Five
Gabriel
"What did you want to show me?" I asked once I'd locked Gray in my bedroom with his favorite toy bone so we could eat in peace.
Xin placed their slice back in the box, then pulled their phone out of their pocket.
I couldn't see the screen once I settled beside them again, so I grabbed a slice and waited for them.
"Here," they said, turning the phone towards me. "I thought it might come in handy at some point."
My brows shot up as I saw the photos. Patrick and his 'afternoon appointment' were in the middle of some NSFW acts, and Xin had captured him in all his naked glory.
"Wow. This is good," I said, and Xin gave me a bright smile that made my breath catch in my throat.
"There's more," they said as they pulled their phone back, and I shook my head. Just how much had they accomplished in a single afternoon?
I took a bite of my pizza as I waited, trying not to watch their slim thumbs move across the screen. Thumbs weren't supposed to look that good, right?
"Here," they said as they tilted the phone toward me again.
I squinted at the screen, and it took me a moment to realize what I was watching.
"What the hell? How did you do that?" I demanded, watching in shock as Patrick walked across a small lot and into a building with a board above the doorway labeling it Saul's Storage Center.
"Patrick" was trying to hide his face, but there were enough shots of it to make it clear it was him.
I watched until he disappeared from the screen, and Xin swiped to show the next video, where we watched him come out of the shop, walk across the lot, and disappear outside the frame.
"How did you do that?" I repeated, absolutely stunned by what I'd seen. There was no way that was Patrick in the video. Had Xin somehow manipulated the CCTV recording?
"It's a secret," Xin said with a small shrug. "I'll tell you someday, but for now, just know that it's not video editing. And since Patrick does not have an alibi he'd be willing to use, it won't be hard for people to believe it's really him."
I had no idea how Xin had done this, but if they wanted to keep their process a secret, I wasn't going to push. The results were what mattered to me, and today had been a success on all counts.
"Good work, Xin. I'm really impressed," I said, and the smile on Xin's face brightened, as if they'd been waiting to hear those words from me.
We finished our no-longer-hot pizzas, and this time, Xin didn't linger for long. After they'd given Gray some scratches, they left, and I closed the door after them, then stood in the same spot as my mind went round and round.
Why was this person twisting me up like this?
I'd spent my whole adult life focused on one thing only: proving my brother's innocence and making Patrick pay. I'd never strayed, never let anything else pull my attention from my goal.
Yet, whenever I spent time with Xin, I found my mind drifting toward decidedly not-mission-related thoughts.
Maybe I should've found a different hacker. I couldn't now. Xin already knew my plan, and they'd done good work. There was no logical reason for me to 'fire' them. But I should've found someone else the moment I saw them because even then I'd known I was in trouble.
The buzzing of my phone interrupted my circling thoughts, and I walked over to the coffee table as Gray ran ahead of me, as if without his help I would never find my phone.
Scratching the top of his head, I picked my phone up, answering as soon as I saw the Caller ID.
It was Aisha, using her new number. She'd borrowed it from a friend once I'd decided to execute my plan so we could stay in contact without leaving an actual trail between us.
If anyone looked into my call history later, we didn't want our connection revealed.
"Hey, Aisha," I greeted, clutching the phone between my ear and shoulder as I sat down and allowed Gray to clamber on top of me. I ran my fingers through his short fur as I sank into the couch with a soft sigh.
"Hey, Gabriel. You busy?"
"Not at all. I just finished dinner," I said, refraining from mentioning I hadn't eaten alone. It wouldn't take much for Aisha to figure out my interest in Xin, and I'd rather keep that from happening. She would push me to act on my feelings, and I couldn't do that. Not yet.
"Okay. Be there in two."
The call ended with a click, and I let it drop onto the couch.
"Aunt Aisha's coming, Gray," I told him, and he barked happily, then raced off toward the front door to wait for her.
I'd met Aisha when she was working on my brother's case, but back then, she'd been a rookie. She was the only cop who'd believed in my brother's innocence, but because she was a newbie—and most likely because someone in the station was on Patrick's payroll—nobody listened to her.
After Kevin was arrested, she stayed in touch with me, and when Kevin died, she was the only other person in the world who mourned with me, even though she hadn't known him all that well.
I wasn't sure if it was guilt or sympathy that made her do it, but after Kevin died, she became a surrogate older sibling to me.
She'd kept tabs on Patrick on her own time, but without proof, she'd never been able to build an actual case against him.
Aisha was the one who kept me from losing myself in my need for vengeance. She was the one who helped me make a plan that would see Patrick paid for his sins without leading me to jail too. And while I didn't listen, she nudged me to return to my music every once in a while.
Without Aisha, I might've just killed Patrick and gone to prison for it and wasted the life my brother had worked so hard to give me.
I owed everything to her. Even now, she was helping me, and when the time came, she would be the one responsible for putting Patrick in prison. That was the only reason I'd decided to go ahead with this plan. I could never trust another cop, but I knew she would do the right thing.
Xin
I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about the look on Gabriel's face when he'd seen the CCTV video. The sound of his voice when he'd told me he was impressed by my work. I hadn't realized how good it would feel to hear him say that.
I wanted to go right back to his place and tell him everything.
It wasn't against the rules to reveal your nature to your mate, after all.
Your mate and any child they might have were the only exceptions to the rule that kept demons—and all supernatural beings—from revealing themselves to the humans.
