Demon Marked by Anna J. Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

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    â€œSo, you’re saying the invisible demons made you kill this man?” He really didn’t want to think Emma was a killer, but people had been making up stories to explain away the horrible things they’d done for centuries.
    â€œNo, I’m not saying that at all.” She abandoned her coffee cup to grab a handful of napkins from the dispenser and promptly began tearing them into shreds. She would be a horrible witness. Her every action screamed “guilty conscience.” “I ... I don’t even know if I killed him.”
    â€œOnce again, I’ll ask: How can you not—”
    â€œHe and I were talking in the alley behind the bar.”
    â€œTalking? Why were you talking to a Death Ministry—”
    â€œOkay, fine.” Emma rolled her eyes, and her napkin shredding grew a bit more frantic. “We weren’t talking. He was the kind of guy I ... Let’s just say he met my needs.”
    â€œOh. Okay.” Andre stared dumbly at Emma’s hands for a second, shocked and the tiniest bit ... aroused by her words.
    The shocked part was easy to understand—he’d come to think of Emma as a kid, like her sister and his cousin did. The aroused part was just ... wrong. Sex addict or no sex addict, he shouldn’t be turned on by the thought of Emma dragging some thug into an alley for a quickie.
    But he was. God help him.
    â€œAnd right after we’d finished ... talking, he started throwing up,” she continued, meeting his eyes, obviously having no clue she’d made him start looking at her full, soft lips in a way he never had before. “I was going inside to find someone to help him, but I passed out before I could reach the door.”
    â€œWhat?” Perverted thoughts fled in the wake of concern. Once more Emma went from potential sex object to troubled kid. Silently, Andre vowed to keep her in the latter category, where she belonged. “How much were you drinking? You’re nineteen, for Christ’s—”
    â€œI’m twenty, almost twenty-one.”
    â€œThat’s still not—”
    â€œAnd I only had a couple of beers. It takes a lot more than that to get me wasted,” she said, sounding like the petulant near teen she was. “I don’t know why I passed out; I just ... did. And when I came to an hour later and tried to wake the guy up, I couldn’t. He was dead.”
    Andre breathed a little easier. If what she’d told him was true, she had no reason to worry ... aside from the fact that the guy had died outside her place of business. “So he probably choked on his own vomit. Or maybe he overdosed on alcohol or a mix of alcohol and whatever else he might have been on. You didn’t kill him; you were—”
    â€œWe weren’t just talking, Andre.”
    â€œYeah. I gathered that, Emma.” Andre tried to ignore the odd thrill of intimacy inspired by saying her name. “I’m a big boy. I know how those things work.”
    â€œI’m sure you do,” she said, meeting his gaze with those intense eyes of hers. “But you don’t know how I work.”
    No, but I’d sure be interested in learning.
    Andre silently vowed to attend the meeting uptown for reasons other than scoring a partner for the night. He obviously needed a meeting badly if he was having inappropriate thoughts about a girl like Emma at five o’clock in the goddamned morning.
    â€œThe aura demons ... they did things to me when I was a baby,” she continued, blissfully unaware of his thoughts. “They changed me. I’m not ... I’m not a normal girl.”
    â€œNot a normal girl? You look pretty normal to me, except for the lack of fashion sense and—”
    â€œThis isn’t funny,” she said, loudly enough to make a couple of heads turn. She bit her lip, visibly forcing herself to regain control before continuing in a whisper. “I really think I