She pushed down the frustration and focused on her table, where a group of rowdy high school seniors had already finished their second round of drinks, each clamoring for a refill as she tried to deliver their meals. Two bacon burgers, one with extra bacon. A double stack of pancakes. An order of chicken fingers. And a pair who had decided to split the entire menu of appetizers—mozzarella sticks, buffalo wings, and three kinds of fries with the works.
They were probably going to skimp on the tip, too, the little shits.
Dani placed the half-dozen empty cups on her tray and hurried into the back. She dumped them by the sink and slipped into the employee bathroom, scrubbing the sickly-sweet ice cream from her shirt. The heavy makeup she wore around her eyes had gone smudgy and uneven from sweat, and she did her best to clean up the lines with a bit of wet paper towel. Her stomach groaned as she worked. She was starving and had agreed to skip her break to keep up with the understaffed dinner rush. The universe was cruel to leave her sticky and cold, too.
When she was done, her makeup looked half-decent and her shirt was soaked, but at least most of the ice cream came out. She gathered up a fresh round of drinks and delivered them to the table, at which point the seniors asked for three different dipping sauces and one boy, with a thin, patchy mustache, threatened to send back the burger if he didn’t get more bacon.
As if she didn’t have other tables to deal with.
By the time the six teens left, leaving a measly two-dollar tip, Dani’s patience had worn thin. At least the diner had calmed and another shift of waitresses had shown up to help.
Dani finally stole a moment for her long overdue break and sat alone in a corner booth. She picked at the remains of her turkey club. The lettuce was wilted and the tomato unripe. It was gone too fast, and already she could feel herself getting hungry again, but she still had another hour left in her shift.
The door chimed as another patron walked in. Dani glanced up, checking to see if the newcomer looked like a good tipper. She needed a healthy tip after dealing with cheap students all night. But instead of the well-to-do adult she was hoping for, there was a kid standing before the hostess, holding up a photo.
Something about the desperate look in the girl’s face had Dani on her feet and moving forward. As she approached, she reassessed her initial assumption. The girl was probably thirteen, maybe fourteen, but she’d looked smaller from a distance. She wore a knit hat over her head. At first, Dani assumed the girl’s parents were overcautious about the chill, but then she noticed the girl’s missing eyebrows. Her thin, almost frail frame.
“Are you sure you haven’t seen her?” the girl was asking the hostess when Dani got close enough to hear over the racket of other patrons.
“I’m sure. We haven’t seen her,” the hostess replied. “Do you need a table or—”
“Can I show the photo around?”
“Hi there. Can I help with something?” Dani interjected before the hostess dismissed the girl outright. She knew Frank’s policies. Diners were not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and she could see the refusal in her coworker’s eyes.
“You know the rules, Dani,” the hostess said, warning in her tone.
“I’m on break.” Dani recognized the kind of desperation that burned bright in the girl’s eyes, felt it echoing back all the ways she’d felt lost and alone since her mother’s attack. She knew then, if there was any way she could help, anything at all, she would do it. “Come with me.”
The girl, who stood a full six inches shorter than Dani’s five foot four, followed Dani to the corner booth where her plate and drink still sat. There were a few leftover fries, which Dani offered to the girl, who introduced herself as Cassie.
“What brings you out to Frank’s Diner at this time of night?”
The girl slid the photo across the table. A young woman, probably in her early-to-mid-twenties, stared back at her. She had beautiful golden-blonde hair that fell in soft waves to her shoulders. Her smile was genuine and warm, and she had her arm around a smaller version of Cassie, who sported matching blonde locks that fell to her waist. “This is Lana,” Cassie explained. “She’s my sister.”
Dani noted the catch in Cassie’s voice, but didn’t know what the younger girl wanted her to say. “She looks just like you.”
Cassie pulled the photo back and turned it to face her, her fingers trailing along the edge of the picture. “She’s missing,” she said at last, fat tears spilling down her cheeks. “She’s been gone for two days, but she’s been acting weird for weeks.”
