by Accardo, Jus
Dad rolled his eyes, but nodded. “I suppose you could say that, since there needs to be an exchange of blood.”
I let it all sink in, and boy, did it ever. Realization smacked me upside the head like a cow falling from the sky. “Wait—so you were human?”
“I was,” he admitted. There was a sad ring in his voice. “But before you go asking a ton of questions, it was a very long time ago. I don’t remember it.”
I wasn’t sure I bought that. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he confirmed. It was a lie and we both knew it, but I didn’t push. “I only know Valefar saved me from death. He was created by Lucifer, who is one of the seven pure demons, created from Pride.”
I took a deep breath. This was a lot to take in, but… “You didn’t answer my other question. Does Lukas know? What’s happening to him, I mean? Does he know he’s changing into a demon because you saved him?”
“Lukas understands, and while I can’t say he’s thrilled, he’s willing to deal with it. The alternative was death. It’s simple, really. You’ll need to be patient while he adjusts to the changes.” He stood and took several steps away from the table and paused in the doorway. With a look that screamed business, he added,” And I won’t subject you to the demonic sex talk, but remember what I said about Lukas changing. He’s going to feel things much stronger than he used to. All emotions will be amplified… All of them. I better not find them amplified on you.”
Chapter Nine
Mom was standing in front of the coffee machine when I came downstairs the next morning. She had the pot in hand with her face over the opening, just breathing it in.
“Rough night?” I asked, sniffing the air. Blah. Hazelnut. The woman was trying to kill me.
She snapped to attention, embarrassed, and set the pot down. “Just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
I held up my hands and backed slowly toward the door. “Whoa. Stop right there. I do not want to know.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was in my room, looking at case files all night, Jessie. Get your mind out of the gutter.” Huh. See that? We thought alike. Mom poured a cup of coffee, then sat down at the table. “Hurry up and get dressed. I got a call from Cassidy about ten minutes ago. We need to go to the Belfair house.”
That was surprising. “Did she suddenly remember something about the mirror?”
Mom shook her head and downed the entire cup in a single gulp. When she set it down, there was a grim look in her eyes. “Kendra found a member of the coven dead on their couch this morning. Murdered.”
My stomach roiled. Kendra wouldn’t even step on a spider because the very idea of death scared her so badly. “What?”
Mom nodded. “Cassidy thinks whoever killed the witch purposefully placed her there as a warning.” She leaned back and sighed. “We don’t need this right now.”
Damn right we didn’t. I felt sick. The darkest thing about Kendra was the shade of her lip gloss. For her to have been the one to find the body… “Did Cassidy say how she was?”
“How who was?” Lukas asked, pushing through the office door. He looked exhausted, and I remembered what Dad said about demons not needing sleep. But, he wasn’t a full-on demon yet, was he?
“Mom will fill you in,” I said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. He turned pale and stumbled away—exactly like I knew he would. I didn’t want to give the poor guy a heart attack, but sometimes I couldn’t resist the funny. I went to kiss him again, but he sidestepped me, watching Mom from the corner of his eye. “Hang tight for five and lemme finish getting ready.”
…
The drive from the office to Kendra’s house seemed to take twice as long as normal. Mom hit every light, and we had to stop four times for people crossing the road. Seriously. Who the heck was out walking around at ten a.m. on a Saturday? By the time she pulled into the Belfair driveway, I was ready to scream.
I wasn’t even over the threshold when I demanded, “Where is she?”
Cassidy, normally stone-faced and brooding, shook her head and pointed toward the stairs. “Her bedroom.”
I left Mom and Lukas to deal with Cassidy, raced up the steps, taking them two at a time, and pushed through the door without even knocking. Kendra was curled up on the corner of her bed. Her knees were tucked tight, and her head was down. Every few seconds her shoulders would quake softly.
“Ken?”
She picked her head up, and when her eyes met mine, the corners of my own eyes began to sting. I wasn’t a crier, but put me in a room with someone who was—especially if I cared about them—and I was a damn waterfall.
