Meg
Haunted houses have never been my idea of a good time. Perched on a staggering cliff along the California coastline, the freaky mansion has turrets and stained-glass windows jutting out at odd angles.
How could my three best friends think this was the perfect way to celebrate our college graduation?
Reaching into the pocket of my hoodie, I close my fingers over my latest game piece creation to settle my nerves. I carved this miniature to be the star of my newest tabletop game design—Mutter Udder Maniacs. Too bad I don’t share my character’s badassery. Lady Snarl would ace a haunted house tour.
Unfortunately, Theo, the way-too-hot tour guide has decided I have to kick off our tour alone.
Unlucky me .
“You may, of course,” he explains, “rejoin your friends after you complete your own mission.”
“A mission?” My gamer brain perks up like an over-caffeinated toddler. “Like a quest?”
“Exactly that.” He opens a door to the left of the entrance. Your journey begins here.”
I glance inside to stairs that lead downward into darkness. “Oh, hell no. I’m not going into the basement. I saw that slasher flick. Everyone has seen it.” Backing away, I curl my fingers around Lady Snarl until her horns poke me in the palm. “
He tips his head to the side, studying me as though he can read every fear screaming in my brain. “You wouldn’t let down the other players when they’re your best friends, would you?”
The appeal lands hard with my team-player self, who has hated every role-playing guild where I’ve been ditched mid-battle with the big boss. “What’s down there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Little white lights flicker along the wall, dancing downward in a dizzying spiral. “What if I can’t?” I whisper.
“Then you’ll activate the band you’re wearing.” He taps the bracelet he made each of us wear, where the biggest sigil lines up with a trio of my freckles. “Press and hold for five seconds, and I’ll come check on you. No matter where you are.”
“In the basement?” Since that’s where he’s sending me.
“Yes,” he agrees with quick certainty, but something in his gaze wavers and makes me think he’s lying. “Leander will be your guide below.”
I edge the toes of my sneakers to the top stair. “I have to go now?”
“The sooner you go, the sooner I can check on your friend, who seems to have gotten lost in the house.”
Ava. I can’t hear water running or footsteps or anything that would clue me in to where she might be. “I should?—”
He stretches his arm in front of me, not quite touching me, but definitely stopping me. “It’d be safer that you stay on your own path. I promise to find your friend.”
Talk about some cryptic shit. How much training did this guy receive in creeping out guests with words alone? So far, this house looks scary on the outside, normal on the inside, and not at all what I expected. But Theo’s solemnness sends shivers up my spine that have me damn near shaking. My heart triple-bangs like a gong being clanged as a battle rattle, and my breath catches in a panic-punch that burns like a flame charm in my favorite online game.
Gripping the miniature in my fist, I stop before I break her. What would Lady Snarl do ? She would march her ass down the stairs and let Theo find Ava, since he’ll be faster. Right now, I hate my own creation.
“Okay,” I mumble and slow drudge down the first few steps. My feet feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds each. I’m more of a lumbering orc than the graceful healer I play in most games. “Wait—” I spin toward the door that slams in my face. So much for an easy exit.
The lights twinkle happily in a path that leads me down, down, down. “Hello?” I call, cringing when my voice echoes back to me. How far does this staircase go? To the seven circles of hell?
I lower my voice to a whisper-yell. “Leander?”
No one answers. I’m not sure if I’m stressed or relieved to be alone. A purr from below has me jumping. A tiny kitty with huge eyes stares up at me before winding around my legs, brushing its fur against my jeans in a swish.
I stoop to pet the sweet baby who rewards me with a head butt. “You must be Leander.”
“Mwrr.” The squeaky meow seems to be all the answer I’ll get.
A shimmering pool of color appears a few stairs below.
Let the terror begin .
Haunted houses go to the top of my “nope out” list for future fun. I debate sitting on the steps with the kitten and waiting until Theo comes back to find me. Except he mentioned a mission, and I don’t like to leave things unfinished. It would be the same as abandoning a half-carved game set. Sacrilege .
My furry new friend darts down the stairs into the rainbow abyss, stopping long enough to look back at me with a you coming? taunt, and my loyalty rushes forward. I can’t let an itty-bitty kitty tread into the unknown with grown-ass me too afraid to follow. Not when I want to level up from healer to warrior more than anything. I stumble ahead, leading with borrowed courage instead of brains. The lights flicker again in a ripple. Hurry , I can imagine them saying. Intensity and impatience thrum through me.
