by D. N. Hoxa
“Good to see you’re okay, Sassy,” Abraham said when I passed him by.
“Yeah. You, too,” I said, but I couldn’t even look him in the eye. We needed to talk, but I was in my pajamas, for fuck’s sake. I needed to get dressed asap.
The shower was heavenly. I took my time, and even though my skin was perfectly clean, I scrubbed it until I was red all over. Just to get the feeling of those ashes sticking to me out of my head.
Fifteen minutes later, I felt like a completely different person.
The mirror of the bathroom said I looked younger. I always look young—Daddy’s genes—but never like this. I hadn’t shifted in over two years, and I’d forgotten what it did to my face, to my hair, even to my eyes. The blue in them was even brighter than normal and my flushed cheeks made them pop more. The hoodie looked good on me, too. Too bad I couldn’t stay awake for long enough to say thanks to my father when he was here. This was probably the only good thing he’d ever done for me. Seriously, there wasn’t a scratch or a tear anywhere on the fabric. Impressed didn’t even begin to cover it.
When I walked out of the bathroom, I found Chelsea and Abraham at the kitchen counter. Chelsea was making me something to eat—probably a sandwich because she didn’t even know how to make scrambled eggs properly, and Abraham was watching her.
No, Abraham was admiring every movement she made.
“There she is,” Chelsea said when she saw me, bright smile and all. She looked exactly the same as before, too. No scars, no marks, no irritated skin anywhere. It was so easy to forget what had happened to her just days ago, and I held onto it for as long as I could.
I pulled the pickle sandwich she’d made in front of me, and before I bit into it, I said, “Start from the beginning.”
The beginning was apparently Lexar freaking the fuck out, trying to actually run after my phoenix when she took off east.
When he saw that that wasn’t going to do him any good, he decided to go back Downstairs and call for backup.
Everybody was freaked out—especially Michael Alifair, the lion alpha. They’d all stayed right at the field and waited for Lexar to come back. When he did, according to Chelsea, he was perfectly calm, and he said that everything was over, and we were good to go home.
“He didn’t even explain shit, just said we should get home and wait for you there.” It was easy to see that this had bugged Chelsea.
“And the were-lions?” They’d seen my phoenix, too. Clearly.
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Lexar said your father would handle it.”
I had no doubt about that. If somebody found out that the offspring of my father turned into a phoenix, things would be out of his control. He didn’t like that very much, and it had nothing to do with me. I sighed. Did it make me a monster for actually being glad for once that he was going to handle this one thing? I did not want to deal with Michael Alifair because the only way I knew how to make him keep his mouth shut was to kill him. I did want to kill him, but his people needed him. Without an alpha, the whole shifter community would go bonkers, and nobody needed that kind of chaos.
“Then Joleen came here. Just knocked on the door with a fucking bag in her hand, and she locked herself in your room, put magic all over the place, and wouldn’t let us in,” Chelsea said, more pissed off by the second. “About eight hours later, she came out and you were there—on your bed.”
So Joleen had found me. She’d brought me back here. Obviously, it had been my father who’d put her on it, but it had been her.
Shit. Now I needed to go see her again to say thank you. I hated thank you’s just as much as I hated help me’s.
“What about Lexar?” I hated to have to ask about him, too, but I really wanted to know why he wasn’t here. Not that I expected him to be or whatever. I was just curious.
“He was here, but last night, some people came to the door.”
“Champions,” Abraham filled in. Champions were Hell’s hounds, and if they had been here, it meant the Fallen had called for Lexar.
And now I was dying to know why.
“He left with them.”
“Did anybody mention anything about who was working with the nocturnal bitch? Was it Tobias, by any chance?” Maybe Lexar had been right when he said that Tobias didn’t have the brains or the power for something like that, but I was betting all my money on him.
Chelsea shook her head. “No idea. They didn’t mention anything to us.”
But they were going to mention it to me as soon as I saw them. “When is Lexar coming back?” I asked halfheartedly.
“He didn’t say.” Chelsea actually avoided my eyes for a second. She felt sorry for me. Ugh. “Only that he’d be back when he could.”
I nodded. That settled it then. The last time when he disappeared, he didn’t come back until the Fallen wanted me to do something for them again. It was safe to assume the same was going to happen this time, too, and you know what? It was probably for the best. I didn’t need to know who had worked with the bitch so long as the Fallen took care of him—and knowing them, they definitely would.
“What about the city? Any news on that?” I asked next.
Elyssa Masters, the witch from the Alliance, had told us all about the weird things going on with humans the past few days. She believed it was the nocturnal bitch causing it, and if that was true, it should all be okay now.
“No news, but Annabelle’s senses have come back. She can sense everything like she used to,” Chelsea said.
“And the thing that the bitch had?” I turned to Abraham, who immediately looked down at the counter. “It was the gift, wasn’t it? The gift of the angels.” I’d suspected it had been it the second I saw it materialize between the bitch’s hands at the fight. All I’d seen was a flash of something golden, but it had to be it.
