by Liz Meldon
His beloved refused the offer, however, and insisted he sit up front. As soon as Malachi settled in, he extended the seat as far back as the track would allow, his long legs cramped no matter how he sat. Moira, meanwhile, buckled herself in behind Severus, giving his shoulder a squeeze when he glanced back at her. Their soft, secret little smiles, the ones reserved only for them, fell away as Malachi grumbled and fought with the seat belt.
In the end, the chaos demon ignored it entirely, bracing himself on the roof of the SUV with ease as they bounced over the uneven trail out of the forest.
“So,” Moira started as soon as they hit pavement again, taking a sharp left toward the north end of Farrow’s Hollow, “what have you been up to these days? Long time no update.”
While it had been a mere four Malachi-less months on Earth, the chaos demon had spent over a year in Hell, which explained the regrowth of his golden lion’s mane and the shimmering scruff along his jaw. His brother shifted in the passenger seat, repositioning himself to address both Severus and Moira.
“I acquired the deed to Farrow’s Hollow, actually.”
Severus’s eyebrows shot up. “You did what?”
“I am legally the owner of this city,” his brother clarified, and he caught Moira falling back against her seat in the rearview mirror, expression unreadable. Malachi’s grin suggested he hadn’t noticed her reaction—or didn’t care. “I am the new caretaker of the Farrow’s Hollow hell-gate. Everything within the city limits is mine.”
“And how did you manage that?”
“With a great deal of red and gold—” Blood. Bribery. Typical. “—and some paperwork.”
“So… So, what does that mean?” Moira asked in a small voice from the back. Severus felt for her; the concept of someone owning her hometown couldn’t have sat well. His inner demon protested the distance between them, plucking at his insides as he whizzed along the country roads, as if to demand he pull his beloved into his lap and console her immediately.
“Well, no other demon can lay claim to the city. Anyone who wishes to engage in illegal trades must seek my permission first,” Malachi told her. “I’ve been, er, auditioning a better breed of demon to fill the gaps left by the old regime.”
Moira’s eyes narrowed, her arms crossed, her knee digging sharply into the back of Severus’s seat. “More drug dealers and pimps, then?”
“Demons deal in vice, Moira. I can’t stop that.” Malachi faced forward with a sniff, needlessly adjusting his rings. “But I can be selective in my decisions. Yes, there will be drugs and sex and weapons circulating Farrow’s Hollow, just as there has been since the creation of its hell-gate. But if I have my way, it will be less mob brutes and more upscale—”
“Douchebags?” she offered icily. His brother chuckled.
“Well, yes. But there will be less violence on the streets.” He glanced back at her. “I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”
When the terse silence dragged on between them, Severus switched on the radio and changed the subject. By the time they reached downtown Farrow’s Hollow, Moira’s ire seemed to have lifted slightly as she regaled Malachi with an account of her new program at the university, a tale he listened to with far more attention than Severus would have expected.
Bypassing Alaric’s invisible house, Severus pulled into his new legal street-parking spot some two buildings away. Rather than dealing with the ticketing issues and the constant searching for a space, Moira had applied for a permit from the city, proof of which hung from the rearview mirror. Anyone who dared occupy this stretch of pavement could be towed without warning.
Most of the time he, Alaric, and Moira simply nudged the offending vehicle backwards or forwards into another spot, depending on the availability around it. The hassle of human authority figures just wasn’t worth it.
“This appears new,” Malachi noted with a nod toward the SUV when he and Severus dragged the two lead-weight suitcases out of the back. Immediately the vehicle popped up to its normal height, burden lifted. “It has a certain… smell.”
“I bought it this summer, actually.” After completely totaling Alaric’s hatchback in June, Moira and Severus had decided it was time to stop relying on the hybrid for transportation and bought a vehicle of their own. The SUV had been Severus’s choice; Moira insisted it made him look like he was compensating for something.
Severus rather enjoyed the fact that he had the heft to bully aggressive pickup trucks around campus.
