“We’re in an IHOP at a mall and you are eating…” I poked the puddle of gravy with a fork. “That. Something’s wrong.”
She glanced around, then slid a matchbook over to me.
The matchbook was a lurid purple with a photo of a woman in a nun’s habit and pasties. In purple script underneath was written “Heavenly Pleasure Gentleman’s Club.”
I grabbed a paper napkin and scrubbed at a spot of syrup on the table. “If you and Dad need, uh, help with the uh, intimate parts of your—”
“Nava. Really.”
Relieved, I speared a sausage. Mmmmm. I pulled my mother’s plate to me and dug in. “Then what?”
“It was in an envelope postmarked from Dubrovnik. Mailed eight days ago.”
My fork clattered to the plate. “Was there anything else in it?”
“No.”
I studied the matchbook more closely. The club wasn’t in Croatia. It was here in Vancouver. On the inside front flap, the name “Kyle” was written in spidery blue ink.
“I called the club,” she said. “Kyle has a shift tonight. He’s working the next few days.”
“Look at you go, Nancy Drew.”
“I have my talents.” Mom winked at me. “Your father certainly thinks so.”
Kill me now. “Nope. Not talking about that ever.”
After that mildly traumatizing meal, I secured promises from certain people to meet at Vancouver Demon Club through a combination of bribes, blackmail, and outright lying,
Leo phoned me. “Has the apocalypse started yet?”
“Still got time. How was your cousin’s wedding?”
“Surprisingly tasteful, given they line-danced down the aisle to ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie.’ Whatcha up to tonight?”
I explained about the meeting.
“I’m coming over.”
“That is a bad idea on so many levels,” I said. “You can’t comfortably cross the wards.”
“It’s a couple hours. I’ll deal. I have to live in this world too, and I’m tired of hiding. These people need to see me as a human first. Some of us are.”
“Sure, but maybe you could do that one person at a time? Starting with very safe people at a meeting that isn’t already a powder keg?”
She made a raspberry noise. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Then let me run something past you.” I outlined my proposition. “What do you think?”
“Major Hendricks is on the case. Sir!” Leo hung up.
“No, I did not lust after you for years.” Kane hauled a case of sparkling water into the library. “I’m five years older than you and that would have been creepy. Plus, you were geeky and annoying.”
“Geeky and annoying until when?” Ari set the deli platter and box of buns on the table.
“You assume that’s changed.”
I clapped my hands. “Less cute, more setting out of food. Ace, there’s a couple of fruit platters in the trunk. Grab them please.”
He saluted me.
Kane ripped the plastic off the flat of individual sparkling water bottles. “What do you get for the boy who has me?”
“Huh?”
“Ari. Our one-month anniversary is coming up and I want to do something special. But he already gets me as his boyfriend, so how do I possibly top that?”
“Give him the gift receipt that came with you.” Rohan set down the platter of cookies I’d sent him to buy.
Kane flipped the plastic cover off and snagged a double chocolate chip cookie. “Hush, Ro-Ro. That callous disregard for love is why young babyslay is looking for better options.”
Rohan stole the cookie and bit into it. “As if.”
“He’s right, Kane,” I said. “It’s his massive arrogance that keeps me searching.” That last part ended in a shriek as Ro tackled me onto the sofa.
“We’re still cuter,” Kane trilled and sashayed out of the room.
I draped my arms around my boyfriend’s neck and kissed him. “Mmm. You taste like cookie.”
He gave me the rest of the treat, which miraculously hadn’t broken into a million crumbs. “I can’t get that night out of my mind. I keep reliving that moment when I was certain Drio and I had brutally murdered Asha.”
I sat up, licking chocolate off my finger. “But you didn’t. How’s her song going?”
The few moments that Rohan wasn’t searching for Hybris, he’d spent on Asha’s song.
“I’ve gone dark.”
My pulse spiked. “No. I got that magic out of you.”