“What kind of weird?”
Cassie scrubbed at the fallen tears. “I don’t know how to explain it. She’s different. Like, she normally plans things out weeks in advance, but all of a sudden, she acting super impulsive. She stopped reminding me to take my meds, and she started bringing strangers to the house, a different person almost every day.”
“Maybe she got tired of being responsible and wanted to party. It happens.” But a sick feeling worked its way into Dani’s chest. The Ink stirred against her arms and back.
“Lana’s not like that. She always used to brag about how normal she was, like it was cool to be so boring.” Cassie scoffed and rolled her eyes, like this was an argument the sisters had often. But then the moment passed, and Cassie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes to ward off fresh tears. “Lana’s not the kind of person who breaks rules. I swear, it’s like she’s allergic to it or something. But the day after she dyed her hair, she had us dine and dash from her favorite restaurant.”
“Huh, that is weird,” Dani said as neutrally as she could. Diner patrons had only skipped out on her check twice since she’d been there, but each time had been absolutely crushing, especially since Frank took the bill out of her paycheck.
“But that’s not even the weirdest part. Lana ordered a burger. Rare.” Cassie put so much emphasis on the reveal, but Dani just stared at her, confused. “Lana’s vegan,” the young teen clarified. “She won’t even eat honey from humanely raised bees or anything. But then all of a sudden, she’s eating this bloody burger? Something is seriously wrong.”
“And now she’s missing on top of everything else,” Dani mused, tapping her fingers against the table. The signs were all there. The reckless behavior. Changes in routine. An appetite for all sorts of flesh. But how could she tell this girl her sister was probably possessed?
“Have you tried the police?” Dani asked.
Cassie shook her head. “No! And you can’t tell them. If they find out my sister is missing, they’ll throw me in foster care until they find her. Maybe even forever, if she keeps acting so weird.”
“What about your parents?”
“They died when I was ten.” Cassie picked at a fry from Dani’s plate instead of looking at her. “It’s just me and Lana.”
“Shit, I’m sorry kid.” Dani pressed her fingers into her temples and massaged her aching head. “We have to do something. You need someone who can watch out for you and warn you not to wander in neighborhoods like this after dark.” Dani drummed her fingers against the table again. Even though Cassie didn’t want the police involved, she wouldn’t get that choice forever. If Lana’s disappearance was demonic in nature, the chances of reuniting the family were practically nonexistent.
“Wait,” Cassie said, sitting up straighter. “We? You’ll help me?”
Dani hadn’t made a conscious decision to help, but as soon as Cassie asked, Dani knew she couldn’t say no. She understood the pain of becoming your own parent too young, and Cassie couldn’t be more than fourteen, at least three years younger than Dani had been. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Oh my god, thank you!” Cassie scrambled out of the booth and threw her arms around Dani, hugging her tight. “Here. Give me a pen.” Cassie grabbed a napkin and scribbled her phone number and address for Dani. “Can you come tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’ll make it work.” Dani glanced at the address. It was in a nicer part of town, the kind
of place her mother might have picked if she had brought them there. If she wasn’t locked inside a hospital for her own protection. A rush of emotion threatened to drown Dani. She swallowed it as best she could.
Frank came out from the kitchen and shot Dani a warning look, tapping the spot on his wrist where a watch would sit if the old cook bothered to wear one. Dani sighed and slipped out of the booth. “Let’s get you home.”
Dani called Cassie a cab and walked her out, handing over the last twenty in her wallet to make sure Cassie got home safely. “Call me if your sister returns,” Dani said, wishing she had a safe place for the young teen to crash while her sister was gone.
She wasn’t too worried about the potential demon—if there was one, it already had plenty of time to hurt Cassie. If it hadn’t hurt her yet, it most likely wouldn’t. But Dani didn’t want Cassie spending another night in an empty house, scared and lonely and lost in her own thoughts. Dani didn’t even want that for herself, and she had four ancient beings to keep her company. “Are you sure you’re all right alone tonight?”
