The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Fall E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Enjoy this urban fantasy series by best-selling author Deborah Wilde. Featuring a snarky heroine, kickass action, and spicy romance, this hilarious adventure sucker-punches you in the heart when you're not looking.

Playtime’s over. 

With the Brotherhood and certain witches gunning for Nava, people are taking bets on who will kill her first.

Not to mention that the shambles of her relationship have just been thrust into the spotlight for a mission to take down one of the deadliest demons she’s faced yet. A demon who’ll force her and Rohan to confront their own inner demons once and for all.

Nava heads to Los Angeles to make her bold play–on all fronts–but can she stop her foes before they destroy her for good? 

And who else will have to die?

Go big or go home, baby.

This sexy, funny, paranormal series is perfect for fans of Kate Daniels, The Hollows, Elemental Assassin, Arcadia Bell, Imp Series, Crossbreed Series, Midnight Empire, and the Guild Codex.

Binge this complete series now!

Leseprobe

THE UNLIKEABLE DEMON HUNTER: FALL

DEBORAH WILDE

Copyright © 2018 by Deborah Wilde.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Cover design by Damonza

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-988681-16-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-988681-17-7 (EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-988681-18-4 (Kindle)

ISBN: 978-1-988681-32-0 (Large Print Edition)

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Excerpt from The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Burn

Become a Wilde One

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

The five leaked song titles from Rohan’s upcoming album that I found on the fan boards were either A) written about me because Rohan wanted to publicly profess his forgiveness, B) not written about me because I was no longer lyric-worthy, or C) written about me but in a completely unflattering light.

“Silver Lining” was the first title I learned about. A case for either scenario “A” or “C” depending on whether I was the silver lining to the tragedies Rohan had faced in his life or I was the tragedy. And if it was the latter, what was this silver lining’s name? Because she and I were going to have words.

Next was “Tourniquet of Phrase,” which was just mean and suggested that he had to staunch the words that came out of my mouth. Another one for the “C” column.

“Rhapsody in You.” As the Magic 8 Ball that I’d had for all of three days as a kid before Ari had dissected it to prove it contained neither magic nor science would have decreed in favor of the “A” column, “All signs point to yes.”

Unless the “you” in the title wasn’t me.

Moving on.

“Asp.” Like the death snake that killed Cleopatra? Did he think I’d be the death of him? Seriously? I’d saved his sorry ass from a magicless life. In fact, I’d probably saved him from a reality in which he moved to the top of a mountain in a fit of emo pique, went off-grid, and eventually ended up with a peg leg because he sucked at gardening and couldn’t produce a single fruit or vegetable. The point was, I’d fixed things. Badly, perhaps, but he also wasn’t a legless mountain man, so there. And he calls me the asp?

And then there was the final leaked title. The title that no matter how I spun it, never left the worst-case column, and in fact added a subsection of “get ready to be dumped and hard.” “Age of Consent.” Because we all knew how he felt about consent.

I decided to take it from the top again and see if perhaps reading them for a seventh time changed anything when a strange noise caught my attention.

I slid my phone into my pocket and peered across the kitchen.

Ari Katz, my twin brother, was humming. Sure, sunshine streamed in through the open glass sliding door, the late July sky was a picture-perfect blue with fat pillowy clouds drifting lazily by, and the pop song streaming off Apple Music was pretty catchy. It would have been plausible, nay, likely even, that another blond guy would bob his head to Katy Perry and hum while doing dinner prep, but my brother? The guy who’d been tortured, liked weird art, and whose magic was the literal manifestation of darkness?

Not on your life.

I dumped more oil and balsamic dressing on the salad in the large wooden bowl that sat on the counter in front of me, pondering that Sherlock quote about eliminating the impossible blah-blah-blah to get to the truth.

And the truth’s denim-clad bubble ass was currently bent over in front of the fridge.

Kane Hashimoto elbowed the fridge door shut, holding by a pair of tongs a raw slab of T-bone that glistened with marinade.

“Do you have…” he glanced around. “A plate?”

“Because your meat is dripping?” Ari asked in a mild voice.

“If it was?” Kane popped a hand on his hip, a cocky smirk on his face.

This foreplay made no sense, since no one, and I mean no one, at Demon Club was getting laid. While Kane’s words sounded a sexy challenge, his arrogance was belied by a look of light panic in his eyes. It seemed unlikely to stem from needing crockery.