“It was horrible, Jessie,” she whispered. Her breath hitched, and she hiccupped. “You can’t even imagine… Horrible.”
I rushed forward and threw my arms around her. “I’m so sorry.”
She pulled away and sniffled. Swiping her hand across her eyes, she shook her head and said, “I’m sorry. I’m being a total girl. It’s probably no big for you. I mean, you must see this kind of thing all the time.”
I leaned sideways so I could look her in the eye. “I’ve never seen a dead body, Ken. Not a human, anyway.”
Her eyes widened, and she swiped the back of her hand under her nose, then hiccupped again. “Really?”
“Really,” I confirmed. “We’ve taken down tons of baddies, but humans…humans are different. I can’t even imagine…”
“I got up this morning and saw someone on the couch,” she said, eyes fixing on some unseen object over my shoulder. “I thought it was my mom, and I panicked because I could feel it, ya know? That something was really wrong? Everything was too quiet. The air was just too still.”
I nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“I wanted to run. Even before I knew what I was looking at, I wanted to run. It took everything in me to walk into that room.” She sucked in a deep breath and shrugged. “Mom says we can feel it. Death. It blips our radar. Anyway, I did it. I walked up to the couch. She was lying on her back, and her eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. Just…empty.”
I grabbed her hands and squeezed. “You don’t have to talk about this.”
“I do,” she insisted. “I reacted badly. Mom is probably ashamed of me. I just couldn’t hold it together, Jessie. I broke.” The tears gathering at the corners of her eyes spilled over, and she dropped her head into her hands to hide her face.
I pulled her up and shook my head. “Don’t you dare. You acted like anyone would. I would have freaked the hell out.”
She was shaking her head. “No way. I’m pathetic. Mom would have never reacted that way. She wouldn’t have crumbled like that.”
“You’re not Cassidy—you’re you. And you are perfect, exactly the way you are. Who the heck says you have to pretend to be fearless? Because that’s what those other witches do, Ken. They pretend. They’re just as scared as everyone else. They just hide it better. They build up a wall of bravado using their powers as a shield, but when you strip that away, they’re only human. Just like you. Just like me.”
She looked like she might argue, but after a minute, slumped back against the wall and sighed. “God, she was so pale…” Kendra looked up. Her eyed were red-rimmed and swollen, but there was strength there whether she saw it herself or not.
“We’re gonna figure this out. I prom—” Movement caught my eye. A dark tendril of smoke wafting in from the seam of the window by the desk. I watched it for a moment, transfixed by the way it swirled and danced with an odd kind of grace, before the reality of it hit me like a pound of quartz. “Shit!”
The small tuft of purple smoke fragmented and burst upward, taking a familiar shape. With a grainy laugh, the demon from the mirror stepped forward, gaze fixed on Kendra. “The Belfair blood calls to me, witch. I knew I would find you sooner rather than later.”
With a yelp, Kendra stumbled off the bed, ducking the demon’s reach by a fraction of an inch. I lunged sideways, determined to get between them, but it knocked me
backward with the tiniest flick of its beefy wrist.
Had the lights been out, I could have shadowed us both the hell out of there, but since Kendra had put up the track lighting, it was bright as the sun in here.
“Tell me where it is,” he demanded, advancing on her.
“It,” Kendra repeated. She started to back away slowly, but didn’t get far. Three steps and she hit the wall. “Define it.”
“You know what I seek, witch,” the demon bellowed. “Give it to me now, and your death shall come swift.”
Not even an I’ll spare your lives? Someone didn’t know how to negotiate…
“Um,” I said, trying to redirect his focus to me. “Maybe it would help if you explained what you were looking for. Does it have a name? Maybe you have a picture?” My heart thundered behind my ribs, but I stood my ground. “Oh! Maybe you could tell us where you last saw it? That might—”
And just like that, he was in front of me with one hand wrapped around my throat and his putrid demon breath puffing out across my face. It was all I could do not to puke right then and there. A mix between rotting flesh and burning hair with the smallest hint of sulfur. When I felt the ground beneath my feet disappear and saw the twisted grin on his face, I tried to call out for Mom, but wouldn’t you know it? That required air—something that was, at that particular moment, in very short supply.
