Blood Ties

by Skyla Dawn Cameron

  “Are you sure we don’t owe you anything?” Yamila asked, voice low as she peered at her friend.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m good. Plus a large chunk of missing money from your bank account after his death would raise flags for anyone who looked into your finances. Keep your money and get her back on her feet.” I also may or may not have already planned for some money to suddenly land in Joy’s lap later, when she had her own personal bank account set up separate from her ex.

  Yamila clasped my hand in both of hers, a fringe of black hair falling in her eyes as she gave a quick bow of her head. “Thank you, Elis. You have no idea how much I—we—appreciate—”

  “I do,” I assured her. “I get it. C’mon, let’s get the cat’s stuff collected.”

  *

  The tabby’s name was Charles. Not even Charlie—Charles. Which, I mean, better that than “Pumpkin” or “Tiger”, but okay. I actually liked waking with the little bugger there—I did like cats and had grown up with a rather large one who still lived with Dad. My life didn’t feel stable enough for a pet, though.

  Maybe I could volunteer at one of the local shelters. Where did “serial killer witch” fit on a résumé? Under special skills?

  I finished my first cup of coffee on the couch by the big bay window, the city waking and rushing by in the background while I flipped through messages on my phone. I needed to shower—I could still smell a whiff of burnt flesh, and I’d stripped off my hoodie so it might’ve been on my hair—and was pondering heading home or just catching a shower here when the door opened.

  I sat up and turned to look behind me—I hadn’t locked up after Joy and Yamila left, but then I had layers of warding that made most eyes glance past the place. The average human wouldn’t find their way to my doorstep even if they were looking for it, and anything more than human would usually trigger an alarm.

  She did not.

  My visitor was a woman of thirty or so. And beautiful. Japanese, a little above average height and lean, glossy black hair falling in layers to her shoulders with a long fringe swept to the side of her forehead. Leather jacket and black jeans, a pair of chunky ankle boots with heels that made me re-evaluate her height. Her dark eyes went straight for me—didn’t scan, didn’t search. She was definitely looking for me.

  None of my interior wards were flaring—she was humanish, at least, though maybe not entirely. “We’re by appointment only,” I said.

  She stopped before the couch where I lay. “I don’t need an appointment.”

  I chuckled and sat up fully, swung my legs around and rose. “All right, I’ll bite—I’m leaving after my second cup of coffee, so I will listen exactly that long.” I tucked my phone in my back pocket, scooped up my empty mug, and went for the coffeemaker.

  “Elis...” She remained standing by the couch and I gave her my back, my shoulder-length hair in a messy ponytail that fluttered against the back of my neck as I moved.

  She knew my name. Not unusual—plenty of people did—but it still unsettled me.

  There was only three-quarters of a cup left in the pot. I informed her of this as I turned back to face her, the rim of the mug at my lips, and added, “So you might have to talk a bit faster.”

  “I’m looking for my cousin,” she said.

  “Okay. What did he do?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not like that. He’s in trouble.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes and only about half succeeded. I flicked a hand toward the window where INVESTIGATOR blazed backwards in white. “I’m not that kind of investigator.”

  “I know who you are and what you do—”

  “Then you have me at a disadvantage. Who are you?”

  “Melinoë Takata.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “No, I don’t expect it would,” she said dryly, the weight there not something I understood. Before I could ask, she launched on. “My cousin and I have been tracking the Aanzhenii and—”

  Jesus-fucking-Christ on a pterodactyl. I inwardly shuddered at the thought. “Then your cousin’s dead. Sorry—I don’t retrieve corpses, I make them.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  I took a long drink of my coffee—over halfway there now.

  The great winged humanoid creatures known as Aanzhenii were foreign to this dimension—brutally violent when it served them, completely alien in how they thought and acted, and their very presence in this world tore at reality. Literally. They’d been here twenty-five years, growing more and more bold as time went on, but had their own agenda and mostly kept to themselves now. Once in a while they wanted something—Dad had enough ancient texts and demonic artifacts that he’d locked his entire property down with spells to keep the Aanzhenii out. At best, it might slow them down long enough for anyone on the property to get to safety. Nothing could really stop them.

  Few things scared me, but those creatures were among them. I’d had enough encounters with... Well, I stopped that thought, and itched idly at my thigh.

  Focus on getting the hot nutcase out of your office. “If you’re fucking with them, yeah, he sure as hell is,” I continued. “Sorry not sorry.”

  “He’s not because I don’t think it was them who took him.”

  Took. She thought her cousin was abducted? “He was tracking Aanzhenii but they didn’t get him?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve traced his steps as far as I can and...” She sighed and scrubbed a hand back through her hair as she dropped to sit on my couch. Which was pretty fucking ballsy considering she had about a third of a mug of coffee for me to get through before I kicked her out. “So...he and I track them because we’re trying to send them back to their dimension.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said automatically.

  “We’ve gotten close. It started as a ‘what if’ kind of thought experiment but it got serious a few months ago. I don’t think they grabbed him, though—there were no residual tears, no sign of their presence. Something else took him.”

