Chapter 1
Chapter One
TOM
“I’m here to propose an alliance,” my rideshare client declares, and from the way everyone around me reacts, he may as well have set off a bomb. I lean closer to Skye, my best friend since kindergarten.
“What’s going on?” I ask, keeping my voice low and using Connor’s shouting as cover.
He clearly doesn’t want this alliance—it actually kinda looks like he wants to commit murder right now.
He’s being physically held back by Gabe, who dragged me out of my own car just minutes ago and has a motherfucking sword in his other hand.
If this whole thing wasn’t so weird, it would be a sexual fantasy come to life.
“Long story,” Skye mutters, his voice tense. “I’ll catch you up later. Shh.”
That’s so not helpful, but I obediently shush and concentrate on what’s happening. Connor seems to be winding down from his rant about this new guy being an “untrustworthy murdering demon,” and he stops pulling against Gabe’s hold.
“Quite done?” my client asks urbanely. He looks supremely unruffled by Connor’s yelling and accusations.
I have no idea who he is, though he’s definitely not from around here.
Too fancy—clothes, mannerisms, the way he talks.
His profile on the rideshare app says his name is Marc, but that’s all I know.
Oh—he was also willing to chat on the drive over, though mostly just about the weather and the best place to get breakfast in town.
Not every client wants to talk. Not every client tips, either, and according to him, he tipped thirty percent, so I really hope Connor’s wrong about him.
“We don’t appreciate that tone,” Gabe says flatly, keeping a firm grip on Connor. “You’ve come here, threatened our friend, deliberately antagonized Connor, and declared you want an alliance. I’m finding it hard to believe you’re sincere.”
“Yeah!” Johnny, the youngest-appearing ghost at Mannix Estate, declares. One of the other ghosts shushes him.
Marc puts a hand to his chest and fakes a hurt expression. “I? Threats? Antagonism? Please, tell me when I did this.”
Gabe’s face is hard. “I won’t be manipulated by you, demon.”
Something in the way he says it makes me think it’s not just an insult. But… that’s crazy, right? There’s no such thing as actual demons. They’re just something the church made up to scare people into obedience.
Right?
With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I glance over at where the ghost of my dead grandmother is standing with the others.
And I remember the way she was smacking Marc in the car, yelling that he’s a devil.
I didn’t pay too much attention to that part of it, since she’s always been obsessed with the devil—the whole church thing—and my main concern was the way she was beating up my client.
But maybe this time when she called him a devil, she was being literal.
I swallow hard.
“It pains me that you think I’m trying to manipulate you,” Marc’s saying, and I return my attention to him. “I’ve come here alone and unarmed to put myself at your mercy and beg for aid.”
Connor sucks in a deep breath, but he doesn’t yell again. Instead, he seems to calm down. “Beg for aid? Put yourself at our mercy? Fine, then. Tell us your name.”
“My name? I think not. So far, I’ve done all the giving in our relationship. I’d like to see some reciprocation before I give you the ultimate power over me.”
Gabe scoffs. “You’ve done all the giving? What have you given?”
I’m not sure what’s going on, but Marc’s smile turns scary. “I gave your hunter friend his life, didn’t I? And his brave little brother.”
“Forget you ever met my brother,” Connor snaps, raising his sword in warning. There’s a story there, but this doesn’t seem like the right time to ask.
“I didn’t exterminate your ghost when she so foolishly started hitting me,” Marc continues, ignoring the interruption. I blink. Is he talking about Nonna? My nonna? He was going to “exterminate” my grandmother’s ghost?
“Marc,” I blurt, any last shred of hesitation evaporating.
I trust Skye completely, and he seems to be on the I-hate-Marc team.
His friends are all decent people—even Gabe, who I got off on the wrong foot with—and Marc just said he would have killed my grandmother.
Re-killed her? I don’t know how it works with ghosts. “His name is Marc.”
Beside me, Skye draws in a shocked breath, while the others all glance over at me. Marc shakes his head mock sorrowfully.
“It’s impossible to get good customer service these days,” he muses. In the next second, a wave of utter terror washes over me and the hairs on my arms stand on end. “Oh well. At least I don’t need to keep up this facade anymore.”
“Just Marc?” Connor demands. “Or is there more?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. They don’t tell us that.”
“The same Marc who mind-controlled my mom?” Skye asks, and Gabe swears. I’ve never heard him curse before, not even when my nonna spent a ninety-minute car ride calling him the devil and other stuff.
“Your mom was mind-controlled?” I hiss, trying not to vomit with how scared I am. I didn’t even know mind control was possible! Although it does kind of explain why Skye’s mom came back to town after being zero-contact for twenty years.
Marc’s smile turns sly. “Well done. I didn’t think you’d get my name from her. Not that this tiny part of it is any use to you, but good job anyway.”
“And another manipulation by you,” Gabe points out. “You claim to want an alliance, but you’ve yet to give us any reason to believe you.”
I really want to ask Skye why we’re not just throwing Marc off the property, but I also don’t want to miss anything.
“A reason to believe me?” Marc repeats. “Cato is all the reason you need. You know what he’s capable of.”
Cato?
“We know what your lackeys have told us,” Gabe replies smoothly, speaking over whatever potentially flammable words Connor opened his mouth to deliver.
