Hellishly Ever After (Infernal Covenant Book 1)

by Nadine Mutas

  Azazel loomed right in front of Taylor now, shadows writhing about his body. Her eyes darted back and forth—then stilled and focused on him. She sucked in a breath and stepped back.

  “You wanted to see me?” he purred.

  Slack-jawed, Tay stared at him.

  I peered around him to glance at his face. Good God. He’d amped up the mesmerizing factor of his hard-cut beauty to a dazzling degree. I wasn’t even looking at him directly, and I wanted to sink to my knees and worship his masculine perfection.

  Tay gaped, obviously thunderstruck.

  He tickled her under her chin. “Demon got your tongue?”

  She uttered a sound of helpless awe.

  “Azazel,” I ground out and tugged on his arm.

  He dipped his head and looked at me from under his lashes. “Did you think I was going to hurt her?”

  “I…”

  “She’s your best friend and your only confidante. She could be trying to knife me, and I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.” He shrugged. “I’d simply bedazzle her.”

  “Like you’re doing now?”

  His smile was blindingly brilliant. Taylor sighed.

  “Quit it,” I hissed.

  “I do have to make a good impression on your best friend.”

  “I think you have—”

  “Earn her seal of approval, and all that.”

  “Stoooooop.”

  “As you wish.”

  I felt the shift in energy as he pulled his power back into himself. The shadows retreated into his skin, the magnetic allure of his beauty toned down to normal levels. Which were, of course, still heart stopping in their effect.

  Leaning back against the balcony railing, he slid his hands into the pockets of his pants and winked at me. I gave him major side-eye in return.

  Taylor blinked, shook her head, and took a deep breath. She studied Azazel from head to toe and back up again, then turned to me.

  “Girrrrrrl.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s…”

  “I know.”

  She nodded, her brows raised, lips pursed. Facing Azazel again, she asked, “Do you have a brother?”

  “Tay!”

  “Sister,” Azazel smoothly said.

  Taylor seemed to ponder that. “I remember, Zoe mentioned that. Is she gorgeous like you?”

  “Tay!”

  “As her brother, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the looks of my sister, but she’s never lacked for suitors.” He tilted his head to me, a glint of humor in his eyes. “Zoe here may be able to give you a better assessment of Azmodea’s attractiveness.”

  “Wow, look at the time,” I shouted.

  “Well, if she’s half as fine as you are,” Taylor said to Azazel, “a girl might just consider switching sides…”

  “Shouldn’t we be leaving?” I asked with a hint of desperation.

  “I also have a nephew,” Azazel threw in.

  Taylor’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s right, Zoe told me about him. Yummy Mammon, right?”

  Azazel leveled a stare at me.

  “I feel like we really should be leaving!” I flailed wildly.

  “Please tell Mammon I’m open to some demon possession of my own.” Taylor fluttered her lashes.

  “Byyyyyeeee!” I grabbed Azazel’s arm and tried to pull him away. Of course, it was like trying to move a tank.

  I turned to Taylor. “It was great to catch up with you, but we must be going now. I’ll be back when I can, ‘kay?” To Azazel I said under my breath, “We’re leaving. Now.”

  “We still have a few minutes.” His eyes twinkled.

  “Now!”

  He sighed. “Pleasure meeting you, Taylor.”

  “Mhm.” She cocked a brow. “Say hi to Mammon for me.”

  With a wink, he extended his wings. They flared over the railing of the balcony behind him, fire licking over the gleaming obsidian feathers.

  “Whoa!” Taylor stumbled back, her eyes huge.

  “Show off,” I muttered.

  He beckoned me with a crooked finger. “Hop on, babe.”

  Babe? Oh, he was laying it on thick. “I swear, if you start calling me bae...” I growled.

  His grin was all sorts of wrong.

  Facing Taylor again, I said, “I love you, Tay. Feel hugged.” I blew her a kiss.

  “Ditto, Z.”

