“Has she left?”

“Didn’t see her leave.”

“Thank you. You can go back to sleep now.”

The power snapped away as Greyson turned. They left the clerk, already shuffling off back behind his wall, and headed for the elevators.

Megan stopped halfway there. The emptiness was stronger there. She felt it like stepping into a cold draft. “Hold on.”

They stood outside a nondescript brown door. The thin plaque on the wall beside it informed them that this was the entrance to the Flower Ballroom.

“What is it?” He’d taken her hand as they walked away from the desk. Now he gave it a faint squeeze. “You look a little pale, bryaela. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just . . . it feels weird in here.”

He examined her for a second, his gaze sweeping over her face and resting on her eyes. “Want to go in?”

She didn’t, actually. But she didn’t want to admit that. She wasn’t scared, necessarily. It wasn’t fear making her heart beat a little faster. It was that emptiness, that sensation of nothing. She hadn’t felt that in a while. Or rather, she hadn’t felt that outside Ieuranlier Sorithell, a houseful of demons she couldn’t read.

She’d never felt it out in the real world, the human world.

So she nodded. Even as she did so, she was aware that they could be walking into a trap, but she did it anyway. “The room feels empty.”

He glanced up, nodded at the brothers. The secret sound of knives being drawn from pockets and sheaths filled the air around them before Maleficarum opened the door.

The room wasn’t empty.

What the hell?

How had she not been able to feel them? They were just people. Three hotel employees, two maids and what looked like a maintenance man, tidying the room. They glanced up when the door opened. Quick movements beside her were the brothers tucking their weapons behind their backs.

“C’n I help you?” The man plucked a screwdriver from his pocket. The brothers tensed around her, but he simply held it. Beside him were exposed wires and a wall sconce half dangling like an open seashell.

“We were looking for Reverend Walther,” Greyson said smoothly, as if he’d expected to find people in the room. People she hadn’t sensed. People she couldn’t read.

“He’s not here now.” One of the maids picked up a chair, started carrying it to the stacks against the wall. The room was set up as for a seminar of some kind, with a table at the far end and rows and rows of chairs lined up to observe it. About half the chairs appeared to be gone, waiting against the wall for the next day. Or so she assumed.

“Bless him,” the other maid said. “He must be just exhausted from what he did here earlier. You should have seen it. He was amazing.”

“He’s touched by the angels,” the maintenance man agreed.

“I’ve never seen anything so amazing.” The first maid turned around and headed back to the row of chairs. Her gold necklace caught the light and flashed at Megan before she bent again to grab another chair. “He truly has the power of Jesus behind him.”

“We’re lucky he’s here,” the maintenance man informed them.

“We’re all blessed by his presence,” said the second maid.

Megan and Greyson glanced at each other. His eyes were troubled; he cut them sideways, back at the chair-stacking maid, and raised his eyebrows.

Megan looked again but didn’t see anything. He shrugged. “Well, thank you. What time does the show start tomorrow?”

The maintenance man frowned. “It’s not a show. He’s saving lives.”

“Of course. What time does the life-saving start tomorrow?”

None of the room’s occupants—none of the human occupants—seemed to like that comment, but finally the first maid spoke. “Eleven. Eleven in the morning, and he won’t leave until everyone is clean.”

“Until they’re all free from the demon scourge,” added the other maid.

Malleus snickered.

Greyson’s lips twitched. “Thank you.”

They barely got the door closed behind them before the demons started giggling. Megan understood their amusement but couldn’t bring herself to share it. “Why couldn’t I feel them?”

Greyson stopped smiling. “Did you try while we were in the room? While they were speaking?”

“No, I—no. I don’t know why.”

He reached for the doorknob. “Do you want to try again?”

“Careful now, Lord Dante.” Malleus had not stopped smiling. He looked like the Joker. “There’s a demon scourge about, there is.”

Maleficarum slapped him on the back. “Aye, there is! Fink we oughter be scared? Nobody’s safe wif demons about.”

For once their humor didn’t go completely over Megan’s head, but for once she didn’t feel at all like laughing. The only people she’d ever failed to read had not been people at all. They’d been demons. But the three inside the Flower Ballroom had most certainly been human. Since Christmas and the consolidation of her powers, she’d been more easily able to tell the difference. Demons had a certain feel to them, a power signature that humans simply didn’t have.

Even as she thought it, though, something else occurred to her. No. There had been another human she couldn’t read. Not a witch either; witches were also difficult to read but had a certain feel to them.

She’d had a radio caller just before Christmas, just before things with her demons and Ktana Leyak—a leyak demon, the one who’d created the Yezer—had gotten truly out of hand. The caller had called because of problems with her mother or something—Megan couldn’t remember the details very well. She wouldn’t have remembered the details at all if not for the fact that the woman had been unreadable.

Megan had suspected possession herself at the time. But perhaps . . . perhaps something else was going on?

Shit. The last thing she needed was for her powers to start going wonky again.

“That’s enough,” Greyson said, dragging her back to reality and dragging them all toward the elevator. “We need to find that FBI agent, and we need to figure out what exactly the reverend is up to. I don’t like this one bit.”

“Yes, what were you looking at, by the way? You raised your eyebrows at me.”

“The maid’s necklace,” he said, and pressed the button. “Didn’t you see it? There’s clearly something off happening here.”

“No, I didn’t see it, why?”

The elevator doors opened. They all stepped inside. “She was wearing a Star of David.”

Chapter 11

“I don’t—” she started, then stopped. Oh, right. “Most Jewish people aren’t testifying about the power of Jesus.”

“Correct. So unless she converted and forgot to remove her jewelry, we could have a problem here. You couldn’t read them?”

She shook her head. “The room felt empty. And not even empty. More than empty, if you know what I mean. Like there was . . . an absence. A vacuum.”

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open, revealing a nondescript hallway empty of anything but doors. The patterned carpet made Megan think uneasily of The Shining.

They all stood for a second as if the opening of the elevator doors was an event they couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Then the brothers exited, peering around the wall first, checking to make sure nothing and no one lurked in wait.

Greyson took her hand and led her into the hall, the dim light lost in the darkness of his hair. She hadn’t noticed before how tired he looked, how the shadows under his eyes weren’t just caused by the horrid plastic- covered fluorescents clinging to the ceiling, casting a greenish glow on everything.

But then she was sure she looked exhausted. She certainly felt exhausted, as if someone had attached heavy weights to her limbs. Being almost killed hadn’t exactly pepped her up either; all the energy she’d taken from the witch on the roof had dissipated, worn away by fear and worry and the desperate search for answers.