I rush through the colors, my head spinning and my stomach threatening to be sick on a roiling wave. Don’t pass out becomes my new goal.
“Leander?” I murmur, hoping the kitty can hear my pitiful rasp.
“I’m here, Meg.” A deep voice full of gravel and grit booms from above. That definitely doesn’t belong to a teeny black cat.
The rustle of movement and a rush of warm air has me looking way up. A beast looms over me. Darkness swirls, and my vision goes hazy.
Looks like I might pass out after all.
I come to in a princess bed—which startles me as much as anything else in a haunted house could. My childhood dreams revolved around me being a knight in dented armor or a sorcerer with full spell robes—not a pretty, poufy dress in sight. The scents of earth, damp stone, and spices fill my nose. A netting draped around the four posters hangs in perfect symmetry, as though someone designed this room and this bed for the gauzy, sheer veil that separates me from whatever waits beyond.
Panic has me bolting to a sit. How long did I sleep? Where are my friends? And why did they leave me down here? I grab for the bracelet, ready to call Theo so I can tell him how shitty his establishment is. Ava’s mom would love to sue them for whatever trippy drugs they piped in to make me pass out. Add moving me while I was knocked out, and she’ll be screaming six figure settlement for emotional distress.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” It’s the same deep voice from earlier.
My pulse picks up in a fast thump thump that makes me freeze, and a thrill runs through me. Stop it. Just because he sounds like the bad boy version of my favorite streaming gaming channel host doesn’t mean my body should react. I can’t let hormones stand in the way of me getting out of here. The kitten picks that moment to jump through a gap in the netting and pad across the bedding. With a purr to rival a toy freight train and a swish of a tail, he curls into a ball and settles in for a nap.
“I’m guessing the cat isn’t Leander,” I say to the darkness, since I can’t see anyone else in the room. Maybe hiding in the shadows comes with the haunted house care package.
A sin-soaked chuckle rolls over me, and I push down desire. That’s it. I’m joining a hookup-heavy dating app when my friends and I get back to civilization. I don’t need a relationship messing with my mind or any commentary from asshole boyfriends about my weight, my appetite, my clothes, my hobbies, or anything else, but if I’m going to fantasize about a laugh? It means my dry spell has gone on far too long.
“The cat’s name is Oggie.” The voice moves. “Or at least he goes by that name in his other form. I assume he took this one to lure you through the portal before any of my rivals showed.”
My brain stalls. Theo’s old-timey talk was one thing, but who trained this guy? The Villains’ Mastermind School? “What do you mean, his other form?” The rest of what he said replays in my mind. “What portal? And who has rivals? Like an arch-nemesis?”
Yeah, I speed-read comics and binge-watch sci-fi. No, I’m not going to be ashamed about my hobbies ever again. I stroke the kitten’s soft fur while I wait for answers. He cuddles closer. This freakshow may be a colossal fail as a haunted house, but the pet perks are phenomenal. I stare past the flickering candles but see nothing.
He—or I assume that barrel-chested rumble comes from a man—stalks the shadows just beyond the light. “I have multiple enemies, I refer to the dimensional portal that transported you to me, and Oggie’s short for Oggdalon.” His matter-of-fact delivery sounds as if he ticks off each answer, as though he’s running through a grocery list. The guy should have shelves lined with shiny awards, given his superb method acting. “Oggie’s a sentinel demon.”
“What?” I swallow a shriek and yank my hand away from the kitten as the possibility that I’m petting a demon puts my lungs in a chokehold. “A d-demon?” Said demon yowls, giving me an indignant look before shoving his head against my fingers for more neck scratches.
“One with the important responsibility of standing watch at the portals.”
I can’t even process this conversation, my mind bumping along at a stumbling speed. “So your enemies don’t come through?” Who wrote this awful script?
“Exactly.” The deep rumble is reassuring, but the fact that I can’t see who’s talking has my gut churning.
He sounds big, and big can mean dangerous when pissed off. Even my scrawny cheating ex turned nasty and scary within minutes of being caught. So much so that I took off from the apartment that we shared, not imagining that he would snatch and sell every game board I had hand-crafted. I found out when he broke up with me a week later. If my sniveling ex could be so diabolical after claiming to love me, what might a complete stranger hiding himself in the shadows be capable of?