  I turned to Azazel and waited for him to scoop me up with one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, as usual, but he made no move to pick me up.

  His smirk caused a flutter in my ghostly stomach. “I said, hop on.”

  Oh, you—

  Rolling my eyes, I grabbed hold of his tunic, jumped up and slung my legs around his waist. He caught me with his hands under my butt, wicked amusement playing over his features.

  “I’ll get you back for that,” I pressed out.

  “I’m aquiver with fear.” With his hands on my ass, he pushed my hips closer to him, right against the unmistakable hardness at his groin.

  My fingers dug into his neck, arousal flooding my ghostly form.

  “Get a room,” Taylor said laughing.

  “Why get a room,” Azazel muttered, “when we can just do this?”

  By now I recognized the telltale prickle that accompanied switching between visibility and invisibility—somehow Azazel brought me along with him as he made the change.

  “That is equal parts cool and weird,” I heard Taylor say—right before Azazel let himself fall backwards over the railing.

  Still holding on to me, he snapped his wings closed, and we plummeted down.

  I shrieked, grabbing him tighter, my legs holding his hips in a vise grip.

  Ghost form or no, instincts made sure I died about a thousand deaths in the few seconds of free fall before he flared his wings out and shot upward again with powerful beats.

  His mouth at my ear, he murmured, “That’s what you get for Yummy Mammon.”

  “Right there, the house on the corner lot,” I said, pointing to the small single-level home that was just a step above a trailer as Azazel swooped low over the little town.

  After we’d gone back to Hell through the gate in Sydney, he flew me to yet another demon’s territory, since Azmodea’s gate in the east of the San Francisco Bay Area was hundreds of miles away from Forest Grove, the little town on the suburban outskirts of the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon.

  Thankfully, the demon whose gate we had to use this time wasn’t interested in why Azazel needed access, and we proceeded to Earth without issue.

  Now Azazel shot me an arch look. “You do realize I’m familiar with your mother’s house?”

  “Why—” I broke off and glared at him. “You watched me?”

  “I checked in on you every once in a while,” he corrected, “in the never-dwindling hope that you might marry before your twenty-fifth birthday.”

  “Perv.”

  “You weren’t that interesting as a teenager,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I never watched you in your room.” His lips twitched. “Not until after you went off to college.”

  “What?”

  His voice was all innocence. “Had to keep a closer eye on you as you approached your mid-twenties.”

  Ah, yes, to manipulate my boyfriends into proposing. I was still sore about that. But right now, the other implication of what he said riled me up far more—while it also irritatingly aroused me, not that I’d ever admit it. “How much exactly,” I gritted out, “did you watch me?”

  A smug smile snuck onto his face, and his voice dropped to a sensual purr. “Enough to know how you like to be touched.”

  I probably should have been scandalized. And I would have been. Totally. I’d have mustered up real outrage about his unethical snooping…if I wasn’t so much in favor of the result.

  He landed in a whirl of wings and set me down right in front of the door to the small backyard just as I heard my mom’s voice.

  I froze where I s
tood.

  The window to the kitchen was open, allowing parts of her conversation to float outside. As if in a trance, I stepped closer, looked inside.

  My mom sat at the small kitchen table, her phone at her ear. Her hair, the same dark brown as mine, only cut shorter, was tousled, as if she’d run her hand through it a hundred times today. The last few years had brought her a few wrinkles, but now her face appeared haggard, the lines deepened, her skin pallid. She seemed to have aged years since I last saw her.

  Even in my spirit form, the echo of my heart cringed at her sight, at the sorrow and grief that hung about her like a heavy mantle.

  “No,” she said, her voice hoarse. “No, I do understand, but—” She paused, and her features tightened. “She wouldn’t just leave. Maybe you could—” She closed her eyes, her free hand on the table clenching to a fist. “Please, if you could just send another officer to question—yes, I know. I get that. I just think—” She paused again, swallowed. Her tone turned bitter. “I’ll have a nice day when I know what happened to my daughter.”

