Authors: Sierra Dean
The guy stumbled backwards and hit Liam.
“
Stop
,” I commanded, pointing at Carlos, even though he seemed to be in a trance.
The scene froze.
I hadn’t known I could treat this like a DVR. “Think back to the moment he pushed him.”
Everything moved backwards like a movie on rewind, right up to the point the bro hurled his big insult.
“I want you to think about this carefully, really go over it slowly.” I beckoned to Perry, urging him to come to me and watch from my angle, because I was pretty sure what happened next was going to give us the answer we were looking for.
The detective came to stand beside me, and Wilder moved towards the feet of the body, watching it from the opposite viewpoint.
Everything moved in slow motion as Carlos played the scene over in his mind. Mason took two steps forward, planting his hands on the guy’s chest, and pushed. It wasn’t a hard shove, or the dude would have gone flying across the alley, but it was enough to send him stumbling backwards. He fell into Liam, and they both struggled to keep their feet under them.
“Genie.” Wilder snapped his fingers to get my attention. “You should see this.”
“
Stop
,” I commanded again.
The whole scene became a frozen tableau once more.
I got to Wilder’s side with Perry hot on my heels, and asked Carlos, “Okay, what else do you remember?” The scene was set in motion, and this time I saw what Wilder had wanted to show me.
Liam was about to find his balance and catch the bro, but someone tripped him.
A bare female leg shot out from the building crowd and caught the victim at the back of his ankle. The weight of his falling friend brought him down like a sack of bricks, and we all watched in mute horror as he smashed his head on one of the cinder blocks from the pile I’d used for my demonstration of strength earlier that day, only this one was whole and not broken.
Panic ensued, and the crowd blurred. Carlos’s memory became jittery, I expect because he was running. But things became crisply focused again when he looked at the body.
The cinder block was gone, and the man was bleeding out on the concrete. It was a mess and absolutely looked like an assault.
Carlos’s memory jerked, bouncing as he ran, but before he reached the edge of the salt line I spotted something else. Something that gave me a chill all the way down to the tips of my toes.
There was a blonde girl hurrying away, a bag slung over her shoulders that appeared to weigh enough to make it sag and slow her down some.
She glanced back, and though I’m sure the face meant nothing to Carlos, it meant a great deal to me.
Tansy hit the salt line and vanished.
No one else seemed to notice her.
Both Perry and Wilder saw the intentional trip, and now we all knew how the man had died. Carlos hadn’t mentioned the cinder block, but there was a good chance he hadn’t understood what he was seeing. No one had thought to ask him about it because the block was gone by the time police arrived on the scene.
Because there had been no blood on the dumpster or any other nearby objects, it had been assumed he was hit
with
something, rather than hitting his head
on
something.
We knew better now. We knew it was intentional and that Mason and Emmett hadn’t done it.
I was the only one who knew who
did
do it.
And for some reason I didn’t say anything.
As the memory cloud lifted and Carlos came to, I stayed quiet.
In a daze I put the lid on the smoldering pot and then dumped the whole stinking mess into the dumpster. There was nothing left but melted wax and a sloppy stew of brain and eyes. The magic was all burned out of it.
Wilder helped load the body back into the van, and I shook Carlos’s hand, thanking him.
A small frog leapt away from me and towards the front of the alley.
And the whole time I didn’t say one damn word about Tansy.
Part of me was convinced I must have imagined her, because it was too weird, too kismet to be real. What were the chances my demon sorority house mystery would overlap with the dead body that had landed my boys in jail?
Actually, considering my luck and the circles I ran in, maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked.
Still, it didn’t make sense, and that was the thing keeping my lips sealed. I needed to figure out what Tansy had been doing at the bar and what possible reason she might have had for stealing the cinder block.
I had two threads that were knotted together in an impossible mess and no idea how they’d even come to be in the same place.
I wouldn’t say anything to Perry until I knew for sure Tansy was guilty of something. If she’d just been there as a bystander, there might be a logical explanation.
