by Megan Starks
Like how someone had messed with Warrick and Susanna.
The way Shade shook his head was too immediate and fierce of a denial. “I wouldn’t—why would you think—?”
“Warrick hired you because of the contract.” The words tasted sour in her mouth. “He’s entranced, and he has no idea.”
Was that what was happening to her? Would believing the dreams bespell her into trusting that Shade belonged in her life?
She understood now why the couple had accepted Shade into their business without question. Shade had warned her not to drag Warrick and Susanna into this mess, but he’d dragged them into it first, and for that she couldn’t forgive him.
Her pulse spiked, and she worked to control her breathing, to calm down.
“The dreams, I’m not—” He broke off with a hair-raising growl.
She scoffed at the hopelessness of their situation. “I thought Warrick hired you because he didn’t trust me to take care of myself anymore. He didn’t even ask me about bringing you on, and then he gave you most of my caseloads—anything that might be even remotely dangerous. I couldn’t understand what made you so special. You gave me nothing but coldness and lies. I was so ticked, I was going to quit.”
“Gigi, I never meant to run you away. I didn’t think about what your life might be like now, that maybe you were happier without me.” He fisted his hands. Claws cut into his palms. “My whole life is one big fuck-up. I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.”
“Shade…”
“I’m worthless. I’ve failed you in so many ways.”
“Stop it. You’re not responsible for me. You don’t even know me. And I don’t need anyone to take care of me. Not you, not even Warrick.”
He cringed like she’d purposefully wounded him and pulled further in on himself, hiding his emotions away. He was going to turn to stone again, a beautiful, icy stranger. “You’re right,” he answered, voice empty. “I’m just a coworker that’s been a thorn in your side.”
“Well, yeah, you have been. But it’s my fault, too. I didn’t know why you’d upended my life. I didn’t know you didn’t have a choice. I won’t blame you if you turn on me later.”
He knew it would happen. It was why he’d been so upset by her contract. His master had tricked him, right? Let him think he was running away, only to find out later he was still a weapon to be wielded without choice.
“I wouldn’t. I swear. I’ve only ever been—ah—fuck. I’m—” He cut off the sentence, struggling for an answer that his contract would permit. “I won’t ever let it happen. I won’t go back and become a risk to you.”
“If you break your contract, this woman will find you. She’ll force you to return.”
He smiled weakly. “So make it a short trip. If you can’t… I’ll, you know… there’s always a final choice.”
“Don’t you dare,” she told him. “Don’t put that on me. I can’t be worth that to you. We’ll find a loophole first.”
“Gigi, there are no loopholes in these things. I made a deal with a Devil. I knew it was a price I might have to pay.”
“Please,” Gisele begged. “Just stop. It’s too much.”
They were so far in over their heads. She felt like she was drowning in the middle of the ocean, and Shade was the one pulling her under.
His words caught in his throat, a broken confession. “This is my nightmare.”
“Is it?” a voice from the doorway interrupted, and they both jumped. A version of Shade stood there, leaning against the frame and watching them with a disdainful, bored expression. It was the way he’d looked in the Office of the Paranormal, wounded, blood-soaked shirt plastered to his abs. “Or is this?”
The voice warped and pitched, settling in the falsetto of a child’s drawn-out giggle as the elghoul shimmered and shape-changed. It was faster and more fluid than Gisele had witnessed from the nargaya that night at the Curators of the Cursed. The elghoul was a natural shifter, her change instant—a shuffling of shadows, a flare of darkness and fear as she twisted and shrank into her next form. She sprouted tangled, long blond hair and a row of tiny, knobby horns. Her features reset into smooth, chubby cheeks and bright red, tear-stained eyes, and she wore a nightgown, drenched with blood from a jagged slash in her throat.
She’d chosen the image from Gisele’s nightmare. It was her, killed as a little girl. The first cold wave of fear washed down the back of Gisele’s spine, and she took in a sharp breath to steel herself.