And Abraham confirmed it with a reluctant nod. “Yes, it was the gift. She found it and used it to summon all those dybbuks.”
“Do you have it?”
When he looked at me, I could swear I heard the fight going on in his head—I just didn’t know what it was for.
“No. It fell in the hole, I think. It disappeared,” he said, and my bullshit radar went off like crazy. Abraham was lying. I don’t know how I knew. I just did.
“What was it?” I asked in a breath. If he wasn’t going to admit to me that he had that gift, I could at least find out what it was.
“I don’t know. From what I saw, it was a golden circle, about this big.” He brought his hands together to show me. “It’s what’s on the inside that matters.”
I nodded. Pushing him to tell me the truth wasn’t going to do anybody any favors right now because to be honest, I preferred that Abraham had that thing, whatever it was. In the hands of the Fallen, it could potentially be just as bad as it had been in that bitch’s hands. It was best if Abraham took it away and nobody found it again.
Chelsea leaned closer to me on the counter. “Your turn.”
I held up my index finger while I swallowed the bite of sandwich in my mouth. “Just a minute.” I looked at Abraham again. I wasn’t done with my questions for him. “Did you talk to my dad by any chance?”
I didn’t think it was possible, but the guy turned two shades paler even before I’d finished the question.
“No.” He said it like what I’d asked was ridiculous. Like I’d offended him.
“Good,” I said with a nod. “I’m going to be straightforward with you, Abraham, and I need you to do the same. Am I gonna have to kill you?” Because I would if I had to. I wouldn’t actually like it—he was an angel’s descendant, for fuck’s sake, but if it had to be done, I’d do it.
“You’re not going to kill him,” Chelsea said, rolling her eyes.
“If by that you mean to ask if I’m going to tell someone about what I saw, the answer is no,” Abraham said, a small smile curling the corners of his lips.
I squinted my eyes at him. “You sure about that? Because you seem like the guy who t
ells his parents everything.”
At that, he laughed. “I do give people that impression sometimes, but the answer’s the same. I won’t be telling anyone about what you are—that is, if you tell me the whole truth to it.”
Now, that I didn’t like at all. “I don’t trust you.” I’d told him this before. Plenty of times.
“And I don’t trust you, but maybe I will if you’re honest.”
“And you will be, too?”
“Yes.”
“About your parents?” Because I was very, very interested in them and everything they did.
Abraham leaned closer on the counter, his eyes never leaving mine. “How about I do something even better? How would you like to meet my parents personally?”
And just like that, everything changed.
I dragged the smoke of my cigarette for one last time before throwing the butt to the side. Hank wouldn’t mind. And if he did, he’d get over it.
I looked at the door in front of me, and I reminded myself that just because I didn’t want to do this didn’t mean I could walk away. Just because everything hurt didn’t mean I could stay in my room all day and read books—which, let’s be honest, would have been the best possible scenario for me right now.
But, no, I’d needed to drop the lightning in the bottle for my ghost friend Elizabeth. She hadn’t been there, nobody had answered the door, so I’d hidden the bottle with Lexar’s lightning close to the stairs. She’d probably find it. Definitely one of the weirder things I’d ever had to do, but it was already done. My debt to her was paid.
Now, I needed to talk to Hank, too. The pain wasn’t going to stay with me forever. It was already so much better than it had been hours ago, and it was going to fade away into nothing in just a few days’ time.
Taking in a deep breath, I pulled the door open and walked inside the warehouse. People there knew me. His guards didn’t try to stop me, but they all watched me as I made my way into the narrow corridor and to the stairs that would lead me down to Hank’s office. Thoughts buzzed in my head, trying to come up with what had happened with my phoenix two nights ago, after I’d given her complete control. She was quiet now, and if I didn’t know for a fact that she existed within me, I’d have felt completely alone in my body. She was recovering, too, I guess.
I don’t know how Joleen had found her or if the phoenix had gone to one of the locations we had set out around the city since I first shifted, but she had. She’d put the ashes in a bag, and she’d brought me home. I was going to have to go see her, just…not today. Elizabeth and Hank were enough.
The guards in front of the door stepped to the side when they saw me approach.
“Hey, fellas,” I said with a smile, but neither replied. Just how I liked it. “Is the boss man in?”
The one on the right, a tall and slim guy whose neck looked like a hook from the side, turned the handle and pushed the door open to tell me to just get inside already.
I grinned. “Thanks.”
Hank was behind his desk, just like the last time I’d been here. Only a few days ago, actually. It felt like a lot longer.
And just like last time, Hank was not happy to see me. He was alone in his office—his guards didn’t follow me in. Probably because I slammed the door shut behind me. I needed to talk to Hank because Hank knew shit, and if shit was being said about me in the paranormal community, I needed to know about it.
“What now?” Hank said, slamming his hands on the table desperately. I liked that I inspired that reaction in him.
“Relax,” I said, raising up my hands. “I’m not here to fight. I’m just here for information.”
I sat on the chair across from him, ignoring every weird ass thing he had on the shelves there—especially the jar full of tiny blood-colored fish that seemed to be shaking instead of swimming. Their wide eyes followed my every movement, and it was weird as fuck.
