Epilogue
MALACHI - SIX MONTHS LATER
Lying little mortal.
They’re a little crooked in the front—crowded together like tenants in a cheap apartment building—and there’s a silver filling on the back molar that looks like it was installed with a trowel. But the she’s hoarding assets.
She has all four wisdom teeth.
Two are barely visible, shyly poking through the pink gums like shy mushrooms, but the top two are there in all their crowning, pearlescent glory.
I should wrench them out of her face right now. It would be a practical, fiscal decision.
Except she’s currently sleeping beside me in a warm, chaotic tangle of limbs and cheap cotton.
The House-Beast is acting as a sentient, furry paperweight on her ankles, purring with the force of a diesel engine, and Chain-Chewer’s sprawled on the floor, twitching in his sleep, chasing dream-mailmen.
It is disgusting. It is domestic. I hate it. I love it.
I lean back in, unable to help myself, and use my thumb to hook her bottom lip, tugging it down to get one more look at the hidden contraband.
She stirs, grumbling against my thumb. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks before she finally blinks.
Her hazel gaze is unfocused, heavy with the fog of dreams. She looks up, pupils slowly contracting as she realizes I’m looming over her jaw like a vulture inspecting a particularly interesting carcass.
“What...” she croaks, her voice thick with sleep and confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Inventory,” I say flatly. “You have thirty-two teeth, Eden.”
She blinks again, her brain trying to process the fact through the haze of REM sleep. “You were... counting my teeth?”
I flick her nose. Hard.
“Yes, you absolute fraud,” I snarl, though there’s no heat in it. “I was counting them. Wisdoms included. You let me believe you were a pauper. You walked around claiming poverty while carrying a small fortune in calcium in your skull.”
Her face flushes a spectacular shade of pink, and she tries to pull the sheet up over her mouth.
“Well, I didn’t want you to pull them out in the middle of some dusty old Hell corridor,” she grumbles, her voice muffled by the linen. “You were talking about ripping them out for bribery. Can you blame me for wanting to keep them where they belong?”
I huff, crossing my arms over my chest, genuinely offended.
“The lack of trust is wounding, little summoner. Truly,” I say, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t have pulled them in a corridor. I have standards. I would have at least waited until we found a chair with proper lumbar support.”
She rolls her eyes, opening her mouth to retort, but I don’t give her the chance.
I launch a tactical strike and collapse onto her, pinning her to the mattress, and pepper her face with kisses—quick, aggressive, possessive things that land on her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids.
She squeals, trying to shove my shoulders, but she’s laughing, and the sound is better than the crunch of bone, better than the screams of the damned.
“Get off me, you oversized leech!” she gasps.
“Never,” I mumble against her neck. “I’m liquidating your assets. Starting with this jugular.”
She leverages my own weight against me, and we roll across the mattress in a tangle of limbs and domestic warfare.
For a few seconds, the universe isn’t a cold, void-filled horror show; it’s just warm skin and the smell of sun-warmed peaches.
She pins my wrists to the pillow, looking victorious and delightfully disheveled, her dark hair a chaotic halo of static.
“Yield,” she demands, breathless.
“I recognize no authority but—”
The sound of my phone cuts through the air and I groan, letting my head thud back against the headboard.
Eden’s smile falters as she looks over at it.
“Again?” she asks quietly. “Malachi, it’s nine a.m. on a Saturday.”
“The wicked don’t sleep, apparently,” I mutter, grabbing the device. “And neither do I.”
It’s usually only one case a week, but for the past fourteen days, it’s been non-stop.
Satan’s had me running down leads on a caffeine drip.
I’ve spent every night prowling the rain-slicked underbelly of the city, hunting down wayward assets, collecting debts, and reminding demons why they shouldn’t skim off the top.
I am the First Division’s premier Headhunter, and I am exhausted.
Eden stretches out lazily, her limbs unspooling across the sheets as she kicks the duvet off one foot, looking entirely too comfortable for a woman who just kneed a demon in the solar plexus.
“You’ll be back for dinner, right?” she asks, stifling a yawn.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I lie, sliding my arms into my jacket.
Internally, I fucking hope the apocalypse starts around five p.m.
I adore the bones of my little summoner—I would burn cities to ash just to keep her toes warm—but my word, dinners with her progenitors a drab affair. They are the human equivalents of unbuttered toast, and spending an evening with them is like being slowly suffocated by a sentient cardigan.
Her father does enjoy fire, though. We have found a common ground standing over the backyard grill, staring into the charcoal abyss with a shared, silent appreciation for searing flesh. He tends the flames with a pyromaniac’s focus that I find deeply relatable.
And her mother bakes a lemon drizzle cake that is so violent, so acidic, so moist, it almost justifies the three hours of conversation about her neighbor’s hedge height.
Almost.
"Since I’m already descending into the fluorescent purgatory of the twenty-four-hour mart," I say, checking myself in the reflection of the mirror. "Would you like me to acquire more of those... gelatin worms?"
