The Unlikeable Demon Hunter_Crave

by Deborah Wilde

  “Visitor.” I told them about the oshk.

  Drio packed up the camera case. “That thing needs a tracking chip.”

  “Oh. What about a location spell?” I tossed him the lens cap that had fallen on the ground.

  “Rasha can’t do those,” Rohan said.

  Drio snickered. “You’d know. The Passover dinner,” he told me. “But he’s right. It’s not something you cast. It’s something witches do and I’m not bringing any witches into this.”

  “Too late,” I said. “Ta da!” I threw jazz hands, giving him my brightest smile.

  Drio gave me his Torture Time smile in response and blurred out. Ro jumped in front of me with a winded omph as he collided with Drio, who flickered into place.

  Ro grabbed Drio’s arm, wrenching it up behind his back. “Not happening.”

  Double checking that Rohan had Drio secured and was calming him down from the bombshell I’d dropped, I moved to the far end of the rooftop and phoned Dr. Gelman to ask what I needed to do.

  Gelman explained that location spells were misnamed because there wasn’t a spell, it was elimination magic. Removing the distance between a single item and its source, like a hair and a person’s head or a prized possession and the owner. It didn’t work on compounds, so I couldn’t use the Sweet Tooth. However, if the oshk had left any secretion behind in the crime scene room, that would work.

  “What do I do with it?” I said.

  “You ask Sienna really nicely. I’m going in to chemo and you can’t pull this off without training.”

  “I portalled. Isn’t this the same idea?”

  “You portalled under extreme stress. Try it now and get back to me. Besides, this may be the same idea, but it’s far more complicated to execute. Sienna’s still on duty. Bribes work. She likes sambuca.” Gelman hung up.

  “Ack!”

  Drio had flash stepped to stand directly in front of me.

  I fumbled my phone.

  “You’re more powerful than me?” he said.

  I bounced on the balls of my feet. “You gonna try and take me, suckah?”

  He chucked me under the chin again. This was starting to be our thing. “Training is going to be fun.”

  “You’re a weird puppy. You know that, right? Can you zip on over to the crime scene and check for oshk goo? You got gloves? Something to collect it in?”

  Drio rummaged in the camera bag, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and dumped a thin filter out of its case. He flashed out.

  And then there were two.

  I fiddled with the flower behind my ear. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you first about Gelman confirming me as witch.”

  Rohan jammed his hands in pockets and shrugged. “That’s the least of the shit between us.”

  My lack of a protest lasted a second too long. He gave a bitter laugh and turned away. Only a few feet separated us physically. Emotionally, we were across a chasm I didn’t know how to breach.

  My phone rang. It was my mom and I debated ignoring the call but it couldn’t be worse than this pained silence. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Can you come over?”

  I gripped the phone. “Did something happen?”

  “No. Why would you ask that?”

  It’s not like you call me for social visits. “No reason.”

  Drio returned and shook his head. Damn. No secretion and no bribing Sienna necessary.

  “I can come now.” I stuffed my phone into my pink capris. “Gotta go.”

  Drio ignored me and Rohan nodded. There was no goodbye kiss.

  I stewed on that fact for the entire drive over to my parents.

  A charred, slightly sour smell hit me when I unlocked the front door. My knotted-up stomach lurched because the one time Ari had let the coffee burn off, Mom had torn a strip off him. My ass nothing was wrong.

  I turned off the coffee maker and put the carafe in the sink to cool. “Mom?”

  No answer. I ran through the house, searching, my panic escalating, and images of her dead on the floor whipping through my thoughts.

  She was sitting at her desk in her study, her back to me.

  “Mom? Mom. Shana!” I shook her shoulder.

  She blinked at me. “You got here quickly.”

  “You could have burned the house down. The coffee maker.” I clarified at her blank stare.

  “Oh.” She stood up, but I pushed her back down.

  “It’s handled. Thanks for giving me a heart attack.” I peered at her screen to see what had had her so engrossed. It was open to a search on witchcraft in Judea. “You know you can’t publish anything on that, right?

