes from the table. She’d gone through a quarter of them. “Will you do me a favor?” Without waiting for his answer, she held it over the wall. “Will you hide these at your place? I won’t buy more if I can get them for free next door.”
    He didn’t respond, but his fingers brushed hers as he took the pack. She closed her eyes. He was warm, as if he’d protected his hands in his pockets instead of exposing them to the cold night air, a feather in one and a cigarette in the other.
    “If you ask, should I give them back?”
    Her fingers trembled, and she pulled her hand away from his and tucked it against her side. “No. Make me come and get them.”
    “Well now, Charlie, I don’t know whether to hope that you resist, or to pray for an end to our Pyramus and Thisbe routine.”
    Her teeth clenched, and the frustration that rose up in her wasn’t unfamiliar: that feeling of ignorance, of being unable to share in a joke or discussion—or worse, the certainty that she had heard something before, but just couldn’t place it. “Hold on, Ethan. I’ll be right back.”
    She didn’t close the sliding door behind her. Her computer was on, and luckily the search engine offered up the correct spelling after she put in her mangled, phonetic version. Pyramus and Thisbe. Lovers parted by a family feud, whose only contact was speaking through a crack in a wall.
    Damn. She had seen this once, at a theater in New York—she’d probably been drunk off her ass, or halfway there.
    She grimaced as she scanned the rest of the story, then returned to the balcony. “That didn’t end well. Unless you think double suicide is romantic.”
    Ethan’s laughter broke and rolled like muted thunder—a fitting accompaniment to the lights and the weather. “No,” he said eventually. “That I don’t. Good night, Miss Charlie.”
    She smiled into the dark; this was a familiar routine. And she was feeling settled now, too—and safe. “Good night, Ethan.”
    Her smile lingered as she readied for bed, as she placed the feather on her nightstand. The drumming of the rain against the roof, the sighing of the breeze, the swish of the passing cars was a soft symphony lulling her to sleep.
    Long before it was silenced, she’d fallen deep.

    Charlie needed better locks.
    Ethan could have picked them open within seconds, but he didn’t require tools or time. He mentally tested the shape