by Liz Meldon
Verrier might have been retired, but every demon within his jurisdiction was required to pay the same tribute to him on Earth as they would pay to the princes of Hell below—and it was a testament to just how much Verrier had loved Alaric’s mother, and Alaric by extension, that he had handed over his little black card the moment Alaric requested it.
Meanwhile, to say that Verrier had been less than impressed with Severus when he had waltzed into his office at the Inferno, begging for angel names, would be the world’s greatest understatement. While the former prince had provided them, he’d done so with the assurance that that would be the last he heard of this angel nonsense.
And then Moira had thrown Diriel across his bar, damaging tables and chairs and glassware in the process. While Verrier refused to become directly entangled in the fallout of that night, he had allowed Moira to stay in his son’s secret building, and now Alaric had a blank check to bid on her tonight. He might have wiped his hands clean of angel affairs, but Verrier would still do anything for his most beloved son.
It was a weakness Severus knew he had exploited far too often in the last week, but he had no other choice. Moira’s life was at stake. None of the demons searching for her would kill her—just gleefully torture her until her life expired, however long that would be. Hybrid life spans varied depending on what the human was mixed with, and no one had much experience with angels. At this point, even Severus was just making it up as he went along.
“How long will you guys be gone?” Moira asked as he crossed the room and swiped his shoes from the rack in the coat closet.
“Apparently the…” Alaric pressed his lips together, the word “auction” likely on the tip of his tongue. Severus shot him a look as he sat on the stairs and stuffed his foot into one of his polished wingtip oxfords.
“I believe we should be back by eleven,” he told Moira, looping the thin laces. “I’ll send you a message should things run later.”
“And then we can start our movie night,” Alaric added, the enthusiasm in his voice failing to draw more than a half smile out of Moira. “Right? Right? I can’t believe you’ve never seen any of the Indiana Jones films. Harrison Ford is a legend.”
“So I’m told,” she said flatly, then offered a more genuine smile when she caught Severus’s eye. “Pick up some snacks on the way back?”
“Certainly. Text me your preferences.”
“Have fun tonight,” she called as they headed out the front door, “with whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Trust me,” Severus told her, gripping the knob tight and scowling at the thought of what was to come, “we most certainly won’t.”
Moira waited until the final lock was set and Alaric’s gaudy car had pulled away from the curb before she sprang into action. The chair’s legs scraped across the hardwood as she shoved back and scurried into the kitchen, lowering the temperature on the oven and quickly checking on the tenderloin to ensure it wouldn’t burn. Pork took forever to cook, right? At such a low temperature, she could get to campus and back before it was done—and well before her demon guards returned from whatever they were doing tonight.
Nibbling her lower lip, she returned to the dining table that had been her essay-marking hub for the last few days, then gathered all the corrected essays—due at midnight tonight from all teaching assistants, no exceptions—and set them in a neat pile. Heart pounding, she looked to the door, half expecting Severus to come thundering back in with an aha, the jig is up! All she got instead was the very gentle evening traffic cruising by the front window. Still, she waited a moment longer, her palms starting to get clammy, before grabbing her phone and ordering a taxi to the address of the apartment complex next door.
With an estimated arrival time of five minutes, she packed her shoulder bag—graded essays, wallet, phone—and hurried upstairs. Her lungs burned by the time she reached the third floor, still no more accustomed to scaling the thin, narrow stairwells today than she had been a week ago. It had been very thoughtful of Severus and Alaric to give her an entire floor to herself while she was stuck here, even if she spent every night in Severus’s bed rather than the squishy queen they’d had delivered on her first day.
In fact, as she changed out of her sweats and into something more campus appropriate, Moira had to acknowledge that her new roommates had been very accommodating—despite her moodiness—from the very beginning. Sure, the night of the incident had been tense. Alaric had apologized for what he’d said the following morning, citing stress as the reason for blaming her for all their problems, and Moira had forgiven him without a second’s hesitation.
Alaric had turned into a welcome ally in the week that followed, always up for playing video games with her, watching movies or shows, and drinking well into the early-morning hours with expensive liquor from his dad’s bar when Moira felt like getting drunk. She hadn’t succeeded yet, but Alaric made it fun to try.
Even Severus, for all his phone-stealing and lecturing, had put in the effort to make her comfortable. He hadn’t apologized for his behavior that night—for storming off and leaving her sobbing in his bed—but his actions had suggested as much. By day, he saw his human clients, bolstering his strength for the nights he spent in the demon underbelly of Farrow’s Hollow, supposedly trying to quash whatever rumors were flying around about her.
He had even faced Ella’s wrath, both in person and over the phone, when he had gone to their house and packed up some of Moira’s things for her. The incubus took care of all her meals, and he hadn’t once tried to fuck the tension away—as much as Moira wished he would. All in all, he had been a perfect gentleman, which made what she was about to attempt ten times harder.