  “What? Oh. Yes.” She closed the laptop. “Have you considered the possibility that you’re a witch and not Rasha?”

  I pressed a hand to my heart, my relief that nothing bad had happened supplanted by a rushing in my ears as she regarded me with professional curiosity and not an ounce of maternal concern. “Uh, yeah. Turns out I am. Ari doesn’t know yet, though. This other witch I know confirmed it.” Mom didn’t say anything and I kept babbling. “I think you’d hit it off with her. She’s in the hospital now, but I’ll introduce you when she gets out. She’s a physicist.”

  “Maybe she’ll influence your academic choices,” Mom said dryly. Goody, there was the mother I knew, and well, knew. She opened her desk drawer and handed me a letter. “If you don’t confirm your registration by the end of the month, UBC will force you to withdraw. I’ve pulled all the favors I can.”

  I took the letter, not bothering to complain that she’d opened my mail. “No one asked you for any favors.”

  “From what I understand, most of the Rasha have degrees. You won’t get anywhere within the Brotherhood with your high school diploma.”

  I stuffed the letter in the back pocket of my capris. “I won’t get anywhere because I don’t fit the definition of ‘brother.’ Aside from that, I think the only real criteria is staying alive and I’m not dead yet.”

  “Don’t be so morbid.”

  “You’re right. It’s all sunshine and rainbows fighting demons.”

  Mom slammed the drawer shut so hard that I flinched. “You think I don’t worry every single day about my kids dying?” I shrugged. Mom muttered something under her breath about me.

  “I’m not going back to school. Not now. You can bask in your golden boy’s achievements.” A tight smile on my face, I spun around. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  “What ‘golden boy?’ Nava, stop.”

  I froze, conditioned to obey that sharp tone. I forced out a breath to the count of three. “Ari. It’s what you always called him, right?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitter. I mean, I was, I just hadn’t intended for her to hear it.

  A fleeting sadness crossed my mother’s face. “Nava,” she said. “He wasn’t my golden boy. He was my golden-haired boy. The same way you were my raven-haired girl. You and Ari shortened it to Golden Boy and Raven, when you were about three. You told me they were your superhero names.”

  I wrapped my arms around my chest. “Nope. No memory of that.” Mom pushed me out of the room. “What are you doing?”

  “Disabusing you of this ridiculous notion of yours that Ari is more important to me.”

  Mom forced me down the stairs and into the TV room. She pulled an album off the bookcase, quickly flipping through the pages. “Here.”

  The photo showed me as a preschooler, sitting in our kitchen on top of a pile of candy. “Yeah, the year I went as a crow.” Good haul.

  “The year you went as a raven.”

  I took the album from her. “Are you sure?”

  She glared at me. “Yes.”

  “Why did you stop calling me that then?”

  “Because you’re the most stubborn child imaginable. I don’t know what your brother had done to set you off, but you stomped in one day when you were about seven and announced that name was done.”

  I sat down hard on the sofa. Those were pretty much the exact wo
rds I’d said to Ro when I’d told him to stop calling me Lolita. That part was plausible but… I bit my bottom lip. “You treated Ari like your golden boy. My entire life.”

  Mom sat down next to me, fiddling with her wedding ring. “When Rabbi Abrams told me about your brother, I cried for three days.”

  “Because you were proud of his big destiny.”

  She tucked a curl behind my ear. “Because I was terrified. How could this tiny baby fight demons? Would I,” her voice cracked, “outlive him? I swore to enjoy every second I had with him.”

  I ripped a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and blew my nose. “Never mind that you had twins.”

  “You had Ari and you had dance and you seemed so together, I didn’t need to worry about you.” She reached past me for her own tissue and her Chanel perfume teased a memory from when I was little of falling asleep in her lap all the times she and Dad had stayed up late playing cards. How she’d held her cards with one hand so she could keep me snuggled against her chest with the other.

  I blew my nose again.

