Chapter 9
Lily
Delerium pulsed like a living thing, but its heartbeat was muffled into a dull thud by the thick walls of the security room.
The office was colder than I expected, lit by the glow of a dozen oversized monitors.
Each screen flickered with grainy footage from every corner of the club.
I’d been coming here for years and never once noticed how many cameras were tucked into the shadows.
A little creepy. But efficient, and kind of impressive.
Nathan, the head of security, sat in the only other chair in the room, arms crossed over his massive chest. He was a bear shifter and built like a brick wall. He smelled faintly of pine and something smoky like a campfire, and I had to stop myself from mentally making Yogi Bear references.
It felt like I’d reviewed hours and hours of footage, even though I’d only been in here for twenty minutes. So far, I’d confirmed that no one touched my drink, so the idea that someone had drugged me was out. That left a magic spell.
I stretched and rubbed my eyes before scrolling the video feed back to the hallway to the bathrooms again.
I hadn’t left the VIP area much last night, and somehow, I doubted a spell could’ve hit me while I’d been surrounded by my friends.
With three witches and an incubus, I was sure one of us would’ve noticed.
So I focused on the times I’d gone to the bar or the bathroom.
A pair of witches walked past the camera, laughing, their magic trailing behind them like glitter. Then for a long time… nothing. Just an empty hallway. I checked the time stamp again, but time kept passing. About two minutes later, Penny and I stepped into the hallway.
I followed us all the way to the bathroom.
Then because something felt off, call it intuition, I checked some of the other angles. Sure enough, a man in nondescript black clothes had walked into the hallway before we had. I went back to the other view and rewound the footage.
It was hard to ignore the giant bear breathing down my neck.
Nathan was supposed to be watching the rest of the screens which played the current footage, while I reviewed the videos from yesterday on one of the monitors, but I kept feeling his eyes on me.
But then again, I might’ve rubbed him the wrong way when we first met.
Julian had assured me that if there was anything in the feeds from yesterday, Nathan would have found it, but I insisted on checking myself. That probably hadn’t sat well with the bear shifter. But I hadn’t meant to imply that he’d done a bad job. I just wanted to see things with my own eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as I rewatched the two minutes again, Stopping every few seconds to check frozen screen for any residual artifacts.
“I think some of the footage is missing.”
Nathan leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine. “That camera’s been glitchy lately.”
I frowned. “Glitchy? How?”
“Static bursts. Lag. Sometimes it skips a few seconds.” He shrugged. “We’ve been meaning to replace it. We have another one pointed at the entrance just in case.”
He brought up the same camera I’d found with the guy walking into the hallway. But all it got was the back of the man’s head.
I scrolled through the feeds again, wondering if I could catch the guy’s face from another angle either before or after he’d gone into the hallway.
“What are you looking for?” Nathan asked. “I can help you.” He leaned, took my mouse, and started fast-forwarding through the footage. “You don’t have to watch it second by second,” he said. “Just skip ahead until something interesting pops up.”
A blur of black flickered across the screen. I blinked. “Wait. Go back. What was that?”
He clicked over to a screen of a man in a dark gray uniform. “That’s just the janitor. He’s here every night.”
“Even the nights the other two witches went missing?” I knew I sounded unfairly suspicious, but I wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed, his posture stiffening. “Listen. We had nothing to do with that,” he said, voice edged with defensiveness. “I thought you were on our side. Julian said you were here to figure out what happened last night. Does he know you’re prying into shit you know nothing about?”
I raised both hands. “I don’t think Delerium or Julian’s involved,” I clarified. “I’m just trying to make sense of everything, that’s all.”
“Did the cops put you up to this?” He adjusted his headset like it was suddenly too tight.
“What? No!” Crap. I really shouldn’t have brought up the other witches. I considered using my talent to calm him down, but if there were any enchantments in this room that flagged magic use, it’d only make things worse. He’d think I was trying to control him.
“Are you from Starling’s coven?” he snapped. “Did her father put you up to this? Fake a spell, seduce Julian with your magic, and get access to the videos so you can pin all this on me?”