Ari, to his credit and my astonishment, didn’t blush. He licked his lips. Slowly. Except again, less foreplay, more cheerful determination, like he was faced with a wild stallion he had to gentle and nothing was going to deter him from his path.

Kane broke out in a full-body blush: from his razor-sharp cheekbones, across his bare sculpted torso, and down into his waistband. He ducked his head; even his spiky black hair looked flustered.

My brother trained a fond expression on him and handed him a platter.

“That’s it.” I threw down the salad servers. “What is going on with you two? Because ever since you came back from that mission in Osoyoos, you’ve been all…” I circled my finger around at the two of them. “That.”

Kane transferred all three raw steaks from the marinade bowl onto the platter. “You need a life, babyslay.”

“We kill demons, remember? Lives are overrated. What I need is cold, hard information so I can stop driving myself crazy.”

Blue-gray eyes met dark brown as Ari and Kane shared a look.

“When’s the last time you spoke to Rohan?” Ari said.

I thunked the salad bowl into my brother’s chest, making his faded green T-shirt ripple. “Salt this. And don’t deflect.”

“There’s nothing going on.” Kane tossed the words out over his shoulder, oh-so-cavalierly, and stepped outside. He had the platter in one hand and the BBQ tongs in the other.

Ari shrugged and tossed a dash of salt onto our salad. “You heard the man.”

If I had a twin sister, I’d have had the details ages ago. No matter. I’d break him.

“If you two are dating, then tell me. Don’t pretend it’s not happening out of some kind of misplaced pity. Don’t want it. Don’t need it.”

Ari set the bowl on the dark granite counter next to the forks and plates I’d already gotten out, then plucked Ro’s favorite purple guitar pick from between my fingers. I blinked, surprised to find that I’d fished it out of the front pocket of my shorts and had been rubbing it like a lucky rabbit’s foot.

Again.

I swiped it back before my twin confiscated it in some misguided Rohan intervention.

Ari glanced outside at Kane on the flagstone patio by the stainless steel BBQ, grilling and singing away. “There’s nothing going–”

An alarm blared from upstairs, startling us.

“Mischa!” I yelled, sprinting for the foyer.

The three of us ran up the curved staircase to Kane’s bedroom.

Technically, the surveillance cameras we’d installed in Mischa Volkov’s townhouse weren’t legal. Neither was the B&E that had allowed us entry while he was at work. But what were pesky laws when the fate of humanity was at stake? I’d made the call and would make it again in a heartbeat.

Kane dropped into his desk chair, tapped the keyboard, and shut down the alarm on our side that had been triggered by Mischa’s garage door opening. He peered at the various room views displayed on his monitor, Ari and I hovering at his shoulder. “Look at his bed. The top sheet is messed up.”

Mischa wasn’t Rasha like Kane, Ari, and myself, but he’d spent some time in the military, given his hospital corners and blanket that was usually so taut you could bounce a quarter off it.

“About the right size and shape for a suitcase,” Ari said.

“The tracker,” I said.

“On it.” Kane brought up another window, this one displaying the blinking light that represented Mischa’s car’s turning off his street. “Wherever are you going?”

Over the past few weeks of watching Mischa, it had become clear he was a man of habit. Or a dude trying very hard to stay under the radar. He worked a boring nine-to-five job, shopped and did meal prep for the week on Sundays, and aside from the rare drink out with co-workers, didn’t socialize. Not once had he left his house on an early Saturday evening like now.

Ari and I sat down on Kane’s mattress and settled in to learn his destination in tense silence. Well, tense silence and cramming as much steak into our mouths as possible to temper the excruciating wait while Mischa drove along the highway for the next forty-five minutes.

Over the past month, we’d hit more dead ends in our investigation of what Rabbi Mandelbaum and his select group of Rasha were up to than a fairgoer in a house of mirrors. Ferdinand Alves and Tessa Müller were still dead, Sienna Powell was still missing, and we still had no definitive clue as to the rabbi’s agenda.

I crossed my fingers for a much-needed break, perking up when Mischa took the turn off for the ferries at Horseshoe Bay.

“He’s going to Bowen. Gotta be. What’s the wait time for the ferry line up?”

Ari opened a browser on his phone. “He’ll make the one at 7:10. With the crossing that gives us about a sixty-minute window.”

Kane nudged Ari’s knee with his. “You good to go?”

My brother wiped off his mouth and tossed his napkin on his plate. “Yup.”

Kane handed me an iPad mini, which I tucked into my waistband against the small of my back under my flowy blouse.

“There shouldn’t be any buffering problems,” he said.

