“We’ll wait for her here,” I said as a new wave of energy crashed onto my chest. “She has to come back at some point. She won’t leave her mother behind.”

  “Adrian.” My name was a warning on Eae’s lips.

  “No, just listen to me. If I break the deal for her, she can’t be blamed, can she?”

  “I don’t know the technical terms of their deal, kid.”

  “You said you could listen to everything they say when people make the deal. How can you not know this?” Maybe he was just kidding. It was like him to joke even in the most difficult situations.

  “Because I wasn’t focused on her at the time. I was focused on releasing you. And I did hear the deal as it was made. The problem is, I didn’t hear anything else! She disappeared from my radar altogether. I’ve told you this a thousand times.” He sounded tired, and I couldn’t have cared less.

  “You have told me this a thousand times. What does it tell you that I keep asking?” It was a low blow, but I had no other choice. I needed him to be on board with this, damn it.

  “It tells me you don’t believe me,” Eae said.

  “You’re hiding something from me,” I said because I did believe him about Willow. I just didn’t want to admit it to his face.

  “Of course I am. I’ve always kept secrets, and I always will. You’re human. I’m not going to share everything with you, ever. The sooner you accept that, the better.” He pulled his lips inside his mouth for a second as if he hated saying those words as much as I hated hearing them. “Now, stop being a fucking pussy, and get back in the car,” he said before he turned back to where we came from. “I’ll wait for you there.”

  He didn’t stop or turn to look at me, and I was thankful for that. I wanted to be mad at him, but he was at least being honest. I couldn’t hold that against him. And it wasn’t like I wanted to know all his secrets, anyway.

  My head pounded, blurring the view in front of me. I needed some time to clear my head—away from Eae—so I sat on the sidewalk and focused on breathing before my head exploded from questions, the answers to which I didn’t want to think about.

  What if Eae was right? What if Willow really couldn’t see me because of her deal? Did that mean I would never see her again?

  It could very well be. Maybe it was time I began to accept that…just not tonight.

  Tonight, I sat on the sidewalk and I looked around the street, hoping to see her walking to me with a smile on her face.

  She never did.

  This was even worse than deciding to go to New Jersey to free my brothers back when I thought Pops was going to die. Did I continue to go after her, or did I just give up?

  When I heard footsteps coming from behind me, my heart skipped a long beat. I jumped to my feet and spun around, half of me sure that she was going to be right there.

  Instead, I saw Eae.

  He was much closer to me than I thought he would be, and he looked at me like he was about to start crying any second now.

  “Eae?” I said, trying to move away so I could see his face better under the light of the moon. I never got the chance.

  “Sorry, kid,” he whispered, his voice weaker than I’d ever heard it before.

  The last thing I remember was the pain that spread on the side of my head when he hit me.

  At first, I thought I was dreaming.

  “I’ll give it to you, brother. I never thought you’d do it.” It was the Devil’s voice. I would have recognized it anywhere.

  “Thank you, Luc. It means the world to me, coming from you.” Eae. It was Eae, and they were both very close to me. Trying to open my eyes didn’t work, but I was lying on something soft. Leather. My head was against glass. That’s how I knew that I was in Eae’s car, probably lying on the backseat while he and the Devil had a chat. No wonder I couldn’t move. I never could when the two of them met.

  “You know this isn’t going to stop me, right?” the Devil said.

  The left side of my head still hurt, and it was very hard to focus.

  “I think it will.” I could practically hear the smile in Eae’s voice.

  The Devil laughed dryly. “On the contrary—it’s going to make my job easier for me, that’s all.”

  “What did you expect me to do? You practically told me that he was all you wanted. Was I to just sit around and wait for you to take him?”

  My first thought was that Eae had killed me. Maybe I’d died and gone to hell, and that’s why I could hear them speaking.

  But I was pretty sure hell didn’t have leather seats.

  “I had no idea your fears ran so deep, either,” the Devil said, as pleased with himself as ever.

  “I didn’t do this because of fear, brother. I did it because I know you, and if you want something as badly as you do Adrian, you would’ve found a way to trick him into it.”

  Suddenly, everything became clear. On the inside, I screamed at the top of my voice.

  Eae hadn’t killed me. He’d done something far worse.

  “Ah, but you’re wrong. You know very well I wouldn’t need to use any tricks,” the Devil said. “You were afraid I’d take him the same way I did Grim. And in case you need the reminder, I took him from you without any trick.”

  Grim? As in, the Grim Reaper?

  “What’s done is done, Lucifer. If that’s all, get the fuck out of my car,” Eae spit.

  “Just one question—what do you think will happen when he wakes up and finds out what you did? When you tell him he can never see his precious Willow again or what happens if he does? Because I might just have a change of heart and make her come see him, right now.”

  Something moved and I would have given my right arm to see what the hell was happening, but no matter how hard I tried to open my eyes, they wouldn’t budge.

  “Don’t you dare,” Eae said his words filled with hatred.

  “I don’t think I’ll have to do anything. He’ll be gone the second you tell him.”

  A long moment of silence before something clicked. “Get out.”

  “This isn’t over, Eae,” the Devil whispered.

