Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) Read Online Free PDF Page B

afford to go through this again. They must know more than they’re saying. And they will have every incentive to help you find that out.”
    Quinn nodded. The plan, from an outside perspective, made total sense.
    “Okay,” he said. Kate gave him another warning look, but he pretended not to notice it. “We’ll get on the case. Starting now.”
    “I don’t need to remind you that you don’t have a lot of time,” Tim said. “The longer the Post story sits out there, the more people will believe it no matter what we say.”
    With that, he seemed to dismiss them from the room. Kate and Quinn walked out feeling like they had been battered and bruised. Kate started to speak, but Quinn motioned to go outside.
    They walked downstairs to the basement, past the massive printing press and out the back door.
    When they were outside, Kate wheeled around.
    “What are you doing?” she said. “We can’t take this assignment.”
    “Would you like someone else to do it?” Quinn responded.
    “Yes,” she said. “Anyone else, in fact. Let Helen do it. We’re playing with fire.”
    “And God knows what she’ll say,” he said. “This is the only way to control the narrative.”
    “There is another way,” Kate said. “And you know it.”
    “No, I don’t,” Quinn said.
    “Go to Summer directly,” she said. “Make her back down from the story. She made this shit up. She’s pulling a Jayson Blair here and we know it.”
    “How? How are you going to make her back down?”
    “I’ve got lots of ideas,” she responded. “Most of which would be extremely satisfying.”
    Quinn watched her uneasily. He thought the death of Lord Halloween would have eased some of the anger she had inside her. He understood—better than anyone—how the death of her mother had affected her outlook on life. But if anything, the fury she carried with her was even worse now. The only difference was that at certain times of the year, she had a powerful way to inflict that anger on others.
    “No,” Quinn said. “For starters, we don’t have any powers yet.”
    “I don’t need any powers to scare the hell out of Summer,” Kate said.
    “Still no,” he said. “It’s a bad strategy. I guarantee Summer doesn’t think she made up the story. She’s not that terrible a reporter. No, someone whispered in her ear and she ran with it because she finally gets to take revenge on us.”
    “For what? We never did anything to her,” Kate said, but she knew that wasn’t true.
    “Oh, come on, Kate,” he said. “We broke the biggest story in this county’s history. She’s the Post’s reporter on the ground and she looked like a fool to her editors when she had nothing and we had everything. She has plenty of reasons to hate us and more than enough cause to seize any excuse to undermine our credibility.”
    “She made it up, Quinn, and she should pay for it. Lord Halloween never had a partner. He’s dead. We killed him. We can’t write a story speculating about the killer when we know damn well it’s us.”
    “Oh yes we can,” he said.  “I have a plan.”
    “I’m not in your head, honey,” she said. “You’re going to have to say it out loud.”
    “You aren’t going to like it,” he responded.
    “There’s nothing about this I like,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
    Quinn took a deep breath.
    “We tell the truth.”

Chapter 3
     
     
    Kate looked at him like he’d gone insane.
    “You want us to admit that we killed Lord Halloween?” she said in disbelief.
    “No, of course not,” he said. “But you left the door open, didn’t you? You wrote that letter. The one signed by the Prince of Sanheim taking credit for the killings.”
    It took a minute for Kate to even remember what he was talking about. She had done it on a whim. It was early on November 1, shortly after they had lost their powers. She had left Quinn sleeping in bed to sift through the piles of information Buzz had left behind on Lord Halloween. She