Starling? Her coven? Her father. And pin it on him? Starling must be one of the missing witches. The name didn’t ring any bells though, so it must be a nickname. Did that mean Nathan had been close to one of the missing women?
“I don’t—”
He crossed his arms again. “Go ahead. Comb through the feed. You won’t find anything. Because I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m not sent by anyone,” I finally managed to say.
Nathan was still glaring at me when the door creaked open and Julian stepped in. His eyes swept the room, landing on me with that hungry look that made my stomach flip. But it disappeared the moment he sensed the tension in the room.
Julian raised a brow. “Everything okay, Nate? I came the moment you called.”
When had he called Julian? Then I remembered Nathan fiddling with his headset earlier. He must’ve done it then.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Nathan asked tightly. “Alone?”
Great. So much for my investigation. I stood. “It’s okay, I’ll go.” Then I squeezed past one sexy incubus and made my way back out to the club.
The club was just starting to fill up. People trickled in through the velvet-curtained entrance, some dressed to impress, others already half-drunk and ready to dance the night away. Colorful lights flashed overhead, casting quick bursts of pink and violet across the glossy dance floor.
I scanned the crowd, noting the mix of humans and monsters.
Some of them were glamoured to blend in, I was sure, but most flaunted their inhuman attributes proudly.
A pair of mermaids—or were they naiads? I could never tell the difference—sat perched by the bar.
They wore their legs, but had fins jutting out behind their ears, the scales shimmering iridescent in the light.
There was a being with an ogrelike face with both horns and tusks jutting out of it, but he was red instead of brown or green.
They were accepted here, no matter what they looked like.
My hand went to the thick gold chain hanging around my neck.
Julian had let me borrow it for one last attempt at a protective charm.
Apparently, getting thoroughly tangled up with him had done the trick.
I’d managed to channel enough energy into it without another magical mishap.
A good thing too, because I already felt horrible enough for ruining his dining room. I didn’t want to melt his jewelry too.
The charm wouldn’t activate unless I was in real danger, but it wasn’t inert either. The necklace should heat up in the presence of offensive spells like a magical warning system.
I stepped onto the club floor, blending in with the crowd like just another party girl on a Friday night. But my mind was still back in that cold little room, replaying every word Nathan had said.
He’d mentioned a coven. Of the two witches who’d gone missing after visiting Delerium, only one was officially part of a coven. Marissa. A dream witch who specialized in dream walking and astral projection.
I made a mental note to talk to her coven sisters. If they suspected Nathan, I needed to know why. That was one thread worth pulling.
As I danced, I kept my eye on the bartender. The DJ was different from last night, but the bartender was the same. I made my way over to grab a drink and maybe chat him up. But the music was so loud, I realized small talk was going to be damn near impossible.
I know! The bouncer!
I slowly made my way off the dance floor, which was really starting to fill up, and headed for the door.
I found the bouncer, a fire imp, letting in the last groups in the line.
The women looked young, and he was painstakingly checking all their IDs.
As he did, I took out my phone and pretended to check it.
When it was nothing but us and Darlington’s streets, I went to introduce myself.
Deciding to start off with a little bit of my magical charm from the get-go this time, I turned on my talent ever so subtly.
Since my talent wasn’t like a spell you could cast, and it wasn’t offensive, I hoped it would get past the club’s offensive magic shields, which surely extended out beyond the club if only to protect its employee.
It was still strange to use it after so many years pretending it didn’t exist.
I introduced myself, but he already knew who I was.
“Oh, you’re the lady from last night. I hope you’re feeling better. I’m Flint.”
“Fire demon?” I thought it was a little obvious, but I asked anyway. To my surprise, he rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish.
“Kinda. I let everyone think I’m a normal demon, but I’m actually just an imp.” His tough-guy persona and massive body seemed to shrink a little. “Flint, the fire imp, at your service.” He held out a hand.
I grinned and took it, trusting he wouldn’t burn me.
