Once Darkness Falls (Preternatural Affairs #7)

by SM Reine

  “You may now kiss the bride,” the officiant said. At least, I thought that was what he said. I couldn’t understand his accent.

  Fritz hooked an arm around Isobel’s waist, bent her over halfway, and kissed the hell out of her. If she hadn’t already been dead, that would have been the kind of kiss that suffocated a person.

  I clapped along with the others. I didn’t really mean it, but I put all my heart into it.

  If I could lie to Lucrezia about Suzy, then I could lie to Fritz and Isobel about my feelings, too.

  Fritz had said it himself: the truth wasn’t in everyone’s best interests.

  The reception was held on deck, if you could call a party with five people a reception. The crew served fancy-ass hors d’oeuvres. The guests sat at a table together to eat, and we talked about demons, death, and destruction.

  You know, wedding stuff.

  “My family has been involved in the Hell slave trade as long as it’s existed,” Fritz said. “That’s why I recognized the patterns of disappearances. I knew that someone was mimicking our best techniques for slave acquisition.”

  I’d been about to eat some weird gray pâté, but my appetite suddenly vanished. “Your best techniques?”

  “The Friederling family’s,” Isobel said. She was practically sitting in his lap, glowing with newlywed joy. “They’re with the House of Belial, who are mostly nightmare demons.”

  “So you’re a demon, Fritz?” I asked.

  “The in-laws are,” he said with a shrug. “I’m entirely human, as all kopides must be. It’s one of the laws of the Treaty of Dis.” The corner of his mouth tugged into a woeful smile. “Who knows what will happen now, though?”

  “What do you mean?” Krista asked.

  “The directors who were assassinated were part of a team that preserved the treaty,” Fritz said. “An ally of my family, Belphegor, has informed me that everyone else on that team got killed, too. The treaty is no more. All rules are gone.”

  Krista’s eyes widened. “I see.”

  We hadn’t told her that the killing had been perpetrated by Lucrezia, though. I’d insisted on that. I trusted her, but she would be safer if she didn’t know what was happening.

  The official story was that none of us knew what was happening. We didn’t know Lucrezia was evil. We didn’t know that Allyson and Zettel had been helping her make people vanish, and that they’d set Malcolm up.

  We knew nothing at all.

  It was the only way we could survive long enough to stop them. And that was the first item on Fritz’s agenda once he got back from his honeymoon.

  Yeah, I really didn’t have an appetite for pâté.

  Nobody seemed to be hungry after that conversation. The crew cleared the table off the dance floor, music turned on, the ship kept bobbing in the water.

  Fritz was smooth dancing with Isobel, considering the guy practically had a peg leg. “I put the fancy one on,” he said with a wink when he caught me looking. “Enchanted for dancing.”

  “You have a leg enchanted for dancing?” I forced a laugh. “You have way too much money.”

  “You should see what other enchanted things he has.” Isobel shot a naughty look at me over Fritz’s arm before he spun her away. Both of them knew what they were doing. Rich fucks had probably taken classes and shit.

  I was the kind of guy who didn’t dance, unless you counted bobbing my head along with the beat. And I didn’t even feel up to that. The wedding had been nice and all, but the joy wasn’t infectious. My mind was still trapped on the Union base in Reno, talking to Belphegor at that portal to Hell.

  Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out Suzy’s sticky note.

  I’m fine.

  It was the only thing that kept me going for the moment.

  “Present for you,” Krista said, appearing at my side to refill my champagne glass. “And a present for me.” She knocked back a martini, olive and all.

  “Do all kopides drink like the world is about to end?” I asked, slipping Suzy’s note back into my jacket.

  Krista gave an unladylike burp, trying to hide it behind a hand. “The smart ones do.” She set the martini glass on the bar. “Dance with me.”

  “No way,” I said. “You haven’t seen how uncoordinated I am.”

  “Have you ever looked at me, Agent Hawke?” she asked, lifting her bad arm.

  “I’m worse than a woman with cerebral palsy,” I said. “I mean it.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  Convincing argument.

  Krista and I joined the happy new couple on the dance floor, and we danced the way God intended: the woman doing all the work while the guy stood there.

  All in all, not a bad reception.

  I’d have been happy to end the night like that. The Caribbean sunset made everything all pretty and shit, and I was drunk enough that I could openly appreciate it without questioning my masculinity. Blue water, warm air, all that nice stuff.