Shade was on his feet faster than she could blink, ready to protect her without a second thought, but he swayed, drained from being collared and then drained further from battling against it.
“Vyx,” he warned, but his threat had no backbone. He was in no condition to fight.
Of course, that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
“Playtime’s over. I’ve come to fetch you home, Shade. Master has grown extremely displeased with you, and you know what happens when Master Rhogan is displeased.”
Fists clenched so hard his claws cut into his palms, he shook his head. “I won’t go back. And you know that form can’t scare me anymore.”
“No, but it hurts you. And I like hurting the puppy. Master is going to let me hurt you so much more when you’ve returned. I’ve been thinking of all the fun new things I want to try. New tools. New fears. I won’t let you pass out half so often. Come along now, you moronic stray. There’s no need for him to hear about your precious little princess,” she flicked her gaze to Gisele, “before she’s dead.” She shrugged one small shoulder, returning her child-eyed focus to Shade. “He’ll reward me beyond my wildest nightmares for killing her, the one that got away. But if you make Master Rhogan travel all the way to the surface, it’ll only be that much worse for you later.”
Shade paled, and Gisele unloaded both of her clips into the elghoul—a slowed, out-of-body sensation in which she watched the silver bullets tear through her own tiny chest, throat, face, and head. An eye exploded along with a girl’s gargled scream. It deepened into the scream of a woman as the elghoul dropped and crawled on the carpet in a bloody heap. Already her shape was changing, lengthening, her hair blacker than oblivion, so black it sheened, her nails long as claws, purple, and scrabbling against the door frame.
Gisele stood behind her, looking down at the wounded demon. She took a hard look at the creature of nightmares, a woman whose remaining eye was bright teal on purple sclera. A sharp fire of malicious intelligence burned behind that eye, but it flickered and dimmed as the demon’s pain grew stronger and her life waned, poisoned by the silver in her system.
“I’m not afraid to pass through the final Gate,” Vyx breathed, blood flecking her lips.
“Good,” Gisele answered and fired two bullets into her brain.
She holstered the weapons, the impact of what she’d done smashing into her chest, staggering her. It was the first time she’d taken a life, willingly or otherwise.
She turned to Shade behind her. He stared, white-faced, mouth agape. He’d fallen back to a sitting position, and his hands fisted the edge of the mattress so hard his knuckles were purple and white.
“It’s a lie,” he said to himself, eyes unfocused. “This is a nightmare. A new punishment, a test. I failed so I have to suffer—”
“Shade,” Gisele snapped. His shock was about to push her over the damn edge. She grabbed a handful of his ash-brown hair, yanking his head back and forcing him to look at her. “Get yourself together. Do you know who I am?”
Grounded by the pain, he focused on her face, fear swimming in his light gray irises. “Gigi,” he gasped. “This can’t be real.”
“This is as real as it gets. You knew her. Are you upset that I killed her?”
She was a murderer. There was no walking this back. She felt ill.
“What? No, the things she did… I don’t, I just—they would pretend that—they would use you to hurt me the most. So many times—they tricked me, made me believe things, like you’d come for m
e. Then they’d rip it away. Please, I don’t want that to be this.”
He sounded insane. She’d broken him.
“That isn’t this,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I just killed a woman, do you understand? She’s dead, and about half of this apartment building just heard the gunshots. So stop falling apart and get up. We have to go before your neighbors call our friends in blue, understand?”
“Yeah, okay.”
She let go of his hair, but he made no attempt to move, slumped in on himself as if wounded. He watched her, numb and listless, as she gathered the contract, the chains, the collar and cuffs, and her spent shell casings into her leather bag.
“If you do not get up and get moving,” she threatened as she worked, “I will collar you, drag you out of here, and toss you in the trunk of my car along with the corpse.”
