The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Need (Nava Katz Book 3)

by Deborah Wilde

  He huffed a laugh. “Yeah, Nava. Normal people label relationships, not find every excuse in the book to keep denying that they’re in one.”

  “Please. Normal people do that all that time. Not that we’re in a relationship. A relationship implies an equal dynamic and that’s not how you roll. You don’t listen. You barge in when you’ve been told repeatedly you’re not welcome. Violate boundaries left and right–”

  Hurt flashed across his face. “You think the kiss was a violation? I gave you every chance to stop it.”

  I stared at my feet. “You’re missing the point.”

  “No, you’re being deliberately obtuse. As usual.”

  Another honk from the waiting driver. This one long and pointed.

  I spun to face him. “Honk again and watch me stand here all freaking day.”

  He glowered at me and drove off, leaving me with Rohan, stony-faced, his arms crossed.

  “I’m hardly the obtuse one. Also?” I beckoned Rohan close with the crook of my index finger. “Little secret. We’re not normal. We hunt demons and wield magic. Pretty freaking abnormal. And that’s without all the rest of the baggage you Brotherhood boys come with.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I tossed my purse into the car. “You’re broken. All of you. Even as you’re all so committed to your fantasy that you’re these chill dudes with your shit together.”

  He actually rolled his eyes at me.

  “Don’t hold it in, Snowflake. You’ll get cancer.”

  “Then enlighten me.” His voice was clipped. “About these many issues.”

  Another car slowed down next to us.

  I shooed it off with a sharp jab, then commenced Rohan’s enlightenment. “How about for starters you’d rather die than admit you’re still messed up over whatever happened to your cousin?”

  His expression went ice cold. “Don’t talk about Asha.”

  “How could I?” I slammed my hand down on the top of the door. “You won’t tell me anything about her. You’re still punishing yourself for what happened even though you say you’ve moved on. You’re so scared of revealing yourself that every single thing with you is a calculated decision designed to let you stay in control and make sure you have the upper hand. God forbid you give anything away.”

  “Like you’re some open book.”

  “Compared to you, I am. Plus, I may have trust issues and control issues but at least I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

  “No, you revel in it.” The flatness in his gold gaze, his body vibrating with barely suppressed violence, that had been him controlling his reaction. With these words, he tipped into an all-consuming black storm. A supernova of fury. His eyes sparked as he stepped toward me. “You revel in this deep ‘self-awareness’ of yours that’s nothing more than an excuse to let yourself off the hook and do exactly what you want.”

  Fatigue drained the very marrow in my bones. I sank into the driver’s seat and jammed my key in the ignition. “If that’s how you feel, then why are you here? Did Kane find the ingredients?”

  “Not yet. I fingerprinted the spine,” he said. “Got a partial match with a Rasha. A deceased Rasha. We have a connection. Not to whether the spine was used to bind the gogota but the Brotherhood did modify them.”

  I looked at Rohan, trying to find the right words to say thank you. To say something.

  The silence stretched out between us, growing tauter and thinner until Rohan pivoted sharply, and in that motion I swore I heard a loud crack as any connection we’d ever had broke with an irrefutable finality.

  21

  Ari didn’t answer his phone so by the time I’d driven back to the chapter house with no contact from him, I’d worked myself into a frantic state, unable to see anything other than my brother’s broken bloodied body from when Asmodeus had tortured him.

  I ran inside. “Ari?”

  I checked every floor with no sign of him, then hit the basement, running into the Vault almost blind with panic.

  A dark-haired guy was making out with someone. All I could see was the back of Dude #1. His arms were braced against the wall as he kissed his partner. My red haze only cleared when I noticed the size of the hands that grabbed Dude #1’s ass, pulling him closer. Two guys and therefore not Rohan.

  Dude #1 groaned, arching his hips into Dude #2, who fisted his hair in Dude #1’s hair, tilted his head and sucked hard on his neck.

  I was so stuck on the “whoa” of the scene, I’d failed to consider the “who.”