They followed me into my bedroom where I stuffed my feet into runners, tugged on a pair of fingerless gloves, and pulled on a balaclava, carefully tucking all my hair under it.

“You sure you don’t want me to take you?” Ari said.

“My portal mishaps were so two weeks ago. I’m rocking Witch Magic 101. Later, gators.”

“Just make sure you don’t end up in the duck lake at the petting zoo again. That was a hard one to explain.” Ari squeezed my shoulder. “And be careful.”

“You, too.” I pulled them into a hug, rubbing my cloth-covered cheeks against theirs. “If this is the start of all hell breaking loose, I want you both to know how much you mean to me. And also that you’ll need to feed me second dinner later because I expect I’ll be hungry.”

Kane pushed me off of him. “I feel like I’m being groped by Deadpool. Go.”

I closed my eyes. Witch magic was based on the idea of infusion and elimination. All I had to do now was eliminate the spaces in between my start and end points. It was still somewhat surreal that I was now my own mode of long-distance transport, but I gotta admit, witches beat Rasha hands down in the magic department.

I took a deep breath and vanished, landing in the small forest clearing out back of the single-storied, very rustic log cabin that Mischa owned on Bowen Island, and startling the crap out of the herd of deer grazing there. As I didn’t end up all Han Solo embedded in the damn animals, all was well. Most of them bounded off, but one snorted, turning its disdainful gaze on me.

I flicked it the finger and strode into the press of Douglas fir.

Ari and I had spent the past couple weeks unearthing everything there was to know about Mischa, including that he owned this property. He hadn’t tried to hide the fact or anything, but then again, he probably hadn’t expected to be under surveillance.

I inched my way closer and closer to the house that was set well back in the woods. It had been cool under the tree canopy, but the temperature shot up pleasantly as I skirted the back lawn to the bushes under the living room window. I elbowed my way into the brush, doing my best to avoid any brambles, and cautiously raised my head to peer inside.

A man with shaggy brown hair sat sprawled on a battered sofa, texting. One of Mandelbaum’s Not-So-Merry Men, this hunter had actually trained at the Vancouver chapter years ago. He tossed the phone onto the cushions, rose, and padded into the small galley kitchen.

I slid my burner phone out of my pocket and fired off a quick text of my own. He’s here. My phone buzzed two seconds later with a thumbs-up emoji. I stashed it in my pocket, and portalled into the cabin.

“Howdy, neighbor.” I’d never spoken to this man before, so he wouldn’t recognize my voice.

Ilya Volkov’s double take and barked Russian profanity were priceless.

I planted my hands on my hips and cocked an eyebrow. “Come on. I nailed that landing. That was a solid ten by anyone’s standards. Even the Russians. Get it. Russians? ’Cause you’re… Okay, do you speak English?”

His furrowed brow got more slanty and scowly. “I don’t talk to witches.”

Ten points for recognizing I was a witch, and a big sigh of relief that he hadn’t realized I was also a fellow demon hunter, since the exact total of all female Rasha was me. Those fingerless gloves hiding my Rasha ring had been an excellent idea.

Even if he’d seen any photos of me, say in the center of a dart board owned by Rabbi Mandelbaum, my balaclava obscured my face so my identity was hidden.

“You just did. Talk to a witch. Because you answered–” I yelped and portalled behind Ilya and out of the path of the knives that rose of their own accord from the butcher’s block and flew across the cabin to impale me.

They thunked into the wall in a reasonable outline of my head and torso, quivering from the force of their embedment.

“Telekinesis! Aren’t you a special boy?”

Ilya spun around and was caught up in a net of my magic electricity. He struggled, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

I spared half a second to get the cabin layout and assess what else Ilya could use as a weapon. It was one big room, with the only inside door leading to a small bathroom. There was a rumpled bed in one corner, barstools shiny with age pushed haphazardly up against a high round table, and a living room area with a sofa and flat screen TV. The room smelled vaguely of cedar.

It was two steps up from “serial killer in the woods.”

“I just want to have a little chat,” I said. “And before you do something stupid like try and eviscerate me again, look at this.” I moved in close enough for him to see the iPad screen.

His twin brother Mischa was strung up by his wrists in a dusty warehouse, his mouth duct-taped, and his head hanging forward, sporting a fat purple bruise over his left eye.

Ilya’s mouth flattened out into two tight lines, but he didn’t speak.

Since he was still caught fast by my magic, I pulled him toward me, as if he was in a lasso. Yeehaw!

