by Louisa Lo
So there was Gregory and I, standing in the middle of my bedroom for the first time. And it wasn’t like how I’d imagined it in the far and rare occasions when I caught myself fantasizing before quickly shutting it down. At least the current messiness of the room wasn’t my doing, so I was spared the embarrassment on that front.
“Megan, I don’t have to tell you what almost happened tonight. And I know firsthand how persuasive Candy can be. But please, I must ask you not to involve and endanger her from now on.”
Everything he said was logical, and the tone he used was more flat than condescending, so why did I feel my ire rising?
Because he’d lied to me about the true nature of the Internet. He had hid the truth from me, and a solus iungere wasn’t supposed to be able to do that to his true mate. Never mind that I wasn’t his true mate. Maybe. Probably not.
“Well, I wouldn’t have endangered her if I had all the facts,” I retorted back, the shame of what almost happened was making me a little defensive. “We’re business partners. I thought that meant something. And my grandma is freaking missing. So pardon me if I’d grabbed Candy’s offer like a lifeline without thinking it through.”
“Megan”—Gregory closed his eyes briefly, as if struggling to come up with something to say—“I—”
“Ju—just go.” I wanted to say that I was shaking with anger. But after that little flare of temper, all I felt was an utter sense of fatigue. I was weary to the bone of getting nowhere with finding Grandma. I was sick and tired of going around in circles when it came to convincing my heart and instincts that there was nothing between Gregory and I. I was so done for the night. Yes, a part of me recognized that Gregory had good reasons for being mad at me, and in fact I’d probably be even more outraged if I was in his shoes, but I was too tired to care. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? And I’ll let you know if I get any calls from Marv.”
Gregory bit back whatever the hack he was going to say and teleported away.
I pushed back the pang of longing I always had now whenever he left and got ready for bed. Again.
I did a reversion spell to turn the bedroom back to its pre-attack state. Screw doing it manually, right now I wasn’t in the mood to save a few magical credits.
I hopped into the second shower of the evening and let the hot water ease some of my guilt, anger, and frustration. Then I used a bit more magic to zap dry my hair and got into bed.
It might as well be that I’d chosen to take Marv that night, because sleep didn’t come easily for me. I was so wired up that, despite the fatigue, I wasn’t able to simply shut off my mind.
Truth be told, it was hard to fall asleep most nights these days, but I generally used a spell that was equivalent to a human sleeping pill. Tonight, even that had failed me.
Scene after scene of what I’d been through in the past few months played through my mind as I stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come.
…my friends and family fell around me one by one, cursed by the Council to experience a thousand kinds of pain. The helplessness that overwhelmed me as I watched them suffer…
…the moment when I realized that Grandma was in trouble. The sense of utter shock I felt because she had always seemed so indomitable to me…
…the deal I had had to make with the Council to get my friends out of the vengeance headquarters alive. My fear that it would all come back and bite me in the butt…
Then came that kiss with Gregory.
I shouldn’t even be thinking about that in the face of all the other much more serious stuff, but half asleep, my defenses were down.
We were in front of the hospice where I just handed over my active co-op case to a school official, effectively putting an end to my time at Demon U. Gregory had agreed to take me on as his mercenary partner. I was wondering if I should suggest that we go grab some shawarmas when he wrapped his arms around me, his lips closing in on mine, the distance a mere half an inch away and getting less by the millisecond…
I was abruptly pulled out of that memory and submerged in another one. This one from my early childhood.
I was nine, and Mom found me crying under the desk in my bedroom. She was a gorgeous woman at any age, with flawless, glowing olive skin, and long, black hair swaying to her curvy hips.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” My trickster mother quickly put down the box of animate-on-demand plastic spiders she had taken up from the basement. For the sake of my dad, the arch vengeance demon, she no longer got involved in any major-league trickery since her marriage to him, but she always made sure to update her inventory to prepare for any small gigs that might come her way.