  Kane and Ari.

  “Aaack!” I screeched.

  Ari jumped away from Kane, blond hair messed, lips swollen.

  “Did you go after Malik at all?” I asked my brother.

  Kane went uncharacteristically still. “Malik?”

  “Our marid serial killer,” I said.

  Kane’s face and arms turned iridescent purple, his salt-based poison coating his skin, making him deadly to the touch. “Letting off some steam, were we?”

  My eyes burned from the salt in the air.

  “Since when is that an issue?” Ari said.

  Kane shook his head at Ari, contempt on his face.

  Ari stepped toward him. “K–”

  Kane’s hands flew up, keeping Ari at bay, and he stalked out of the room. Ari punched the wall, bloodying his knuckles on the concrete.

  “Good job,” I said.

  “You’re one to talk. I told you not to talk to the demon.” Had I not just seen the same contemptuous look on Kane, I might not have identified it on my brother because I’d never been the recipient of that expression from him.

  “Malik was right,” I said. “You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid your whole life about how you’re doing good and how this big noble cause excuses everything to the point where you can’t see all the actual damage in your wake.”

  “By ‘damage,’ I’m guessing you mean you? Not knowing when to stay out of something?” he fired back, walking off.

  I grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You’re the one who blew our shot at getting him. Fuck you and your hypocrisy and double standards. All of you, but especially you, Ari. Do you know why Rohan showed up? I was right. There was a Rasha print on the spine. The Brotherhood is up to its neck in dirty dealings and you, darling brother, better figure out where you stand on the matter.”

  I’d always known that if I gave people a chance to come into my life and be a significant part of it, I was simultaneously giving them the power to hurt me. I just hadn’t believed that applied to the person I’d shared a womb with. The one whose presence I’d instinctively sought out through the good and the bad like he had with me.

  “Being Wonder Twins was only ever good in theory,” Ari said. “The reality? Two Katzes in the same sphere is one too many.” Jaw tight enough to shatter, Ari pushed past me, knocking into my shoulder as he left the room.

  “You’re such a brat,” I yelled after him.

  I drove over to Leo’s apartment building with the window rolled down, holding all the jagged bits of myself together, and willing the frigid night air to seep inside me and make me numb.

  “Open up, baby,” I said into her intercom. “Mama wants cuddles.”

  “Sleep-stealing bitch.” She buzzed me in.

  I got into the elevator, my butt braced against the rail, my head bowed.

  I should have forced a different resolution with Ari, kept looking for Malik, done something to further this investigation, but after the shit show that had just gone down, I needed a night to get my head back in the game. When my life had flipped upside down and I’d become Rasha, my greatest wish had been to put Ari back on his rightful path. And I had, except somewhere along the way, I’d also decided that I could be good at this and more importantly, that I could be happy being Rasha. I’d been lost for a long time.

  Even after the kiss of regret, I’d been forging ahead, secure in the knowledge that there were certain things I could count on: nothing came between Ari and me, Rohan
had my back, and other than demons, people from the Brotherhood were the only ones I had to watch out for.

  In the past few weeks, all those certainties had been blown sky high. I felt like I was balancing on a landmine where not knowing who to trust or what to believe was about to have dire consequences, and boo hoo, I still had to find my way out without being blown to smithereens.

  Leo greeted me dressed in baggy men’s pjs and a scowl. “Why didn’t you tell me you made out with Drio in Prague?”

  “Huh? Because it was coming off the disaster of the wrap party and barely qualified.” I stalked into her apartment. “And how do you know the specifics?”

  She padded into her living room, throwing herself down on her couch and pulling a chunky knit blanket with fringe over her legs. “I asked him.”

  I did a double take. “You what? How? Why?”

  Leo jutted her chin out.

  “Are you seeing him?” I crashed my ass down onto a chair, my jacket falling from my hands onto the floor. “The fuck is going on here?”

  “I’m not seeing him. I ran into him before he left. Things happened.”

