by Davis, L. C.
"And that wouldn't put you in a bad position, either, I'm sure."
He shrugged innocently. "I'm an opportunist. Never claimed to be anything else."
"Well, thanks for the spiel, but I'm gonna pass," I said, handing the contract back to him.
His face fell. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"I'm sorry," he said with a laugh. "I don't think you fully understand what I'm offering you here."
"I do, I'm just not interested," I said, opening the door. "Not that letting you pimp me out isn't a tempting offer and all, but I think I'll just stick with not being the herald of the apocalypse."
"You don't have a choice."
"If I didn't, you wouldn't still be arguing."
That seemed to hit the mark. There was a crack in his mask of camp and charm and I found myself wondering how much of it was an act. "I'm going to give you some time to think about this," he said, his voice low and icy as he swept past me and lingered in the doorway for a moment. "Take my card and call me when you're ready to stop running."
I looked down at the white square that materialized between his fingertips. Engraved on the fine cardstock in elegant black script was The Demon Locke. I flipped the card over to reveal a sigil made of crude lines and a circle with an equal-armed cross in the middle. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"You really are out of witching practice if you don't know what to do with a sigil. Just don't wear it out," he called.
I looked up from the card and he was gone, but I had a feeling it wasn't the last time I'd be seeing him. I tucked the card in my pocket and sighed. One could hope.
Ten
DANIEL
"Daniel! There you are."
I groaned inwardly at the sound of Carla's syrupy tone. I liked her, I really did. More than her husband, that's for sure. She cared about the town and it showed, but she had a tendency to assume that everyone else shared her nonstop energy and zeal for taking on new projects. Between the clinic and the house calls I'd been making regularly, I just didn't have the time to sign up for another committee. Then there was the Council, which she'd been trying to recruit me onto for the last five years straight. I could only guess which one it was now, but it was getting to the point where going to the damn market wasn't safe.
"Hey, Carla," I said, forcing a smile. After getting bitten by a Chihuahua and a labradoodle in one day, I was hardly in top condition to fend off her philanthropic advances. "Good to see you."
"I'd hoped we would get the chance to talk more at the party, but you disappeared," she said, shifting her basket onto her hip. "Where'd you get off to?"
It wasn't so much where as who I'd gotten off with, but Carla was the last person who needed to know about my unplanned tryst. True to my prediction, my one-night stand after her party hadn't made any attempts to come back for his robe. It was probably just as well.
"Just decided to call it an early night. I've been burning the candle at both ends lately," I said, hoping that would be a hint that I didn't need anything else added to my to-do list.
"Well, I just wanted to check in and see if you'd made peace with Holden. I heard about what happened at the diner."
"It's fine now," I said, sensing the lecture that was coming if I didn't assure her of that. "We talked the other day and came to an understanding."
"Well, that's good," she said, straightening the canned peaches on the shelf so all the labels were facing forward. "We don't get many newcomers in this town, and I'd hate to have anyone get the wrong impression of Stillwater."
"That would be a shame," I said, holding my tongue.
"What was it you wanted to speak with Luke about, anyway?"
"It was nothing."
That seemed to satisfy her and she gave me a pleasant smile. "Oh, I almost forgot," she said, reaching into her purse to pull out a flyer. "I sent these out to everyone, but Nick has been awfully distracted lately, so who knows who actually got them?"
I looked down at the small flyer she offered me. "The Equinox Festival?" It was one of Stillwater's many annual excuses to batter and fry all manner of food items on a stick and get plastered on cider, but I had all but forgotten it was coming up.
"All the business owners are setting up booths, so I thought you might want to have one for your shelter animals."
"You know I run a vet clinic, not a pound, right?"
She stared blankly at me, so I sighed and slipped the flyer into my pocket. As far as volunteer commitments went, it wasn't the most time-exhaustive and maybe agreeing to it would get her off my back for a while. "I guess I could set something up with Karen at the shelter."
"Wonderful! I'm sure Nick would be happy to help. Oh, and then there's the Council..."
Shit. I agreed too soon. This woman was pushier than my Army recruiter. "I told you --"
"I know, I know, you don't have time," she said, rolling her eyes. Like that wasn't a valid reason. "I just thought you'd want to know that Dennis just turned in his declaration of candidacy for the empty spot when he got back this morning."
My head snapped up fast enough that I was courting whiplash. "Dennis? You're kidding."
"No, I'm afraid he's quite serious."
"He'll never get elected. I don't care how long it's been, this town never forgets."
She gave a noncommittal shrug. "With no one to run against him, Lucas won't have a choice but to appoint him... He can't very well deny someone public office for a crime they were never convicted of."
So that was her game. For all I knew, it was just Carla taking her strong-arming to the next level to guilt me into running, but the idea of Dennis holding any kind of sway in town didn't sit well with me. She knew how to get to me, if nothing else. "I'll think about it," I muttered.
Her smile turned up a few thousand watts. "I knew I could count on you. Just like your father," she said, giving my arm a squeeze. "Enjoy your evening."
