Demon Night Read Online Free PDF

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 of the cylinder in the deadbolt, the simple pin tumbler in the knob, and unlocked them both with an effortless thrust of his Gift.
    Though she’d left no lights on, he easily avoided the bamboo trunk that served as a coffee table. Knitted throws in bright colors covered the sofa and the chair in front of her desk. Against one wall, her television was dwarfed by stereo speakers and encased by shelves stuffed with records and CDs. He could read the neatly arranged titles from across the darkened room, but he already knew that classical and opera dominated her collection: she played them often.
    It had been her way of introduction two months before, a throwaway comment from the balcony, underscored by Vivaldi: Tell me if my music is too loud.
    Loud or quiet, it wouldn’t have mattered; if he listened closely, Ethan could hear her heartbeat through the walls. The click of knitting needles. The distinctive slide of a feather over skin.
    He followed the sound of her deep, even breathing. The fragrance of apple shampoo and cocoa butter rose from the damp towel wadded in a laundry basket at the foot of her bed.
    Charlie lay on her stomach, her knee cocked. She’d kicked the blankets off. The left hem of her checkered flannel pajama pants had ridden up, revealing half the length of her sleek calf. The straps of her white top exposed more smooth skin at her shoulders and toned arms.
    Despite her ordeal on the roof, her psychic scent suggested that her dreams were soft and pleasant—so different from the tension surrounding her in her waking hours. So different from the neediness, the emotional instability.
    She didn’t outwardly reveal them, but Ethan often felt both, like a dark itching scab in her psyche. They repelled him almost as much as they aroused his protective instincts.
    She began to move restlessly, her wheat gold hair tousled over her pillow, her psychic scent altering, tinged by erotic heat.
    Ethan looked away, ignoring the tightening in his gut, his groin. He’d come in for a purpose, but lusting after a human who needed protecting wasn’t it.
    The feather sat beside her alarm clock; his attempt to vanish it into his cache failed.
    With a frown pulling at his mouth, he strode across the room and swept it up. Placing any object into his mental storage space required that he possess it, or obtain permission from the owner. Charlie had apparently formed such a strong attachment to the lost feather that he had to steal it back.
    This time, it went easily into his cache. Destroying evidence—and whatever comfort it had offered her.
    He couldn’t erase Charlie’s memories, or the bruise forming across her cheek. A Guardian with a Gift for healing could have taken care of the latter—and had Ethan been prepared for her bolt away from the wall, he could have avoided her slamming into him.
    As it was, he’d only managed to keep her from hitting his weapon. His elbow had done less damage, but there shouldn’t have been any damage at