  I stared at the giant poster of Andy Warhol’s flowers above her head, sorting and rejecting a dozen responses before I settled on, “Things you didn’t bother to tell me about.”

  It wasn’t particularly gratifying that in the ensuing stare down, Leo blinked first.

  “It’s not all about you,” she said.

  True, but we’d always shared that stuff. I’d have understood, sort of, if she’d known about me and Drio and hadn’t wanted to say anything, but that had been news to her and she’d kept silent anyway. I picked up my jacket, ready to bolt in a cloud of self-righteous anger… and went nowhere. First Rohan, then Ari. I wasn’t ready to have Leo be the next casualty in my disaster of a personal life.

  I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “Is this because I kept bitching at you about the danger of getting involved with him?”

  “Kind of.” She plucked at one of the tasseled fringes on the blanket. “And kind of that line between our worlds thing.”

  I blew out my cheeks, draping my coat on the back of the chair. “Does he know about you?”

  “No.” Her eyes snapped to mine. “Unlike some.”

  I crossed the room and crawled onto the sofa beside her. “I’m sorry about the club. I never meant for you to be outed.” Leo had left the club before I had that night, and even though I’d left her a gazillion messages apologizing, we’d been playing telephone tag, and this was the first time we’d actually spoken.

  She glared at me a bit longer before deflating. “That’s on me, as well. What’s Ari going to do?”

  “Nothing.” I had to believe that no matter how angry Ari was or how badly he wanted to side with the Brotherhood that I still knew him well enough to be certain that when it came to Leo, he wouldn’t hurt her.

  I crossed my fingers and toes for a second anyway.

  Leo gnawed on a cuticle.

  I grabbed her hand. Sure enough, she’d bitten herself ragged. I smacked her. “Stop self-cannibalizing.”

  Leo growled but scooted over enough for me to lay on my side facing her. “Enough about all the Rasha. What else is new and exciting?” she asked.

  “I want to hear about you and Drio.”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going to tell you yet, seeing as you didn’t tell me first.”

  “It was a non-starter. There wasn’t much to tell.” I fluttered my eyelashes at her. “Can I interest you in a marid serial killer?”

  Yeah, that got her eyes lighting up with a feverish gleam. “Perhaps. Tell me more.”

  “He’s on the loose and I have no clue how to kill him.”

  She frowned. “You sure it’s a marid?”

  “Yup. Why?”

  “Fire demons have fiery personalities. Sure, they kill but if they go after someone, it would be more personal, if that makes sense.”

  “Maybe cold calculation is from his water side,” I suggested.

  She shook her head. “Water is a secondary power. It doesn’t rule their natures.”

  “Okay, well, he drew the Arabic word for love on his victims and he’d been in a relationship with one. At least from her perspective. Love gone wrong? Crime of passion?”

  “How many victims?”

  “Seven.” I snagged a couch cushion that had fallen on the floor and stuffed it under my head. “In just over two weeks.”

  “Seven crimes of passion in two weeks? It’s plausible. If he’s a fourteen-year-old girl. Marids are ancient beings. This isn’t a case of too many crushes.”

  “We may never know why he killed them. It may just come down to how we kill him.” I sniffed the air. “Are you making curry?”

  “Neighbor.” Too bad. It smelled really good.

  “You need to find the marid’s weakness,” Leo said.

  “We know his weak spot. He keeps bursting into flame before we can hit it.”

  “Weakness, Nee. Not weak spot. There’s a difference.”

  “Is an ancient demon going to have a weakness?”

  “Something that powerful that’s survived thousands of years? Their ego is unchecked. For sure, he has a weakness.”

  I sighed, stuck on the many weaknesses in my own life these days.

  “You don’t want to expand on your feelings surrounding that sigh, do you?” she asked.

  “Nope. Noooo. Naw.”

  She nodded in relief.

  I tugged some of the blanket onto me. “You knit this one? It’s gorgeous.” Deep reds and blues and soft as a cloud. I snuggled into it.