“Listen.” I struggle to keep my voice calm without the tremor that has my mouth quivering. “I appreciate you taking care of me after I…” Lost consciousness? Passed out? Had a hysterical meltdown when convinced I’d seen a beast of a man? None of those seem like the safest word choices. I settle on a neutral option. “After I fell, but I really need to be going. My friends will worry about me.” I push to a stand, but my body goes tight and still at the quick sounds of rustling fabric and the clack of hard- soled shoes. Fear traces a ghostly finger of ice along my spine, and chills skate across my flesh.
“You can’t leave. The portal has closed.” He doesn’t sound ominous, merely surprised I hadn’t come to this insane and illogical conclusion myself.
My patience snaps with a crack of my temper. “I’m done with this haunted house nonsense. Your training has clearly been thorough, but you can quit playing whatever part the corporation assigned you.”
“Corporation?” He sounds unsure, and I want to yell at him to stop messing around. “There’s no one else involved in our arrangement. Just you, me, and the matchmaker.”
“Matchmaker?” My heart rabbits in my chest, my throat goes dry, and the word comes out strangled. “What matchmaker?”
“In the human world, he goes by Theo.”
“Theo’s a tour guide. A hot one, I’ll grant you?—”
He snickers. “Hot as the hell dimension he escaped from, I’m sure, although I don’t understand how you know this.” His tone goes frosty. “Did he touch you?” He bites out the question in a cruel, vicious clip. “Is that why you seek to call off our bargain? To summon him?” The last comes on a growl that makes me shiver.
Adrenaline races through me in fight-or-flight instinct, with logic yelling at me to run, and my pride insisting that I don’t need to take this jealousy from someone whose face I haven’t even seen.
“Okay, stalker.” Yeah, yeah, redheaded rage—I’ve heard all the jokes, but in my case, there’s truth to the cliché. “You have zero right to question who I talk to or who I allow to touch me. I wouldn’t bother meeting any matchmaker, because I don’t want a relationship. What I need is time, and another jerk of a boyfriend won’t help me with that.”
“Another—?”
I cut off his interruption. “We have no bargain . Now, stop skulking in the shadows, and come out where I can see who I’m arguing with. Or are you the one who’s scared, instead of the one doing the scaring?” A sliver of dread slams into me, hinting that perhaps I should’ve stopped before throwing down a challenge.
“You don’t want me to come out into the light.”
“Yes, I really do.”
No, you don’t , the primitive part of my brain whispers.
He hesitates, remaining hidden. “On second thought, summon Theo and ask him about our bargain.”
Summon him? How? Oh yeah, the stupid plastic jewelry. Theo said to hold the middle sigil for five seconds. I squeeze the center button on my bracelet, expecting a buzz, or a light, or something to indicate that I activated my Host Signal. Reminding myself that this is reality and not a scene from a comic book, I cross my arms over my chest and wait in the silence that’s interrupted only by the demon kitty’s purring.
“Meg?” Theo’s voice comes over a speaker I can’t see.
“Theo?” I feel like an idiot talking when I can’t see him.
His face comes through a mirror across the room, at a pretty vanity like I’ve only seen in movies. Neat trick. I guess the Underworld spent all their money on acting lessons and a special effects mirror, instead of bothering with actual horror scenes. “Are you in danger?” he asks. “Did Leander not find you?”
“I’m here,” my unseen companion says in a grumble. “She doubts our arrangement, though she doesn’t appear feeble-minded.”
“Hey!” I snap.
“Which means the fault must lie with you.” My companion quits insulting me and switches to Theo. He continues talking to the trick mirror that glimmers with Theo’s face. “It would seem, demon, that you left out some of the details of the deal.”
Demon? Deal? What the fresh hell is he talking about? Anxiety spirals in my belly, and I feel sick. I’m finished with both these pranksters and their stupid haunted house. “This isn’t funny, Theo. I want my friends.” I want to go home . “Call off whatever scene this is so I can go.” And I can warn everyone away from this place that has gone past creepy and into just plain strange.
Mirror Theo looks straight into my eyes, as if he can see me. “You and your friends really should learn to read contracts before signing them, little human. Your negligence doesn’t negate the authenticity.” Glancing toward the shadows where my unseen not-a-friend lurks, Theo says, “I’ll forward the contract. It’s valid and binding. She’s yours for fourteen days—until the new moon. Now, I have a situation that’s an actual emergency.” He waves his hand in front of his face and fades from view.
Hope sinks in my chest like a worry stone. The contract? The liability waiver on the tablet that I signed without reading what it said. My friend Val’s mention of kink and sex acts. How she assumed the corporation had screwed up the contracts. What the hell did I agree to?
