by Jenn Burke
As more imps swarmed from the back room, I fought them on autopilot and opened the mental box of magic a crack. Allowing only a thin thread to extend outward was so hard—the bulk of my magic thrust against my restraint, wanting out fully. A headache bloomed between my temples at the effort, but I ignored it. I directed the magic toward Lexi, softly, slowly, so she wouldn’t realize she was getting a boost. God, it would have been so much easier if I’d just told her—told everyone—about this, but even as I had the thought, even as I recognized the foolishness of keeping my secret, I knew that even after this fight was done I wouldn’t confess.
It had been too long. There’d be too many questions, and most of my answers were stupid, so no. Best to keep my mouth shut.
When my magic intertwined into Lexi’s, her demeanor changed. I don’t know if she was aware of it, but I saw it. Her tired, rounded shoulders straightened. Her casting movements went from lackluster to determined and strong. In moments, she’d cleared most of this wave of imps.
“Finally,” she said.
I jerked my chin at Evan and we moved to flank her. A few more imps trickled into the café, but we dispatched them easily. Lexi’s hands drew symbols in the air, symbols that glowed briefly to my vision. I couldn’t recall seeing that before, but then, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Lexi cast serious, involved magic, and have fingers left over. Until last spring, that hadn’t been the type of life we led.
Thirty seconds passed without more imps. Then a whole minute. Two.
Lexi blew out a breath. “It’s closed—sort of.”
“Sort of?” Evan echoed.
“The best I could do was patch it.” She grimaced. “I hope it holds.”
I let a bit more magic flow into her, then cut it off before closing the box. I felt none the worse for wear after sharing some of my power—other than the headache from restraining it—which would be frightening if I let myself think about it.
So I didn’t.
A head of long, braided black hair slowly emerged from behind the counter, next to the cash register, followed by a pair of wide mahogany eyes. Bhavana, the café’s owner, looked around, skimming over the damage, before landing on us. “Is it over?” she asked, her voice shaky and her lilting accent thicker than I’d ever heard it.
“They’re gone,” Evan assured her with a gentle smile. He was back to looking human, which showed how far he’d come in the past few months. It used to take him a lot longer to put his vamp away.
“I—I—” She rose farther, gaining her feet, but she didn’t stop scanning her surroundings. “I heard scrabbling in the kitchen, and—I’ve never seen rats like that. Or that many. All swarming...” Fully standing now, she looked at me with a strange expression. Hopefulness? “They were rats, right?”
I shared a glance with Lexi, then turned back to Bhavana. In the distance, sirens wailed. “Yes, of course. Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I—Yes. Rats should not act like that.”
Lexi stepped forward too, holding out a hand in encouragement. Bhavana took it and let Lexi lead her around the counter and toward the front entrance. “It was the cold snap,” she said. “It drove them into your café.”
“Rats like warmth,” Evan added.
“Yes—they do,” Bhavana said with conviction. “Indeed they do. Rats.”
She continued forward, her steps less than steady, and Lexi kept her balanced. Behind them, I took a minute to survey the damage to the café. Tables were overturned, as were chairs, and there was dust—imp remains—everywhere. Everything appeared to be fixable, but it would take some work to put to rights.
“You think she’ll convince herself it was rats?” Evan murmured.
“I don’t think her brain will give her a choice.”
“Fair enough.” He let out a sigh. “The health department is going to shut her down, isn’t it?”
“Shit, I hadn’t even thought of that.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “It’s not fair she’s going to be punished for something that isn’t true.”
“Somehow I don’t think they’ll change their minds if we tell them it was imps and not rats that trashed it.”
“No,” I agreed. “But we’re investigators. So...let’s investigate.”
Chapter Two
Let’s investigate. Simple. Direct. Easy.
Except I’d forgotten about the wet blanket known as Hudson Rojas.
“No,” he said, his arms crossed. The fabric of his long-sleeved, eggplant-colored Henley bunched across his biceps. He was tall—way taller than my five-seven frame—and broad, muscular, barrel-chested. His dark brown hair was more silver than not these days, and long enough for gentle waves to tease his collar. His everyday appearance was intimidating, but when he let his vamp out and flashed his fangs, he could be downright scary.
Not to me, though. Never to me. Just looking at him made my blood sing.
Usually. Right now, though, it was starting to boil.
“What do you mean, no?” I demanded. I cast a glance at Lexi and Iskander for support, but their attention was conveniently occupied by other important things in the office. Like the coffeemaker. And a wall. “Look at the big picture. Those imps got through somehow.”
“Wes has a point,” Lexi interjected. At Hudson’s glare, she shrugged. “Just saying. We should find out how they ended up here.”
“We’re not the paranormal police,” Hudson countered. “And do you think the cops or health inspectors or whatever are going to let some random investigators wander through the scene?”
“You’re not a random investigator,” I said. “You used to be one of them.”
“Not the point.”
“Okay, so...we could sell our services to Bhavana. I’m sure she’d like to know—”
“What? How the nonexistent rats entered her café?” Hudson scoffed.