  It could have been just me, but he sounded like he meant it.

  “You’re not going to have him, Lucifer. Not while I’m here,” Eae said. “I suggest you make better use of your time and find out who’s playing you for the fool you are.”

  “I’m a fool?” The Devil sounded surprised.

  “Do you know who wanted to kill Adrian in the first place?” There was no answer. “Then, yes, brother. You’re a fool.”

  Warmth spread from my chest to every part of my body. Air slipped into my lungs, bringing me back to life. My eyes finally opened, but now, I didn’t want to move. I just looked at the roof of the car.

  “And I’m worse,” Eae whispered to himself. He had no reason to think I was awake, that I’d heard.

  I’d heard everything, and now I wished I hadn’t.

  “You did it,” I whispered, and Eae jumped in his seat. My voice sounded strange, like it was not my own.

  “You’re awake,” Eae said breathlessly.

  “Why did you do it, Eae?” It was beyond me. I could feel it in my bones now that the shock of being knocked out, then frozen for a few minutes, had passed. My tattoo was just a tattoo again. Prae was gone.

  I was no longer Eae’s Aux.

  The angel let out a loud sigh. “Would you believe me if I said that I did it to protect you?”

  It was ridiculous enough to laugh at him. Instead, I sat up and met his eyes. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, but he turned to me and looked like he already knew what he’d done. But he didn’t. He had no idea what it meant to me.

  I pulled the sleeve of my shirt up and looked at Prae’s tattoo. To see it—so dull and lifeless—made me feel like I’d lost someone. I’d lost a part of me that I was never going to get back.

  “Adrian, I’m sorry,” Eae said, but I barely heard him. I pulled the sleeve down and looked out the windshield. Hope had left me. Everything had left me. All that remained was disappointment.

  “I can only imagine how you must feel,” Eae said. “And if I had any other choice, I wouldn’t have done it. But I do know Lucifer—”

  “This has nothing to do with Lucifer,” I said. I’d already heard enough.

  “This has everything to do with him,” he insisted.

  “No, Eae. The only issue here was your lack of trust. You didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust that I’d say no if he offered me another deal.” If I ever thought he did, I had fooled myself.

  “That’s not true,” Eae said. “I do trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”

  “Who was it?” I wondered out loud. “Was it really the Grim Reaper?”

  I knew he’d never answer me that. He had said it himself—he was always going to keep secrets from me because he was an Angel, and I wasn’t.

  And that was fine now. I wasn’t tied to him anymore. I was no longer his fucking help.

  Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe now I was free to go back to my family and find Willow on my own. I just needed a little time to come to terms with how much my life had changed when Eae walked into it and how much it was going to change now that I was walking out of his.

  Without another thought, I opened the door and got out of the car.

  He followed.

  “Where are you going, Adrian?”

  “Home,” I said, though I no longer owed him any explanation.

  “Adrian—”

  “You probably never heard this before, but you’re a worse coward than I would have guessed. You took the easy way out and I just…” My voice trailed off. I had so many things I wanted to talk to him about, and now there was nothing. What else could I say? What was done was done. It was over. “I’m no help to you anymore, Eae. We’re done. I’m going back to my family.”

  “You can’t go after Willow,” he called, never moving away from his car.

  I turned around to face him. “You can’t tell me what to do. Not anymore.”

  “You’ll die, Adrian. If you see Willow, you’ll die,” he said. “When she made a deal with my brother, it was to keep you from dying. If you see her, that deal is off.”

  “You weren’t so concerned about me seeing her a day ago, were you?”

  “I wasn’t because you were my Aux. My power protected you. Healed you. Now…” He couldn’t even finish the fucking sentence, so I did it for him.

  “I’m not your Aux anymore. Your power doesn’t protect me.”

  I didn’t know what was worse, the painful look on his face or the fact that I believed him.

  “Well, then, thanks for that, too,” I said and walked away.

  “Adrian, please,” Eae called after me, but I didn’t turn. I’d had enough.

  I walked down the street in wherever we were—because it didn’t look like we were in New Haven anymore—trying to figure out if it was worth dying just to see Willow one more time. My hand went to my chest instinctively because I remembered with clarity what it was like to have that bullet in there, killing me, little by little.

  And the answer was yes—Willow was worth it. My mind was made up, and that terrified me. I didn’t know exactly how long I could put off going after her, but I did know that I owed my father and my brothers a little more time. A better explanation.

  But how was I going to explain going back home when I’d told them just a couple days ago that they wouldn’t be seeing me for a while?

  By the time I made it to a bus station, all the lies I came up with to tell my family exhausted me. I couldn’t tell them the truth because they’d never let me go after Willow, and I couldn’t lie to them and look them in the eyes every day, even if it was for just a little time. I felt like every door was shutting in my face, and there was no more room left to breathe.

  In the toilet of the bus station, I splashed ice-cold water on my face and neck to help me clear my mind. It didn’t matter what I decided to tell my family. Nobody was going to stop me from finding Willow—not even myself. I’d put her in the mess she was in, and if I didn’t have Prae to release her from her deal, then I would release her by breaking it.

  “Adrian Ward?”

