It was the middle of the night, and Leon was in the woods.
I smelled him as soon as he got close to the house. Juniper was asleep, stretched out under a blanket on the couch with the TV playing low, so I went out to meet him. The last thing I wanted was for him to creep inside the house and catch her by surprise. What a fucking mess that would be.
I found him by the water.
“Out for a stroll?” I called, grinning as I came up beside him. “Need a light?”
He nodded, and I lit the joint at his lips. He took a few long drags, his foot tapping impatiently, his eyes flickering out across the water.
“He dismissed me, Zane. I’m free.”
I thought I must have hallucinated his words. “You…he what?”
“Kent Hadleigh dismissed me.” He grinned, and it was the kind of grin I hadn’t seen on his face for a long time. A killer’s smile. The smile that had made my heart beat faster the first time I’d seen it. “I told him I’d crush precious Jeremiah’s skull if he didn’t. So he made the right choice. Dismissed me.”
“Holy shit.” I took the joint when he offered it. “A goddamn century later, and finally…You can go home. Fucking hell.”
“You should have seen Jeremiah’s face,” he said. “Pathetic little rat nearly pissed himself.” Then, his face sobered. “There’s a problem though. The grimoire. My name. Kent lost it.”
The only way Kent managed to keep Leon under control was because of that old book. It had given him the knowledge to summon and control a demon like Leon — control him through pain, through torture. The fact that he no longer had it made him vulnerable.
It made Leon vulnerable too. His name was out there again, and if it fell into the wrong hands, he’d end up back under the control of another magician.
“Do you remember the woman from the bar?” Leon said, his voice low. “Raelynn?”
“Your little obsession? Of course I remember.”
I expected him to protest the obsession bit. He didn’t. “Kent wants to sacrifice her.”
“She’s one of the three.” I nodded slowly. “Of course. No wonder the Hadleigh brats were clinging to her.”
“I refused to take her,” he said, his voice even lower, as if he needed to get the words out but didn’t want them heard. “And I’m not going to fucking let him —” He cut himself off. He shook his head, nervous energy making his muscles twitch. “She has the grimoire, Zane. I don’t know how the hell she got it.”
“It’ll be easy enough to get back then.”
“Should be. Might have a little fun toying with her first though.” He smirked. “Speaking of toys…you have a human in the house.”
“Can’t share this one with you,” I said. “She takes a while to warm up to…anything.”
He laughed. “How long have you been after this one?”
“About four years.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’ve always been the patient one.”
“It’s a gift. I just have this insurmountable talent for —” He punched my arm to shut me up. “Fuck, for getting what I want. Asshole.”
“A free asshole.” He stretched his arms. “Well, I’ll leave you to your little toy. If she ever warms up to it, we’ll have ourselves a foursome.”
What Leon said changed things: Kent no longer had him, and he no longer had the grimoire. Without the grimoire’s spells, Kent was significantly more vulnerable; a fact Juniper and I could use to our advantage.
“So he can’t use magic anymore,” Juniper mused, pinching her lip between her thumb and forefinger. “Then he’s just a sitting duck without his demon.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the laptop screen in front of her. “God, Victoria is so annoying. Every other photo is her in a bikini on a yacht.”
“I’ve seen your Instagram feed, Juni. Half the people you follow are hot women in bikinis.”
She glared at me over the top of her laptop screen. “None of those women tried to kill me.”
“Every lover I’ve had has tried to kill me,” I said. “Keeps things exciting.”
She’d been scouring the Hadleighs’ social media for days. With the worst of her wounds healed, she was eager to get back into the thick of things and make her move against them. But choosing where to strike was risky. Even without the grimoire, Kent was hardly helpless.
We still had a big problem to deal with.
“If we take out Kent first, the Libiri will fall apart,” Juniper said. “They’ll be scrambling. If we can start tracking his movements, we can find —”
“There’s something else we need to deal with first.” And I wasn’t looking forward to it, at all. “Kent Hadleigh still has access to magic, even without his little book.”
“We’ll take care of that first then,” she said simply, setting the laptop aside.
I snickered, shaking my head. “What do you know about witches, Juniper?”
She shrugged. “Broomsticks, pointy hats, double, double, toil and trouble.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Are you…are you implying Kent Hadleigh is a witch?”
“He isn’t a witch. His mistress and their daughter are.”
