Chapter 3
Chapter Three
TOM
If someone doesn’t tell me what the fuck is going on, I’m going to scream.
Some of it I’ve worked out from context.
Like Marc is actually a demon who once nearly killed Connor.
And Connor and Gabe are demon hunters? Or something.
And demons live in another world, which might or might not be hell—based on what Marc said, I’m guessing not.
But there’s an asshole demon who wants to take over this world too.
Okay, just recapping that in my head is enough to make me feel sick.
Here’s hoping there’s something I don’t know that will make this all seem benign.
Like the fact that it’s the rehearsal for some kind of theme weekend here at Mannix Estate, and I’m the unwitting test audience.
I’d be cool with that. Seriously. Please let me be the test audience for a skit that’s about to end.
Judging from the way everyone’s reacting to what Marc just said, I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s very good at calmly dropping bombshells. I wonder if he does it on purpose.
“You’re lying,” Connor says, but unlike before, there’s no heat behind it. He doesn’t believe what he’s saying.
Marc tilts his head. “Am I?”
“Fuck,” Gabe mutters. “I need to talk to Con. Norval, Josh, if he does anything…” He trails off, leaving me to think that there’s not much Josh could do if Marc did do anything. And I have no idea what Gabe thinks the ghost of Connor’s great-something uncle could do. “We’ll be back in a second.”
Connor’s already out of his chair and striding toward the door, and Gabe follows him out. They leave the door open. Does that mean they’re worried they’ll need to race back in to protect us?
Pushing that cheerful thought aside, I turn to Skye. “Tell me everything right now,” I demand. Nobody else is talking, so of course that attracts every eye my way.
“It’s a really lo—”
“Long story, yeah, I get it. Give me the CliffsNotes version.”
Skye looks helplessly over at Kieran, then Josh, then turns back to me. “Okay. Um… so you know about the ghosts here.”
I glance toward the ghosts still clustered by the door, Nonna with them. “Yeah, of course.” All the locals know about the ghosts at Mannix, though it wasn’t until last year that I learned any ghost can manifest at the estate, even if they’re only visiting.
“So, back in the seventies, when the hotel closed… that was because the guest who died—her name was Emma—she summoned a demon to get revenge on her boyfriend. Don’t worry, he deserved it. But she did it wrong, and instead the demon killed her and ate her soul.”
Holy fuck.
I swallow hard. “Okay.”
Skye’s watching me worriedly, but he nods once and continues. “Once she was dead, the demon ripped open a gateway between here and the world it came from. We call it the otherworld.”
“Typical humans,” Marc murmurs. “Othering anything that’s not them.”
Heads slowly turn toward him. “Tell you what,” Kieran snaps, “if demons stop killing us and consuming our souls, we’ll use more inclusive language to refer to your homeworld.”
I want to ask what the demons call their homeworld, but this doesn’t seem like the right time.
“Anyway,” Skye says loudly, “the demon ripped open the gateway because the only way demons can get to Earth is by being summoned, like Emma did, or through a gateway, and they can only be opened from this side.”
So. Many. Questions. But I don’t want to derail the story, so I just nod.
“The demon then went on a rampage and injured people at the hotel, so they had to close. And then the ghosts worked out a way to trap it in the basement and guarded it for fifty years.”
Whoa. I look at the ghosts with new respect, and I’m not the only one.
“Impressive.” Marc flicks a hand in casual salute to the ghosts. It’s the kind of effortlessly cool gesture that I’ve never been able to pull off. But apparently demons from the otherworld can. Not fair, universe.
“When Josh came here, the ghosts decided he might be able to help them. So they told him about the demon.”
Right, the demon. I think of all the times I’ve been here over the years, tra-la-la-laing through life with no idea what was trapped in the basement the whole time.
Josh picks up the story. “I had no idea what to do. I didn’t even know demons existed before then. So I told the rest of the senior staff”—he gestures to the other people in the room—“and we started doing research.”
“We didn’t know what we were looking for,” Daniel adds. “But we looked anyway.”
“We stumbled on this forum online. It was mostly whackjobs, but Connor was on there too, calling people idiots. He seemed to know a little more than everyone else, so I took a chance and contacted him.” Josh shakes his head. “We were so lucky.”
“Connor—though we didn’t know that was his name then—told us what we needed to do, and it worked.” Skye hesitates. “That was when Daniel and Ewan were injured. You remember?”
“Of course I remember.” I manage to squeeze the words through my too-tight throat.
“You said there was an accident on the farm.” They were both in the hospital, Daniel for longer than Ewan.
He needed surgery on his hands, and for a while we weren’t sure he’d have full use of them again. But he’s fine now.
“So things were good after that, except the gateway was still there and we were worried that another demon might come through. At the time, we didn’t know what it was or how it worked on what was on the other side. The ghosts had blocked it off with some energy, and they were keeping an eye on it.”