He tapped his head. “Dark up here. When I was convulsing, lost to the shadows, and you shocked me? I saw a white light. I know that’s super cheeseball, but it was what it was. All my attempts at her song, I’ve been too scared to immerse myself in that darkness, that I’d get stuck there again. I’d forgotten that dark only exists in harmony with light, so I’m writing my way back to it.”
All Rasha lived with some form of PTSD. With the horrors we saw, there was no way around it. But the scars of the past few weeks were different. We’d deal and find a way to approximate a normal life, because there wasn’t any other option, but I wondered if this scar tissue would ever truly scab over, or if it was something we’d take great pains to never examine too closely, trying to fool ourselves into thinking that if we didn’t look at it, then it wasn’t possibly as horrific as we remembered.
“Is it working?” I said.
He gave a cautious nod. “Yeah. Creatively the music is flowing and the poison is being drained. I’m getting there.”
“When you do, it’ll be incredible.”
“My personal cheerleading section.” His eyes gleamed.
“Forget it. I don’t own pompoms.”
Rohan snagged the final piece of cookie. “A guy can dream. How are you doing? What do you need tonight?”
“Help keep the peace. Leo’s coming. And she’s not hiding who she is anymore.”
“Wow. We’re still on the ‘go big or go home’ game plan.”
“Apparently. Let’s hope it works better this time around.”
Baruch, Kane, Ari, Ro, Ms. Clara, and I watched the hands of the clock like the timer of a bomb, each tick dragging us forward to the inevitable explosion.
I wiped my hands on my jeans for the thirtieth time, my stomach a tight, nauseous mess, though that might have been the sheer number of headache pills that I was popping on a regular basis.
The sharp rap on the front door at 9:05PM was a relief. Events were in motion.
“Yo, witch girl!” Danilo, a Filipino Rasha, tatted up and with the cut strength of an MMA fighter, strutted into the room, followed by Bastijn, all dark curls and panty-melting eyes with a long, lean body, and Cisco, chiseled Native American hotness, his hair pulled back in a short ponytail.
I flung myself at them, squishing them in a fierce hug.
“Careful, chama.” Bastijn extricated himself, his hand on his ribs.
Cisco had a black eye and Danilo’s arm was in a cast.
“What happened to you three?” I said.
“Oh, not just us.” Cisco slapped Ro on the back.
“Used up another one of your lives, man?” Ro said.
“Got two or three left,” Cisco said.
“Keep it that way,” Ro replied.
“We had a lead on our missing Rasha.” Pierre hobbled into the room. “Had to check it out.”
“You have a very weak chin,” Baruch said. “I would grow the beard back.”
Ms. Clara elbowed him sharply. “You look fine, Pierre.”
Pierre rubbed his hand over his chin. “The beard was scorched off by a witch.”
“Glad as I am to see you all, where’s everyone else?” Ari said.
Danilo piled sliced Havarti and salami onto a Portuguese bun. “Mahmud might be dead. Depends on whether he connected with the tree Raquel flung him at.”
“You didn’t stick around to check?” I ran to the window.
“We’re not stupid,” Bastijn said.<
br />
Ari clapped his hand over Kane’s mouth.
“It’s not sexist when we didn’t know you existed.” Mahmud stomped into the room, tiny twigs stuck in his dark hair and goatee. His exquisitely tailored shirt was ripped under one arm.
“Had you thought about it for two seconds, you’d have realized the impossibility of only men having magic.” Cartoon steam practically poured out of Raquel’s ears. She wore a short black dress, a couple of shades darker than her skin, and red stilettos that could inflict grievous bodily harm. She rounded on me. “You better have proof that Esther wanted us all to meet, because I have gone way above and beyond bringing these assholes here.”
“No other witches came?” I said.
“Gracias a Dios,” Bastijn said, crossing himself.
Danilo dropped into a chair and swung a foot onto the coffee table, sandwich in hand. “I dunno. I’m game to meet more.” He leered cheerfully at Raquel.
“Proof,” she snapped.
I held up Esther’s lighter.
“Where’d you get that” she said.