“I’ll be fine. And I’ll call if I hear anything from Lana. I promise.” Cassie said, and when the taxi rolled up, she hugged Dani again. “We can do this, right? We’ll find my sister?”
Dani opened the cab door and offered the girl a smile. “We’ll do our very best.”
Poe was waiting for Dani at the end of her shift. He hopped from branch to branch before taking off into the air. You smell like bacon grease, he griped.
Dani rubbed her sore shoulders and didn’t dignify the raven with an answer. The sun had fully set, and the lights of the city blotted out the stars. Dani was struck with a sudden, aching desire to lie in the cool grass and chart the constellations with her mom. She missed the full-bodied dark sky that could only be found in the middle of nowhere. In the city, you could never escape the light. Not fully.
She shoved the wanting aside and walked toward her apartment. The weight of the snakes at her arms made her already exhausted body even more weary. They wanted to come out. They wanted to hunt.
“Silas. Jasper.” She whispered their names like a prayer, and though it would burn when they returned to her skin, the relief of their anxious energy bleeding out of her was almost enough to make her cry. In the dark, she could barely make out the snakes as they dropped to the sidewalk at her feet, shadows solidifying into strong scales and lithe bodies.
When are we hunting? Jasper asked, his hood flaring as he slithered across the cracked and crumbling cement. I’m hungry.
Jasper was always hungry. Silas, too. The pair could tear a demon in half and swallow it whole in less than a minute. They’d get their chance, just not tonight. “Soon,” Dani promised.
Above them, the raven let out an irritated sound. Poe swooped low, the wind from his wings brushing against Dani’s cheeks. Soon? What do you mean, soon? You have to hunt, Danika. This wretched city will be overrun if you don’t take your duty seriously.
Dani scowled. Blackthorn was overrun long before she’d ever gotten there. “I’ve had a long day, Poe. I can’t hunt safely when I’m ready to collapse.”
Poe landed softly on her shoulder and nuzzled her cheek with his beak. Regular hunting will keep your strength up, Danika. You can’t keep putting it off to work in that grease pit.
“I know.” Dani brushed the soft feathers on Poe’s chest, soothing herself as much as him. “But I can’t tonight. I just . . . I can’t.” She dropped her hand and squeezed her eyes tight. “I don’t know what else to do. If I don’t find a way to earn more money, Mom can’t—”
Shhhh . . . Silas hissed, shrinking in size until he was no larger than a garden snake. He slithered up Dani’s body and wrapped around her wrist. Ignore the Bird. He does not speak for all of us. We will be fine until you can hunt again. He flicked his tongue against Dani’s palm.
“Thanks, Silas,” she whispered, wincing when he returned himself to her skin, burning into her like a thousand tiny cuts. Before Dani could recover from the sensation, Jasper seared into her other arm, neither snake lingering in the physical world without an impending hunt to entice them.
Reptiles, Poe grumbled and took off into the night. He never liked when the other Ink contradicted him, especially when they were right.
While Poe flew overhead, Dani’s thoughts circled back to the girl she’d met at the diner. She had a bad feeling about Cassie’s missing sister. While there might be a thousand human reasons for the strange changes in Lana’s behavior, so much of what Cassie described sounded like possession. And a fresh one, too.
In some ways, new possessions were the most dangerous. The demon inside didn’t yet know the limits of their body’s capabilities—often hurting themselves or others in those first few weeks. The demons were reckless in the human world, often too excited to be in the mortal realm to understand the need for caution.
Dani was still trying to piece together a plan for her meeting with Cassie when her apartment rose before her. The ancient brick facade mirrored the rest of the block, each building in danger of crumbling to dust. Dani yanked open the rusted front door and started the five-story climb to her apartment. On the third floor, Poe returned to his place along Dani’s chest and shoulder, bringing with him a low, constant thrum of nervous energy.