I swallow. “Where was it?”
“It’s in the Garden Suite.” Skye cringes a little. He knows I’m still thinking about all the times I’ve been in this building with a freaking demon in the basement and a gateway to demonland upstairs. Oh my god...
“My parents stayed there for their anniversary!”
“It’s fine,” Josh soothes. “They’re fine, right? It was more than a year ago, and nothing’s happened to them. The gateway doesn’t hurt anyone. It just is.”
There’s a flaw with that. “But a demon could have come through at any time!” They exchange guilty glances. “Oh my god, one did. More than one? How many?”
“None.” Josh’s voice is firm. “No demons came through that gateway. But last year, a spirit came through.”
“A spirit.” I don’t know what that means. Is it like a ghost?
Skye must sense my confusion, because he pats my arm. “Spirits are a species from the otherworld. Or a group of species. There are lots of different kinds. They’re not ghosts.”
There’s a general muttering from the ghosts, and specifically a harrumph from Norval. I smile weakly at them in apology and wait for someone to finish the story.
“The spirit was what’s called a body hopper. It’s…” Josh trails off and looks at Skye.
My bestie takes a deep breath. “Okay, so, big news! Turns out, I’m a conduit.” While I blink a few times and try to process, he rushes on. “That means I can talk to and see spirits, which not many people on Earth can do. Exciting, huh?”
That does sound kind of cool. “Wow. So the spirit came through and you talked to it?”
He grimaces. “Eh. Not exactly. I didn’t know anything about it back then, and the thing about body hoppers is that they like to… possess bodies. And they can only do that when people are sick or a conduit. So it came through the gateway, found me, a conduit, and… moved in.”
Not so cool. “You were possessed by a spirit?” My voice rises a little at the end.
“It’s fine, though! Josh called Connor, and he came and sent the spirit back to the otherworld.”
Marc sighs, but we ignore him. It’s not like we know what else to call it, anyway.
“And then he told us about the otherworld and the Collective, which is an organization for protecting Earth from demons,” Josh explains. “He told us we needed a gatekeeper to guard the gateway so nothing else could come through.”
“Gabe,” I say with sudden realization. “That’s why he lives here. Not to finish his dissertation.”
“He’s doing that too,” Kieran assures me. “But mostly he needs to be close to the gateway to guard it effectively.”
“So Connor’s a demon hunter, Gabe’s a door bouncer at the club called Earth, Skye can talk to spirits, and Josh talks to ghosts. And Marc over there is a demon who once tried to kill Connor, and more recently mind-controlled Skye’s mom.”
“She wasn’t hurt by it,” Marc says with mild exasperation.
“Yeah, so about all that. There’s been a lot happening the last few weeks.
The short version is, when a demon is summoned from the otherworld, it comes through the nearest gateway, even if there’s a gatekeeper.
It can do that because the summoning overrides everything.
” Skye squints, then turns to the others.
“Is that right? I’m still not convinced I fully understand it. ”
“Me either,” Daniel says. He’s usually perpetually cheerful, but not so much tonight.
“That’s right,” Marc confirms helpfully. I guess he’d know, being an actual demon.
“Great. When Emma summoned that first demon fifty years ago, it came through a gateway somewhere within a fifty-mile radius of here. After Connor got here and brought Gabe, he went searching for that gateway, because they needed to make sure it was closed or guarded.”
“Makes sense.”
Skye eyes me measuringly, like he’s surprised I’m not freaking out. I try to project calm. This is all fine. I’m not on the brink of a breakdown.
It must fool him, because he continues. “Except they haven’t been able to find it.
They should have. But then a couple months ago, a spirit found me and gave me a warning that we’re all in danger.
It was killed before it could say more.” A mix of sorrow and guilt wars on his face.
“We started looking for more answers, and it turns out that the reason Connor couldn’t find the gateway is because Cato, the demon in charge in the otherworld right now, is hiding it.
He’s planning to invade Earth… well... you heard all that bit, right?
That gateway is his secret back door right now. ”
My head spins. If this was a movie, I’d say it was jumping the shark with this plot twist. “So the bad guy is Cato, and he’s trying to take over the world. I’m guessing this wouldn’t be a pay-tithes-and-we’ll-leave-you-alone type of invasion.”
Marc laughs.
“That’s a no, then,” I mumble. “And Marc is here because he doesn’t like Cato and doesn’t want his world and Earth mingling too much.”
“Bringing down the barrier would mean the eventual end of both worlds.” He studies his nails. “I don’t care about this one, but I’d like to hang on to mine.”
“And the reason you’re here, at Mannix, talking to us, instead of at the… Collective?” I glance at Skye to see if I got it right. He nods. “You’re not talking to the professional demon hunters at the Collective because you think one of them is in cahoots with Cato?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Gabe says, and we turn to see him and Connor in the doorway, faces set.