“Everyone hates me, why?” my younger self pouted, tears streaked down my cheek. I was wearing my elementary school uniform, so I was at a stage in life where I was old enough to have gotten my share of cold shoulders, but not old enough to understand that things weren’t going to get any better with time. Not with the vengeance lot. My heart ached for the day in the not so distance future in my younger self’s timeline when she found that out the hard way.
Mom grimaced. “I’m so sorry, hon. They’re like this because your daddy married me.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” The younger me frowned in confusion.
“Because I’m not a vengeance demon. You see, everyone believes that vengeance demons should marry each other.”
“Why?” my younger self persisted.
Mom shrugged. “Because they think only vengeance demons could be solus iungere to each other.”
My younger self frowned. “What’s that?”
“A soul mate. When a vengeance demon meets his or hers and they kiss, they just know.”
“How?”
“They just do.”
“But you’re not a vengeance demon.” My younger self was chewing on her lower lip, clearly upset. “Does that mean you and daddy are not supposed to be together?”
Mom laughed, her voice as clear as silver bells. “Hon, believe me, your daddy and I definitely belong together. You’ll feel it in your heart when it happens. Sometimes, just the scent of a true mate is enough to let you know.”
“Does that mean Cold Cynthie wasn’t Dad’s soul mate?” My younger self seemed relieved by the idea. It was understandable. Who would welcome the thought that their birth parents belong to other people?
Mom grasped. “That’s not a very nice name to call Esme’s mom.”
“But she is cold,” my younger self insisted.
“Doesn’t matter. Listen, your daddy met Cynthia when he was very young and it’s easy to mistake other stuff as love. This kind of mismatch happens more often than you think. It’s not like there’s a test they could run to make sure all the engaged couples are true solus iungere to each other. Most people realize their mistake too late and just live with it. Your daddy’s divorce from Cynthia was quite the scandal back then. Well, until he topped it off by marrying me.”
Mom’s mischievous wink dissolved, and I was suddenly back to the memory of Gregory’s lips pressing down on mine. First there was still a little bit of heated air between us, then our lips touched.
Then I felt it, and I knew.
There was the lust that I’d experienced to a degree before when kissing other boys in the past. But what was new was this undertone of delicious slow-burning fire, like hot apple cider on a cold winter night. It felt solid and grounded.
Ever and always. True and never extinguished.
Gregory deepened the kiss, tenderly stroking the small of my back. I sighed.
The sweet sensation made me want to shout my joy to the world and twirl in dresses in the full spectrum of the rainbow, which might explain the vengeance demon’s out-of-character fashion choices during the time of courtship.
This, what I experienced right there, was why I’d had the urge to act like a lovesick teenager ever since that kiss happened. By all right I should be allowed to, even the strict vengeance society norms allowed that. I’d found my soul mate and it
was a jubilant time.
Except Gregory disagreed.
Out of the blue, he pulled away without warning. No, jumped away was the more appropriate description. He acted like I was a hot potato and he’d forgotten to put on his oven mitts before touching me. Or like I was a toxic spill and he was afraid of getting chemical splatter on himself.
I was left with my jaw open, staring, which was as inelegant as it sounded. I shivered, and it wasn’t just because Gregory’s warm hands were no longer on me.
I closed my mouth, then opened it again, but words failed me. What could I possibly say?
Err, did you hate kissing me that much? Was my half-trickster saliva giving you an allergic reaction or something?
Or worse—Hey, did you feel what I just felt? You want to meet my dad for our traditional Sunday night dinner? How’s six o’clock sound?
For a long moment we just stared at each other while our breathing returned to normal.