She sucked in a breath, gritting her teeth against the pain of his return. The skin on her chest was always the most sensitive, and it didn’t help that his presence was also the most draining. By the time she reached the fifth floor, Dani was ready to collapse. And instead of the silence and warmth she so desperately craved, the drafty building was a cacophony of unending noise. Old gameshows played too loudly by the elderly woman who lived at the end of the hall. Simulated gunfire and foul-mouthed taunts from a neighbor playing video games late into the night. False orgasmic moans from the camgirl next door.
At her own apartment, Dani fumbled with her keys and let herself inside, locking the several deadbolts behind her. There wasn’t anything to steal in her apartment, and she could certainly handle herself, but the last thing she wanted to deal with was another human.
On the rickety side table, Dani dropped her keys and ignored the stack of mail she’d let pile up. Almost all of them were stamped with the dreaded FINAL NOTICE warning in vivid red ink.
The apartment was far smaller than she’d described to her mother, with a tiny window whose only view was the brick wall of the next building over. The cramped studio held little more than the mattress on the floor and the small table covered in bills. She didn’t have a couch, television, or even a table or a single chair. The most impressive piece of furniture was the one thing she’d brought all the way from Greenvale: a hand-carved wooden chest, filled to the brim with weapons.
The sandwich at the diner was a distant memory at that point, so Dani flipped through the cupboards, careful of the one with the broken hinges. She looked through her meager supplies and settled on a cup of instant ramen that she’d gotten on sale—four for a dollar—and filled the kettle with water from the sink.
Dani turned on the kettle and her whole apartment went dark. She glanced at the stack of FINAL NOTICE envelopes, pressure building behind her eyes. Of course, they picked today to cut her power. Of course, it had to be before she could eat. Dani gripped the kettle and flung it across the room, letting loose a blood curdling scream that anywhere else would send neighbors into a panic.
Here, she was just another unfortunate soul.
The kettle slammed into the wall on the far side of the little studio, denting the dingy gray walls. It shattered on impact, water raining down.
All over her mattress and her only set of sheets.
Dani’s legs gave out, and she crumbled to the floor. “Kiva,” she called pitifully, and the panther uncurled herself from Dani’s back. The great cat stared back at Dani, golden eyes gleaming, and licked the tears from her face.
Without either of them needing to say a word, Kiva sprawled on the floor, creating a makeshift
bed. Dani curled up beside her friend, the closest thing she had left to a maternal figure, and cried herself to sleep.
6
Dani woke the next morning with the sun on her face and the world gently rising and falling beneath her. Kiva still slept soundly, the panther’s breath gently rocking Dani. She glanced at her ancient flip phone and groaned when she saw the time. It was almost eleven. Way later than she’d wanted to start the day.
She hurried through a frigid shower—her water heater lost with the rest of the electricity—and returned Kiva to her back before she finished getting dressed. Kiva’s return hurt the longest, the Ink covering the entirety of her back, but at least her energy was soothing.
When she was finally ready, Dani headed for the subway.
Cassie’s place was too far to walk, otherwise she wouldn’t waste the fare. At least being so late meant she had missed rush hour. When Dani emerged from the subway, she found herself in one of the nicer areas of town. Not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but people here owned small single-story houses. They had tiny patches of green lawn out front, which was more than could be said about Dani’s shithole apartment building.
Dani counted the mailboxes until she reached Cassie’s address, where she found a small yellow house with white trimmed windows. The lawn hadn’t been cut in a weeks, and the white paint had gone dingy with age, but it was blessedly quiet on the street. A thread of something akin to nostalgia wove up Dani’s spine, clinging to her ribs. At first, she couldn’t figure out why, but then it hit her in a rush—this was so much like their small home in Greenvale, where the last thing Dani had said to her mother was how much she hated her.
Before she could knock, there was a rustle at the window and the door flew open. Cassie stood on the other side, hatless, displaying her completely bald head. “You actually came.” The young teen seemed surprised, though pleased, to see Dani on her doorstep.
Chosen Page 4