My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Lights Out

"Who?" I said.

Royce just smiled.

"Ask your husband how wards work," he said. "Then ask yourself who's been acting strange."

He walked off down the hall, whistling, and pushed the button for the elevator.

I didn't follow him.

I wanted to. My whole body wanted to.

Malphas's hand closed around mine.

"Don't," he said. "That's what he wants. You chasing him down a hallway in front of the court."

"I know."

"Then why are you still leaning?"

I stopped leaning.

On the walk home, he told me how wards work.

"Nothing of his can cross my door," he said. "Not his hand. Not his voice. Unless a paper of his is already inside."

"A signed paper."

"Signed in this house, by someone who lives in it. Then the paper is a door."

"Can you feel it?"

"No. His paper hides from me. It always has."

"Can I see it?"

"If you were holding it, yes."

We walked a block without saying anything.

"Let me take the hounds through every apartment," he said. "Tonight. They'd smell him in a minute."

"No."

"Dorrie."

"No. Nobody's apartment gets searched."

"One of them has opened my house to the thing that burned the last one."

"And one of them is scared out of their mind," I said. "You know how I know? Because nobody signs with Royce Greaves unless they're scared."

He stopped on the sidewalk.

"Nobody reads them first," I said. "You remember who told you that."

He looked down at me for a long time.

"I remember," he said.

At Sunday dinner, I stood up before Opal served the pot roast.

Everybody went quiet. They'd learned I stood up for a reason now.

"Royce says one of us signed something with him," I said.

The table went very still.

"I don't care who. I'm not asking. If it's you, come to my desk any time, day or night. Nobody gets put out. Nobody gets yelled at. That's the whole speech."

I sat down.

Opal put a plate in front of me with four potatoes on it, one more than usual.

Nobody came to my desk on Monday.

Nobody came on Tuesday.

On Wednesday I knocked on every door in the building, all seven of them, and said the same thing at each one.

The two old men in 1A said it was probably the pug lady, and she didn't even live here.

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