Yeah right.
As Perry pulled away from the alley, leaving Wilder and me alone once more, I glanced at him, weighing my options.
“Did you see her?” he asked, taking me by complete surprise.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?” It wasn’t like he was accusing me of anything, he just seemed genuinely curious.
“Why didn’t you?”
“This was your rodeo, not mine. I figured I’d see what you did, and you stayed quiet.”
I nodded, staring into the night, listening to the bass thumping at the strip club.
Wub-wub-wub
. It matched the pounding rhythm of my pulse.
“I think we need to go see Tansy.”
Wilder frowned. “We’re not detectives, Genie. We should tell Perry what we saw and let him deal with her.”
“No. I want to go talk to her.” I said it in such a way it shut down any opportunity for further debate. We’d go see Tansy, and that was that. My uncertainty and numbness were fading, and in their place was a building anger I didn’t know what to make of.
“To Cash’s place, then?”
I could see why he’d assume that, but I had a gut feeling I couldn’t ignore. I started walking towards the motorcycle. “To the sorority house.”
“Oh… Hey, I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“I think that’s where she is.”
Wilder was suddenly ahead of me, his hands braced on my shoulders, holding me in place. “
Hey
.” He gave me a gentle shake. “Can you hold on for two seconds?”
“We have to go.”
“Do you remember what happened the last time we were in that house? In what world do you think she would go back there? For that matter, why should
we
go back there? Even with what’s-his-name doing some kind of hoodoo, I don’t think we ought to go back.”
“Santiago.”
“Not my point.”
“Can we just go see if she’s there?” I wasn’t struggling or forcing him into anything, but I felt driven to go to the sorority house to such an extent I would go on my own if he said no. This wasn’t his battle, and he could sit out if he wanted, but I
had
to go.
That probably should have set off some alarm bells in and of itself.
I wasn’t in much of a mood to listen to my own common sense, though, let alone someone else’s.
Wilder was staring at me with such intensity I thought he might be attempting to change my mind by sheer force of will. Wasn’t going to happen. When he finally realized the futility of trying to stop me, he sighed and stepped out of the way, moving with me to the motorcycle.
“I think you’re nuts, but I’m not letting you go alone.”
This brought the faintest of smiles to my lips. I was freaked out about the idea of going back to a demon-infested sorority house, especially at night and with my powers relatively tapped out from my foray into memory magic. I wasn’t sure if I could make a basic protection charm work right now, let alone stop a demon in its tracks.
As I climbed on the bike behind Wilder, I pulled out my phone and texted Santiago.
That spell of yours would be more useful sooner rather than later
.
I didn’t even have my phone back in my pocket when I got his reply.
How soon?
Nowish.
When he didn’t reply again immediately, I put my phone inside my jacket pocket alongside a half-f bag of M&M’s and slipped my helmet on. In spite of the muffled sound from the helmet I heard Wilder ask, “You just messaged him, didn’t you?”
“I did. It wasn’t some kind of tawdry sexting.” I used a joking tone, but I was a little annoyed he’d asked, like I couldn’t be trusted somehow.
He put his helmet on silently, and I knew he didn’t approve. But what else was I supposed to do? If it turned out Tansy was up to something, I wasn’t sure she could be trusted with a demon. Getting Santiago to speed things the hell up and help me exorcise the demon from the house would go a long way to easing the burdens on my plate.
Besides, I hadn’t asked Santiago to come to our rescue, I’d only told him to hurry the hell up with his magic. That seemed like a perfectly rational request if you asked me.
Twenty minutes later we were parked in front of the Delta Phi sorority house, and I no longer doubted we’d done the right thing by coming.
A loud party was in progress, with most of the house lights off but bright flashes going off inside, and a collection of hastily assembled Halloween decorations strewn about the lawn and visible in the windows.
It was only October twelfth.