With Moira leading the way, they wandered back to Alaric’s four-story downtown home, a house invisible to all save those who bore Cordelia’s mark on their skin. Because of that—and the fact that both Aeneas and Diriel were long gone—they had stopped locking the door entirely. As soon as Moira pushed through it, an onslaught of Ella’s classic nineties R & B assaulted the trio, and Severus closed the door behind them with a chuckle.
“She got the job!” Moira squealed, plopping her shoulder bag on the dining room table, face wreathed in an adorable smile as she blitzed by up the narrow, steep stairwell directly in front of the doorway. The song switched over to something new as soon as Moira rounded the corner, swinging on the railing, her squees joined by more girlish screeching. Footfalls pounded the hardwood above, painting a fairly clear picture of what he could expect.
Setting the luggage in his hand next to its twin, Severus looked to his brother, a jest about Ella’s musical preferences locked and loaded—only to pause at the expression on the chaos demon’s face. Pinched. Tense. His golden brow knit and his shoulders rigid.
“You all right, brother?”
“What? Of course,” Malachi muttered, shooting him a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes before taking to the stairs. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
The telltale words of a demon who was decidedly not fine. Severus trailed up the stairs after him with a roll of his eyes.
Just as he had suspected, Ella was throwing an impromptu dance party—and had roped Alaric into the fun. His redheaded roommate bounced around, arms up, mirroring Moira and Ella perfectly as an old Destiny’s Child hit blared from his wall-mounted flat-screen.
The hybrid slowed, however, when he caught the Saevitia pair out of the corner of his eye, and he speared a hand through his red waves, grinning.
“Gentlemen,” he said with a little half bow, his voice oddly deep and formal. It had taken his best friend several long months to come to terms with the changes to his body when his fallen-angel side activated. During bouts of heightened emotion, his gaze snapped to dark grey rather than black. His physical strength had tripled. His skin had paled. His nails had hardened and his emerald green eyes had lightened, but unlike Moira, Alaric’s hair retained its full fiery glory. For a time, his personality had sharpened, and although he still referred to himself as a demon hybrid, much of his former self had returned as the temperatures dropped, summer bleeding into autumn rather abruptly this September.
While Severus was pleased to have the old Alaric Crowley back, Cordelia had told him—in confidence, of course—that something was growing under her lover’s skin. On his back. Over his shoulder blades. Hard peaks, just like Moira had had before her wings slowly and painfully emerged from her flesh. Yet Alaric was the son of a fallen angel, a former prince of Hell. He shouldn’t have wings.
For now, they all let it be. While Moira had been forced to sort through all the changes by herself, Alaric had a very involved father living and working in Farrow’s Hollow. Should more issues arise, there was someone very powerful and exceptionally knowledgeable, who loved the hybrid a great deal, to fall back on.
“Oh, Alaric…” Severus crossed his arms with a shake of his head when the hybrid started to vogue a little too well. “You’re better than this.”
The hybrid flashed an impish grin, his bright white teeth slightly sharper than they had been a year ago. “Not really.”
His movements intensified as he shimmied back to the dancing girls, maintaining an impressive amount of
eye contact with Severus, especially for the pelvic thrusts. Laughter filled the second floor, Moira and Ella celebrating on either side of the coffee table. Alaric, meanwhile, hopped up on his L-shaped leather couch, ever the lord of the dance.
And his big brother, dripping in Saevitia wealth, stood at Severus’s side, woefully out of place. Even the hum of his being felt intrusive tonight. The chaos demon studied the scene before him with the same steely glint in his eye Severus had noted downstairs, not an ounce of that tension gone.
Not a single snarky comment either. No leers, jeers, or sneers.
Severus faced him with a frown. Was Malachi ill?
His brother said nothing to his inquisitive stare, that bright blue gaze fixed on something else.
Or someone else.
Ella, specifically, who appeared to be eyeing the demon from the other side of the coffee table with a curiously serious look of her own. Her flailing had decreased by a good 70 percent, her breath falling hard, her curls positively enormous—and her honey-brown gaze locked squarely on Malachi.