  I looked up in the mirror in front of me to see who it was that called my name. It was a man with dark hair and completely black eyes, a couple years older than me, if that. I narrowed my brows in question because I was pretty sure I’d never seen him before.

  He smiled.

  Everything went dark.

  Chapter Eleven

  Willow Robinson

  The demon smiled at her date—a young man who looked so out of his element in the fancy restaurant, his cheeks were constantly red. She was a succubus, and from what Cirko told me, she didn’t choose her humans at random. Instead, she established a relationship with them first. She took the men out on dates and stayed with them for weeks, sometimes months, all the time drawing out their energy through sexual pleasure to keep herself alive and to keep looking so goddamn gorgeous.

  Her ash blonde hair fell in waves on one shoulder and was pinned with a golden feather on the other side. The smile on her soft pink lips screamed sex, and the green dress she wore, so tight I was afraid a button was going to pop off, insinuated the same.

  I stood by the bar and watched her, drinking my bourbon even though it was still only two p.m. There were a lot of people in the restaurant, but she was very hard to miss when her eyes shone yellow like that. Just a few steps closer and I’d feel her presence—the equivalent of an ice cube sliding down my back and slipping into my skin until it reached my bones. It had always been like this, for as long as I could remember. The only difference now was that I was no longer alone.

  Cirko and I had been following this particular succubus around for two days now, hoping to get her alone, but until now, we’d had no luck. Today, we were going to follow her back to her apartment, and we were going to knock her date out before we were done with her. I didn’t like to involve humans in my hunts, but this time, it looked like we would have no other choice.

  When the succubus stood up, I thought our wait was finally over. Then I noticed that her date was still eating his dessert. They weren’t leaving. She was just going to use the restroom.

  I took out my phone and typed a quick text to Cirko. This was our shot. We could get her in the ladies’ room if we were lucky, and by the looks of it, I had about two minutes to go there and make sure it was clear.

  Jumping off the barstool, I ran to the ladies’ room as fast as I could without attracting too much attention. Luckily, the succubus was walking really slowly. It could have been her extremely high heels, or maybe she just liked the way every head in the place turned to her when she passed. Whichever it was, it gave me more than enough time.

  One woman was at the sinks washing her hands and redoing her lipstick. I didn’t bother to tell her to leave—she was going to be gone soon enough. I checked the five stalls to make sure nobody else was there, and when I was sure that we were all alone, I texted Cirko again. He needed to guard the door so nobody else came in, not until I finished the job.

  The woman patted her hands dry with a paper towel, looking at me like I’d lost my mind for opening all of the stalls like that, but I only grinned. Just as she turned for the door, it opened, and the yellow-eyed succubus walked in. It was easy to see why her date resembled a very young model when she looked like that. Even the woman who was leaving turned her head back to check her out when the succubus passed her by.

  I went to the last sink and turned on the cold water to give her time to get in one of the stalls. Catching her with her panties down was going to make this easy as pie, but she wasn’t there to take a piss. She was there to check her makeup.

  I almost rolled my eyes. I dried my hands before taking out two of my bone knives from their sheath, a gift from my dead father. They were going to make sure that this succubus never hurt another human again. Through the corner of my eye, I watched her wipe the makeup under her eyes and then take out the powder from her small purse.

  “Quite the date you’ve got out there,” I said before I could help myself, nodding at the door.

  She smiled and looked at me through the mirror. “Back off, sister. He’s all mine,” she said, laughing.

  I cringed. Sister? I never thought I’d see the day.

  “Actually, he’s not.” I raised my hands over the sink, and in the mirror, her eyes moved to my knives instantly. She froze with her powder brush still on her chin. “Before you can suck the life out of him and leave him to die alone, I think I’ll just suck the life out of you for a change.”

  She looked into my eyes, and I could see the dilemma in hers. She was debating whether to stay and try to fight me or just make a run for it.

  She decided on the latter.

  Her makeup and purse dropped on the sink with an annoying clang, and she turned for the door fast as lightning.

  But the door opened before she could reach it, and Cirko smiled brightly. “Hey, there,” he said, his voice light as air. He stepped inside, and the succubus backed off into the room once again, closer to me.

  “You,” she whispered at Cirko, shaking her head.

  “Yes, me. Go ahead, take it in,” he said with a wink. Demons could sense other demons, and this wasn’t the first time that one of our victims was shocked at the sight of Cirko. And my shape-shifter-demon friend just loved the attention.

  “You…you traitor!” the succubus shouted, and she swung a fist at his face too fast for either of us to see it coming. She hit Cirko on the cheek, and by the sound of it, it hurt like hell.

  Surprised, Cirko looked up at her with his brows raised, then moved away when she tried to punch him again.

  “A little help here?” Cirko called when the succubus didn’t stop attacking. I could have laughed at the look on his face. It was priceless, only because he refused to “get his hands dirty.” He insisted that his job was to find demons to kill, not actually kill them, and that was fine by me.

  As much as I would have loved to see this succubus beat Cirko’s ass, I charged at her the next second. I thought she wasn’t going to notice me closing in, and she was going to continue to focus on Cirko, making my job extra easy.

 

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