Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
An hour of careful, side-eyed observation and Mateo’s bored again.
It’s not that he wants a demon hunter fight. Zero idea what that would even be, especially when they’re both of the never thrown a punch in their lives physique. But he’d welcome it over the newly discovered joy of performing his job with a raging migraine.
He tells Topher to take a lunch, and all Topher does is speed walk up the street like an uptight, suburban housewife—all jarring, high-stress motions.
No threat there, just ridiculous looking.
The tension in Mateo’s skull slacks with every power-walked step between them.
As far as evidence of aggression goes, it feels circumstantial.
Pulling out a granola bar—hemp, sunflower, and pumpkin seed because Ophelia does the grocery shopping, and she’s disgusting—he leans on the counter and tries to reason out the unreasonable as a lone customer circles the bubble mailers.
If it’s an attack, it’s a weak one. Only mildly inconvenient and defeated by clocking out and going home. Could it be that Topher’s so annoyingly useless that he’s forced a normal human headache through a demonically altered body? Plausible but not likely.
It really probably is his human body dying around him.
Demon, sprite, faerie, god. They’re all technically the same thing: an entity from another plane of reality. The ones dubbed demon are just the ones most incompatible with human life.
Mateo’s housing one of those.
A typical demon possession has some notable hallmarks: All-black eyes, bone-breaking contortions, vomiting demon gunk, and speaking in tongues.
Real The Exorcist stuff. The human body can’t handle containing any of these creatures.
It starts to break down pretty rapidly—props to his sucky mom on mitigating that.
He’s lived for over two decades since she locked something inside of him.
Which has to be the worst world record to hold.
But whatever she did is failing. Missing time, seeing things, invasive and violent thoughts, loss of control of his own body kind of failing.
And using magic makes it worse.
Which begs the question: why would he want to do magic on the side if doing magic makes it worse?
Funnily enough, time makes it worse too.
He can either wait to be overtaken by the thing inside him or scrape together enough money with the only questionable skill he has and hire someone to get it out.
And the people who might be familiar with his specific problem—and not immediately kill him for it—are expensive and far away.
A real damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario, but the literal kind because no signs point to good stuff happening to his soul once he fully loses control of himself.
A soft buzz, and he scoops up his phone from the counter, knowing it’s Ophelia texting because he doesn’t communicate with anyone else.
It’s a picture of what must be their last DRIVE!
Energy drink, held upside down and empty over the sink.
Mateo fishes out his wallet, counts six dollars, does a little rent-dinner-paycheck-timing math, and then texts her back a sticker of a cartoon skeleton tenderly holding a bright pink heart.
Hemp seeds and sixteen fluid ounces of cranberry chemical is Ophelia. He wouldn’t tolerate such a hypocritical combination from anyone else.
Thumb hovers over the keyboard as he considers asking for help.
They’re codependent but in a cute, probably psychologically healthy way, and he feels better when she’s involved.
But what would he even ask? Hey, could you flip through one of those books in terrible old Spanish that we’re both bad at reading because our parents never taught us Spanish and check the index for demon vessel gets a headache from a potential demon hunter with no life skills?
That isn’t what he’d ask, of course. He’d ask her to swing by. One look and she’d know if Topher was of the spell-wielding variety. Ophelia possesses both horrible taste in drinks and the Sight with a capital S. But he can’t risk it. Not when he doesn’t know if Topher’s a threat.
Bubble Mailer Guy stuck his hand inside every mailer, found them wanting, and left, so Mateo searches online for anything about his now-faded-probably-dying-but-maybe-magic-attack headache.
Halfway through an article on negative energies, someone whispers. “What’s that?”
Topher’s directly in front of the counter.
Mateo full-body jolts in an obviously startled way that Topher doesn’t react to.
Which is cool and super normal of Topher.
Not that Mateo’s a master of his surroundings, but the only noise in the shop is the smooth jazz his mind filters out due to years of inhumane exposure to the same six songs.
He hadn’t heard the bang of the front door hitting the doorstop.
“Article on dark energies, according to some guy named GoodVibesOnlyPaul,” Mateo answers truthfully, learning that his reaction to being startled is disconcerting honesty.
Topher’s bug-eyes get buggier, and he starts a full chihuahua, trembling all over.
It’s the worst response—until those pale lips, barely a different color from his anemic skin, part.
He’s going to say something. A spell. A threat.
Random weirdness. Doesn’t matter. Mateo takes an unconscious step back, certain something he doesn’t want is about to happen.
The shop door bangs open, and a rumpled CEO or poor college student—no visual difference in downtown Seattle—stands there with a phone pressed to his ear. “You sell paper?”
CEO, then. And it’s the most beautifully brainless question Mateo’s ever heard. He vaults over the hip-high divider to get around the counter and away from Topher, ecstatic to show a person with literal stacks of paper on every side of them where the paper is.
Paper Dumbass signals the start of the after-work rush. The flow of customers is constant, and it’s five after seven before the cha-ching of the final customer brings with it the suffocating weight of aloneness with Topher.