Her eyes slowly widened, realization coming over her. “Heidi and Everly? Are witches?”
“Think about it,” I said. “Think back to the night you crawled out of the mine. I’ve wracked my brain for years trying to figure out how you got away from Leon. But when you said Heidi touched you, it made sense. She hid you from him. Gave you a chance to get away.”
Juniper frowned, her muscles twitching with tension as she thought back. Those memories took over her whole body when they came. She braced for them as if bracing for pain. “Heidi was in the church. She stood beside Kent while he…” She took a moment. One slow deep breath. “She stood beside Kent while he cut me. She did nothing to stop it. Why would she protect me later?”
I shrugged. “Regret, perhaps. Or a vendetta against Kent. From what Leon has said in the past, Kent never treated her or Everly well. A witch with a vendetta is a dangerous thing. Witches, in general, are very dangerous. No broomsticks, no pointy hats, and no cauldrons. Just very powerful magic. The kind of magic any sane demon wouldn’t fuck with.” I sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, I’m not very sane, and neither are you.”
She grinned. “Damn right. Everly was there that night too. She watched.”
“I can only assume she has power like her mother. And while Heidi may have a vendetta against Kent, there’s no guarantee Everly will go against her father. They’re both risks. They’re both dangerous.”
“Then we take them both out.” Juniper leaned back in her chair. “How powerful are they?”
I rubbed my head, holding back a groan. “Listen. There’s very few things demons will avoid fucking with. The first on the ‘No Fuck List’ is Gods. I’m currently breaking that rule, but in general, every demon knows better than to fuck with a God. The second is Reapers: Hell’s executioners. Reapers are to be avoided at all costs, unless you’ve got a death wish. The third is witches. Witches have the power to discover our true names, and therefore control us by magical means.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
“Meaning if we go after the witches and things go south, and they manage to discover my name, they can turn me against you. Granted, they’d need to be incredibly powerful to summon me to their service. But it’s still a possibility.”
Her fingers tapped rapidly on her thigh, her lips pressed tightly together in thought. “What are their weaknesses?”
“Same as any mortals: guns, fire, knives. They can still be caught off guard. They can still bleed.”
“Then we make them bleed.”
But we had to find them first, and it proved not nearly so easy as locating the other Hadleighs.
“The last time any of the Hadleighs had a photo with Heidi Laverne was six years ago,” Juniper said. We were in my car, sitting in the student parking lot at Abelaum University. “She was in a group photo taken in front of the Historical Society building. She used to work there — she guided our field trip through the museum in elementary school. But she’s not listed as faculty on their website. No death records for her.”
“No sign of her at their house last night,” I said. I’d watched the Hadleigh house from the previous evening until nearly noon this morning, before coming to meet up with Juniper. She’d been so excited to drive the car. By the look of the gas tank, she’d done a little more driving than simply going from the house to the university. “I didn’t see Everly either.”
“Strange.” Juniper tapped her fingers against the wheel. She watched every group of students that passed by, on the lookout for familiar faces. “Everly’s social accounts are all locked, so no luck there either. Only one photo of her with the family, from years ago. But she was listed as a vendor for the Main Street Art Fest, so she’s still around.”
“She’s too valuable to Kent for him to let her move away,” I said. “If we find her, there’s a good chance we’ll find her mother.”
Juniper nodded, suddenly going tense as she spotted a group of students making their way across the quad. “There’s Jeremiah. Follow him. We need to know everywhere he goes, who he talks to. I’ll keep an eye out for Victoria.”
“Why do I get Jeremiah?” It wasn’t as if I’d ever interacted with the man, but… “He’s such an obnoxious bastard.”
Leon had told me enough. I knew it was true.
Juniper sighed. “Victoria will notice you if you follow her. If I lay low, she won’t notice me.”
“Seems like it should be the opposite. You two were close.”
“Just trust me,” she said. “Victoria will absolutely notice if some —” She cut herself off abruptly. “Just follow him.”
“No, no, please, go on, Victoria will if…?” She’d regretted whatever she was about to say, therefore, I had to know what it was.
She grit her teeth. “Victoria will notice…” She lowered her voice even more, as if she hated to get the words out. “She’ll notice if some hot guy is following her around.”
“Me? A hot guy? Wow, Juniper, you flatter me —”
“Jesus Christ, just go follow Jeremiah!”