Chapter Ten
As I struggled to move air in and out of my lungs, Kendra sprang into action. Lunging sideways and flinging the door open, she leaned into the hallways and screamed, “Upstairs. Hurry!”
“Girls?” Mom’s worried voice drifted in from the hall a second before she appeared in the doorway with Cassidy. Lukas brought up the rear, but managed to push past them and into the room. Lips curled in a snarl, beautiful brown eyes narrowed and sparking with rage, the sight of him would have taken my breath away if Purple Haze here wasn’t already cutting it off.
The demon smiled at them. A sick, twisted grin. “Give it to me or I will snap her neck.”
“I’ll kill you,” Lukas threatened and made a move to lunge forward.
Mom came in to stand beside him, closing her hand around his arm with just enough time to pull him back. “What is it that you want?” Her tone was even, but underneath the calm was fear. What we did was dangerous, she knew that, but seeing it affect me up close and personal was hard for her to handle.
The fingers around my neck twitched, long, pointed nails puncturing the soft skin at the back of my head. For a second I was sure he would do it. Snap my neck like a Popsicle stick. But his fingers flinched, and he said, “It does not surprise me, after all these years, to see that the Darkers and the Belfairs still conspire against demon kind.”
“Whatever your grievance is with the Darkers,” Cassidy said in a cool tone, “it does not affect us. The Belfairs have not aided their cause during my lifetime.”
Wow. Talk about throwing us under the bus. Kendra paled and watched her mom in shock. Even my mom looked surprised.
“Just tell us what it is you want,” Lukas said. He’d wrenched free from Mom’s grip, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. It was similar to the look he’d worn when we were in the park. Sort of unhinged and feral. His gaze alternated between the demon and Cassidy, and I wasn’t sure which one he wanted to rip apart more.
The demon roared. “I want my lord’s prison.”
Lukas opened his mouth, but Mom yanked back on him one more time. “We don’t know what that is,” she said softly, looking to Cassidy for confirmation. The witch nodded. “But if you tell me more, maybe I can get it for you. First, though, you have to release my daughter, because if you hurt her, you’ll—”
Lukas charged.
The grip around my neck loosened then disappeared, and I dropped to the ground coughing and sputtering for air. The demon laughed and dissolved into a puff of purple smoke. A moment later, he resolidified behind a crazed-looking Lukas. Mom dove forward, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Lukas and the demon were only inches apart.
“You would do well to remember your manners, boy,” it snarled and lashed out. The action was almost too fast for me to follow. Lukas flew forward into Kendra’s dresser and crashed to the floor. The impact created an echo that rattled through the room and made my blood run cold. Dad said he was becoming a demon, and that meant he’d be a lot tougher than the average Monster Masher, but I didn’t know how far along the demon path he’d come yet.
I stood and tried to make a move, but the demon growled and whirled around, latching back on to my throat. I froze.
It watched me for a moment and then, to my surprise, released its hold. “I have business here, so I will give you two days. Hand over the prison in four days’ time. I’ll kill you either way, but I promise to make it quick.” And with a puff of purple, its form dissolved, the smoke filtering out the crack in the sill from where it’d come in.
…
“She was totally lying,” I said as Mom pulled the Mustang away from the curb. The moment Lukas picked himself up from the floor, Cassidy all but threw us out of the house. She insisted she needed time to recover from what had almost happened to her daughter. What crap. I knew Kendra’s mom loved her, but coddled? Not a day in her life.
“By telling us she didn’t know anything about the prison?” Mom made a face. “Noticed that, did you?”