No chance of that. Not until I knew what Dennis was planning. I set aside the couple of items I had managed to grab before Carla hunted me down and stalked out of the market and across the street. The lights in Dennis' building were still on, which was fine with me since that meant I didn't have to confront him at his house. The place always gave me the creeps and I didn't feel like walking all the way out into the woods. I was no lightweight at six feet tall and two-hundred pounds, most of it muscle leftover from my training days, but people had a habit of not coming back when they went to visit him.
The front door was unlocked and it was a public building, so I strode up the stairs that led to Dennis' office and pounded on the door. No amount of mental prep would have gotten me in the ideal frame of mind to see Dennis face-to-face after avoiding him for more than a decade, and if I gave myself time to think about it at all, I was bound to lose my nerve.
The door opened and there he was. I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, since I was there for the explicit purpose of seeing him, but it was still a punch in the gut and I couldn't quite recover enough breath to announce the reason for my presence.
The hardest part about seeing him should have been the reminder of what he'd done, but it wasn't. It was the fact that even though the ice blue eyes I found myself staring into were the ones I had known for years, the man I'd fallen in love with wasn't anywhere to be found in them. His eyes had been colder back then, full of all the pent-up rage of adolescence that had united us as much as it had turned us against each other. Dennis was my worst enemy and my first love all wrapped up in one toxic package, and I knew him as well as I knew myself. At least, I'd thought I had, before he killed Jessica. That tragedy was the point at which I realized, as alike as we were in our anger towards the world, his ran so much deeper than mine did. I had assumed that losing him so soon after losing my parents was the bottom of the barrel, the deepest loneliness I'd ever feel, but I was wrong.
Knowing Dennis was a monster capable of worse than I had ever imagined was one thing. It churned my stomach and hurt in ways I still
couldn't define any better in my thirties than I had been able to as a nineteen-year-old, but I could deal with it. It was manageable, if not tolerable, but looking into his eyes that first time after the police had released him from custody on a lack of evidence and seeing a complete stranger looking back at me? That was something else entirely, and the sting of it hadn't lessened at all with the passage of time.
"Something I can do for you, Daniel?" he asked in that soft, gratingly polite tone he'd adopted as he leaned in the doorway, his arms folded over his two-tone shirt. The urge to reach out and grab him by the overpriced silk tie around his neck and throttle him until he told me what the fuck he'd done with the man I loved and the man I hated--the years had done nothing to distinguish the one from the other--was strong enough that I tucked my hands into my pockets just to keep them at my sides.
"I know you're running for the empty spot on the Council."
He cocked an eyebrow. "You're battering down my door at ten o'clock at night because you found out I'm running for Council?"
The voice was his, but the way he spoke was so different it made my skin crawl. Sure, people grew up. They stopped cursing or started, talked about different things, lost accents or adopted them, but to change every mode of speech, every inflection? The stark difference in his voice in contrast to everything else that hadn't changed was what bothered me. He was older and he had let his light blond hair grow out a bit, but he wore the features of my Dennis like some macabre mask. I knew the slope of his nose, and the dorsal bump that was proof of the time I had broken it on our eighth-grade field trip. I still couldn't remember what the fight was about, but I knew he was the one who'd started it. He'd probably been picking on another kid and I'd taken it upon myself to intervene. That was how those early conflicts had usually started, with him taking out his anger on someone helpless and me taking my anger out on him in turn. That was the dysfunctional cycle that had begun it all, and yet I had the gall to be surprised things had ended the way they did.
Except they hadn't ended. He was gone, but the imposter in his place just kept on living and I was supposed to pretend I didn't notice, just like everyone else.
"Daniel?"
His voice called me back to reality and I realized he was looking at me with concern. If nothing else, that was proof this wasn't the Dennis I had grown up with. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not happening," I said, forcing myself back on track. "You're not getting on that Council."
He gave a bored sigh and stepped back, holding the door open. "Since you're here, you might as well come in."
An invitation was the last thing I expected and I found myself wary of following him into the office, but before I really knew how it happened, I had a drink in my hand and the door fell shut. He was by the liquor cart, pouring himself a drink. Scotch. The one thing on his dad's shelf that had always been safe from him. Guess his tastes had changed in more ways than one.
"You drink at the office?"
He gave me a bored look and took a sip before perching on the edge of his desk. "It's a perk of working for yourself. You should try it sometime, it might loosen you up."
"I thought you were supposed to be in Burlington until December. Run out of criminals to defend?"
"I don't defend criminals," he said calmly. "Our justice system holds that anyone charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Given my past, I'm sure you can understand why that distinction is so important to me."
My eyes narrowed. "Our past. I spent the weekend getting questioned by the cops with the local press camped on my lawn because of you, remember?"
He gave me a placid smile and dropped a fresh cube of ice into his glass. "I'm a bit confused. What is it you came for, Daniel? To question my decision to run for Council or to take a stroll down memory lane?"
"Neither," I said, setting my glass aside. "Honestly, I don't give a shit why you're doing this. I'm not going to let you."
"Ah, yes," he said with a knowing sigh. "You still take your role as self-appointed guardian of Stillwater so seriously."
"Someone has to," I said, coming to stand in front of his desk. If physical intimidation was what it took to get the message across, so be it. "Maybe everyone else has forgotten how you preyed on Jessica, but I won't let you hurt anyone else. Don't like it? Leave."
