by Jenn Burke
“Good.”
“You’d think so, yeah? But Gareth had connections. The charges didn’t stick. Hannah stayed with me, and Gareth came by, crying and begging her to return. And...she did.” Priya swallowed hard. “Two weeks later, she was dead.”
“Shit,” I said.
“The police said she fell down the stairs when she was alone in the house, but I knew that wasn’t true. Gareth killed her. My best friend, the woman I wished—” Priya closed her eyes.
Oh. Oh.
“With the police refusing to do anything, I knew I had to. I was—I was furious. I’d never felt anger like that. Rage. All I could think about was getting revenge. Making him pay. But what could I do on my own? I started researching, wondering if I could hire a hitman, when I stumbled across a website that talked about...things. Magic.”
Hudson groaned. “Please don’t tell me you cast a spell you found online.”
“No.” Her mouth quirked upward at one corner. “I hired a practitioner I found online to do it.”
“Jesus Christ.” Hud scrubbed a hand over his face. “So you summoned the demon and, what? Killed Gareth?”
“Yes. He tragically fell down the same steps his wife had. Broken neck.”
I grimaced. “Then you faked your death.”
“Yes,” she said, more subdued.
“How could you let your dad think you were dead, Priya?” Hudson demanded.
“Like you care,” she shot back. “Me showing up here was taking a chance, in case Dad had gotten in touch with you, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t. You’re right close with your brother, aren’t you?”
“I’m ten years older. He moved to Europe with your grandmother when I was in my twenties, and I called...” Hudson trailed off, as though he realized his excuses were damned weak.
“Hudson’s brotherly love or lack thereof isn’t the point,” I interjected. “Anyone letting their father think they died is a shitty move.”
“The first time the Order came after me, my dad was in the car. They ran us off the road and Dad was knocked out. I fought them—kicked the shit out of them. But I knew no matter how many times I fought them off, they’d be back, and they wouldn’t care if my dad got hurt. So yes, I faked my death so I could run. I’d rather break my dad’s heart quickly than kill it slowly over time.”
“So you’re a murderer.”
She met my gaze. “Yes.”
I gave Hudson a significant look.
The one he returned was kind of sad. “You’re forgetting that I am too, Wes.”
“That’s different. You were in a live-or-die situation. You had to take action against Pike to escape. Priya chose to avenge her best friend.”
“You can’t work undercover without grasping the gray areas. Sometimes you have to do bad stuff to get a good outcome.” His expression was muted, sad, and I knew he was thinking about the lines he’d crossed in his day. “Do I approve of what she did? The cop part of me can’t, because she broke the law. The rest of me understands that the law isn’t always about justice. But...a demon? Really?”
“I don’t regret Jet. I can’t. She’s a part of me now. It would be like regretting I have a left arm.”
“How long do you have?” I asked.
Priya frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“The last demon we came across wanted to do a ritual to prevent its stolen body from decomposing around it,” Hudson explained.
She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”
“So?”
“I...don’t think I’m, uh, decomposing.”
Hudson rose and stepped close to Priya. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mind what?”
“If I smell you.”
“Uh...no?”
He leaned down so his nose was extra close to Priya’s throat and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. Priya was clearly uncomfortable, but she didn’t flinch away or otherwise move.
After a minute, Hudson straightened. “I can’t smell any rot.”
“Could you with Julia?” I asked.
“Slightly, though I didn’t know what it was at the time,” he admitted.
“Maybe it’s because Priya isn’t...gone.” Because the more she’d spoken, the more I believed her insistence that she was sharing her body with the demon and that it hadn’t taken her over completely. Something in the way she spoke seemed genuine—the emotions, the passion, the hurt.
But then, Julia had seemed damned real too, when she was mourning the death of her ex-wife. So maybe I was a shitty judge of character.
“I’m still me. Jet is usually not at the forefront—only when I’m in danger. She and I have an agreement.”
I raised a brow. That was the second time she’d referred to the demon with a gendered pronoun. “She?”
“She has no concept of gender so she doesn’t care what pronouns I use. It’s easier to think of her as a she since she’s inside me,” Priya said with a shrug.
“So what’s your agreement?” Hudson asked.
“She helped me with Gareth, and I let her ride along to see the living plane.”
That was a pretty benign agreement, actually. Well, on the demon’s side. I still couldn’t believe that Hudson’s niece had killed someone in what sounded like cold blood, regardless of the motivation.
Which brought me back to the current dilemma. “If I call the Order...”
Priya didn’t hesitate. “They’re going to kill me. They’re judge, jury and executioner. Who do you think shot you, Wes?”
My breath caught in my throat. “They were aiming for you.”
“They were.” She winced. “Sorry about that. I left here because I thought they were following me, but I’m so bloody tired of running. I stayed in Toronto. They almost caught me downtown—” she gestured at the side of her face where the bruise had already healed “—but I thought I’d lost them. I hoped I might find sanctuary with you, and I honestly didn’t think they’d take any action with that many normal humans around.”