I squinted at him. “You don’t want to investigate because it’s a paranormal thing.”
Iskander let out a soft groan. “Oh, here we go.”
“No, that’s not why, and you damn well know it,” Hudson growled. “We’re investigators, not exterminators. How the hell are you going to sell our services to Bhavana?”
“I could—could—” I waved a hand in the air. “I’d make something up!”
“Good business practice. Start out by lying to your client. Excellent.”
My magic, reacting to my temper, pounded in my head to the time of my increased heartbeat and I let out a frustrated noise. “You always have an excuse.”
“An excuse for what?”
“Not taking on the cases that seem a little weird.”
“The cases that ‘seem a little weird—’” he made air quotes “—are weird because they’re not legit cases.”
“You don’t know that.”
“C’mon. Give me some credit for knowing people and knowing when their stories are bullshit. I was a cop for nearly forty years.”
“I’ve got to side with Hud on this,” Iskander said. His voice was raspy and just above a whisper, thanks to the scar on his throat.
Hudson gave him a small smile. “Thanks, Isk.”
It was stupid, but Iskander backing Hudson over me didn’t feel great. He’d been a client of my thief-for-hire business—and then my kinda-maybe friend—first. But he and Hudson had gotten close while working together to open the firm. They had a shared experience, after all, both being investigators—Hudson an ex-cop, Isk a PI. Investigating stuff took a certain personality, one I didn’t have. Most of the time, when I tried to put two and two together, I came up with five. My conclusions had my own brand of logic behind them, one that made sense to me and no one else. But that was okay—that wasn’t my main contribution to this business venture. I was the covert surveillance guy, seeing as I could turn into a ghost.
But Isk
ander and Hudson? They were the fitting-puzzle-pieces-together guys. They thought alike. Watching them bounce ideas off each other as they were trying to figure something out was like watching brothers bicker on their way to a common goal.
And yeah, I was jealous.
I wished Evan had stuck around instead of going on a date. As much as Lexi liked helping us out now and again, she wasn’t a full-time employee of the firm—she liked being a nurse too much—and she wasn’t invested enough in the business to take my side, but Evan? He would’ve.
Probably.
Okay, maybe. He had a bit of hero worship going on with Hudson.
“So we’re not pursuing anything with Bhavana,” Hudson declared, as if that hadn’t been clear.
“Got it,” Lexi said. “I’m going to research how the tear might have happened, though. Those imps weren’t summoned.” At my blank look, she continued, “When a witch does a summoning, one of the most important parts of the spell is closing the rift behind whatever you summoned. Leaving it open takes a hell of a lot of energy—a constant drain—and it’s dangerous. As fuck.”
“Because anything could wander through,” I said.
“Exactly. No witch in their right mind would create a crack to the beyond and leave it.”
“Right mind might be the operative phrase here,” Iskander pointed out.
I had to agree. Summoning anything seemed to be the wheelhouse of someone who was a little unhinged.
“True,” Lexi admitted. “But here’s the kicker—I didn’t sense any casting at Bhavana’s. Recent or otherwise.”
I frowned. “What are you saying? It was random?”
“Maybe? That’s why I need to research.”
I decided Lexi sounding uncertain about a magical event was my new least favorite thing.
* * *
Lexi headed home to dive into research, and Iskander, Hudson, and I spent the rest of the night planning out the next steps on our active cases. By the time Hudson and I left the office at two, I was ready for some downtime. My magic throbbed in my head like an oddly placed toothache. If I were into anthropomorphizing things, I’d say it was angry at being teased with freedom and usage earlier only for me to contain it again. It made me edgy and crabby, so when Hudson pulled up to his house, I couldn’t hold in my annoyance.
“You could’ve asked.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw tighten as he guided his monstrous red muscle car into the detached garage at the back of his property. “If you’d admit you already lived here—”
“Except I don’t.”
He let out his grumble-sigh-hitching breath, his can’t react don’t react noise. “You’re raring for a fight tonight, aren’t you?” he growled as he wrenched the gearshift into Park.
“No,” I sputtered, even as my temper crowed Yes!
His only response was to slam his door. I scrambled out of the car to catch up. Instead of using the code-locked secret tunnel from his garage to his house, Hudson traversed the short stretch of driveway to the kitchen door. He’d once told me that he’d dug the tunnel to avoid the gaze of nosy neighbors, but at a few minutes past two in the morning, there was no one awake to witness him arriving home and it was dark as pitch, which meant he didn’t have to cover his skin to protect it from his allergic reaction to UV rays.
As I closed the kitchen door behind me, he tossed his keys on the small table tucked into the corner where we ate breakfast most evenings, and turned to face me. He looked tired—but there was a spark of irritation in his gaze. “I’m not gonna ask again.”
I retrieved his keys and hung them up on the rack beside the kitchen door—their usual spot. Hudson was meticulous about everything having a place, so the fact that he hadn’t hung them up there to start with was a sign he was pissed. “I know.”