I got all up in his face. “Answer my questions and we all walk away. Fail, or hurt me in any way so I can’t give my team members the signal, and you’ll be attending Mischa’s funeral. Nod once if you understand.”

He glowered at me. His snotty disregard for his predicament was pretty impressive, given he was levitating a couple feet off the ground.

“Think it over. I’m gonna get a drink,” I said. “You want anything? No?”

Leaving him in my magic net, which honestly, was so low-grade it didn’t even qualify as strong-arming, never mind torture, I strolled to the fridge and flung the door open. I staggered back, throwing an arm over my mouth and nose and slammed the door shut, breathing in the scent of the orange floral perfume clinging to my sleeve. Sadly, trying to overpower the stank of the sour milk burning my nose hairs was a losing proposition.

The creepy stuffed owl mounted to the wall with the clock in its belly showed that I was twenty minutes into my allotted sixty.

My phone buzzed with a text from Ari. Took private water taxi.

Shit. That shaved a good fifteen minutes off my window of opportunity.

I dropped my magic and Ilya plummeted to the floor. “Talk.”

One of the bar stools flew across the room and smacked me across the small of my back. I howled, crumpling face down, the iPad slipping from my grasp to bounce on the hideous area rug that boasted a pine cone motif. The person who’d looked at that rug and thought “that’s exactly what I need to tie my room together” needed to be shot.

I pushed myself up onto my knees. “Your brother’s gonna die.”

“He’ll die for the cause.” Ilya raised a fist–to show his solidarity, or just toss a sofa at me, whichever. I wasn’t taking chances.

I blew him into the television. He splintered the screen, the set crashing sideways onto the floor. I snatched up the iPad and marched over to him, shards of glass crunching under my shoes.

“Fucking zealots.”

Give me a villain with verbal diarrhea anytime. Placing the iPad within easy reach, I splayed my hand on his chest.

Ilya stiffened and gasped, my magic wreaking havoc with his heartbeat.

“You feel that, right?” I said. “Arrhythmia. A classic. I could give you trippy visuals that would make virtual reality look like 8-bit. It’s all in the synapses and magnetic pulses. But for my purposes today? Lungs.” I ground my palm into his ribcage. “Ever burned your lungs? I made a troll cry last time I tried it.”

The troll had been on a murderous rampage and had killed two hikers. Killing him had been a mitzvah. This? Not so much.

Ilya’s skin turned bright red, his eyeballs bugging out of his head. This was fucking ruthless, but the fate of the world might literally be at stake if I didn’t stop Mandelbaum and I was desperate for a break. Ilya was my last resort.

I steeled myself and did what I had to. “Think of this as your own electric chair session. Your flesh is swelling and stretching. It’ll break soon, but I’m hoping you catch fire first. Apparently it comes with this cool popping sound like bacon frying, so if you’re not going to talk, I might as well get in some practice time.”

Ilya thrashed against my magic, his mouth slack, uttering garbled sounds.

“Did you want to reconsider? Great. What’s Mandelbaum’s agenda with the demons?” I dialed down the voltage coursing through his system.

He opened his mouth… and spat in my face.

My magic flared with a sharp snap before I strapped it back down under control, wiped the spit off with the hem of my shirt, and tapped a key on the iPad.

“Stage two,” I snarled into the iPad’s built-in mic.

After Kane, unrecognizable in his own balaclava, drove his fist into Mischa’s side, Ilya closed his eyes to block out our persuasion tactics.

I turned up the volume on his brother’s strangled screams, punctuated with meaty thwacks. “Don’t like it? You could stop this. Just say the word.”

Still nothing.

According to the Brotherhood, Ilya Volkov was dead. He hadn’t allowed Mischa to believe that lie and I’d been banking on his connection with his twin to get him to crack now. Since he’d snuck away from whatever nefarious agenda he’d been working on with Mandelbaum to come see Mischa, his brother had to matter.

Personally, I would never have even let Ari suffer stage one.

I glanced at the owl clock. Ten minutes left if I was lucky.

Ilya turned as bright red as a boiled lobster and blood leaked out of his nostrils.

On screen, Mischa’s tenderizing continued.

“Huh. Bones breaking really sound like the crack of a wooden baseball bat.” I let up on the magic for a moment in case he wanted to share.

Ilya wiped the blood away with his sleeve.

“You better have the balls to kill me because I’ll hunt you down for this,” he said through wheezing breaths.

“‘Balls?’ Don’t need them. It doesn’t seem like yours are helping you terribly much at keeping it together, does it?” Fuck. He was really going to sell his brother down the river. I cranked my magic up again.