  “I have contacts I can point you to,” I offered. “But I’m not your girl. I’m not a private investigator, I don’t look for missing people.” And I sure as fuck did not mess with the Aanzhenii.

  Not more than I already had.

  “I know who you are, Elis,” she repeated. “And you are going to look for this person.”

  I was somewhere between annoyed enough that magic hummed along my fingertips with the desire to murder her and...oddly kind of turned on? Not to mention vaguely curious to figure out which.

  Regardless, I had better shit to do right now. What, I couldn’t say, but I wouldn’t tell her that.

  I downed the rest of my coffee in one gulp and set the mug down. “Time’s up. Leave me your number and I can put you in touch with—”

  “You are going to look for this person because you know my cousin.”

  Finally we get to the point. “And that is?”

  She didn’t blink. “Your half-brother, Devdan.”

  Three

  Devdan

  I hadn’t seen my brother in...years. At least two. Three, maybe.

  I felt my face pull into a frown as I thought, feet moving without me asking them to. I crossed the room, old polished hardwood creaking underfoot, and peered out the window as I pulled out my phone.

  His number was still in my contacts—or at least a number. No idea what he used now, but I might as well check before I bothered Dad with this; I hit dial.

  The phone rang across the room.

  Melinoë retrieved it from the breast pocket of her leather jacket, holding it up—there was my face on the screen. “I tracked his phone. He’d stayed two nights at a motel out of town but hadn’t checked out. His personal items were still there.”

  “Signs of a struggle?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a little out-of-the-way place, no security cameras except for in the office and the recording wasn’t helpful. The motel owners gave me all his things since they wanted the room free and h
e wasn’t there to pay.”

  “Go to the police?”

  She gave me a look.

  I raised my hands, fingers splayed. “I have to ask.”

  “Whoever took him isn’t human. I know what he’s capable of.”

  So did I. Dev and I shared the same father, and he was admittedly ridiculously powerful, but my brother had another advantage from his mother’s side: she had demon in her lineage. Fucking royal demons at that. Granted, when that trickled down to Dev, it didn’t give him a lot—“one-eighth demon” was a kind of embarrassing claim—but enough to boost even the strongest magics to a whole other stratosphere.

  Anyone who fucked with a part-demon witch like my brother was either very, very stupid, or very, very powerful. The Aanzhenii would be a good guess for the latter, but Melinoë was right—it was impossible for them to have a presence somewhere without royally fucking up the surrounding area for at least half a kilometer.

  “Previous calls?” I gestured for the phone and she handed it over.

  “Thumbprint lock and seven digit code—I can’t get in.”

  I checked and found she was right, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what the pin might be. Tamper with it and it might be set to wipe automatically. I handed it back as I had no other idea what to do with it. “Has anyone called?”

  “No, not once.” She tucked it back in her jacket. “I’ve kept it charged and on me just in case.”

  For the time being, I dialled back the focus from my brother and aimed it at the woman on my couch. I leaned my butt on the old receptionist counter across from her, crossing my arms. “So when you say cousin, you mean on his mother’s side?”

  “Right. Our mothers were half-sisters—we share a grandfather.”

  Who was a demon. At the very least, Melinoë was as powerful as Dev. No wonder he got it in his head he could track and send away Aanzhenii with her assistance.

  I wondered how he’d found her. His mother had died when he was five or so, that much I knew. I came along almost four years after that, so I knew very little about that side of things. Dad had never hidden anything, always answering our questions on every topic, including demons and Dev’s heritage. But because it was a part of our daily lives, not forbidden knowledge, I usually didn’t...care? Mom had been more private about the past but Dad, as delicately as he could, spoke freely. In all of those discussions, though, I’d never heard more about other family members on Dev’s mom’s side. I thought she’d been an only child, but it’s just like a demon to father a bunch of offspring all over the place.

  “I don’t really have anything to do with my brother,” I said at last. “We don’t speak. Not once in at least two years or so, I’d say.”

  Dev never really liked my mom, and regardless of her being gone now it still had fractured our relationship as we got older. Plus it didn’t help I’d killed my first man at sixteen and found I rather liked it. Never mind that he deserved it—give a woman some power, any power, that could threaten a man’s life, and suddenly there was something “wrong” with her. Even the “good” ones. No matter their upbringing and personal philosophy, when raised in a culture that told them they held all the power over life and death, they assumed if we held that same power we’d use it the way they had for thousands of years.

  And, I mean, I did. Happily. But that scared my brother, along with most other men. There was good reason why I usually dated anyone across the gender spectrum who wasn’t a cis man.

  “So why come to me?” I asked.

  “Because Dev said if he was ever in trouble, you were the first person he’d go to.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. The stink of Ben’s corpse was still on my body—I wanted to go home and shower for an hour at least, maybe dunk my body in charcoal to get rid of the odor. Not be standing here having this conversation. “Dev would go to Dad—”

  “He said you. And I figured no matter what went down between the two of you, you’d have his back.”