“Better for me to get hit—”
Hudson raised a hand. “No. Stop right there.” He reached out and threaded our fingers together. “Did you know we were paranormal all along?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I did. Sorry. Jet recognized you as a vampire, but she couldn’t tell what Wes is. Still can’t. You said he’s a god?”
“I’m right here,” I grumbled. “And yes.”
“God of what?”
I blinked. “I...don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“The god thing is fairly recent,” Hudson explained.
“I was a plain old not-ghost before that.”
“Not-ghost?”
“Long story.”
Priya looked from me to Hudson and back again. “So what are you thinking?”
I wanted her gone, but I knew from looking at Hudson that he didn’t feel the same. He’d wanted a connection with his family, and now he had it—and she had a connection to the paranormal too. It was a perfect situation...you know, minus the whole murder thing.
But could I judge her on that? If someone killed Hudson and the police refused to do anything, I might take things into my own hands too.
Fuck. I needed way more sleep or caffeine to wrap my brain around this ethical quandary. “You guys figure it out.”
Love rushed across my bond with Hudson, which buoyed me a little. A decision that made him feel that good couldn’t be all wrong.
* * *
Lexi, Evan and Iskander burst through the front door while I was enjoying my coffee, and I had an instant to set my mug down before they swarmed me and wrapped me in a giant group hug.
“Never again,” Lexi rasped.
“What she said,” Evan whispered.
Iskander squeezed wordlessly.
“Oh, honey.” I swept a hand over her hair. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“You’re not allowed to do that again.”
“How’d you all know I was back?”
Lexi pulled out her phone and displayed a text from Hudson. You were right was all it said. “Did you have a talk with him?”
“Yeah. He hadn’t quite understood everything.”
“That’s what I figured.”
I shifted to the other side of the breakfast nook, on the bench, so Sam could sit close beside me, and Evan, Isk and Lexi fixed themselves their own drinks and chose seats around the table. Hudson was upstairs, sleeping some more and recovering from his days-long bender.
Once we were all settled, Lexi retrieved a folder from her massive purse. “I enacted Plan: Burn It All Down.”
“Jesus, who came up with that name?”
“You.” She gave me a crooked grin. “I think it was the same night we got drunk and you proposed.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “You’re not supposed to remember that.”
“You should know by now I remember everything.” She handed over the folder. “I got in touch with the contact you left me for your new ID. Given how everything went down, I figured just switching around your first and second names wasn’t going to cut it this time.”
“What did you do?” I literally felt the blood leave my cheeks as I scrambled to pull my new identity out of the folder.
Lexi didn’t say anything as I finally grasped the documents and laid them out on the table. “Taggart Mitchell Westerson? Did my parents hate me?”
“It was the best I could do so you can still go by Wes,” she said. “We can go back to Cooper the next time you have to do this. I met with your lawyer and got everything transferred over to me, per your will, and updated my will so everything goes to Taggart if I croak before we get it all rearranged. Cool?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“After I got Hudson’s text, the morgue called me to say that your body was ‘misplaced.’ I reacted as any distraught next-of-kin would.”
“She yelled. A lot,” Sam said.
“I figure we’ll let that drag on for a bit and see what explanation they come back with.”
“If they offer any sort of compensation, tell them to donate it to the police widows and orphans fund.” Talking about my death was a surreal experience. Every other time I’d gone through a switch in identities, it had been meticulously arranged beforehand. This time it was weird not being the one to enact everything.
“I’ve got Wes Cooper’s obit ready for the paper, but I won’t submit it until we get the final word from the morgue.”
“No funeral, right?”
“None. That’s in the obit, and I’ve mentioned it a few times whenever I talk to the cops or the lawyer, that we’re going to have a quiet family celebration of life.” She glanced at Evan and Iskander. “Am I missing anything?”
Isk shook his head. “We’ll get you new business cards for the office. A new desk nameplate too.”
“I’m not a cousin this time, am I?”
Lexi scrunched up her nose. “Distant cousin.”
I could live with that. It gave me the backstory I needed to appear in Toronto—I heard my cousin died, so I came to pay my respects, and hey, I had similar skills to Wes’s so...
“He’s going to need a new look.”
We all turned to see Priya standing at the kitchen island, a cup of tea in her hand.
The urge to stand between her and my family was strong, but I fought it back. “Everyone, this is Priya, Hudson’s niece—yes, his actual niece, she’s not dead. She’s also a demon.”
“I’m not a demon, I just...bloody hell. Nice to meet you.” She held out a hand to Lexi, who was closest to her.
Lexi looked at the hand, then at Priya, and then at me. “Is this a joke?”
“Not even close,” I said with a sigh.
“This is why the Order is after her?”
“Apparently.”
She glared at Priya. “Wes, would you mind... I need to talk to you right now.”
I gestured in the direction of the empty office. “Lead the way.”
“We’ll hold down the fort.” Iskander gave Priya a wary look.
