“Jack is obviously dead to me, but it’s fine. I’ll go. I really didn’t want to spend my last Halloween here trying to avoid an ex, but whatever. Here we are.”
“Ah yeah. Fuck exes.” Bo shook his head. “I hear that so hard. I got one stalking me, leaving me hate mail and all this shit. You cheat on a girl two times…”
I stared at him for a moment, then nodded in commiseration because I wasn’t sure what else to do. He was entirely serious.
“Let’s go,” Jack said from outside Noah’s door, impatience clear in his voice.
“Well if she’s in…” A smile graced Noah’s wide face, and he stepped out of the SUV. I slid across the seat and ignored Jack’s reaching hand.
“No. Seriously.” Piper crowded me the second I stepped foot on the sidewalk.
Valets waited nearby, two behind a little booth wearing red jackets with little horns on the pockets, and one beside the SUV waiting for the keys. Their hard gazes zipped by me, not sticking for even a moment, as though I held very little importance. Anywhere else and that would be totally normal. Here? That alone gave them away. They were expecting this SUV and me in it.
Another deep breath and I grabbed Piper's arm.
“Come on. It’s fine. I’ll confront my ex-boyfriend. It’s really not the big deal Jack is making it out to be.”
“Um…hello whiplash. What is this?” Piper squinted as she looked at me. “Since when do you go quietly?”
“I’m not going quietly. I’m arming for battle.”
Her eyebrows pinched together in confusion as I walked us toward the main entrance, her sexy little cat tail swaying behind a mostly not-there black cat Halloween costume.
I adjusted my wire halo. What a perfect year for me to have worn the sexy angel costume.
Jack caught up with us, bumping off my other arm. A line of people dressed in Halloween attire waited behind a red velvet rope at one side of the door, two and three deep and stretching away to the left and around the side of the building. Only a portion of them would be admitted, the privilege of going to the best dressed and best looking—the best prey.
Demons did like their sport.
I stopped as we neared the red carpet leading to the grand front entrance.
“Jack, you may walk behind me,” I said, power infusing my words.
He shuffled back before he knew his feet were moving.
For all his posturing, he didn’t belong here.
I did.
Partially, anyway. My mother had wanted to piss off her family by bringing my dad, a drunk mortal, around to parties. It worked, especially when she found out she was accidentally pregnant. Having a half-mortal baby just wasn’t done.
My mother wasn’t just any type of demon, either. She belonged to the class of princes and princesses, powerful as hell and morally ambiguous, meaning they could be either “good” or “bad.” There were plenty of both.
With her family threatening to kick her out of their organization, she gave my father a choice—take the child or kill the child. It made no difference to her. She was done with it. It being me, obviously.
It was pretty clear which side of the good/bad line she resided on.
My dad didn’t let her kill me—I’d give him that—and he even moved to find a better job. But his other life choices were less than solid. He married a woman who hated kids and then got himself fired by drinking on the job.
Looking for money, he found the local demon organization and asked for help. Or so Emeric had told me five years ago. Knowing my dad, he was probably hoping he could give me back to my biological mother.
There was just one problem—demon organizations are a lot like companies. There are many of them, and they operate independently of each other. Because Dad had moved, the organization he’d visited wasn't the same as the one my biological mother belonged to. They were competing organizations, in fact, which was the only reason the local demons were interested in me. They would either get a powerful demonic princess they could use or a powerless mortal they could dangle in front of my mother’s family as an embarrassment and a joke.
Either way, I'd be a pawn.
They wouldn’t know which fate would be mine until my power either came in at sixteen or it didn’t. Until then, they gave my father a deal: they’d buy me from him and appoint him as my custodian. He’d get a stipend for raising me, and when I was of age, he’d hand me over.
That deal had been signed when I was eight. I remembered it acutely. A golden blade covered in symbols had sliced red across my forearm. I’d watched sparkling crimson well up from the cut and then spill over, dripping down into a dancing magical flame. Power had squeezed me like a vise, cementing my status as owned.
It would’ve been so much better for me if I’d made all that up when locked in a basement.
Dad died before my power could develop, though, and demons didn’t seem in the habit of monitoring mortal children, even ones with potential. I’d slipped through the cracks. I had remained free.
Until Emeric.
The grand entrance of the club beckoned us, and I knew Emeric waited within its depths. Lights blared and blinked from the building. Neon shone down. Loud house music thumped from within.
I started forward again, aiming for the middle set of three double doors, the VIP entrance. Two steps led up to a small porch with columns around it. A large demon hulked on either side, both of them dressed in chic tailored suits, looking for all the world like normal men as they watched us approach.
My fake satin dress swished around my upper thighs as I ascended the first step.
“Are you sure about this?” Piper said on a release of breath, looking around the area with wide eyes. “This is…swank.”
I didn’t think she’d meant to say the last bit out loud. I knew she wouldn’t like what happened next.
On the porch, I stepped between the bouncers and stopped.
“You may enter, Ms. Von Brandt,” the one on the right said, his aura swirling around him, crystalizing his disguise. I could see beneath the magic, though, an ability that had come with my power—the power that had materialized at sixteen. Two shiny onyx horns curled up from his temples and nearly lined his skull. Red pulsed out from around his pupils, separating his vivid green irises from the black. A tail hung between his legs and flicked in sudden unease at our exchange. The rest was him. His type didn’t have scales or spout fire or have fingers that turned into claws.
I didn’t know how to make an aura. Thankfully I didn’t have to. While I didn’t look much like my father, I had solidly human attributes. No tail. No horns. Thank fuck, like Emeric, no scales.
“I need to speak to Dormetrian,” I said. “I assume he’s on hand?”
The breath left Jack in a loud whoosh. Dormetrian was Emeric’s second-in-command. He oversaw all their vast operations. Jack’s boss would be well down the ladder compared to the heavyweight we were about to meet.
I’d met Dormetrian several times by now. Most notably, every year when he brought the invitation by hand and waited for my response. He never had a visceral reaction when I told him fuck no.
The tail flicked again, twice. These guys were trained to be stoic. For him to react like this meant he was severely uncomfortable. That was not good news.