  “Yeah. While I was binge watching Santa Clarita Diet.”

  “Rohan is a giant jerk.”

  She pulled the pillow out from under my head and swatted me in the face. “You’re pathetic. You had your chance to share and you missed it.”

  “That was on topic.”

  “Really? Rohan is a risk-averse, middle-aged woman with a new zest for life thanks to turning zombie?”

  I scrunched up my face. “Rohan’s from L.A. The show takes place in L.A. Ish.”

  She swatted me again. “If I’m going to be subjected to a Mitra monologue, at least tell me something juicy.”

  “So only I’m supposed to share?”

  She grinned. “Naw. I’m gonna foist all the dirty details on you. But you first so I can judge.”

  I shot her the finger. She smothered me with the pillow.

  “All right!” I said in a muted voice, fighting not to be asphyxiated. I tossed the cushion across the room. “I took Rohan on a date after Cole showed up at the club asking for a second chance.”

  Leo stuffed her freezing cold feet between my legs. “Whatcha doing there, girl?”

  “Driving Rohan out of town and auditioning my transitional?”

  “Your delusions are strong, grasshopper.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure I’ve driven him out of town now.”

  “You don’t sound too chipper about that.”

  I mimed shooting myself in the head, then flung my arm over my eyes. “Do you ever miss being sixteen?”

  “Don’t romanticize it. You couldn’t wait to grow up and start your life.”

  “I want a do-over. Appreciate how good I had it then.” A tenor outside on the street sang a beautiful aria, his voice growing fainter and fainter. “Can I stay here tonight?”

  Leo rubbed her nose against mine. “Yes.”

  “Can I borrow something to sleep in?”

  “Of course.” She hopped up off the couch, returning shortly with a pair of sweats and a T-shirt that she tossed at me.

  It was a Fugue State Five concert tee. “You’re a cow.”

  Leo beamed at me.

  “For that, we have to watch Grease.”

  Leo planted her hands on her hips. “Is this a happy singalong viewing, a maudlin belting out of ‘Hopelessly Devoted’ viewing, or a fierce declaration with ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do?’”

>   I pulled the blanket over my head. It really was soft.

  Leo patted my back. “Okay, pumpkin. Put on the movie. I’ll make the popcorn.” She snickered. “And then get ready to hear everything.”

  I smiled with the blithe happiness of an idiot who had no clue how much danger she’d be in tomorrow, and reached for the remote.

  The light of a new day plus having hung out with my best friend–with only the tiniest twinge of regret for the sexytimes I’d missed out on with Drio–made a world of difference. Okay, a small city block of difference but at least I woke up on Friday ready to jump back in to the investigation.

  I hadn’t tried to dissuade Leo from seeing Drio if and when he returned, but I had let her know that I had her back. If shit went seriously south with him, I was gonna be there to help with the fallout. Like I would if Ari tried anything stupid.

  I headed over to Daniel’s place, since at the moment, he was the strongest connection to Malik that we had, pulling up to the curb right as my brother showed up. There was no conversation beyond a chilly “Good morning.” We marched up the front stairs and simultaneously knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  Ari leaned sideways off the balcony to peer in through the slit in the curtains. “Oh shit.” He yanked a small lock pick set from his inside coat pocket and, removing a tool, had the door open in seconds.

  The place was trashed: broken furniture strewn about the living room and a huge black scorch mark on the wooden floor.

  “Daniel!” I ran through every room on the main floor, Ari’s footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  “Nothing,” he called out.

  “There’s a basement.” I flung open the door in the kitchen, fumbled for the light switch, and booted it downstairs, terrified I’d find Daniel’s lifeless corpse.

  All I found was a gurgling water tank in a half-finished basement, next to a washer and dryer, its door open. Half of the clean laundry had been dumped in a hamper, the rest still inside the machine.

  Rust edged the bottom of the tank and a small yogurt container had been placed under the spout to catch the drips, except it had fallen over. I crouched down to straighten it and a flash of white under the tank caught my eye.