Ilya’s hair was smoking–on his head, on his arms, on his face–but he didn’t say a word.

Seven minutes left.

“Stage three,” I said into the mic, holding the screen up once more.

Mischa’s face was a bloody pulp. His head lolled at an awkward angle. Kane raised a gun and fired it into Mischa’s knee.

Ilya flinched.

I mentally fist pumped. “Last chance. The cause or your brother.”

The pool of sunshine in the cabin had been dwindling down through our encounter to the last dull rays of twilight. The oppressive gloom now pressing in on us went a long way to setting the appropriate ambiance for the grand finale.

Ilya turned his face away from me.

“Shitty birthday gift for the two of you,” I said. “But kudos on your devotion to the cause. Kill him,” I said into the mic.

Words I never thought I’d say. Especially to a twin.

Several months ago, a Rasha had taken down a ward and facilitated the kidnapping and torture of my brother at the hands of a monster. I hadn’t been able to understand that kind of betrayal and yet here I was, the monster now torturing Ilya and blithely ordering Mischa’s death.

I truly was a Fallen Angel, trying harder and harder to hold on to some of my light.

The image jerkily zoomed in to Kane placing the gun against the back of Mischa’s neck.

“No! I’ll talk.” Ilya rushed his words, his eyes glued to the gun trained on his brother. By the time he neared the end of his debrief, he was practically slurring, his words were tumbling out of him so fast.

Good thing the iPad was recording all the important intel he was spilling because my entire focus was on keeping him pinned in place. Physically and emotionally, I was exhausted. My vision swam and my breathing was labored, but I didn’t want to release him until I had the full picture.

A car crunched over the gravel, coming closer up the drive.

My time was up. iPad in hand, I released Ilya, but in the split second before I could portal out, he used his telekinesis to blow me through the window.

Glass exploded around me, cutting into my flesh as I sailed into the air and landed in the driveway with all my weight on my left ankle. My foot twisted, giving way beneath me with a hot burst of pain, and I slammed forward, breaking my fall with my knees and one forearm on the gravel.

Glass sparkled in my lashes like diamonds, embedded all over my skin like I was a human disco ball. I closed my eyes, using my magic to buzz the pieces out of myself, while blood streamed freely from dozens of gashes, soaking into my clothes and providing an underlying silky texture for the swath of road rash striping my body.

The balaclava was ripped from my head.

Ilya squatted in front of me, blinking in confusion. “You? But…” Headlights from the approaching car illuminated the evil glee on Ilya’s face. “No matter. Now it’s your turn to die.”

“Ilya! Happy birthday!” A man exited the car, carrying a bright pink pastry box that looked cheerfully discordant against the tableau of broken window, bloody Ilya, and me, holding the iPad aloft in a weird Lady Liberty impersonation. The man was hale and whole, in perfect health except for the shocked expression on his face as he slammed the driver’s side door. “What happened?”

“Mischa?” Ilya did his second double take of the day.

I had one way out. Mischa hadn’t seen my face yet so there was only one person who could rat me out. I bracketed Ilya’s face with my hand and pulled on his memories of me, eliminating them.

The one good thing about Rohan’s absence was that it had left me with a whole lot of time to nail several witchy arts. This was one of them.

Ilya’s face went slack, his eyes unfocused. Memory wipe accomplished.

Go, me. Gelman seriously needed to start handing out gold stars to her star pupil. Or rugelach.

Mischa’s booted heels rang closer and closer. “Hey!”

Exit, stage left.

I landed on the back lawn at Demon Club, sweaty, bloody, and in copious amounts of pain, prepared to lay here under the cloudless night sky until I was either found by friends or eaten by wolves. I was tapped out and neither my magic nor my inflamed ankle were capable of getting me back into the house.

Ari discovered me about five minutes later. “Shit, Nee.”

He pulled out a jagged shard that had been too deeply lodged in my collarbone to pop out with my magic.

Fire blazed down through my shoulder. I turned my head and vomited onto the grass.

He carefully scooped me up and carried me inside. “Did you get the answers?”

I nodded, waving the iPad. The screen was cracked but it still worked.

Kane bounded into the kitchen. “How did it look? Am I brilliant or what?”

“She’s injured and exhausted. Wanna give her a minute?” Ari carried me into the TV room and lay me down on one of the oversized leather couches.

They got my ankle propped up with a cold pack, my back settled against a bunch of pillows, and let my accelerated Rasha healing magic do its thing.