To my knowledge, imps were still demons, but just a more diminutive type. Less magic, less power, less substance. It seemed Flint was a little bit embarrassed about it, so I decided to boost his ego a little.
“Well, I would’ve never known if you hadn’t told me. You’re just as big and bad as any demon.”
He stood a little straighter and puffed back out to his previous size. “Thanks. I’ve been working out.”
Flint and I chit-chatted a bit before I asked about the missing witches.
He was worried that any negative attention on the club might force it to shut down, and he’d be out of work.
“It’s not like the old days, where we could just hang out in the woods.
We actually need income now if we want to be part of society.
Besides, I’ve done the whole hideout in the woods thing enough.
It’s boring as fuck. It’s a lot more fun in the city. ”
I liked Flint; he gave off chill vibes, despite being a fire imp and looking like a giant wall of flaming muscles.
“Well, I’m Julian’s friend, and I don’t think he has anything to do with it. I just need to find out what really happened to get the cops off his ass.”
“Good. He’s a good guy for an incubus, and this is a good gig. If I find out anything, I’ll pass it on.”
“Thanks. You’re being a lot more helpful than Nathan.” I watched his face for any reaction.
The fire imp chuckled. “Of course. He used to date one of the witches who went missing. Marissa. Anyway, she dumped him because her family didn’t approve of her dating a bear shifter with a kid.
Her coven and family are sure he’s behind everything.
” Flint rolled his eyes. “I think it’s silly, because she wasn’t the only witch to go missing, and Nathan didn’t know the other one.
And Nathan wouldn’t do anything like that anyway.
He was heartbroken, but he’d never hurt her. ”
Ah! That explained Nathan’s reaction.
“Who do you think might be responsible then?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I heard both missing women helped contain that weird ass portal that opened up last month that was mind controlling and swallowing wizards.”
He meant The Breach. The thing put the entire city on high alert. I hadn’t even thought it could be related.
“Huh! Really? I was there too.”
Flint raised a brow, and a wisp of smoke curled from his head. “And you got hit by a spell that knocked you out yesterday.”
I nodded grimly.
“Shit! I knew that the EA should have closed that portal when they had the chance. I heard they sent some expert on portals to research it.”
“They did,” I said. “And I agree with you. I hope it’s just a coincidence and not related.”
“Either way. If someone’s using Delerium as a launching pad to kidnap innocent women, they are going to regret it.
I’m going to scorch their asses.” Then he looked pensive.
“You’re not heading home alone tonight, are you?
You shouldn’t be alone. If you wait till the end of the night, I can drive you. ”
Flint tried to hide it, but I couldn’t help but notice the hopeful look in his eyes.
I was just about to let him down lightly when a large, angry shadow—could shadows be angry? This one certainly was—descended on us.
Julian stormed toward us like a thundercloud, his broad shoulders tense and jaw tight. The power rolling off him showcased the difference between a full-fledged demon and an imp.
Julian’s voice cut through the muted beat of the music like a blade. “She’s going home with me,” he growled, stepping between me and Flint. “And if you ever offer again, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
The fire imp raised his hands, backing off. “Easy, boss. Just being polite.”
Julian didn’t even glance at him. His focus was locked on me, jaw clenched, voice low. “You don’t need anyone else watching over you. You have me.”
I arched a brow, lips twitching. Was Julian jealous?
I sent one more look of thanks to Flint as Julian guided us back inside the club. “You always this dramatic when your staff flirts with the patrons?”
“You’re really entertaining offers from my staff now?”
“He was being polite.”
Julian’s jaw ticked. “He was being stupid.”
“You sound jealous.”
He snorted. “Of Flint? Oh, please. I just don’t like my employees being distracted. Witches are going missing, remember?”
“Ahh. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
Julian didn’t answer as he guided us up the stairs.
To my surprise, he didn’t stop on the second floor, which I now saw had a separate sign with words Upstairs over the set of double doors and its own bouncer.
Instead, he continued to the top floor and entered the code to get into his home and guided me inside.