“Esther bequeathed it to me.” Obviously, I intended to live up to Esther’s faith in me, and I was fine playing that card to get Raquel onboard, but I wasn’t sure yet what being a fire-tender meant. It seemed so huge, like I was supposed to be this massive blaze keeping evil at bay, where I felt more like a couple of tiki torches at best.
“Fuck.” Raquel reached out her hands to throttle me, then threw them up in frustration.
I snickered. “Now you must obey me.”
Mahmud dug into his pocket and pulled out his own lighter. “Does this mean you have to obey me, too?”
Ro shook his head frantically at him.
Raquel lifted Mahmud off the ground without touching him and fired him toward the window.
Baruch caught him, inches from the glass. “We need him.”
He set Mahmud on his feet, then calmly set about making his own panini.
Mahmud moved away from the window. “I’m not working with this… this…”
“This what?” Raquel demanded.
“I’m kind of curious to hear the answer, too,” Ms. Clara said.
“Et tu, Brute?” Mahmud said, joining Baruch at the food.
“Back off,” Baruch said in a mild voice.
Bastijn slapped ten bucks into Cisco’s hand.
The front door banged open and Drio flashed in. “Where is she?”
The room sucked in a collective breath.
Grooming and Drio were no longer on intimate terms and sanity appeared to have done a runner as well. In wrinkled clothing, a bushy dark blond beard covered his face, and his red-rimmed eyes were only slightly less vivid than the purple bags under them.
“Where? Is? She?”
“Hybris isn’t actually here.” I yelped and portalled briefly out of the room, sidestepping Drio’s flash-step in my direction.
I portalled back in. Silver magic crackled over my skin, level four and barely in check. “Stay calm.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Rohan demanded.
“Tracking,” Drio said.
“Funny. Because you look exactly like you did after Asha’s death when you’d been drunk for a week.”
“Fuck you, Mitra. If you’d killed Hybris like you said you were going to before, we wouldn’t be hanging in the wind now.”
Ro’s blades shot out.
A piercing whistle cut through the room.
“Sit down and shut up.” Leo strolled into the room and shoved Drio down into the chair.
His eyes bugged out.
“You aren’t going to find Hybris in that state. Or at each other’s throats.”
She glared at Rohan until he retracted his blades.
“Way to make an entrance, pint-size,” Kane said.
Pretty much everyone except Drio was now helping themselves to food.
“Who are you?” Cisco asked.
“Leonie Hendricks.” Leo bowed to the assembled guests and grabbed a cookie. “Private Investigator, half-demon, and Nava’s best friend.”
Drio tensed up.
Pierre jabbed a finger at me. “You’re lucky I don’t have to file official reports anymore.”
I dropped my head into my hands with a groan.
“Did you know?” Kane said.
Ari nodded.
“When?”
“I found out that night we went to the club and met Malik. I’m sorry. I would have said something, but you know.”
Kane smirked. “I know that I’m the superior Rasha because I suspected the first time I met her here. She presented the same symptoms of distress as other demons brought behind the wards. That night at the club nailed it for me. Redcap goblin.”
“Liar. I successfully distracted you that night.” I licked a drop of mustard off my finger.
“No offense, babyslay, but you’re about as subtle as an asteroid.”
“You don’t care that I didn’t tell you?” Leo said.
“Why would I? That’s yours to share as you see fit.”
“Imagine that,” she said.
Drio crossed his arms.
“Did you know?” Baruch asked Ms. Clara.
“I know everything,” she said primly. “As I keep telling you.”
Danilo grabbed a carrot stick and jabbed it in the ranch dip. “A PD, huh?”
Leo rapped Danilo on the knuckles with one of the plastic sparkling water bottles. “Half-demon.”
“Fucking hell!”
Raquel laughed. “Nice to meet you, Leonie Hendricks.”
“Hybris,” Drio said. “Where is she?”