Kane reheated some Hawaiian pizza for me, allowing me to shovel in three pieces before once more demanding I sing his praises.

“Yes, you’re a genius. Really.” I licked sauce off my fingers. “I’m not being snarky. Even I was uncomfortable watching it and I knew it was staged.”

Kane had used hundreds of surveillance photos we’d taken of Mischa to create a 3D rendering of his face. Knowing Mischa and Ilya’s birthday might be an occasion for them to meet up, Kane had mapped Mischa’s head onto the footage of a purely fictional torture session we’d filmed. My best friend Leonie had hooked us up with a couple of film student friends from university to help make it happen and man, were those dudes warped. We told them we were filming a short horror film, and they immediately had a dozen disturbing ideas to improve it.

Ari, having a similar build to Mischa, had played the body double when required, while the prop body the film boys had brought along had taken the brunt of the damage.

Kane had worked on the resulting footage around-the-clock, and that was what Ilya had watched. Kane had remained at Demon Club to stream it and stay in contact with me to switch up scenes as needed. Blessings for stage makeup, camera angles, and fake blood. Oh, and high-stress situations that smoothed over any suspension of disbelief issues.

“Play the audio file.” I scrubbed at my arm with the damp cloth my brother had brought me. Sure, I’d stopped bleeding, but being coated in dried, flaking blood wasn’t a step up.

Kane and Ari’s expressions grew grimmer and grimmer the more they heard of Ilya’s babbling.

The Brotherhood’s Executive was comprised of six rabbis who oversaw the organization. As its head, Rabbi Mandelbaum wanted to usher in a new era with some very big-picture thinking: in this day of CCTV and iPhones, the rabbi didn’t think that demons–or the Brotherhood–could be kept secret much longer.

Fair enough, except his plan was to strategically unleash the spawn on the world, swoop in, and play hero. He’d intended for Tessa, a witch in possession of dark magic, to cause an earthquake in a major urban center. By pinpointing the right stress trigger, she’d have set off earthquakes across the globe. Mandelbaum would then have deployed Rasha to all those cities, since demons were drawn to disasters. With those places compromised and on high alert, no one in the organization would have thought twice about the redistribution of hunters.

Then, using demons bound against their will to carry out orders, again thanks to Tessa’s black magic, Mandelbaum would unleash the second wave of spawn on the public in those cities where the Rasha happened to already be conveniently stationed. The Brotherhood would present itself as the only de facto option before any other militaristic group could even think about trying to pull rank. Not that the military could kill demons, since their deaths could only be brought about by magic, but Mandelbaum didn’t even want them getting a toehold on the situation. Plus, he could claim he was preventing unnecessary loss of life from the military.

In one stroke he’d reframe the ensuing terror of people finding out about demons into a huge relief that we’d had these secret heroes all along. The Brotherhood would be universally adored and Mandelbaum would be the most powerful man in the world.

Thanks to Ilya, we also finally confirmed what the deal with the modified gogota had been. An early–and abandoned–line of experimentation to try and make demons even more challenging to kill when they sent them after their enemies.

Like Rasha who strayed from the fold.

I hugged a pillow tight against my chest.

“Go team,” Kane said, his body rigid.

Ari sat with his head in his hands.

“You okay, Ace?” Ari had grown up being Team Brotherhood all the way.

“I knew something like this was coming, but to hear it spelled out so matter-of-factly?” He dragged in a shaky breath.

“The trouble with this plan?” I polished off my last crust. “Tessa’s dead. The use of dark magic burned her up from the inside about a month ago. Ilya said that Mandelbaum hasn’t figured out how to do this without a replacement witch.”

“I’d throw a parade,” Kane said, “except Ilya also mentioned that the rabbi was actively looking for one.”

Heaven help us if he found a woman who had that ability–either the one currently AWOL or the one trapped inside me.

2

Since I was all dented, I spent Saturday night binge watching the final season of Orphan Black off my laptop. Supernatural might not have had the same allure for me anymore now that my day job was destroying the things that went bump in the night, but clones and my Tatiana Maslany crush held up just fine.

By the last episode, I was a teary mess, rolled up in my blankets like a burrito. Battered and bruised, my body ached and worse, my heart ached. I was a puddle of emotions by the final credits, thanks to this stupid show that had given me all the feels.