  She glared at the phone, the call apparently ended, and let the device fall to the table, burying her face in both hands. Her shoulders shook.

  Something broke inside me.

  I started for the door. Azazel caught my wrist. His face harsh, he shook his head.

  “Don’t.”

  “I need her to see me,” I rasped. “She needs to know.”

  “No. You think you’re doing her a favor by revealing the truth, but you’ll end up hurting her more. Most human minds aren’t meant to understand what lies beyond their senses. There’s a reason we don’t run around showing ourselves here on Earth. Taylor was different because she was present during the séance and has known since you were both thirteen. Kids are more open. If you spring this kind of knowledge on an older human, set in their ways, you risk irreparable damage to their psyche.”

  My mom’s sob yanked my gaze back to her. I hadn’t seen her cry like this since the early days after my dad’s betrayal. My entire soul hurt watching her.

  “She’s already suffering,” I ground out, pulling to get my wrist free of his grip. “I can’t harm her more than this. Let me go.”

  “No.” He slung an arm around my waist.

  “Azazel, please.”

  His grip was implacably firm. I tried making myself visible, but the telltale prickle never came—he kept me invisible, unheard.

  “Please,” I begged, my voice as brittle as I felt. “I can’t just—”

  My words died at the sight of my aunt walking into the kitchen. Stopping my struggle against Azazel’s hold, I stared numbly. Aunt Cora was my mom’s younger sister, the only other close family we had left. Both my maternal grandparents had died years ago, taken too soon by cancer and heart attack. Working long hours at a law firm on the East Coast, Aunt Cora hadn’t been able to visit us much in the past years. Sometimes we didn’t even see her on Thanksgiving or Christmas, when she had to work overtime for some clients.

  But now she was here, outside of any big holiday...to comfort my mom in her time of grief.

  That broken part inside my soul fractured a bit more.

  “Hey,” Aunt Cora said, sinking into the chair beside my mom and stroking over her back. “Hey. Shhh. Still nothing?”

  My mom shook her head, her eyes reddened. “They’re not even really looking for her. They still think she just ran away. She wouldn’t. She just started a new job, for God’s sake!”

  “I know.” Aunt Cora pulled my mom in for a hug. “We’ll keep looking, and digging, okay? I know some people who could help.”

  Mom nodded and blew into a tissue.

  Aunt Cora’s voice grew quiet. “Have you decided if you want to go?”

  My mom’s features hardened. “I don’t know yet. I don’t know.”

  “Well, you have two more days to make up your mind, and I’ll be here for another week, so even if you want to go after the funeral, I can come with you.”

  Funeral? If they were still looking into my disappearance, then it couldn’t be my funeral they were talking about. My soul became very, very still, dread stealing through me on icy claws.

  “I just…” my mom whispered. “I always thought, the day he died, I’d be… Happy is the wrong word. But I’ve been angry with him for so long, and there’s just so much pain, I thought there’d be...closure. But now…” She rubbed a hand over her face.

  I felt like I’d been dunked in ice water. No. Oh, no, no, no.

  “Yeah,” Aunt Cora said, taking mom’s hand. “It’d be nice if everything were black and white, hm? Feelings aren’t rational. You guys were married for as long as you’ve been apart now, and you loved him once. It’s never that simple turning your back on that.”

  No. It couldn’t be.

  “I mean,” Aunt Cora went on, “we can always go after the funeral so you don’t have to see them. And then whether you want to cry or spit on his grave—or both—no one will judge you. I’ll be there for you either way.”

  My ghost form trembled. My whole spiritual core shook with the chilling implication of their words. “Azazel,” I whispered.

  He’d grown very still behind me.

  “Has my father died?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  I trembled some more. “How can you not know?”

  “I’m not omniscient.” His voice held an edge. “And I didn’t keep tabs on your father. You were estranged.”