As everyone ate, I gave the fastest recap of all events involving Rabbi Mandelbaum, the Ring of Solomon, and Josip’s death that I could, my words tumbling out of me as I tried to catch the Rasha up before Drio lost what little patience he was clinging to. While I mentioned that Hybris had killed Josip, I didn’t tell the others about the Asha deception.
“My mom got this in the mail.” I handed the matchbook to Drio. “We think it’s a concrete link to the ring. Both Mandelbaum’s people and Hybris are looking for it.”
“I thought she can’t use the ring,” Raquel said.
“She can’t,” I said.
“But she’s got vendettas to settle,” Rohan said. “Hybris managed to clear her name as the one who spread those rumors on the demon dark web. Not only is she not being hunted anymore, a number of demons are furious that we made fools of them. They’ve teamed up with her. Mandelbaum, Nava, me, Drio, we’re all active targets right now.”
“Good.” Drio’s eyes flashed. “I’m coming with you to see this Kyle person.”
“Excellent, but that’s not why I called this meeting,” I said. “Most of the Rasha are still captive and for the past couple of weeks, no one has been killing demons. Now there are a handful of us free, but it’s not enough.”
The mood in the room turned grim. Without doubt, the demons loose on earth had taken advantage of our absence. There was no way to assess how much damage they’d done.
“I’m still trying to find our Rasha or Mandelbaum by tracking the money, but nothing’s popping up, yet,” Kane said. “Until then, we’re limited in how many hunters we have.”
“No, we’re not,” I said.
Raquel nibbled on a strawberry. “You want witches to join in?”
“It’s your job, too,” Mahmud said. That boy liked living dangerously.
“Witches can kill demons that we’ve failed to because you are more powerful,” Baruch said. “But we’ve got the training most of you no longer have. We pair up. Deploy to the most critical areas.”
“It’s like with the rift.” I accepted the celery stalk that Rohan offered me. I was eating celery when all I craved were more cookies. If that wasn’t love, I don’t know what was. “We’re all focused on our own thing, patching gaping wounds with band-aids. Have you come up with any solutions?”
“Not yet,” Raquel said.
I finished the tasteless vegetable, then took another stalk, because it was the perfect dip delivery shape and I did like my ranch. “Healing that rift is super urgent. You need to figure it out.”
Before I was forced to let Sienna play peek-a-boo in my brain and possibly doom all the Rasha.
“Thanks. I got that,” Raquel said.
“It’s time to pool our resources and pool our strengths. What did Harry say about the intel?” I asked Leo.
“He’s in. He said this was better than the Mothership and it was about time we all got off our collective asses and got in the fight together.”
“What about intel?” Pierre said.
“The Brotherhood had Orwell,” I said. “The demons have the dark web, which, thanks to Leo and Harry, we have access to as well.”
“The witches must have information systems,” Kane said.
“Yes, but—” Raquel said.
“Then pick the women who would be best suited for the job to work with Pierre and me, and let’s build a bigger and better system,” he said.
“Not all the witches will agree to this,” Raquel said.
“Not all the Rasha still held captive will either,” Baruch said. “We’ll lose some once they get out and see how the wind is blowing. But we must move forward as a cohesive whole.”
“We should relocate to Los Angeles,” Cisco said.
“Find a secure location to establish Command Central,” Ari said.
“We’ll help,” Danilo said.
“Will the witches help us track down the rest of the hunters?” I said.
“I don’t know.” Raquel’s voice held an uncharacteristic defensive edge. “You’re asking for everything all at once.”
I held up the lighter. “You’re a leader and I need you. Will you fight with me?”
Maybe that was how I tended this flame. You couldn’t build a fire with one log, it took a pile of them, carefully arranged and kindled. So, Raquel could be the next log on this fire. Fingers crossed.
“This could lead to civil war among the witches,” she said.
“It might,” I said. “But our world, our ways of fighting, are deeply and profoundly broken. We need to forge a new path.”
She sighed. “Fine, Luna. I’m in.”
I clapped my hands, bouncing up and down. I’d teamed up the witches and Rasha. I allowed myself a moment of smugness and another chocolate chip cookie.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 159