Hank’s sweaty forehead wrinkled. “Still after the nocturnal witch?”
“Oh, no. She’s dead. I killed her two nights ago.” Technically my phoenix killed her, chopped her head right off with her beak, but it was basically the same thing. I am the phoenix. The phoenix is me.
“Then what?” He didn’t try to hide his annoyance at all.
“What’s going on in the city, Hank? I’m just here for a conversation. Tell me what people are saying, who’s going after who, who’s fucking who, if there’s any mention of my name around the streets—you know, the usual.”
“You want to know if someone’s saying things about you?” That finally got an ugly smile out of him.
“Yeah. Why not? I want to know what people say about me.”
“Nothing,” Hank said, shaking his head. “Nobody says anything about you.”
Ah, music to my ears. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Your father’s a fucking Fallen,” he reminded me, as if I could ever forget.
“What about other things, other people? Other misbehaving witches around here, maybe? Any newcomers I should know about?”
For a second, Hank just stared at me. He didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, just stared. I get that he was surprised. I’d never done this before, but I should have. And from now on, I was going to. If I’d spoken to him before my father called that meeting in Hell, I would have maybe had a chance to off the nocturnal bitch long before she became a threat.
Long before she tried to actually summon the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Psycho bitch.
And that was the second reason I was here to see Hank. I knew the bitch hadn’t succeeded. My phoenix killed all of her evil spirits—which I suspect she was using for energy, just like she used the energy from crystals to summon the evil spirits first. She was good at it. Really good at it, and I’d made the mistake of underestimating her one time. I wanted to learn from it—and just make absolutely sure that she had failed.
Now, everything she’d said to me in our short conversation, still spun around in my head.
Lie, I reminded myself. All she’d said was a lie.
“Everything’s been the same since the last time you were here,” Hank said when he got his shit together and stood up. I did the same. “I need to get upstairs to check on a shipment.”
“Then I’ll walk with you,” I offered with a polite smile. It was like I’d told him to fuck off. “C’mon, maybe you’ll think of something someone told you along the way.”
Hank didn’t like it. He couldn’t wait to get me out of his hair, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I was convinced that he was telling me the truth—that nobody was around here that shouldn’t be.
“I am not your own personal informant,” Hank said when we walked out into the hallway and headed for the stairway.
“But you can be.” I said it like that was a good thing. Technically, it would be—for me.
“No, I can’t. You want information, you pay for it,” Hank said.
“Sure. Just send me your bank details.” I was being sarcastic, but I didn’t think he noticed. Or cared.
With a sigh, he shook his head. “The were-cheetah pack is gone. They’ve moved to Canada,” he started, and I almost cringed. How the hell had my father managed that? Because there were probably other were-cheetahs of the Philly pack who hadn’t been in the fight. Who’d survived. And he’d sent them to fucking Canada?
“Why?” I asked Hank, just to see what he knew.
“No clue. Nobody knows shit about it, but the order came from Alifair himself.” Ah, so that’s how my father had done it.
“What else?”
“There was a fight in a club between a vampire and two were-foxes two nights ago. The were-foxes died,” he said reluctantly.
“Really? Who’s the vampire?”
“I don’t know—just some loner. He isn’t new, but he doesn’t mingle with anyone. I think his name’s Jacob.”
“Hmm.” I’d never heard of a vampire named Jacob before. “What else?”
We walked up the stairs, and
I followed him to the right of his huge warehouse. Box after box full of stuff against the wall, the piles so high they reached the ceiling. The last time, the entire space had been empty, but Hank had apparently done a lot of business since then. Eleven people were running around, some with those weird-looking wheels that carried boxes, some carrying stuff by hand, rushing it to the front of the building where one of the three aluminum doors was open. Through them I could see two white vans with the backdoors open while people loaded them.
“I don’t know!” Hank exploded and turned to me. The whites of his eyes had turned red. “That’s it. I don’t know—just a bunch of bullshit, like usual. Nothing ever happens here.”
He had no idea how wrong he was about that, but okay. I believed him. My instincts said he was telling the truth.
I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. He flinched. “Sorry about last time, Hank. I didn’t mean to beat up your people.” And him. “I was just having a bad day, that’s all. We can be friends, can’t we?”
“Friends?” He laughed. “Yeah, we’ll be friends.” But in his mind, he was cursing me the worst possible way. That was okay, too.
“Great. Get to work then. I’ll see you next time.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you, Sassy. Take care,” he said, obviously relieved that he no longer had to talk to me, and he rushed toward the vans the next second.
I was going to turn around and leave when something in the corner of the huge room, almost completely covered by boxes, caught my attention.
“Hey, Hank!” I called, and he spun around furiously.
“What?!”
I pointed at the corner of the room. “How much for that?”
He looked at where I was pointing, and the anger disappeared to leave way for surprise. “The piano?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, the piano.” It wasn’t all that big, but it looked pretty enough, with light-colored wood that had probably seen better days.
“A thousand bucks,” Hank said with a shrug.