As Moira pulled her black wool cap on, carefully tucking all hints of white hair beneath, she hesitated again. Severus had been great, even with her sullen pouting and frustrated glares. Moira had made it very clear she didn’t want to stay here, locked up like a prisoner, but she understood the logic behind it. Unfortunately, understanding didn’t translate to acceptance, and her mood had been up and down—mostly down—all week. Alaric had suggested that she might finally be processing, really processing, everything that had happened to her since she met Severus, all the hard new truths she’d had to swallow. It made sense, and she knew she shouldn’t have taken her mess of emotion out on Severus—but he had proven to be an easy, willing target.
And it made her feel awful. Just—downright shitty, honestly.
This—sneaking out—made her feel worse. The essays were due back, however, and Moira was determined not to let that stupid incident derail her life completely. All she needed to do was get to campus, take all the back routes to her professor’s building, then leave the stack in her mailbox. Hail a cab, somehow figure out how to get back inside the magical building that no one but her, Severus, and Alaric could see, and then bam. She’d be good to stay indoors for another miserable week.
Wearing a thin beige knit sweater and a pair of old skinny jeans, the waist still too big, Moira slipped her feet into her beat-up runners, then hurried down to Alaric’s room. Violating his privacy didn’t make her feel any better—nor did the distinctly boy smell of his dark, cluttered bedroom—but the bathroom on her floor had no windows and the skylights in Severus’s didn’t open, so she needed this one to get to the fire escape that spanned from the roof to the ground floor of the building. The front door wouldn’t open for her after Severus had locked it, and she wasn’t sure why, but in a pinch, the fire escape would do just nicely.
While the lock on the window latch was trickier than she anticipated, Moira managed to get it open. About a foot to the right, the ladder ran parallel to the window, and she climbed on top of the toilet, her heart leaping into her throat as she peered down. Why hadn’t she thought it would be this high? The building was narrow and tall; Alaric’s second-floor bathroom looked like any regular fourth-floor drop. Taking a deep breath, she maneuvered herself as nimbly as she could, adrenaline making her movements somewh
at uncoordinated.
Once she had a hand wrapped around a black metal ladder rung, she managed to swing herself over, a little squeal slipping out when she didn’t immediately find her footing. As soon as she did, Moira took a moment to catch her breath, heart pounding between her ears now. There. The hard part was over, right? All she had to do was climb down. The alleyway was silent behind her as she descended, one rung at a time. Beyond the usual downtown chorus of car tires on cement, the occasional honk, and the very distant chatter of pedestrians, she felt alone behind the building.
When the tip of her shoe touched cement, she hopped down but kept one hand firmly on the ladder. She peered up, squinting at the still-open bathroom window, then flinched when her phone started to ring from the depths of her bag.
Moira turned to dig it out—and in that moment, as soon as she broke contact with the fire escape, the building disappeared.
She gasped, despite having known that was exactly what would happen, then reached out. Her long, grasping fingers didn’t collide with anything as she swiped her hand through the air. Gone. Like it had never existed.
“Oh, Moira,” she said, sighing like Severus did whenever he was mildly exasperated with her lack of otherworldly knowledge, “you did not think this through.”
When she had concocted this little scheme of hers a few days ago after reading a terse email from her professor reminding all TAs that the essays were due, it had been easy to just throw her hands up and decide she would figure out how to get back inside Severus and Alaric’s magical home when she returned. Now, however, she could acknowledge the folly in that logic.
What could she say—this former honor student had zero experience breaking the rules. Moira had been punctual and obedient all her life, sometimes to a fault. Sneaking out was unexplored territory.
She pursed her lips, knowing and accepting she’d have to call Severus on the way home to explain what she’d done. He’d be angry—and rightfully so—but she knew he would let her in. Hopefully. And then deliver a well-deserved earful of lectures about safety and how terrible demons were and how much of a risk she had taken and blah, blah, blah.
Fidgeting, Moira checked her wool cap one last time, now aware that her tell as an angel hybrid was the startling white hair she shared with all the others at Seraphim Securities. Then, because curiosity prompted her to, she took another swipe at where the building ought to be standing. Nothing. A little smile tugged at her lips. Amazing.
She really wanted to meet this witch cousin who had enchanted an entire building to vanish completely, not only from sight, but from every other sense too.
Unfortunately, there were more pressing issues to take care of. With her phone still bleating at her, she fished it out and answered somewhat breathlessly.
“Daisy’s Taxi here for Lara?” a woman’s voice remarked as Moira held the phone to her ear with her shoulder, now jogging through the vacant, dismal, rain-soaked alley where a building had once stood.
“Coming now,” she managed. She might have made a mistake in using her real name when she booked a night with an escort, but Moira had learned since then. Her mom’s name, thankfully, was common enough not to arouse suspicion, and she kept her head down when she blitzed from the shadows of the alley and into the awaiting taxi in front of the neighbouring apartment building.
The driver in the front seat smiled at her in the same palpably disinterested way most taxi drivers did when they picked up a student headed for campus, and as the car—its interior positively reeking of cheap, sharply floral perfume—eased away from the curb, Moira flopped back in the seat, and only then noticed she was shaking.
Shaking, but free at last.
Even if it was just for the next half hour.
The end of this term marked Moira’s fifth year on the FHU campus—and it was strange to realize she actually missed the old place.
