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in my head didn’t necessarily mean that the truth was easy on my heart.
    “It might not be true,” Laura said.
    I looked at her curiously. “You think he’s lying to me?”
    She shrugged. “There are so many little things, you know? All that stuff you’ve told me about why you thought he was Eric.”
    She was right. The way he called me “Katie,” and the way he moved when he fought. So many little hints that had finally built up until I suspected my first husband had come back to me.
    Even so, though, I had never been sure. Not until last night, anyway. “He wouldn’t have lied to me,” I said. “It’s one thing to keep quiet. To say nothing and leave me unsure and guessing. But to flat out lie?” I swallowed, realizing I’d done that very thing to Allie. Then I shook my head, banishing the thought. “No. I know Eric, and there’s no way he would do that to me.”
    Laura, I could see, disagreed. But she was kind enough to let the subject go, shifting the conversation instead to the demon-related part of the story. “So who is this Andramelech that the demon wants freed?” she asked, as Eddie came in to get yet another serving.
    I shook my head. “I wish I knew.”
    From his perspective above the coffee cake, Eddie harrumphed. I looked sideways at him. “Do you know who Andramelech is?”
    He replied with a sad little shake of his head. “I don’t know what the hell Forza was thinking when your generation of Hunters came along,” he muttered. “Not know who Andramelech is. That’s damn pathetic, Kate.”
    I started to retort that I’d been primarily concerned with killing the beasts, not making sure I had their proper names for engraved invitations to formal functions, but bit my tongue. Better to just get the information from Eddie and forgo the Forza bashing. Considering Eddie had been betrayed—and then spent several decades as a rogue demon hunter since he no longer trusted his Forza contacts—I understood where he was coming from. But that didn’t mean I wanted to hear about it again today.
    “Just tell me what you know,” I said.
    “He’s a bad one,” Eddie said.
    “I figured as much. I haven’t met a good one yet.”
    His bushy eyebrows rose and he chuckled. “You got a point. My point is that he’s badder than most. One of the high chancellors of Hell. A Throne Demon.”
    I grimaced, because that was bad. Apparently your average run-of-the-mill demon had no use for San Diablo. All the demons I’d met so far were either High Demons, or had come to San Diablo to do a High Demon’s bidding.
    “Hold on a second,” Laura said. “What’s a Throne Demon?”
    “There’s a demon hierarchy,” I explained. “Just like with the angels.”
    “Like archangels,” she said.
    “Right. So the High Demons are the baddest of the bad, and the chancellors of Hell are pretty much Satan’s right-hand guys.”
    “In other words, incredibly, horribly bad,” Laura said. “That’s all I needed to know.”
    “So what else do you know?” I asked Eddie as I got up to refill my coffee.
    “Not much that would be of use to you,” he said. “Apparently some of the ancient Assyrians sacrificed children to him. But what that has to do with the fellow who jumped David ... well, damned if I know.”
    I shivered, then took a step back so that I could see Timmy. I couldn’t find him at first, and a pulse of terror pounded through my body. I opened my mouth to call for him when a little wooden train came barreling down the entrance hall into the living room, stopping with a thud when it hit the leg of our coffee table, leaving a scrape mark I could see from fifteen feet away.
    The train’s path had originated near the front door, and I could only assume my little boy was down there, too.
    “Timmy?”
    Nothing.
    “Timmy!”
    Soft footsteps, and then the boy himself, his little face peering around the corner, his eyes wide and innocent. “What, Mommy?”
    “Are you supposed to be knocking your