At that he moved, grabbing jerkily for a duffle bag that he could shove weapons and clothes into, still shaky and pale. She was sure this wasn’t the first death he’d dealt with. Vyx had been something big, something scary with a real hold on him to unhinge him so badly.
His words had given her a glimpse into a terrifying past. He hadn’t been working with the elghoul, he’d been tormented by her. Maybe for years.
“Grab anything that could identify you.” She’d already found out that he hadn’t rented the apartment in his real name, and he’d paid cash, six months in advance. He hadn’t existed before three months ago, so he wouldn’t have any fingerprints or a legal record on file. Aside from his DNA that was now on storage in the Office of the Paranormal, he was a legit ghost.
“We take the body. If it goes to the Office of the Paranormal, it’ll link back to us. We scrub the blood, we get out. With any luck, the cops will lose interest fast. No evidence, no human vics, no reason to investigate.”
It was risky, relying on apathy and incompetence to get them off, but they didn’t have a lot of time—maybe fifteen minutes, less if they were unlucky.
“There’s bleach in the bathroom. I’ll get trash bags.” He dropped the duffle bag on the bed, then duct-taped the body in trash bags and used the remainder of his clothes—the wad from the fridge—to soak up the blood and scrub the carpet with bleach. Those too he tossed into trash bags.
“Sorry I lost it. I just never thought… It’s good that you shot her. She’d have turned your guns on us otherwise. Or drowned us in a dry room, I don’t know. Whatever fear she felt like exploiting.”
But now the master she’d spoken of might come for them. He didn’t say it, but she could see the worry bunched tight in his shoulders.
She touched a hand to the top of his head, comforting in the only way she knew how. There was so much she wanted to say—this night kept breaking her heart for him—but there was no time.
“It’s been eight minutes,” she said.
He stood, adding the jug of bleach, roll of duct tape, and the last few rags of his clothing into the final trash bag. “Take the body and the bags. There’s no surveillance in the building. I’m going to open the windows to air out the bleach and lay a concealment spell to help cover the smell and hide the wetness. It’s better if they don’t have a reason to snoop around.”
“Shade…”
“Four minutes. I’ll find you. I won’t run, I swear.”
He was testing her, she could feel it. He needed her to trust him, but it felt like a bad idea.
“Four minutes,” she repeated.
If he ran and she never saw him again, it wouldn’t be the worst thing that had ever happened to her. If anything, it would solve one of her problems. But she wondered where he would go, how far he’d get before he’d be considered in breach of his contract, and how long he could keep running without getting caught.
“My car’s not in the parking lot. It’s down the street, toward Mayfern. I’ll wait for you.” She’d be a sitting duck with the body if he turned her over to the police. But she was going to trust him.
The body was lighter than she’d expected it to be—a little less than a hundred pounds. It felt wrong that something so delicate had been so deadly.
“Gisele,” he called to her when she reached the front door. “Why did you help the minotaur? You said you were going to help me for the same reason.”
She would have shrugged, but the body was draped over her shoulders, and the plastic bagging was stuck to the back of her neck. So instead, she just said, “I helped him because he needed me to.”
They exchanged one last look, and then she was gone, out of the dingy apartment and down the hallway’s switchback stairwell.
It was twelve, not four, minutes later when Shade pounded twice on the frame of Gisele’s car. Her jacket scrunched in the hot silence as she reached across to flip the lock. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. It was too muggy for a jacket of any kind, let alone a leather one, but it helped hide her in the darkness.
Shade dumped a tan rucksack onto the floorboard and slumped into the front seat. The door popped when he shut it behind him.
“I didn’t think you would wait,” he said.
“I said I would.”
He tried to flash her an appreciative smile, but it came across as a grimace. His skin looked sickly, drained ashen from the effort of the spell.
“There’s a patrol unit on Hanover, we should take West Hawthorn.” He’d donned a faded, maroon hoodie, also too hot for the sweltering weather, and had pushed into some black, lace-up boots. “That was harder than I thought. Fucking collar.”