Con nods and smirks, seemingly content to let his friend do the talking.
That surprises me—I thought Gabe was a historian who came here for the peace and quiet while he works on his doctoral dissertation.
Connor, who's some kind of ghost expert, seems like the better choice to be spokesperson.
On the other hand, there’s clearly a lot going on here that I don’t know about. If everyone else is happy to let Gabe do the talking, Imma go with that.
“It’s difficult for us to verify information from the otherworld, as I’m sure you can imagine,” he continues, and I make a mental note of “otherworld.” I get the feeling Skye’s explanation is going to be long and result in me having some kind of mental breakdown.
“You’re going to need to give us something to prove you don’t mean harm. ”
Marc’s face is smooth and expressionless, but I still feel gut-wrenching terror. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but just being near him makes me want to crap myself. It wasn’t like this in the car—he was a perfectly normal, even pleasant man then.
“It’s impossible to prove a negative,” he points out. The polished, almost jocular tone is gone, and his voice is flat now. “The only way to show I mean no harm is to not harm you, an act which can change at any moment.”
“Is that a threat?” Gabe asks quietly, raising his sword slightly. Not far from me, Ewan hefts the massive hammer he’s holding.
“No.” Marc shakes his head. “Not a threat. There’s nothing I can offer as proof except the fact that I’m here, have been here for ten minutes, and none of you are dead.
” He looks Gabe straight in the eye, and a shiver goes down my spine.
I’m so glad that’s not me. “We both know it would take more than a single hunter, a gatekeeper, a medium, and some salt and quartz to stop me from killing you all.” His gaze skims over the rest of us.
“The conduit and the others couldn’t even try. ”
“Oh, we could try,” Daniel growls. He’s Skye’s new boyfriend, and honestly, I never would have picked him for the growly type. Laid-back and cheerful, sure. Willing to go up against a probably-demon in a fight he can’t win? Not so much. Just goes to show you never really know a person.
Gabe half lifts his hand in our direction, a clear signal to let him handle this. “You’re saying we should trust you with our lives purely because you haven’t killed us yet?”
“I’m saying there’s no trust involved. If I want to kill you, you can’t stop me.
And yet I’ve chosen instead to participate in this annoying conversation while standing on the front drive.
” Marc spreads his hands. “You ask me to trust you and give you my name, which would allow you to entrap and destroy me, but you won’t so much as hear what I’ve come to say. ”
Gabe’s silent for a moment, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to at least hear Marc out. I mean, the guy… demon… thing has a point. I think. I don’t actually know how the whole name thing works.
“If you so badly want us to hear what you have to say, perhaps your approach should have been different,” Gabe says finally. “Mind-controlling our relatives and threatening friends doesn’t suggest a desire for equal partnership. Not to mention the way you riled up Connor.”
“Threatening friends? I threatened nobody.”
Gabe folds his arms. “So despite your ability to travel distances with a thought, you decided to hire a rideshare driven by our friend? And we’re not supposed to view that as threatening?”
He can travel with a thought? I really hope that’s not something humans can learn to do. I need the cash from my side gig.
Marc hesitates, and then… the terror is gone.
I suck in a deep breath, surprised to realize how heavy the feeling was.
Around me, the others are all reacting similarly.
“You’re right. I was trying to manipulate you.
The feeling of fear, bringing your friend…
even teasing the hunter. They were all supposed to throw you off, give me the advantage. ”
“And my mom?” Skye demands.
“No. I’d hoped you wouldn’t even find out about that.
I befriended her for information, and when she didn’t have as much as I hoped, I encouraged her to mend fences so I could get more.
” He quirks a brow. “She’s unharmed, isn’t she?
Her brain is completely undamaged. You can take that as a sign of my trustworthiness, if you like.
With as much contact as we had, I could have completely taken over all her faculties.
When your friends broke my hold on her, it would have left her a vegetable. ”
Skye looks at Connor and Gabe. Connor’s jaw is clenched, but he nods. Marc seems to take that as a sign.
“If I meant to harm you, I would have started with her. Yes, many of my brethren treat you humans as disposable, but I never have.”
“You nearly killed me!” Connor yells.
“But not just for the fun of it.”
I blink a few times. Did he just say…?
“Why, then? And why leave me alive, if you were going to kill me for a purpose?”
“You attacked me, remember?” Marc raises a single eyebrow. “Was I supposed to let you win? When it would have ended with my own death?”
Connor shakes his head. “That’s not… You’re manipulating us again!”
“Con,” Gabe says. “We can work this out later.” He turns his attention back to Marc. “You said you want an alliance to kill Cato and end his plans.”
“Yes.”
I don’t know if it’s another trick, but I would swear I can feel the honesty ring from that word. Gabe must too, because he frowns. “No more games.”
“No games,” Marc promises. It doesn’t ring the same way his “yes” did, but it still feels like a promise. “Cato is ripping apart our world. His plans would end so many species in one fell swoop. My friends and I want that insufferable piece of excrement out of power and scattered to atoms.”
Gabe studies him for a long moment, then glances at Connor, who’s still visibly pissed off. He clenches his fists and spits, “Fuck.” But then he nods, and Gabe turns to Kieran.
“Let’s move this to the library.”