Mateo walks to the front, flips the lights off, and pulls the security gate down and locks it.
“I just have to do the drawer stuff,” Mateo says, voice startling himself because it’s booming in the heavy silence. “Can you watch the front?” This isn’t a thing. Both the gate and the door are locked, but Topher bobbles yes, and Mateo flees into the back with the cash drawer.
By the time he zips up the day’s earnings into a black deposit bag and inserts it into the safe, he starts feeling ridiculous for getting worked up.
The headache went away. Anything could have caused it, including something internal.
There’s a demon in him, for fuck’s sake, and he’s blaming that dipshit.
The only proof is coincidental timing and that Topher’s awkward, weird about guys in makeup, and never learned a single life skill that could help in a work environment.
More than that is the fact that Topher just worked an entire five-and-a-half-hour shift without a single murder attempt. Unless he’s a long-game demon hunter serial killer, odds are he’s just a nepotism-hire weirdo.
Nightly deposit done, Mateo steps out of the backroom just as Topher’s quiet voice says, “—going home. The car seemed familiar. It might be from my neighborhood.”
Easing through the door, Mateo doesn’t let it slam shut. He tries not to think too deeply about his automatic spy-mode response.
Topher is in the dark, facing the front window, bathed in the blue wash of light from the glass. A phone is pressed to an ear, his posture rigid and motionless as he listens to the other side of the call. Seeing Topher still when he’s been mild-panic-frenetic all day is unsettling.
“No. I didn’t see her face before it was …
” A pause. “Off her face,” is what Mateo is positive Topher says next.
Which is absolutely the fucking worst. Like that, Mateo’s certain Topher’s a demon hunter serial killer again, nonchalantly discussing his latest kill with a friend demon hunter.
Or maybe the gravity in his voice means he’s reporting to his demon hunter boss.
Maybe he’s in a demon hunter union. At least he sounds somber about un-facing a lady, like maybe if he kills Mateo, he’ll be a little sad about it.
Topher’s free hand balls into a fist at his side, and Mateo tenses.
The silence extends a moment more before Topher says, “No. I won’t.
This conversation was a courtesy and now it’s over.
I think you should talk to my lawyer from now on.
” It’s textbook murderer deferring to lawyer application of the phrase, tone firm and quiet.
Topher lowers the phone and stares out the window.
Being the vessel for an ancient evil sounds impressive until you consider that Mateo’s mother forbade him from learning magic.
Since her abrupt departure, he’s self-taught what anyone could if they’d spent years spying on their scary witch mom and unearthed the real spells in the glut of bullshit how-to witchcraft books on .
He’s three-quarters through a practical guide on crystals he’d been feeling pretty good about until now.
It hadn’t covered anything about keeping his face on his face.
With all the care he can muster, Mateo opens the door just an inch and then pushes it closed loudly as if he’s just walked in. “All done. I just gotta get the trash.”
Topher turns, blinks as if just waking up, and nods.
They spend the next few minutes wordlessly rustling around in the darkness, getting original outfits back on and bags collected while Mateo fervently hopes Topher won’t speak.
But the silence is unnerving too. It’s pregnant with a nameless dread, like Topher’s head might tip back and a demon tongue will come lolling out.
He’s not sure how Topher went from demon hunter to demon—no, it was definitely the face off stuff. Topher doesn’t have any of the signs of being possessed, but strong demons are meant to be able to hide it for a while.
Is a demon possession better or worse than a demon hunter?
A demon might be cool with Mateo—birds of a feather.
Or might totally hate him. His body’s trapping one.
That’s probably a real dick move in demon circles.
Though, this might have nothing to do with magic.
Topher might just be a good old-fashioned serial killer. No reason to discount a classic.
His brain is spiraling as he shoves his polo into one of the cubbies.
Almost out of there. Just gotta walk out the back.
Then it’s someone else’s problem. Like Doris, who he has to convince to fire this guy without explaining the real reason why.
Maybe he can do a him or me threat. Except he can’t.
Too big of a chance Doris would fire Mateo.
He’s paid under the table on account of not having a soc, ID, or taxable proof of legal existence and she likes to remind him she’s doing him a solid paying him anything at all. She’s fun like that.
Grabbing up the day’s trash, he motions for Topher to give him a minute. The back door is a heavy steel thing that takes all of Mateo’s body weight to shove open. Gross back-alley night air washes over him and feels fantastic. Like escape is imminent.
The only sounds as he disposes of his armloads in the appropriate bin are his boots squelching in alley-yuck and his heart thudding an experimental riff in his chest. He doesn’t want to go back inside—considers what would happen if he cut through the alley and went straight home—but that feels like Topher would still be there in the morning, waiting with his serial killer eyes and a bunch of people’s faces.
Irresolute on his escape plan, he slams and locks the bin.
“If you make a single sound,” a woman says, her voice impatient and very close as a knife suddenly enters his peripheral vision, angled at Mateo’s throat, “I’ll kill you.”