The soul collectors of Otherworld made sure anyone who broke the rules paid the price.
But I couldn't do that. Not yet. Gabriel was not ready for a simple romance, much less one with a demon.
My phone buzzed, and I grabbed it quickly, hoping for a text from Gabriel, a sign that maybe he was thinking about me too. But no, it was the demons group chat, the official one with the Otherworlders.
Otherworld was the realm every human and supernatural soul went to after their death in this world, and the rulers of the realm—King Damien and his consorts, Reece and Artemus—had summoned us demons a little over eleven months ago when four dark souls and a demon who'd gone over to the dark side escaped into the human world.
We'd been stationed in various cities across North America since that was where all the dark souls had headed.
We'd been tracking their movements over the last eleven months, and so far, we'd managed to capture only one of the dark souls. Mammon, the demon who'd turned, seemed to have his own agenda, and he'd killed five dark witches two weeks ago, and stolen a book of dark magic.
Since then, the Otherworlders had been trying to figure out the purpose of the book in the hopes of discovering Mammon's endgame. They'd also been trying to track down the remaining three dark souls.
My phone buzzed again, and I opened the group chat, scrolling back to read the texts I'd missed.
Maximus: Harlan and Wren couldn't determine much about the spells in the book, but the ones they deciphered involve gathering up large amounts of dark magic.
Eshim: This isn't good. What is Mammon up to?
Pythor: I still can't believe he's doing this. What the hell happened to him?
Demons hadn't tortured souls for more than a few centuries, and most of the older generations had already moved on to Afterworld, the realm where souls went to rest until it was their time to reincarnate.
Of the remaining demons, most of us were from the last generation, and we spent only a few decades torturing souls in the Underworld before it was closed for good.
But three demons, Mammon, Star, and Korrigan, belonged to the older generation. They'd played the role of torturer for a lot longer, and in their time in the Underworld, they'd absorbed quite a lot of the darkness that all dark souls possessed.
The ill effect of torture on demons was one of the reasons Underworld was shut down, and while Star and Korrigan had managed to hold on to their goodness, Mammon had, for some reason, given in to his darker impulses, and here we were.
Korrigan: It doesn't matter. Our job is to find him and stop him.
I pursed my lips, wondering if Kor really believed that.
None of us really wanted to throw Mammon into the Chasm, even after he and the dark soul Cynthia had almost killed Eshim—which would've sent him to Afterworld—but Kor had been closer to Mammon than any of us.
They'd known each other for centuries, and I couldn't believe Kor could just forget that.
Lazlo: Anyone sense the other dark souls? I thought I sensed something the other day, but it was nothing.
Xin: Not yet, but I'm sure we'll find them. If what Stuart said is true, they won't be causing too much trouble if they're trying to go undetected.
Stuart, the one dark soul we'd captured, had told us that two of the dark souls simply wanted to experience human life again. Since we'd found Stuart possessing a human, I imagined the other two dark souls would be doing something similar.
Maximus: Just stay on alert, everyone, and contact me as soon as you sense something.
Agreements filled the thread, and I chimed in too before closing the chat. It was past eleven, and yet sleep eluded me. Not that demons needed to sleep all that much, but sometimes it was nice to let your brain rest for a bit.
All the talk of Mammon and dark souls had me worrying about Gabriel, so I decided to secretly check in on him once. He was probably already in bed, but I didn't want to infringe on his privacy, so I teleported to the hallway outside his apartment in my invisible form.
Voices filtered in through the door, and my brows furrowed. I walked through the door, then stopped short.
Gabriel was seated on the couch, in the spot where I'd sat just hours ago.
Beside him, closer than we'd been earlier, sat a woman.
She appeared a few years older than Gabriel.
Her black hair framed her face in a short bob, her skin a soft brown color.
Her hands were clasped around Gabriel's as she spoke softly to him.
I blinked as I stared at the scene, too stunned to do anything else for a moment. But then the shock wore off, and I heard what she was actually saying.
"Don't worry, Gabe. The plan won't fail, I'm sure of it. Especially with that footage you showed me. I don't know how your hacker did it, but that footage will prove Patrick a liar, and once that happens, nothing he says will be believed."
Gabriel nodded, then gave her a soft smile. "Thanks, Aisha. I couldn't do this without you."
Aisha smiled, then released his hand to ruffle his hair, which made him scowl at her. "Of course not. You'd be in prison if not for me. I promised Kevin I'd take care of you, kiddo, and I will."
Kiddo? That didn't sound like something a lover would say. Right? And if she knew Gabriel's brother, that meant she had known Gabriel for a long time.
"You did?" Gabriel asked, as if it was a surprise to him.
"Of course. Your brother wasn't going to leave you without someone watching over you."
Gabriel bit his lower lip, then nodded as he glanced away from her, his eyes landing right on me.
I froze even though I knew he couldn't see me, and the pain in his eyes almost made me look away. I never wanted to see him hurting like this.
Aisha rubbed his upper arm, and I took a step back. It was clear to me now that their relationship was more like that of siblings than lovers, and I was intruding.
I teleported back home, then climbed into bed with a sigh. Maybe someday I'd get to be the one who comforted Gabriel when he was sad, whose shoulder he leaned on, but for now, the only way I could help him was by making sure his plan succeeded.