  “Because family first? Right—that’s not how I operate. Being related by blood does not make him and me ‘family’. Now, you two bonded over your shared genetics, apparently, and I get it—there are very, very few humans anything like you in the entire world. But you’re on your own with this. If it wasn’t the Aanzhenii, it was a group working with them. Either way, it’s not my problem.”

  “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.”

  Melinoë gave me a long look, waiting a beat like I was going to relent. When that didn’t happen, her gaze skirted mine and she walked around the couch, out the door, and away from my office.

  *

  I did not believe for a second that Dev would go to me first in an emergency.

  Yes, I have power. Quite a lot of it. And I had my own particular skillset.

  But I didn’t have his talent. He dabbled, became obsessed with certain branches of magic at times and learned everything he could. He could weave different spells together, modify on the fly, take shortcuts the average witch couldn’t follow.

  That wasn’t me. Dev could’ve come up with ten different creative ways to kill Ben last night, each more elaborate than the last, but I found frying him satisfying so that’s what I did. If I had a goal or a particular want, I’d customize magic to achieve it or do a bit of research then, but I didn’t live and breathe the study of it the way he did. As a result, even with my raw talent, I would not bet money on me against him if it ever came to that.

  Dad had the same level of study, which is why I figured he’d be Dev’s first person to go to for help. Unless, of course, he didn’t want Dad to know what he’d been doing—which seemed likely if Melinoë was telling the truth.

  I sat on the couch again and cycled through my phone, absently tracing the design on my left thigh; even though my jeans covered it, I knew it by heart, knew every stroke of ink, could practically feel the symbols burning my flesh.

  If there was one thing that gave me an edge over other witches, it was the tattoo. But Dev didn’t know about it—he couldn’t. Could he?

  With effort, I clenched my hand into a fist and forced myself to stop.

  Dev. Focus on Dev.

  Even as I tried to redirect my thoughts, I wondered why I should bother. If I was in trouble, would he help me? Doubtful. Maybe there’d be a sense of obligation because of Dad—which was probably the only reason I was giving Melinoë’s information any further thought.

  I thumbed my phone’s screen and went to my contacts, hesitating on my father.

  Dad would have a better idea whether Dev might actually be in trouble and he’d be more able to help.

  But I’d also be worrying him a lot for potentially nothing.

  If Dev’s in trouble and you don’t warn him, though, wouldn’t that hurt even more?

  I closed my contacts. I needed independent evidence for Dad first—I didn’t even know if Melinoë was who she said she was, let alone whether she was telling the truth about my brother.

  I looked instead to the last texts I’d exchanged with Dev—it was with regards to Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. I’d offered to pick him up to go to Dad’s. Dev had declined.

  That was it. Last year he’d been traveling so he didn’t come for dinner; Dad and Aunt Roo had spoken to him. I hadn’t.

  My relationship with my brother in a nutshell: words exchanged for Dad’s benefit or out of obligation. No way would he tell Melinoë to go to me for help in an emergency.

  So if she was making it up...why bother?

  Ugh, none of it made sense and I was too tired to keep wondering. I’d poke around a little, see what word on the street was, if I was feeling generous with my time.

  But if Dev was really in trouble, he was on his own.

  Four

  The Ex

  The shower at home wasn’t quite an hour, but it was close.

  I grew up in a mansion. Dad’s rather...unique limitations meant he couldn’t leave the house during the day. He tried not to le
t that affect my brother and me, and there was always Mom, but he wanted to ensure the house was as “normal” as a fucking mansion in the country with twelve-foot fences and three panic rooms could be. Windows blocked out the sun but had lights in them during the day that seemed like real daylight. The indoor pool was as close as you could get to a beach as possible with a tile ceiling patterned like a sunny sky. I did not want for anything.

  But I was content in my apartment. It was a bachelor overlooking the harbour, renovated about a decade earlier after all the buildings in the area were bought up by someone with grand plans who didn’t realize that no, folks still didn’t want to live in a hub for demons where a huge dimensional tear had opened up twenty-five years ago. I mean, the tear had closed—like, there were tiny ones here and there but that major one sealed almost as soon as it had opened. Sill not a popular spot for real estate.

  I couldn’t ask for lower rent, and my landlord left me alone because he was in an entirely different province—he didn’t want to live here either. Dark laminate floors, high ceilings, a dishwasher. I could run small loads of laundry downstairs, but if I had a bunch I brought it to Dad’s because he’d object if I didn’t. I’d painted the walls in an ombre look, dark gray-purple at the top and then gradually lightening to almost lavender where it met the wide white baseboards. Everything else was haphazardly thrown together, a combination of furniture pieces taken from my bedroom at home, a couch Dad insisted on buying me for Christmas, and various bits I picked up when needed. For a bachelor, the size wasn’t too bad, and I’d partitioned my bedroom space off with floor-to-ceiling wispy lavender drapes.

  I fell into bed after my shower, hair still damp, a throw pulled over me to keep warm in a worn white t-shirt and panties, and dropped into a deep dreamless sleep almost immediately.

  It was a knock on my door that woke me sometime later.

  I opened my eyes and lay there for a moment, watching the light on the wall. Some daylight left, and given the angle I’d say maybe four or five o’clock. I was not expecting anyone.