Much like the strip club we’d left behind, the bass coming out of the house was thumping so loud I could feel it in my chest. I dismounted the motorcycle, keeping one hand on Wilder’s neck. He wrapped his arm around my waist instantly, the kind of instinctive couple-ish gestures we’d both resisted lavishing on each other up until last night.
How many times had I wanted to put my hands on him and held back?
A young man stumbled out the front door with a red Solo cup in hand. He missed the second step and face-planted onto the front sidewalk without spilling a drop of beer. Three girls in the doorway behind him erupted into a cacophonous choir of laughter.
The soundtrack shifted to a hip-hop track so thump-heavy it set my teeth on edge.
“What the fresh hell is this shit?” Wilder managed to sum up my thoughts in one perfect sentence.
“You heard me tell them to get out of the house, right? You were there when I explained there was a fucking demon in there that was responsible for their sisters going missing. Tell me I didn’t imagine that whole interaction.”
“You didn’t.”
He dropped his arm from my waist and got off the motorcycle, joining me on the sidewalk. In any other part of town the cops would have been called in for a noise complaint by now. But since the Delta Phi neighbors were all part of the Greek system, I was guessing none of them minded enough to call it in. They probably took the loud music as an open invitation, if the number of bodies inside was any indication.
Great, so there were fifty or more people crammed inside a demon-infested house, possibly with someone who had helped kill a man and framed my werewolves for it.
Was this what responsibility felt like? I didn’t enjoy it.
“What a goddamned mess,” I sighed. “Hold still for a second.” I pivoted towards him and placed both hands against his chest. The soft material of his sweater was glorious under my fingers, and I had to fight the urge to ball it up in my fists and kiss him.
There’d be time for that later.
Instead I pressed my fingers into the firm muscle of his pecs, hard enough for my nails to scrape flesh. His lip twitched, but he didn’t pull away.
“Who has felt my touch will feel no pain,
Who has seen my face and knows my name,
Whose eyes see my true form
Shall belong to me and meet no harm.”
Wilder’s gaze never moved from my face, his eyes locked on mine the entire time I spoke the incantation. While I could have done the spell just by thinking a protection charm in his general direction, I was tired and weak, and saying the words aloud would give me more control over the outcome.
Wilder covered my hands with his, stroking his thumbs across my knuckles. “Form and harm don’t rhyme,” he whispered.
“Shut up.”
“Thank you.” He kissed my forehead, my nose, and finally brushed a whisper-soft kiss over my lips before pulling back.
What a tease.
“You ready for this?” I glanced over my shoulder to the out-of-control party, already regretting this life choice.
“Am I ready to go into a college party filled with drunk sorority girls? Princess, I was
born
ready.”
Inside the house the volume was almost crushing.
A normal human would have left this party with their ears ringing. For my heightened senses, it was nigh on unbearable to be surrounded by this much noise. Someone was singing a song about bitches and money, and dozens of Tulane co-eds dressed like witches and superheroes were writhing against each other in every room in the Delta Phi house.
Wilder was feeling the intensity of the volume too, I could tell by the way he winced every time the beat would drop and the crowd began to scream.
When your hearing is designed to help you track a deer through the woods at night, it’s torturous to turn the volume up to eleven.
I wanted to cover my ears, but then I’d surely miss any sign of Tansy if she was somewhere in this din.
Everything was working against me in here. The lights were dim, and a series of brightly colored strobes kept throwing the room into strange shadows. With all these bodies, the dance floor was a mix of confusing smells: perfume, beer, sweat, pheromones. I wouldn’t have been able to pick out a single person’s scent if someone offered me a thousand dollars. Plus I’d barely spent twenty minutes with Tansy, and her scent at the time had been muddled with Cash’s. Finding her with my nose was out.
I’d have to locate her the old-fashioned way, going room by room until I figured out where she was.
Taking up all sorts of time we didn’t have.
We might be wiser to split up and go looking for her, but that would mean we’d each be alone in a house with a demon in it. It was hard to think about the very real threat of Gamigan with all this absurd, youthful jubilance going on around us.