I put the laptop on the pillow next to me and massaged my temples. For the past month, my head had felt trapped in a vise exerting a continuous, low-grade pressure that pinched the front of my face and made my eyeballs ache in gritty weariness. I hadn’t been able to take a full breath either. I swear my lungs had seized up inhaling on a gasp that horrible night that Ro had left, and never managed to come unstuck.

But I’d have taken ten times that pain if I could have traded away mornings, because bright and early, every day, I would hang in that moment before full wakefulness, a smile blooming across my cheeks, and roll over to face my boyfriend, only to be jolted with the brutal reminder that he wasn’t here. My eyes would snap open, my brain would trip over his absence, and the totality of my loss would swamp me anew.

Being alone put me in that same swamp.

Kane and Ari were out because it was Pride weekend here in Vancouver, which was where Leo and Ms. Clara were as well. I was too battered on every level to be out partying with them. In my fragile state, the smart thing to do would have been to turn off the light and go to sleep, but I was restless. And yearny, which totally needed to be a word. Maybe I’d write the Word of the Day app people.

I fumbled in my side table for Snake Clitspin, my trusty S-shaped vibe, hit the power button, and scrolled through the settings to the particularly delicious pulse/vibe combo guaranteed to get me off in minutes. Kicking off my underwear, I brought him close to my clit Cuntessa de Spluge, Snake whispering you know you want it.

Heat pooled in my belly, my lady parts growing damp.

Snake brushed over my clit and my entire body jumped to attention. I slid the vibe inside me.

Calloused fingertips biting into my sides.

No. Sisters were doing it for themselves. I palmed my tit, massaging the sensitive flesh.

Rohan shooting me a lazy grin as he licked my nipple.

Focus. It was Snake and me and that’s all I needed. My breathing quickened.

Hot gold eyes feasting hungrily on my naked body.

I canted my hips, emptily aware of being filled with silicone instead of Ro’s hard, hot cock. The tight swell inside me receded, and the more I chased it, the more it eluded me.

That glorious fullness of him, thrusting into me, driving me deeper into the mattress.

My thighs clenched at the phantom memory.

I grit my teeth, blocked out all images of dark haired, brown-skinned men that I ached for, and gave ’er. Fifteen long minutes and four setting changes later, I came with a whimper, not a bang.

With a snarl, I tossed Snake away. He hit the wall and bounced to the carpet, buzzing merrily.

I wanted to buzz merrily because I hadn’t buzzed merrily since the night my life had gone to shit, when I’d made a deal with Lilith, the most powerful witch alive, to possess my body in exchange for giving Rohan his powers back.

He’d trapped her unconscious inside me. And while my malevolent tenant was still out like a light, I’d rather have dealt with her than the constant replay of the wreckage that was my relationship.

The Vault it was. My heart was a parched desert, but my biceps were hella toned from whaling on the punching bag.

I turned Snake off, replacing him in the drawer with a stern scolding to up his game next time.

Two hundred and forty-two steps from my bedroom to the Vault. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and not deviate from the route. I limped out the door, careful of my not-yet-healed ankle. Leaning heavily on the bannister, I navigated the stairs to the main floor, and that’s when my stupid betraying feet led me astray.

I clutched the doorframe of Rohan’s bedroom. Uh-uh. I wasn’t going in. Wasn’t going to lay on his bed like an addict, sniffing his pillow, terrified the last of his musky iron scent had finally faded and would portend him fading. From my photos.

From my life.

I didn’t need to turn on the lights to find his hoodie with the blue zipper and blue cowl neck. Snuggling into it, I crawled under his covers. I was injured and he had a better mattress with way more plush bedding so it was only natural to want to recover here. However, I stuffed my burner phone under his pillow, because phoning him was where I drew the line. I wasn’t a pathetic clinger. Our time apart was a slowing down, not a break up. I knew all that, and still, in the dead of night, I’d find myself bathed in sweat and uncertainty.

Why was I the only one who ever reached out?

That wasn’t fair. Ro had put himself on-call from hunting, insisting on taking all the vacation days he’d accrued but never used since he’d become Rasha. Hunters weren’t great at work/life balance. (For the record, I had zero vacation days. I’d been at this gig for almost five months and I had yet to qualify for an extended coffee break.) He was focusing on his dad Dev who’d had a heart attack and was still recovering from double bypass surgery. Any leftover time was focused on his music. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t focusing on us.

In a quiet, secondary way.

As I pounded the pillow into flat submission, a flash of black caught my eye, wedged between the mattress and the wall. I stretched my fingertips to snag it. It was one of the velcro cuffs from the bondage system I’d bought that one time we rented a hotel room. I dropped it like a hot potato, but it was too late.