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Aunt Cora said. “Take your time to think about it. It’s all a bit much right now… First Zoe, then…” She bit her lip. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

  Mom nodded and rose from her chair.

  I turned, and Azazel let me go enough so I could face him. “Take me to my father’s.”

  His expression was guarded. “Are you sure?”

  “I need to know,” I rasped.

  He regarded me for a few seconds, but whatever he saw on my face made him give a curt nod. “Does he still live in the same house?”

  “Last I heard, yes. The two times he moved, he let me know the new address.” I pressed my lips together, numb though the gesture was. “Not that I ever wrote, or came to visit.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  He scooped me up once more, this time the usual way, and I looped my arms around his neck as he took off into the skies, my spiritual form churning with a sickening feeling, like toxic sludge spreading through my system.

  My dad’s new family had made their home in Gresham, all the way on the other side of Portland. By car, it would take an hour—or more, during rush hour—via the 26, but Azazel flew the distance in less than thirty minutes.

  He touched down in the yard behind a house in the craftsman-style so typical for the region. It wasn’t a big house...but still larger than my mom’s bungalow. Familiar, old resentment stung me. I’d grown up in a house like that, when I thought we were a normal, happy family. Before I found out that the people closest to you can lie to your face for years and years, keeping secrets that are ticking bombs.

  Clenching my ghostly fists at the poisonous bite of old anger and hurt, I took the steps to the back porch and walked right through the closed door into the kitchen. I swept my gaze through the room, noted the little signs of family life strewn about the surfaces—a used plate on the table, a school book—math—on the countertop, notes and photos on the fridge.

  Pulled by inevitable, self-destructive curiosity despite myself, I stepped up to the refrigerator and took a closer look at the pics pinned there with magnets. Two girls laughed from most of them, at different ages, some photos showing them as toddlers, some newer ones revealing that they were now teenagers.

  Their hair was lighter than my dark brown, but their eyes...hazel like mine. Like my father’s.

  I’d never seen my half-sisters.

  In the initial chaos after the separation and divorce, there was no room for a weird kind of family meeting, a
nd in the years that followed, I was determined to ignore my father’s repeated attempts at contact, and to pretend I had no blood relatives on my dad’s side at all.

  Seeing them now, even if only in photos, was like a knife to the heart.

  They looked like me, and yet not.

  The soft sound of the door opening and closing behind me shook me out of my contemplation of the most painful kind of mirror I’d ever faced. Azazel’s energy brushed my back, his presence like a bulwark of calm in the roughening sea of turmoil threatening to capsize me.

  A female voice came from somewhere toward the front of the house. Dread filling my soul, I stepped out of the kitchen and followed the short hallway to the living room. My gaze snagged on the woman sitting on the couch—blond, in her forties maybe, I immediately knew her to be Olivia, my dad’s second wife. Not just from the one photo on the fridge that showed her and the girls, but from how her features were reflected in her daughters’ faces...while those same faces still managed to be eerily similar to my own.

  Dressed in black jeans and a black sweater, she held her phone to her ear and took notes on a pad.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice soft. “And how much for the larger wreath?” She wrote something down. “Okay. What’s the word limit for that one?” Again, she scribbled a note. “Uh-huh. When do you need the text finalized?” Another note. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

  She hung up, laid the phone on the table and rubbed her eyes.

  Something loomed over me, ice-cold and dark, like a giant wave in a stormy sea, building, building, building so high that it blocked out the sky.

  “Megan,” Olivia called and rose from the couch. “Emma.”

  Footsteps thundered on the stairs behind me, and I stepped aside just as a teenage girl walked past me into the living room.

  “Em’s not coming,” she said.

  “Did she find something in her closet?”

  “No.”

  Olivia sighed then raised her voice and said, “If you’re not down in a minute, we’re leaving without you, and I’ll pick a dress for you, and you’ll wear it so help me God.”