"Forget?" He gave a bitter laugh, standing so we were toe-to-toe, face-to-face. For the first time, I saw some hint of human emotion in those eyes, but it wasn't the rage I knew so well. It was anger, but it wasn't the kind that had always burned behind his mask of civility, barely within control. The man in front of me was ice, but the man I knew was fire, uncontrollable and unquenchable. He consumed everything he touched, including me, but this imposter was entirely within his own possession and that scared me more than anything. "Don't play dumb, Daniel, it doesn't suit you. You'll be long dead before I'm able to walk through the streets of this town without the whispers, the fleeting glances, the gossip."
"You say that like you deserve anything less," I said in disbelief. "If it bothers you so much, why don't you just leave?" It was the question I had wanted to ask him ever since the day he'd come back as someone else, and I knew I might not ever get the chance again."
Something flashed in his eyes, some emotion I couldn't recognize. "You think I wouldn't if I could? You think I want to stay here?"
"I've known you my entire life, and if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that you've never done a damn thing you didn't want to."
A cruel smile played on his lips, and for a fraction of a second, he looked like the man I knew. It should have repulsed me. It definitely shouldn't have made my heart skip with hope or my gaze lower to those lips, wondering if he still tasted the same...
The look in his eyes told me he knew the traitorous thoughts going through my mind as surely as if they were being projected onto my forehead. He stepped a little closer until I could feel the warmth, the friction of his lips as they hovered so close to mine, just barely short of touching. "You mean like that time I convinced you to help me break into that cabin on the lake?" he purred, his hand pressed cool and warm against my chest, resting over my heart. If my nerves had been a secret before, my thundering pulse had just given me away. "Just because we could."
My throat was tight and my voice came out strangled, but I couldn't bring myself to break away. He was poison, but that didn't stop me from craving the taste of him. "That would be one of the less despicable examples, yeah."
"That night was something, wasn't it?" he continued, as if he hadn't heard me at all. His hand trailed down and his gaze traveled up, his eyes heavy lidded and his lips parted just slightly as he wound his other hand around the back of my head. His fingers toyed in my hair, making me shudder, but whether it was from disgust or desire, I couldn't tell. The line had always been blurry where he was concerned. At least one thing hadn't changed. "We made a lot of secrets on that bearskin rug. A lot of mistakes."
"I've made plenty of mistakes where you're concerned," I said, my voice gruff and strained. "That night wasn't one of them."
His lips met mine and there were a thousand different ways I should have responded. Pushing him away, telling him to fuck off, running as far and as fast from that office as I could without ever looking back. Anything other than taking him into my arms and returning the kiss, digging my hands into his hair with equal abandon to find it every bit as soft under my fingertips as it was in my memories. That kiss was an outlet for all the anger and venom that had passed between us over the years, and I should have known better than to add fuel to that fire, but if I had one weakness, one blind spot, it had always been him.
In that moment, it was so easy to forget that the man in my arms was a stranger. It was so easy to buy into the lie that he was mine, to ignore all the reasons why he couldn't be and why I shouldn't even want him to.
At some point, he'd moved to my neck without my realizing it, his impossibly sharp teeth scraping against my flesh. Then his ton
gue was in my mouth, forceful and dizzying as he claimed the breath from my lungs. He broke the kiss suddenly, leaving a metallic taste in my mouth, and the tenderness with which he stroked my cheek was the first crack in the illusion. His laughter shattered it entirely. I stared back at him as he watched me in a mixture of pity and amusement.
"Poor Daniel. Still living in the past."
I watched him in growing confusion, torn between hurt and anger when I realized that kiss was just another game to him, and anger was winning out fast. "Who are you?" I asked through gritted teeth. "And don't give me the same bullshit you give everyone else. Not this time."
"I suppose I do owe you a bit more than that, don't I?" He sighed and the acknowledgement, however vague and inadmissible it was, stunned me into silence. "Tell you what? I'm in a generous mood, so I'll give you something I never have before. The truth."
He took my face in his hands and looked me straight in the eye, without a hint of the pretense he wore as stylishly as his designer suits. "I never loved you, Daniel. It was all just a game, and you made playing so easy. All the pain, the isolation, the desperation to cling to another human being after your parents died, it made you so easy to exploit. You fell in love with a beautiful monster, but you were never anything more than prey."
"Stop it," I growled.
"I'm sorry, is this not what you wanted to hear?" he asked in a pouting tone, leaning back on the desk. "That's the thing about lies. They taste so much better than the truth." He drew a finger into his mouth and closed his eyes, as if savoring the taste of something. "Some men will starve surrounded by food just because they can't stomach how bitter the truth is in comparison."
"I've had enough of your cryptic bullshit," I growled.
"Please, Daniel. Just because I let you fuck me, you think you actually meant anything to me?" he scoffed. "You were an experiment. Just another way to pass the time.
"You're lying."
He gave me a pitying look that was so much worse than any physical harm he had ever done me. "You know these lips better than anyone, Daniel. Somewhere deep inside, you know this is the first time they've ever told you the truth."