Then he cleared his throat and took out a black cell phone I’d never seen before. He kept his eyes on it and started talking, not looking at me. "I, er, took the liberty of setting up a 24/7 vengeance hotline for our business. The ads are not running until tomorrow afternoon, so I don't expect there will be any calls before then. Still, I'll keep the phone on me for now. That’ll give you some uninterrupted rest to get ready for our engagement with Hell tomorrow morning. I'll pick you up at your place at eight thirty. It’s better if we travel there together because…”
He went on and on about the details of our very first assignment together, talking very fast and very long, which was not like him at all. The Gregory I knew was measured when it came to his movement and speech, the deliberate slowness a mark of his self-assurance and confidence. This guy in front of me was babbling, and I wasn’t paying attention to a word he said. Was this guy for real? After what we’d just shared, he recoiled and then started talking shop?
I wanted to kick him.
Back on my bed, the present-day me kicked off the sheet. I’d been reliving that sense of utter bewilderment for months now. It was something that I’d puzzled over and over during my quiet moments. And I was no closer to an answer as I was right after it happened.
I sighed into my pillow. I just had to resign to the fact that I’d mistaken physical attraction for something far deeper, and Gregory obviously didn’t feel the same way. Even if he did, what was to become of a union between a full-blooded vengeance demon and a hybrid? Like, get half a soul mate out of each other? Soul Mate Lite? Maybe what my parents had was nothing but a fluke, and there was nobody out there for me.
Or I was fated to go crazy one day and have six babies fathered by six different guys. You never knew. Ugh.
Eventually exhaustion won, and deep, dreamless sleep claimed me.
In the early morning hours I fell into another dream. It felt like a memory, but if so, it wasn’t one that was familiar. It felt foreign, the force behind it cold and unnatural.
I was in a park, having a picnic with Jordon, my boyfriend. He handed me a portrait to look over. It was a pencil sketch depicting me in an apron at the kitchen of the animal shelter, having just taken out a tray of freshly-baked dog biscuits from the oven.
“I drew this for you long before we started going out.” Jordon grinned.
I traced my finger over the tiny pencil strokes that formed the smile on my face in the portrait. “Is that how you see me?”
“Yes,” Jordon murmured. “You’re always beautiful to me.”
There were two problems with this memory. One: I couldn’t bake to save my life. Two: Jordon was Rosemary’s boyfriend, not mine. The portrait he drew was of my roommate, not me.
How the hack did I end up experiencing Rosemary’s dream?
And by all accounts, this looked like what ought to be a happy memory. I mean, the food from the picnic was delicious-looking, and Jordon was being super sweet and professing his love and everything. Then why was a sense of foreboding and queasiness coming over me as if a pet had just died? Or the half-eaten egg salad sandwich on the picnic cloth was off or something?
I saw the memory to its conclusion, where Jordon and Rosemary kissed, chased each other around the tree in laughter, and packed up before heading off to a local farmer’s market. There was absolutely nothing there to indicate food poisoning or death of any kind, but the negative vibe persisted like a low hum that just wouldn’t go away, coloring the happy times with imposed darkness.
Then the hum grew louder, higher pitched, until it became the speaking voice of a female. Cold, sly, and full of rage.
I could turn good dreams into bad dreams, and bad dreams into nightmares. Release my Boyce, mercenary, or your roommate will never wake up again.
Chapter Five
Kidnapping of the Minds
I had to wake up. Now.
I would’ve had a much harder time swimming back to wakefulness, had I not been helped by the sharp pain from a pair of claws digging into my side. I recognized the claws as belonging to Sassy, my feline shade, as she had a habit of kneading me when we cuddled in bed. I bitched about it, but she did it anyway. The difference this time around was the urgency and bluntness of the clawing, as if she, too, knew something was terribly wrong.
"Ouch!" I jumped out of bed, dislodging the cat from my side. I rubbed the scratches that Sassy gifted me with during her departure. My pajama top was torn and slightly bloodstained. Luckily as a supernatural I did heal fast. But still. "That hurts! And I actually mean it this time."
Sassy just hissed and started running toward the bedroom door. To put it correctly, she ran through it, being the shade that she was. Looked like my cat wanted me to follow her, and given the contents of my nightmare, I had a very good idea where she was headed. Ever since I moved in with Rosemary, Sassy had been looking out for my roommate, considered the human hers to protect.