  That wasn’t the end of the night, though.

  After an hour or so, Isobel’s hand slid onto my arm. “Can I butt in?”

  “Uh,” I said intelligently.

  “Be my guest,” Krista said, shoving both of us out onto the floor. “I’m going to take advantage of my excellent metabolism and the hard liquor. Don’t have too much fun without me.”

  Isobel watched her leave with a look that bordered on venomous. “She’s pretty. I don’t think she suits you, but…pretty.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” It felt important that I point that out.

  “Theoretically, it wouldn’t have to matter if she were. It would entirely depend on our agreement,” Isobel said.

  “We have an agreement?”

  “Fritz seems to think so.”

  “Fritz also occasionally buys human souls in cash,” I said.

  She shrugged. “We all have our hobbies.”

  Isobel took my hands and positioned them where she wanted them—one on her waist, one in her hand. Her skin was warm and soft and felt alive. She even had a bit of a shine to her flesh, as dewy as though she’d been standing in the ocean spray.

  “Relax,” she told me, and she started to move.

  I tried to move along with her. I made an effort. I did.

  If I’d been sober, it would have freaked me out to dance with a woman in a wedding dress while I was wearing a suit and tie. It was a little too close to Ghosts of Long Term Commitments Future for my tastes. But I must have gotten at least a bottle of champagne down by that point, and I was feeling fuzzy enough to enjoy it.

  Isobel only tried to dance with me for about thirty seconds before giving up. “Remind me to never ask you to dance again. You really are awful.” She beamed at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink before, have I?”

  “Last time I drank, I killed a succubus,” I said. “But we’re a long way from the shore and any demons. I thought it’d be okay to get drunk this once.”

  Her smile faded a little. “I wouldn’t trust there are no demons on any ship Fritz owns.”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll murder any succubi that comes near you,” Isobel said. She eyeballed Krista when she said that.

  Isobel stepped closer to me, breaking the boundaries of our arms so that she could rest against my chest. Even in a wedding dress with boning and jagged-edged crystals, she was soft as she’d always been.

  “I know Fritz is happy you came,” she said. “He won’t say it because of some macho-man thing, but he wouldn’t have enjoyed himself at all without you here.”

  “I think you’re confusing me with his bourbon.”

  “Be serious for once.”

  “Not gonna happen,” I said. “Especially not after all the alcohol.”

  She stretched up to kiss me—not the kiss of a friend who had just gotten married, but something slow and lingering. When she spoke, she stayed close enough that her lips tickled mine. “In all seriousness—thank you for bein
g Fritz’s best man, Cèsar.”

  I shot a look at Fritz. He only glanced at us before going back to his drink. Yeah, that was the love affair of the century. He didn’t even care that his wife was getting all up in my face region.

  I swallowed hard. “Jesus. This is going to take some getting used to.”

  “As long as you want to try to get used to it, I can deal with that.” Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. “I’m happy you came, too.”

  I wasn’t sure if I could go so far as to say the same thing.

  We’d stopped moving, aside from the swaying of the boat. The sun was gone. All that sapphire-blue water looked black. The air was warm, the music was nice, Isobel was still leaning against me.

  It felt like we should have been so far away from Hell, from apocalypse, from the fractured Treaty of Dis, that I should have been able to relax.

  But the darker it got, the harder I found it not to think about what was happening, champagne and all.

  Isobel wasn’t oblivious to my mood. “It’s okay, Cèsar. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “No. I guess not.” She rested her head on my chest. “Enjoy the fact that we’re all together tonight, and don’t worry about the future. We can’t predict what’s coming.”

  That wasn’t true either, though.

  I knew exactly what was coming. I’d already seen it happen to Aniruddha, Malcolm, and Suzy.

  They were only the first to fall.

  And holding Isobel Stonecrow, newly wedded to Fritz Friederling, out on the placid waters of the Caribbean, I made a silent promise—to myself, to my kopis, to my whatever-the-fuck Isobel was.

  I was going to tear down the Union brick by brick.

  If that was what it took to keep them safe, I’d shatter the whole fucking organization.

  ***

  Bitter Thirst

  Preternatural Affairs Book 8

  Get it now!

  Want to know when I publish a new book?

  Sign up to receive an email alert!

  Please consider leaving a review for the book you just read! Your feedback means the world to me and it helps other readers find the series!

  Connect with SM Reine:

  Website | Facebook | Twitter