Lexi shut the thick wooden door behind us with a definite click and rounded on me. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“I know.”
“She’s a fucking demon, and you’re letting her walk around, la-dee-da, like everything’s fine?”
“I know.” Briefly, I outlined Priya’s situation, and the discussion we’d had earlier that morning. Particularly the fact that Hudson was invested in believing Priya’s story.
“Oh, no. No, no, no. This isn’t ‘some good people on both sides’ shit. Bad decisions, passionate decisions—those I can understand and probably forgive. But she has a demon inside of her, Wes. An evil entity with no morality, no sense of right or wrong, no concept of doing the right thing. It has to be influencing her constantly.”
I flopped onto the couch under the window, Lexi’s words chasing me down. They echoed my thoughts, which is why they stung. “But what if...”
“What?”
“What if demons aren’t inherently evil?”
She threw her hands in the air and strode away from me a few steps before spinning around again and pointing at me. “No. Stop. You can’t go against all the lore in all the books and legends and stories because Hudson’s niece says she’s not all bad, honest. I mean, Jesus Christ, Wes, she admitted to killing a guy.”
“Hudson killed more than one vampire when he escaped Pike. Evan killed Julia.” I felt like I’d flipped into Hudson’s role, defending Priya, but that was because Hudson’s argument resonated with me. Just like Lexi’s did.
“Hudson killed out of a need for self-preservation. Evan killed to save his friends and prevent a demon from gaining immortality. You can’t argue against either of those. But choosing to kill someone to get vengeance? That’s a different level, and you know it.”
“I know. I get it. But...” I bent forward and braced my elbows on my knees, cupping my forehead in my palms. “Hudson doesn’t want to write her off, Lex. What am I supposed to do?”
She walked over and sat down next to me, her side pressed against mine, and leaned into me hard. “You’re supposed to protect him from himself.” She produced the Order of the Onyx Shield card I’d been looking for earlier. “It was on the corkboard. Call them. Find out what they’ve got to say.”
“They’re not going to be objective.”
“No. But the actual truth exists somewhere between what Priya’s told you and what they’ll tell you. And then you’ll know...or at least have a better idea.”
“You know they’re the ones who shot me, right?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I didn’t say they weren’t assholes.”
“Let me use your phone,” I said.
“Oh, right. Yours is—”
“Gone. Again.”
I went through cellphones like some nameless vampires went through whisky.
I dialed the number on the card and put it on speakerphone so I wouldn’t have to relay everything to Lexi. The line picked up after three rings and a woman said, “Oui, allô?”
“Uh...” I checked the phone’s screen to make sure the number I’d dialed matched the card. It did. “Is this the Order of the Onyx Shield?”
Rustling came across the line, as though the phone was changing hands. “Who is this?” The male voice was slightly accented, but I didn’t think it was one of the guys I’d dealt with before.
“Wes Cooper.” I winced. Shit, I needed to r
emember to use my new name. “Make that Taggart Westerson.”
A pause. “I see... Mr. Westerson. I did not expect you to be calling.”
“Yeah, because one of your guys shot me in the head, huh? Lucky for you, I’m hard to kill.”
“I’m glad for it—it was an unfortunate mistake.”
Oh, sure. Firing into a busy street and hitting a target you didn’t intend—anyone could have done it. Jesus.
“How can I help you?”
“Priya Rojas,” I said.
“Yes?” I definitely had his interest now. “Have you seen her?”
I let that question hang for the moment. “What’s her story?”
“I will assume you are well-versed in the paranormal.”
“That would be an accurate assumption.”
“Priya Rojas is possessed. A demon was summoned into her body, and afterwards, she went on a killing spree.”
I glanced at Lexi. “A spree?”
“She is responsible for at least three murders. We suspect she was also involved in the death of her best friend, Hannah Montgomery.”
My stomach sank. Even if the truth was somewhere between what the Order was telling me and what Priya had said, it was not a good middle to be in. But being involved with a cop had taught me a few things.
“What proof do you have?”
The man hesitated. “Eyewitness reports.”
“And I assume these eyewitnesses are credible?”
“Of course.”
That response came too quick. How much did I want to bet that these eyewitnesses were members of the Order?
“She’s suspected of murdering Hannah and who else?”
“Hannah’s husband, Gareth Bookerson III, as well as Seamus MacLeod and Jamie King.”
“And they were?”
“Valued colleagues.”
Pieces fell into place. Priya had said only that she’d kicked their asses, not that they’re survived it. Self-defense, though—could I blame her for that?
Even putting those casualties aside, that left Gareth and Hannah. Given that Priya hadn’t told us the full truth about the other two men, it was entirely possible that she’d fudged the details of Hannah’s death too. Maybe this wasn’t a case of her exacting vengeance on Gareth, but her killing the two of them out of some twisted overabundance of jealousy. Maybe the demon had messed with her memories. God, who knew? With it living inside of her and having access to her thoughts, anything was possible.