Rosemary’s bedroom was across from mine. Unlike the pigsty that was my sleeping area, she organized hers like she did with her kitchen—clean, neat, and not a dirty undergarment in sight.
My roommate was lying perfectly still on her bed, her eyes open but unseeing. There was a glassiness in them, as if she was gazing into infinity. I dropped onto the bed, set her upright on it, and gave her a little shake. “Rose," I used the nickname she insisted I use but never did. "Can you hear me?"
No answer.
Sassy jumped onto Rosemary's bed, sniffed at her toes, and meowed. The sound was pure rage. Something had gotten to her human, and the feline knew it. She was probably pretty pissed that whatever it was had gotten past her. She was a shade and it was supposed to be impossible to elude her.
I shook Rosemary again and she remained unresponsive, which was not entirely surprising. Whatever it was that could get past Sassy and invade my supernatural mind in the sanctuary of my own dreams had to be very powerful indeed. And that scared me more than the vacant look in my roommate’s eyes.
I raced back to my room, picked up my cell, and pressed the speed dial of Gregory’s number. I told myself that he was the first person I thought of because I’d just spoken to him, despite the fact that my own arch vengeance demon daddy would be more than qualified to deal with the situation at hand. If I wasn’t so freaked out, I’d be horrified at how I’d come to lean on Gregory in such a short time, even right after we had a nasty fight.
“Gregory,” I said as soon as the phone was picked up.
“What’s wrong?” Not, What have we got? Which was what he usually said when we got a call in the middle of the night. My tight voice must’ve alerted him to the fact that this had nothing to do with new businesses generated from Marv.
“Come to my place. Now.” I barely managed not to scream into the mouthpiece.
No sooner did I hastily change into something that was not ripped and bloodstained than there was a banging on my door.
I ran downstairs, yanked open the front door, and there was Gregory. He had on a wrinkled shirt and simple blue jeans that he must’ve throw
n on before rushing here. His hair was disheveled, his face unshaved.
“What happened?” he asked urgently, his eyes raking up and down my body as if checking for injuries.
“It’s Rosemary.” I let him in, lowering the safeguard for the house. Following his example, I got right to it without discussing our previous disagreement. “She’s gone. I mean, physically she’s still here, but her spirit has either left or got locked inside her. Her eyes got all glassy, and I can’t wake her up. And there was a ransom note of sorts. She’s been—”
“Kidnapped,” a man interrupted, having teleported directly into my living room, taking advantage of my temporary lax in security while inviting Gregory in. “Miss Aequitas, we meet again.”
I inhaled sharply. A man with salt and pepper hair and nearly the same facial bone structure as Gregory stood in my living room as if he owned it. He could be anything from middle aged to elderly—with supernaturals it was often hard to tell after a certain point. It was summer, but the man was dressed in a three-piece black suit. I wondered if he had embedded a cooling spell tailored right into the clothes itself.
He was Macallister Sebastian Sumpsi, aka Minister of the Vengeance Ethics Commission. As if being a Council member wasn’t bad enough, he was also the biological father who made a bastard out of Gregory. The gall of the man to just waltz in here at this ungodly hour.
“What are you doing here?” Gregory bit out, clearly sharing my sentiment.
Minister Sumpsi focused on me, refusing to spare his own flesh and blood even the briefest of glance. “I’m addressing Miss Aequitas.”
“Okay, what the hell are you doing here?” I snapped. I didn’t have time for this. “You know about Rosemary. Did you have something to do with the kidnapping?”
“Of course not.” Minister Sumpsi looked offended. “The matters of insignificant mortals are beneath me.”
“What have you done?” Gregory’s words came out as a low growl. His vengeance wings were at full attention, his stance low and ready for a fight.
“I didn’t do anything. I was visiting your mother—” Minister Sumpsi began.