He pushed the hood of his jacket back, rubbing a hand through his mussed dark hair. With the hood pushed back, she could make out the line around his throat where the collar had seared him.
She refused to apologize, silent as she peeled out of her sweat-slicked jacket and tossed it into the backseat. She wasn’t entirely convinced covering their tracks was all he’d been up to.
The ignition started with a comforting purr, and she flicked the headlights on, pulling onto the black asphalt of the unlined side street. He turned to check behind them, watching for patrol lights. His eyes drifted down into the darkness of the backseat and he jumped, reeling back.
“Christ, Gisele!” he yelped. “You put her in the backseat?”
“Beast backed into something; now the trunk won’t open,” she explained, sounding almost bored as she drove, eyes scanning the street. “Relax and sit back in your seat so you don’t get us pulled over. And for Satan’s sake, buckle up.”
“What if she’s not really dead?” he asked, watching the backseat from the rearview mirror as he fumbled with the clasp of the seatbelt.
Gisele glanced to the backseat as well, despite herself. She wasn’t wearing her jacket anymore, but another bead of sweat rolled down the valley of her spine. “What, you think she’s just going to wake and sit up?” As soon as she said it, it didn’t seem quite as ridiculous anymore. “How well can she heal? Can she heal like me?”
The demon had survived a shot to the throat only a few days before, but that hadn’t been silver.
“Nobody heals like you do,” Shade answered, and she relaxed, focusing on her driving once again.
“Then she’s definitely dead,” she said, and believed it. “She won’t hurt either of us again.”
“We should burn the body. To be sure.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” she agreed. “Can you summon hellfire?”
“Valahan aren’t fire-breathers,” he snapped, defensive. “It’s like you know nothing about me at all.”
“Okay, whoa, I just meant could you cast it as a spell. I know you’re strong. Stronger than me,” she admitted, in an effort to appease him.
He gave her a strange, sideways look. “You have no idea.”
“Well, you don’t have to be an ass about it.”
“That’s not what I meant. Besides, even if I could summon an all-consuming fire from the edges of Hell, I’m in no shape to do it now.”
Because of the collar. Because sh
e’d weakened him. Maybe there was a better tactic she could have used. Maybe she shouldn’t have been such a bull in a china shop, as he’d once called her.
“I could try to heal you, like I did before.”
That shut him up. He reddened and looked away from her, silent as he stared out the window, shoulders tensed. But the window was dark enough that she could see his reflection. He was watching her in the reversed image, and she was watching him.
Gisele flicked her eyes back to the road.
“If you don’t want me to try,” she started, but he interrupted her with vehemence.
“Don’t. Don’t tease me with it. Don’t bring it up if you don’t think I deserve it.”
“I don’t understand you when you talk about deserving or not deserving things. You’re a person like anyone else, aren’t you?”
“No,” he answered, sounding both angry and wounded. “No, I’m not. And you should know that.”
But she didn’t understand what he meant.
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
So they were back to this. She tapped her thumbs against the steering wheel. “Fine. Forget it. Forget my attempted apology.”
He fell quiet, sullen, as she turned onto the interstate, arms crossed over his chest and his face turned away from her.
“I know a place, about an hour out. I’ll have to stop for a shovel.”
“Don’t risk it,” he said, head tipped back against the seat. “I’ll dig.”
She nodded, and they didn’t say anything more for the rest of the trip.
16
Stepping into the night air felt like easing into a warm bath. The humidity was heavy, clammy on her skin, so Gisele peeled out of her t-shirt to the thin cotton camisole underneath. Shade followed suit, dumping his jacket and white shirt in the front seat. Her eyes lingered a little too long on his bare chest and taut abs, but she looked away without saying anything. Burying the body would be a dirty, sweaty job. She didn’t blame him for stripping out of his clean top. But at the sight of his taped-up ribs, her throat had slowly squeezed shut.