  “Sweetheart. You suffered the fallout of my fears and I’m so, so sorry.” She gripped my hands. “The day you realized you couldn’t keep tapping and accepted your place at UBC? My heart broke for you.”

  I’d lost the battle not to cry. “Why push so hard for me to go to school then? Even now?”

  “I was scared of how empty you were without dance. But I was always proud of you.”

  “Really?” My skin was tingling, a warmth radiating through my body.

  “Well, except maybe the past couple years. You’ve been a disaster, my girl.”

  I choked out a laugh through my tears.

  There wasn’t much talking after that, just the clock ticking and Mom’s arm around me as we looked at the photo of the girl I used to be.

  17

  Any lingering anger at Rohan evaporated after my visit with my mom. She and I had wasted too much time on misplaced emotion and misunderstanding and I wasn’t about to do the same with him.

  Ro waited for me on the front stairs at Demon Club, but he jumped to his feet when he saw my red-rimmed eyes. “What happened?”

  “A good thing.” Things weren’t fixed between Mom and me, but they weren’t broken either and that was better than they’d been in a long time. I kissed him. “I don’t want to fight and I don’t care about anything except us being okay.”

  “I don’t either. I love that we get to share everything about our lives, but it’s hard.” He gave me a wry grin. “I’m used to my autocratic ways.”

  “I may be somewhat intractable myself. Not confirming or denying.”

  “Best not to. We deal with danger all the time and I don’t want to add to yours. I never want to be the reason you get hurt. Physically or emotionally.” Rohan stroked my cheek. “Being thrown into all this? The way you’ve held your own and proven time and time again you can hunt with the best of us? You’re amazing.”

  I blushed and mumbled my thanks.

  “This is touching. Now we will all go into the bathroom and discuss douching together, sì?” Drio lounged in the front door.

  I batted my eyelashes. “You’re the douche expert.”

  His lips quirked.

  “I had an idea about Candyman.” I led them back into the library, scooping up water bottles from the fridge on the way, and tossing them to the guys. “What if his name applies to a physical attribute, not a dealer handle?”

  We entered all kinds of keywords into the database, scoring a match with “sugar.”

  “Hoc demon. Rings a bell.” Drio spun his bottle on the table.

  “Hoc is an acronym,” Rohan read. “Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. They survive off this compound.”

  “They eat sugar?” Drio said.

  I picked at the label that was damp with condensation, a thought niggling at the corner of my brain.

  Rohan dug deeper into the database. “They absorb it through their skin like plants with photosynthesis. Their intake cycle is twenty-four hours. Dusk to dusk. They need to be in their natural form to absorb the sugar.”

  Drio snapped his fingers. “They’re related to fix demons.” The demons who fed off addictions.

  I studied the drawing. The hoc looked like a hairless cat, but with a tiger head. “How big is it? Kitten or giant feral predator?”

  “Cougar-sized,” Rohan said.

  Drio tipped back in his chair. “How do we find a demon giving himself a sugar scrub before his night out?”

  “Buying all that sugar, rubbing itself down, it’s a lot of hassle.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “Candyman used the wretas to distribute Sweet Tooth. Their home was in East Vancouver along the water. The drop was in Crab Park, also along the water on the Downtown East Side, and the first address we had for him?”

  “East Van. Along the water?” Drio said.

  “The most east, and not that far away from the water,” I said.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Guess what else is in that general area?” I took a sip of water. “The sugar refinery.” I pushed Ro’s bottle at him so he’d hydrate.

  He nodded his thanks and drank some. “We may not be able to question the hoc while it’s in its natural form.”

  “I could flash in, slap it with a tracking device, and get out,” Drio said. “We follow it, question it wherever we want. No problem.”

  “Slight problem,” Rohan said. “Hocs have strong pair bondings and don’t tend to go anywhere alone. We’ll all go in case one of them needs distracting. Better to have us and not need us.”

  “Slight other problem,” I said. “The refinery is at the port and we need clearance. Everything down there is fenced off with manned booths at every entrance.”