“The question is why?” Lukas leaned forward and poked his head between the seats. He was sporting a blooming bluish-purple bruise on the left side of his face, and had a split through his bottom lip, but otherwise seemed okay. Mom, who was normally a stickler for seat belts, didn’t say a word about his less-than-stellar car seat etiquette. “That demon obviously dislikes the Belfairs as much as the Darkers. What motivation could Cassidy possibly have to keep secrets from us when we’re only trying to help?”
I reached around and patted his head. I didn’t miss the way he cringed a little. “One day you’ll learn that it’s not all black and white.”
Mom nodded and tapped the brake as we came to the light at the center of town. Even in the cold months, the square was bustling. “Cassidy Belfair has her own motivations. Whether or not she has this prison the demon wants, she’s got an agenda of her own. When you were upstairs with Kendra, she was asking a lot of questions about the mirror.”
My interest was piqued. “Questions? Cause that’s not too suspicious…”
Mom chuckled and hooked a right onto our road. “We have some digging to do.”
Fantastic. Digging wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned spending my Saturday.
She pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. “I’m going to check with Paulson. Maybe one of his ghosts has helpful information. In the meantime, I want you and Lukas to go through the basement. See if you can find out anything about that mirror.”
…
A few months ago, I’d stumbled upon a key to a secret storage locker my grandfather had been hiding. Lukas and I went there in hopes of finding some way to break his tether from Wrath, but all we found was a boatload of crap. Mostly dangerous crap. Old charms, ritual stones, instructions for summoning demons, it was all in there, along with boxes of journals from Darkers of days past. Mom didn’t feel the love of off-site storage, so we’d brought everything back and stuffed it in the basement where we could keep an eye on things.
“Here,” Lukas said. We’d brought several of the boxes up to the office and were camped out with a couple of hot chocolates. So far we’d found zip. He waved an old book in the air and beckoned me over. “There’s a paragraph in one of Charles’s journals about something called a vanity demon. This thing came out of a mirror. Maybe that’s it?”
“Vanity demon?” I hopped off the couch and went around to stand behind his chair. Skimming the page, I shook my head. “No way. That says they kill by slowly stealing away your youth. The thing that killed the coven witch didn’t do that. Her neck was broken, but other than that, she was untouched.”
He clos
ed the book and leaned back, and I settled on the edge of the desk. We were getting nowhere, and I couldn’t focus. Even the chocolate wasn’t helping. I kept thinking about what Dad said about Lukas becoming a demon. The fact that he hadn’t come clean bothered me. Leaving it alone was probably the smart thing to do, and that’s what I’d planned, but I should have known that would never stick. “I need to ask you a question.”
“Okay…”
“How come you didn’t tell me about the demon thing?”
He took a deep breath and was quiet for a moment, letting his head dip low. When he lifted his chin and his eyes met mine, there was a spark of darkness there. More than annoyance, but slightly less than anger. “Damien told you.”
“You didn’t think we should know about that? That I should know?” What I really wanted was for him to tell me Dad forbade him to come clean. I’d been annoyed when Dad first told me, but thinking about it more and more, I was pissed, and just a little bit hurt. I didn’t have any illusions that relationships were all honesty and rose petals scattered in a path across the floor, and since the night we’d put the Sins back in the box, we hadn’t really talked about the actual definition of ours, relationship or not. Lukas was working at the agency. With me and Mom. The fact that he was a potential ticking time bomb should have come up.
“It’s not as though I was keeping it from you.” His voice rose and he stood. The book in his lap slid to the floor as his eyes met mine with the spark of challenge.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was trying to intimidate me. The annoyance faded, giving way to ire. I squared my shoulders. “In this century, not telling someone something important is the definition of keeping secrets from them.”
“That’s just it,” he snapped. “This isn’t important. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Sure it does.” I snorted. “According to Dad, you’re one big emotional time bomb.”
“I have it mostly under control.” Arms rigid at his sides, he curled his fists tight, to the point he was trembling.
