Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1) by Sara DeHaven Read Free Book Online Page A

her up. He pulled harder than she expected, and she had to catch herself with a hand on his shoulder to keep from plowing into him. He looked down at her seriously, the rain dripping from his wet hair and down his face. Then his mouth turned up in a rueful smile. “Well,” he said, “that was, ah, rather awkward.”
    Bree was surprised by a sudden rush of anger. She jerked her hand out of his and pushed off against his shoulder, stumbling backwards in the process. “That was rather fucking dangerous!” she spat out. “I don’t know what the hell that was, but it was way more an exorcism than a taint clearing. And that shouldn’t be possible. None of this should be possible!”
    Daniel's face went stiff. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
    Bree started pacing around the small space. “The taint,” she said, “if it even was taint, was huge. It might have even been a demon part. And I should have sensed that. I’ve never been wrong before about the severity of taint, and only twice on the size of a demon. It was a heartbeat away from getting out of my control, and it was big enough to burn us both. How could it hide itself like that?”
    Daniel was watching her as she paced. “I don’t know Bree, I honestly don’t know. I was preoccupied with staying open and allowing the working, so I didn’t sense any details. And I swear I wasn’t even sure it was taint.”
    “And that’s another thing,” Bree said, facing him. He took a half step back from her as she continued. “How could you not sense that thing in you? I heard you battled the Keltoi, and I figure that makes you a Keeper. So you must have Demonsense. One that big should have registered with anyone with a lick of Demonsense.”
    “Well it didn’t. Look, there’s obviously some mystery here, and I’m happy to discuss it, but can’t we do it inside?” he asked, holding his palm up to the rain.
    Bree’s anger started to drain out of her as she realized the absurdity of ranting about outside. He was right, they should go in, and besides, she needed to get some food, pronto, to replenish her energy. Her legs were still shaking. “Okay, let’s go,” she conceded roughly.
    Once inside, Daniel rounded up some towels for her, then disappeared upstairs to change into dry clothes. When he came down, rubbing at his hair with a towel, he had a blanket draped over one arm. Bree had a towel around her shoulders and had hung her wet coat up on the back of one of the chairs. She was cold and miserable.  
    “I could, um, loan you some clothes or something,” he said awkwardly. “Or maybe this blanket would help?” It was big enough to have been dragged off his bed.
    “Yes to the blanket,” she said. She took it from him and put it around her shoulders on top of the towel. He rustled up some saltines and cheese and a package of chocolate covered graham crackers, the latter of which Bree began devouring immediately. Daniel didn’t try to talk to her until she’d had six of the cookies. One of the nice things about being around other powered was this unspoken understanding of what it took to recover from a working. You could be a total pig without worrying about a lick of judgment. He poured out more tea, then sat fiddling with his teacup and half-heartedly nibbled at a cracker until she paused in her decimation of his cookie supply and looked up.
    “So I’m sorry for snapping at you out there,” Bree began a little sheepishly. “That thing, whatever it was, scared the crap out of me. I could tell when I did the reading that you really didn’t know you had something that serious going on, and I shouldn’t have implied you held something back from me.” Daniel's body relaxed quite suddenly, like strings holding him taut from the ceiling had been cut. “But I think we should try to figure out what that was and where you might have gotten it, because something that good at hiding itself is dangerous.”
    Though visibly less