Until it flicked slightly to the left and met with Severus’s. She then looked away quickly, her cheeks flushed.
“I assume congratulations are in order?” he asked over the music, electing to pretend he hadn’t noticed the strange, silent exchange between the pair. As Moira turned the volume down, Ella nodded, her earlier elation returning in spades.
“They are!” She framed her face with both hands, giggling when Moira dragged her into a one-armed hug.
“Let me guess—the teaching assistant position?”
“Yaaaaaaas,” Ella announced, beaming when Moira and Alaric cheered for her. “Four nights a week, I’ll be encouraging community college students to appreciate the awesomeness of classic literature.”
Severus grinned, genuinely pleased for her accomplishment. She had been job hunting ever since she started teachers’ college in August, because apparently that wasn’t time-consuming enough. Despite the added intensity to her already full workweek, the human had been very excited about this position in particular.
“Congratulations, Ella.” Malachi’s deep, gravelly baritone cut through the scene like a razor-sharp blade. While Alaric’s formal greeting had been used for dramatic effect mere moments earlier, Malachi’s tone seemed authentic.
And odd.
Ella, meanwhile, tried to tuck her thick mane behind her ears, only for the rebellious curls to bounce back as they pleased. Fidgeting with her old Farrow’s University sweater, a gift from Moira’s mother from an era before the administration realized all their paraphernalia said FU in great bold lettering, she cleared her throat and nodded.
“Thanks.”
In the tense few beats that followed, Alaric sidled off the couch and Moira lowered the music’s volume further, then shot Severus a frown. He offered a little half shrug in return, because how the fuck was he supposed to know what was going on here? Malachi and Ella had been combative when they’d first met in the late days of spring, but when the battle at Seraphim Securities had been won, the fighting over, his brother and Moira’s human soulmate had been, well, almost amicable.
Beyond that, even a blind man could have seen the spark between them at the time. Malachi had never offered his protection lightly before, yet he had done so for Ella Thomas without hesitation, shielding her from angels and demons alike.
And now—this. Whatever this was, the entire room felt it.
“Well, uh…” Moira clapped her hands together, ethereal gaze jumping from person to person, her smile strained. “I think we should celebrate Ella’s new job properly. Dinner and drinks, maybe somewhere fancy? House vote.”
Ella raised her hand, her features brightening. “Yay.”
“Seconded,” Alaric added, his hand also up. Three pairs of eyes darted to Severus, and he let out a huff, in no mood to look like a twat as well…
But then he lifted his hand anyway, unable to resist. “Third.”
“The motion passes.” Moira wrapped her long, pale fingers around Ella’s wrist, then tugged the human toward the staircase that stretched up to the third floor. “We’ll leave in an hour.”
Even as she hurried up after his beloved, Ella appeared to be scowling at Malachi over the railing—as if he couldn’t see her—until she disappeared. Gentle footfalls padded straight to Ella’s bedroom, followed shortly by the sound of a door shutting very firmly.
Alaric and Severus glanced at each other, then to Malachi, who had one hand buried deep in his pocket, the other in a tight fist at his side.
Right. Just when he’d thought the evening couldn’t get any stranger—
“Malachi, what did you do to her?” Since starting up a relationship with their witch cousin, Alaric had taken on some of Cordelia’s bluntness. From the clench of his brother’s jaw, he did not particularly enjoy it. Alaric carried on without missing a beat. “Because, let me just say, you seem like her least favorite demon these days. That much is clear anytime you come up in conversation.”
Severus cast his friend a frown; when the fuck had he and Ella spent any length of time discussing Malachi? The pair had grown closer once Alaric was more himself again, but he couldn’t imagine them gossiping as she did with Moira.
But Severus had been wrong before. The complexities of the female mind would forever confound him.
Rather than crooning something salacious back, some vulgar limerick about women and fucking and lust, Malachi motioned to the couch with his chin, his eyes black. “Where will I be sleeping? Here?”
Alaric blinked, looking just as taken aback as Severus felt. When their gazes met again, Severus rolled his skyward, then let out a long, weary sigh, the exhaustion he carried each day settling into his bones.
