Free Mortal Sin by Allison Brennan

dance. At the same time, she was tense and on full alert. These events drained her. Yet, she never complained, never said no.
    Rafe stepped back so he didn’t crowd Moira. Skye had her back if something happened. He looked around, assessing Bertrand’s house. He was angry about what the doctor had done to him, but Rafe had always kept his rage in check. He was mostly worried and curious. What did Fiona and her people want to know? Did they know about these memories he had? Did he have information they wanted? He’d thought a lot about that, because if they wanted the information, then it would help if he could pull it out of his head, figure out what it meant. Perhaps it was how to send the Seven back. Or what Fiona’s end game was. Did they want to know what he knew before they killed him?
    He rubbed his temples. Already, a dull headache was forming as if just asking the questions pained him. He turned into the kitchen to get a glass of water, then stopped.
    As soon as he stepped across the threshold into the bright white kitchen with the sleek black appliances, his head lightened with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu and he grabbed the doorjamb to avoid falling.
    He’d seen this kitchen before.
    Yet he hadn’t. He’d never been in Bertrand’s house before.
    The headache he’d barely beaten this morning returned, moving from the base of his skull throughout his head as he tried to remember. He knew better—when he forced the memories, his brain felt like it would explode. But if he couldn’t control the flashbacks, if he couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on in his head, he wouldn’t be able to help Moira. It was the memories—memories that weren’t his—that were the key to finding Fiona, to solving the mystery of how to send the Seven back to Hell once they were captured. But every time he tried to access the deeply planted memories, it hurt. Only when they came on their own, without his conscious effort, was it almost painless.
    Yet, he couldn’t depend on the information to come in crisis. He needed to get ahead of the game, to figure this out now. How to tap into his brain. How to bring forth the knowledge that would save him. But mostly, somewhere buried deep inside, was the information that would save Moira.
    So he pushed through the pain, then fell to his knees, frozen. The flashback came hard and fast, and Rafe stared in the past through the eyes of Jeremiah Hatch.
    The traitor who had helped poison the priests at the mission, who had helped kill them, who had planned on giving his body to a demon before he died when Rafe interrupted the ritual.
    Pure evil underneath human flesh.
     
    Jeremiah Hatch was both amused and angry as Richard Bertrand washed his hands frantically in the sink.
    “I should never have trusted you!” Richard shouted. “I’m never going to get this off.” He poured dish soap into his palm and worked up a lather.
    “Foolish idiot,” Jeremiah said through his grin. “There’s no blood here; it’s one of her spells. I told you she was powerful.”
    Richard frowned as he continued to lather, though not as quickly.
    “ Versatus consum defluerem ,” Jeremiah began. He chanted the simple spell, really something Richard could have done just as easily if he had any backbone whatsoever. But Richard was a tool, a nobody.
    Richard stared at the bubbles filling the porcelain bowl. The doctor closed his eyes, opened them, then shook his head. He rinsed his hands of the soap, shut off the water, and pulled a clean dish towel from the drawer. “I abhor these games.”
    Jeremiah resisted the urge to work up another spell where Richard would see blood on his hands. Like Lady MacBeth, going crazy, wiping away blood that was not there. It would have been so easy to turn Richard into a blithering idiot.
    Jeremiah had warned the coven that Richard was the weak link, but they didn’t care. Fiona and Serena, two peas a pod, surrounded themselves with weak men. They had once