Standing at the bottom step of the stairs to her professor’s sprawling gothic tower, a building which housed all the offices for the art department, Moira studied the familiar campus with a smile. She shouldn’t have missed this place. It drove her nuts on a good day, all the clueless undergrads milling about. Always too busy, lines too long at the coffee bars, nowhere to sit in the library when she wanted to work. But she had missed it.
Eleanor Grimsby, the professor she had been assigned to TA for this year, had roped her into a conversation when she’d caught Moira dropping off the graded essays in the mailbox outside her office. Apparently, she had been the last TA to do so, but Grimsby hadn’t chastised her for it. Instead, she’d asked if everything was all right, noting that some of her colleagues had been chatting about her absence from seminars this past week.
“Oh, just caught that flu thing that’s going around,” Moira had insisted, a part of her pleased that her professors noticed when she didn’t attend their classes. But then again, with her new looks—how could they not? The pair had chatted in the dimly lit hallway for a good fifteen minutes about essays, exams, and her thesis, due next year, which Moira still hadn’t started. It had been oddly pleasant to discuss academics like nothing had changed, and now as she stood on that step, the horizon painted amber and gold and purple with the setting sun, Moira could forget that the entire demon population of Farrow’s Hollow was out looking for her.
She could forget that she was turning into a creature, angel or not.
She could forget about Severus’s warnings and Alaric’s cautious hybrid chatter. Moira was just a graduate student again. A teaching assistant. A twenty-three-year-old with her whole life ahead of her.
However, as soon as she forced herself off that step, breaking into a brisk march toward the campus bus terminal—taxis were known to loiter around there too, even at this time of night—it all came flooding back to her. That she wasn’t just a normal university student. That her whole life might or might not still be ahead of her. That Severus was going to ream her out—and that she hadn’t spoken to Ella face-to-face in a week.
Abruptly, she stopped, ignoring the grumbles of the lanky asshole who walked into her because of it. He carried on, enormous headphones over his ears, and Moira grabbed her phone with trembling hands. This was the longest she and Ella had ever gone without seeing each other, excluding that one summer Ella had been forced to visit some cousins in New York. It had been the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade, and that had been the longest three weeks of Moira’s life—or so she’d thought.
The distance had a purpose, of course. As she stared at Ella’s display picture on her contacts page, grinning at the crossed eyes and the tongue poking out between her full lips, Moira knew that bringing her into this very real, very supernatural world was damning her.
But she couldn’t go on like this. Ella had known something was up, something was different in her life, ever since the changes started, and Moira hadn’t done much to include her in that. She knew it hurt Ella. She knew her best friend suspected Moira was keeping secrets—and she couldn’t stand it.
Beyond that, if the demons matched a name to Moira’s face, Ella was at risk. And in Moira’s mind, there was being at risk and being oblivious to it—and then there was being at risk and knowing the dangers. At least with the latter, Ella could be protected. She could make her own decisions—maybe even move in and share Moira’s new digs.
At least then, she wouldn’t be left in the dark until something that haunted it finally took her.
So, Moira pressed the call button and brought the phone to her ear. At the first ring, students spilled out of the nearby chemistry building, the seven-to-nine evening classes finally letting out. The bus terminal would be busy, and Moira slowly drifted toward it, her smile vanishing when Ella’s voicemail recording started to play. She hung up, tapping the disconnect button harder than necessary, and went to her text messages instead. Ella lived with her phone. Even if she was in a class, she always answered.
Unless something from Moira’s new world had taken her, Ella was screening her cal
ls.
Frowning, Moira fired off a quick text to let her best friend know she was on campus if she wanted to grab coffee.
I’ll wait for the next fifteen minutes—until the next bus arrives. Just let me know. I’m so sorry, Ella. I really need to talk to you.
After she hit the send button, she called Severus too, her heart pounding faster with each ring. That call also went to voicemail, and this time she left one.
“Hi. So. It’s me. Don’t be mad, but I’m on campus because I needed to drop off these essays with my prof. So far, so good. No black-eyed creatures following me. I was discreet. I’m just waiting to see if Ella wants to grab coffee with me, and then I’m going to head back. If you guys are done with whatever you’re doing, you could always pick me up. I fully anticipate a lecture. I know. I deserve it. I just had to get out and do this.” She paused, breathless, and then cleared her throat. “See you back at your place.”
When she hung up, something inside of her deflated a little to see that Ella hadn’t texted her back. She deserved that, too.
The bus terminal was a nightmare around the time classes got out; nowhere to sit, no one looking where they were walking, smokers brazenly lighting up in defiance of all the no smoking signs. The hustle and bustle had been annoying to endure before the changes. Now, it was downright awful.
Moira’s every sense faced a continuous assault these days, the clamor of crowds just a little too loud, the clashing scents of perfume and body odor making her just a little too queasy, and the array of color and clothing making it just a little too hard to focus. Nothing crazy. Nothing she couldn’t handle. It was just—a little too much. She wasn’t sure if her senses were heightening. She could hardly feel it when humans knocked into her, not like she had with all the demons manhandling her at the bar. But the rest of her senses were on overload tonight, more than usual, and she zipped around the corner of the nearby science library, in need of a brief reprieve.