The mirror transforms into a giant screen with text, and I sprint across the stone floor to scroll through the long paragraphs of legalese. The more I read, the more lightheaded I feel. My skin goes clammy.
How did I miss the binding of two weeks, the descriptions of mate and arranged match , the kinky acts that I haven’t seen outside of my naughtiest romance novels? I blush while skimming the page of intimate acts that Val must’ve crossed out. But the most vanilla sexual acts from penetrative to oral? They remain in straight-forward, unapologetic bold print.
I signed a sex contract.
With most of the sex stuff marked out, but still… Me—who doesn’t get those much-talked-about butterflies in her stomach, or anywhere lower, for anything other than an excellent scene in a book. I agreed to this. And without Ava or her lawyer mother, I don’t know an easy way to get out of it. My supposed match’s talk of portals, dimensions, and sentinel demons circles round and round in my head. I close my eyes, needing the blank space to process instead of drawing connections from one game point to the next stop.
“Oh, no.” My whisper holds all the horror that this house didn’t come close to conjuring. I can’t go home for two weeks. What will my mom think? Who will feed the stray cats in the neighborhood? How will I pay my rent?
The gravelly voice comes from close behind me this time, and I don’t turn, don’t look, don’t pause the panic attack that no mythical healing spell in any game could cure. Remembering my mom’s instructions for not spiraling, I mentally list off her five steps to managing the manic before it controls me.
1. Realize this is panic. Check. A thousand times over, I can check this one off.
2. Breathe. I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth in a slow, measured stream. Better.
3. No mental time traveling. Digging in, I move to the next step because I can only go forward, not back. I can’t undo what has already been done.
4. Step outside the situation and imagine the best and worst possible scenarios for the predicament . Okay, best-case scenario? I’m stuck with two psychos who think it’s funny to paranormally punk a woman into believing she has made a sex deal with a demon to be matched to someone named Leander. Worst case? I’m trapped for two weeks in another dimension, which can’t be possible because those don’t exist outside of movies and video games, right?
5. Fake normal until the pretense becomes reality. Except I can’t. This was supposed to be “pretend,” where my friends and I got a tiny thrill and then left, not a real nightmare that will last from sleep to waking to sleep again.
I can’t stop the spiral. Fatigue and dizziness drag at me. Flashes of color spot behind my closed eyelids, and I squeeze them tighter.
“I don’t want your fear.” When the voice comes along with warmth in my hair and over the nape of my neck, I don’t flinch.
An unhinged laugh bubbles through the room—crazed and desperate. It takes a moment before I realize it came from me. Maybe Dirk the Jerk was right with one of his taunts. My curves may be fabulous, my wit stellar when it comes to gaming, and my interests vast. But I might not have a firm grip on sanity. If I don’t look, maybe the delusion might disappear.
“It seems we share a common problem,” Leander says.
I keep my eyes closed, but the weight of him, the solidness of him behind me comforts when the nearness of this stranger should terrify me. He makes me doubt what I’ve been told all my life about my size—too tall, too sturdy, too round—with his overwhelming presence. Yet he doesn’t sound as though he means me harm. No, the concern in his voice makes me think he’s caught in this trap as much as I may be.
Another giggle soaked in a sob edges out of me. “Did you sign a sex contract with a demon, too?” I wobble on my feet, and strong hands wrap around my upper arms in a hold that keeps me upright without caging me.
“I did. It’s part of the matchmaking agreement, along with promising to protect you, provide for you, never harm you?—”
“Sounds like you got the short end of the bargain.” My joke falls flat, but I didn’t see any of those things listed in my requirements when I scrolled this time. No, my deal centered on sex. “I take it that you’re Leander?” Because who else could he be?
“Yes, and I’m your matched mate. While he’s a trickster, Theo’s matchmaking is flawless. Won’t you even consider the possibility that we’re meant to be together?”
Beneath the rolling rumble of his voice, there’s a vulnerability that calls to the same in me. Could my romance novels have gotten it right? What if I’m the princess of this story? “You think you’re my handsome prince?” This time my teasing comes out steady, the shake in my voice giving way to strength. I open my eyes, catching the part of his reflection in the mirror that shadows don’t cloak.
His broad shoulders, massive chest, and the shaggy black hair falling from the face of a beast. A bull’s head with giant horns and a piercing through his snout where a nose should be. Dark, fathomless eyes stare back at me. Sharp-nailed claws grip my arms.
I scream. I will never stop screaming.