"Ooh," she sighs, wriggling deeper into her nest of blankets until only her eyes are visible. "Yes, please. The blue ones. They make my tongue numb."
"Disgusting," I say affectionately. "Consider it done."
I look down. The House-Beast is ignoring my existence, which is standard operating procedure, but Chain-Chewer is awake. He’s sitting at attention, staring up at me, his tail thumping a traitorous, hopeful rhythm against the floorboards.
"And you," I say, pointing a finger at his wet nose. "Do not think I have forgotten you. I will retrieve the beef jerky. The expensive kind. The one with the pepper."
The beast lets out a whuff of pure, unadulterated joy and drools slightly on my boot.
It is pathetic.
He is a Hellhound. He is a creature born of sulfur, shadow, and the screams of the wicked. He’s a security system. He does not require sustenance. He feeds on fear and the ambient heat of the damned.
But since inhabiting his own mortal shell, he has gone native. He’s developed a digestive tract that rivals a black hole. He eats constantly. Kibble. Steak. Table scraps. My shoes. He has fully embraced the gluttony of his disguise with a lack of dignity that frankly, I find inspiring.
He’s an embarrassment. I’m buying him two bags.
A fist assaults the front door and Eden yawns, finally rolling out of bed to search for a shirt that isn’t covered in animal hair. “That’ll be Piper.”
I watch her go, a flicker of pride igniting in my chest. Since our little excursion to Hell, Eden has grown a spine.
She’s firmer with Piper now. She says ‘no.’ She draws boundaries.
But Saturday mornings are sacred. Every single one, without fail, they sit on the couch, drink tea, and watch a reality show where women throw wine at each other.
It’s a ritual of brain-rot that I have learned to respect from a very safe distance.
I follow her to the hallway, straightening my tie just as she yanks the door open, and Piper bustles in, ponytail swinging.
“Morning, morning, sunlight is burning, coffee is needed,” Piper chirps, dropping a tote bag onto the floor. She stops dead when she sees me. Her eyes rake over my charcoal suit, the crisp white shirt, the tie.
“Why are you so dressed up?” she asks.
“Meeting at the office,” I lie smoothly. “Crisis management.”
“On a Saturday? Gross,” she makes a face, pushing past me toward the couch. “You better be back on time for dinner with Mom and Dad.”
“I will, I will,” I relent, toeing on my shoes.
“Oh, Eden—by the way,” Piper calls out, rummaging through her purse. “You really need to call your old service provider. It’s happening again.”
I stop, my hand freezing on the doorknob.
“What is?” Eden asks, leaning against the doorframe.
“The glitch,” Piper says, sounding annoyed. “I’ve had three missed calls this morning from your old number. The one you lost when... you know. When you… went off the grid.”
I turn around slowly.
“You didn’t mention that to me,” I say.
Eden waves a dismissive hand. “It’s just a recycling error, Malachi. They probably assigned the number to some telemarketer. I didn’t think it was important.”
“You didn’t think it was important that your phone in Hell is trying to reach out?” I whisper, low enough for only Eden to hear.
“Yeah, she’s right,” Piper says, pulling her phone out. “It’s probably just—”
She holds it up like it’s a show-and-tell project. “It’s happening now.”
I move closer, eyes locked on the screen.
Incoming Call: Eden (OLD)
Before I can snatch the device and hurl it into the nearest consecrated ground, Piper sighs, swipes the green icon, and hits ‘speaker.’
“Hello?” she singsongs, oblivious to the fact that she has just opened a direct line to the Abyss.
She’s met with nothing but static and silence.
“Hello?” Piper prompts impatiently, tapping her foot.
Then, a voice crackles through.
“Is this… Piper?” the voice says. “Piper Loxley? The one with the constellation of freckles? The pink cheeks? The pale, soft skin? The sister of Eden Loxley?”
The blood in my veins turns to slush, and my stomach drops through the floorboards, right to the basement.
What the fuck.
“Uh, yeah?” Piper says, frowning slightly at the phone. “Who is this?”
I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. I just clear my throat, the sound tearing out of me like a growl, stepping between Piper and the phone as if I can physically block the signal with my suit jacket.
What the absolute, unholy fuck.
The air in the hallway curdles.
All the blood has drained from Eden’s face, leaving her looking like a ghost haunting her own apartment. She’s staring at the phone in Piper’s hand, recognition flaring in her wide eyes.
My instincts—which have kept me alive through multiple excursions and family dinners—are screaming at me to grab the device and crush it into a fine powder.
“Piper,” I say calmly. “Block that number. Immediately.”
She looks up, blinking, the cheery Saturday morning vibe replaced by a confused frown.
The speaker crackles again. “Malachi? Is that you, man?!”
You feathery fucking bastard.
I straighten my jacket, adjust my cuffs, and force the anger deep down into my gut.
“Rhaziel,” I say calmly. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”