  Drio fired off a text. “Sending in an ID request. The Brotherhood won’t be able to pull anything together for tonight, though.”

  “Even better,” Rohan said. “Gives us time to match employee uniforms, get a layout, and figure out the most likely place to find the hoc.”

  “We’ll do that tomorrow. Tonight we’re going out. Double date. I’ll tell Leo.” I cut off the men’s protests. “No. People need balance in their lives. There is always going to be another demon, something else we need to deal with. We can’t go to the sugar refinery until tomorrow and I don’t have it in me to deal with the purple magic tonight. I need fun downtime to regroup. We need this. Shit like this matters.”

  I didn’t understand why Drio looked so uncomfortable with the idea. “Didn’t you tell me we needed balance? Come on. I will brook no dissent. We’re going to have fun and then we’ll save the world tomorrow.”

  I gave them the details. I’d been waiting for a chance to put my plans for Rohan into motion, but including a double date made the night even better.

  A couple hours later, I wheeled a small suitcase into the foyer and whistled. Rohan stood there in a skinny black suit with white piping along the edges of the lapels, worn over a crisp white shirt, with his sockless feet stuffed into a pair of shiny black shoes. He sported a silver thumb ring and a leather cuff, his hair gelled spiky, and his eyeliner making his gold eyes pop.

  He took in the scarlet fall of my silk dress, held up by a thin ribbon around my neck, and motioned for me to turn around.

  I closed my eyes, the warmth of his body behind me palpable.

  He ran his hand up the inside of my thigh under the fabric, his calloused fingers reverent, but with a bite of sandpaper. The fabric rustled, slipping against my bare ass.

  Rohan bit the hollow between my collarbone and neck. “You expect me to sit through dinner knowing you’re naked under this?” His finger dipped inside me, his lips ghosting my skin. “Knowing how wet you are?”

  I dragged in a ragged breath.

  The shrill beep of his phone receiving a text was the spell breaker I needed to step away from him. I had plans for a long night but I’d been about ten seconds away from taking what I wanted here and now and fast.
<
br />   Really needed to practice the virtues of delayed gratification.

  “Drio’s leaving Leo’s place now.” His gaze licked over me and he took a step back, noticing the suitcase for the first time. “Going somewhere?”

  “We’re staying at a hotel tonight.”

  The smile he turned on me was pure wolf. “You’re right. A night off is exactly what we need.”

  He insisted on driving, and though I’d never admit it, riding in the Shelby was a rush. The leather seats molded to my ass like they were custom made, the sound system was top-notch, and the car didn’t so much drive as prowl. I rolled down the window, letting the sweet summer breeze tamp down my fevered need to a manageable simmer.

  First stop was dinner at a downtown fancy steakhouse. Suited men drank tinkling highballs in a dozen shades of amber and women in cocktail dresses enjoyed good wines in a room lined with wood paneling and dangling chandeliers. The muted hum of conversation filled the restaurant over the live pianist playing jazz standards and the smell of grilled meat had me salivating in seconds flat.

  We joined our friends at a private booth with leather upholstery and a high curved wooden back. Leo was beautiful in a floral vintage dress with a poufy skirt, her red hair pulled back in a bun and secured with a large flower barrette. A stunning shawl in fiery reds and purples was draped over the back of the booth. This must have been the gift that Drio had brought for her from Italy. I couldn’t fault his taste.

  Drio’s slim black suit was only a couple of shades lighter than the scowl on his face. He sat stiffly in his seat across from Leo, greeting us only with nods.

  “Girls’ side of the table? Yay!” I slid in beside my bestie, giving her a hug. “What’s his deal?” I whispered.

  “No clue. If he wasn’t so pretty, I’d never take him home again.”

  I opened my menu. “Good to know you’re a sure thing.”

  “Says the chick not wearing underwear.”

  Drio may have been having some kind of hissy fit not wanting to sit beside Leo, but I’d seen women on the Atkins diet gaze at chocolate cake with less hunger than him drinking her in. I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Oh. Shut up, Katz.