“’Cause I’ve asked you to move in three times already and—”
“I know. I’m—I’m not ready.” I couldn’t. Not with my secrets hanging between us. And yeah, I knew that theoretically, that was an easy problem to solve, but...
“Bullshit.” Instantly, his demeanor softened. “No, not bullshit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Crap. Conciliatory, understanding Hudson was so much harder to resist than annoyed, pissed-off Hudson.
“I know you’re still having nightmares, Wes.”
Fuck.
“What you went through—”
“What we went through.”
Gentle fingers nudged my chin until I met his gaze. Despite the temper riling me up, the sight of his warm, golden-brown eyes soothed me. They were as familiar now as my own reflection. “What you went through,” he said softly. “Yeah, it wasn’t a picnic for me, either, but I’ve had training on how to deal with traumatic events.”
“That doesn’t make you better—”
“God, that’s not what I meant.” He cupped my neck and cheek to hold me still, pressed his forehead to mine, and took a couple of slow breaths. Despite myself, I waited for him to continue. “You’re hurting. That’s normal, and natural, and completely understandable. PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of.”
I hadn’t been formally diagnosed, so Hudson was a bit off base using the term, but even I could admit I exhibited some classic signs of the disorder—recurring nightmares being chief among them. Thing was, I couldn’t even be mad at Hudson for his armchair psychoanalysis, since he was right—he’d been trained to deal with traumatic events, and beyond that, he’d lived through his share and come out the other side a productive member of society. And a vampire, but that wasn’t the point.
Or maybe it was.
He’d been turned against his will while undercover and lost nine months of his life to bloodlust. He’d overcome so many hurdles—the horrors his sire inflicted on him, the obstacles to returning to his beloved job, adapting to being a vampire cop. But he’d made his life work. He tried to tell me his life was better now that I was back in it, and the majority of the time, I believed him.
Except when he looked at me with tired, sad eyes because he knew I was hurting and didn’t know how to help. I’d gone through my own transformative events and I could see the parallels between Hudson’s turning and my own...whatever it was. But I couldn’t bridge that gap.
If I told him, he’d know. If he knew, everything would change. I felt that deep in my gut, and I’d felt it for so long now, I couldn’t figure out if it was instincts guiding me or fear lying to me.
We’d made promises. Vows to give this thing between us a real try. But we’d done that before too, and it had all fallen apart. It could again, because of my stupid magic, and then what?
Goddamn it, Wes.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said quietly.
Hudson let out a soft chuckle that was more air than sound. “Me neither.” His hand pressed against my skin, and I welcomed the pressure. It grounded me. “But I’m here for you when you want to talk, okay? And I lied—I’m gonna ask again.” I took in a breath to protest, but he cut me off. “Shh, not tonight. But I’m going to ask you to move in until you say yes. Because I know you will, eventually.”
And that’s what I was afraid of. If I moved in with Hudson, if he found out the truth...this relationship we were trying again might die.
Chapter Three
Lexi picked me up in front of Hudson’s house for a shopping trip the next afternoon. I could drive, but I preferred to avoid it whenever possible. Unlike Hudson, I didn’t drool over cars or get some weird satisfaction out of the sound of big engines at high revs. Or going fast. He was welcome to his monster muscle car. Even Lexi’s Mini Cooper was a little too peppy for my taste.
As I got in, Lexi turned down the radio and said, “Change of plans.”
“Are we running away together?”
“Idiot,” she scoffed lovingly, checking her mirrors before pulling away f
rom the curb. The wheels spun for a second as they sought traction on the slushy asphalt, then the car jerked forward. “No. I like my neck without holes in it, thanks.”
“So what’s up?”
“I got a call from Kee on my way over. You remember Kee?”
I put on my best old man voice, quavery and soft. “Yes, dearie. I believe so.”
She chuckled. “Stop it. There’s been weird stuff happening at the youth home.”
The youth home was Aurora House, an LGBTQIA shelter for homeless teens that had opened this past fall. Lexi had met Kee, the home’s coordinator, through a charity event a few years back, and when Kee was looking for volunteers to help make Aurora House a reality, Lexi had been only too happy to volunteer the two of us. We’d spent the better part of the summer helping to renovate the old, outdated farmhouse.
“Weird stuff? Like...our kind of weird stuff?”
“Yours, specifically. Some of the kids are reporting ghosts.”
“No shit?”
Despite spending quite a lot of time in the otherplane, I didn’t see many actual ghosts. There were two types, as far as I knew—and if you didn’t include me. The most common sort was an echo, which was like an imprint of ghostly energy that repeated itself again and again. The spirit that the echo originated from wasn’t present, but had already moved on to the afterlife. That’s what those ghost hunter shows usually captured—footsteps, whispers, and so on. In the otherplane, I could see the echo’s form, and they normally looked like a person, but I couldn’t interact with them.
The rarer type of ghost was an intelligent one looking to interact with people or get help to complete a task. Those were the ones mediums could pick up on, the ones that played with Ouija boards and left messages and tugged on your clothes to get your attention, if they could summon enough energy.