Just what he needed in his happy home—tension between his fuckwit brother and Moira’s self-proclaimed sister. Perfect.
“I… I’ll make up the couch, yeah,” Alaric muttered. With a curt nod, Malachi disappeared downstairs, footsteps like thunder, and, moments later, the tinkling of glass suggested he had located Alaric’s overly stocked liquor cabinet.
Chapter Three
“Well, aren’t you the prettiest hippogriff I ever did see?”
Black eyeliner in hand, the tip dull and color smeared down what was left of the pencil, Ella straightened and stepped back to appraise her work. While her legs ached from crouching for the last hour, the final product was worth it. Moira’s makeup for their Halloween night out was just so on point that she had to fight the urge to grab her phone and take a million pictures of it.
Seated on the edge of the toilet, Moira tipped her head to the side, blinking those intense bright blues up at her, made all the brighter thanks to the various shades of grey, black, and shimmering silver Ella had used to completely mask her face. Drawing influence from the Black Swan, both from that one creepy movie and professional ballet performances, she had created a highly contoured look for her bestie. All those sharp, angular features, features that had somehow gotten sharper and more angular over the last few months, made for the perfect canvas. For tonight only, Moira was Buckbeak, from the painted face to the wispy hair to the fluffy grey wings poking out of her back—she was perfection.
Ella had always enjoyed doing her friends’ hair and makeup, but this was a step up. This was portfolio-worthy.
Covered in shimmer and shadow, she tossed the eyeliner pencil on the nearby granite countertop and stopped just shy of wiping her hands on her costume. Two hours of work sat in front of her, covering her bestie from head to toe. Pride tightened in her chest, and she couldn’t help but smile. Two hours well-spent.
And the only reason she had been able to spend so much time on Moira’s look was because hers took about two minutes to create—hair, makeup, costume, everything. Ella had been called Hermione since elementary school, so, really, all she needed was a bit of added volume to her already massive curls, an authentic costume that had cost her about three hundred dollars to recreate, and some very, ve
ry, very basic makeup.
Oh, and the thick knee-high socks from their old high school uniform, which were already starting to roll down her calves.
Moira, meanwhile, was the crowning jewel of her Halloween group costume vision.
“All done?” her friend asked, poking at the feathery beehive Ella had painstakingly crafted into that thick angel-hybrid hair of hers. She swatted her hands away, grinning.
“Don’t play with it,” Ella told her. Actually, there was almost an entire cannister of hairspray in there to keep Moira’s stubborn white locks in place, so maybe it could withstand a bit of curious fiddling. Snatching the box of makeup remover wipes from the counter, Ella quickly got to work on cleaning her hands, nodding as she gave her masterpiece one final scrutinizing appraisal. “All done.”
Moira hopped off the toilet with a little squeal, one that ramped up in volume and pitch as soon as she got herself in front of Ella’s huge bathroom mirror.
“Oh my god—it’s amazing!” She leaned in, doing a giddy little dance in place that made Ella laugh. “You even made my mouth look like a beak… Girl, this is seriously your best yet.”
Her cheeks warmed at the praise, and her lips parted as she drew a soft breath, a thank you on the tip of her tongue—only for the pair of actual wings growing out of her best friend’s back to distract her. Normally Moira wore the magical necklace her angel mentor had given her that kept the feathery pair hidden away. Tonight, however, she planned to tell anyone who asked that they were fake, prosthetics even, as they poked through the two holes cut into her black long-sleeved shirt currently sitting on Ella’s bed. At the moment, Moira’s bra and underwear ensemble made them hard to miss.
Severus’s rescue from Seraphim Securities all those months ago was forever burned into Ella’s mind, and while she had been somewhat high on the incubus’s touch for most of the final showdown, she could never forget the angels and their wings. Enormous white walls of bulletproof feathers, they had stretched four to six feet in either direction, some even larger. They haunted her dreams, those wings—as did that day, scampering over crushed vampire skulls, blood caked on her shoes, carnage all around her.