I was assaulted with images of Rohan, not sexy ones, but playful ones, like the time I’d ambushed him washing his car with an arsenal of water balloons, resulting in the water fight to end all water fights and both of us soaking wet, doubled over laughing. The marathon of Prince hits he’d played for me to tap to, while wearing eyeliner with his feet half-stuffed into a pair of my heels to give me the authentic Royal Badness experience. Every memory of him fighting alongside me, talking to me, feeding me.

And then suddenly hating me.

My brain caught up to my fingers a second after I’d hit speed dial. I tried to end the call before it could actually go through, much less ring.

“You’re up late,” Ro said.

We both were. Vancouver and Los Angeles were in the same time zone.

The huskiness in his voice shivered through me. Whiskey-soaked. No. Stripped down from singing.

I wished I could have seen his face but our one attempt at FaceTime after he’d left had been an unmitigated disaster. I’d spent the entire phone call deconstructing every single expression, not to mention that seeing him somewhere that wasn’t with me was too hard. Too raw. The call had gotten weird and we’d defaulted to these voice-only calls that let me believe in the continued intimacy of our relationship. Since then, we’d fallen into this place where we only had about three safe topics of conversation, the first one being his music.

“Did I interrupt a recording session?” I said.

“Nah. I was just screwing around with a new melody.”

Yeah? What about Josie and the other Pussycats? I tamped my paranoia down. “Nice. The writing’s going well then?”

He made a frustrated sound. “It’s this last song. I can’t get it to fall into place.”

Rohan updated me on the progress of his album, sharing the latest anecdote of his mom Maya, a famous record producer, and him butting heads over the creative direction. Rohan had told me that she’d previously refused to work with him for just this reason and the fact that she’d agreed to for his solo album had his fans going crazy with excitement.

I didn’t begrudge him his happiness or quiet satisfaction, I just wished I got to be there with him, listening to him record, because there’d been a couple times that these anecdotes popped up on his fan boards, and while I’d heard them first, they weren’t any more exclusive and personal for me than any other rando.

Case in point, the leaked song tracks that didn’t include any mention of “Slay,” the tune he’d written for my birthday when I was still his world. His home. Now, I wasn’t sure that song was going to be on the album at all.

“How’s Dev?” I said. Topic number two on our phone call countdown.

Rohan snorted. “Driving everyone crazy because he thinks he can go back to work full-time. Mom actually paid Liam fifty bucks to get him out of the house before she murdered him for pestering her.”

“I’m glad she didn’t have to incorporate prison orange into her wardrobe.” I wrapped my arms around myself, pretending he was the one holding me. “But your dad’s health is good?”

“Yeah. The doctors are really pleased with his recovery. What’s tonight’s T-shirt?” he asked.

I debated whether to press for more than the minimum of personal information about Dev, but I didn’t have it in me to beg for scraps, so I let Ro steer us onto our final topic–and the end of this awful call.

After Ro had gone back to L.A., I’d slept in one of my many snarky T-shirts, like that could somehow armor me up against the night. My discerning taste in quips had always amused Ro, so I’d mentioned it, as part of my “entertaining persona,” a.k.a. conversation topic number three.

“‘I licked it so it’s mine.’”

Right on cue, he chuckled, strained though it was. It was kind of forced, this little ritual of ours. No longer the easy banter that had always flowed between us, more a cautious, careful feeling our way through. I kept telling myself that careful was good. Careful reminded you that you had something precious to lose.

Careful was killing me because it was too close to indifference.

“Hey,” I said brightly, “did I mention I flew ass-first out a plate glass window? I don’t recommend it.”

“Never a dull moment. How badly did the demon bite it?”

Right. I hadn’t actually intended on telling him about today. He’d stepped away from all Brotherhood conspiracies and I hadn’t wanted to drag him back into all that when he was still sorting out his music, his dad, and us. I didn’t want to remind him that I was the one exposing corruption in his Brotherhood, that I was a witch, that I was more trouble than I was worth.

“Same as always,” I hedged.

“You worried that she’s listening?” Ro’s words were measured.

“Lilith?” I did a thorough body scan, but didn’t sense my occupant. Too bad I couldn’t collect rent. My body was valuable real estate. “No. I don’t feel her at all.”

“She’s incredibly powerful. You don’t know what she’s capable of. She could be influencing you without you knowing.”

I sat up. “Is that what you think? That you’re speaking to Lilith or some brainwashed version of me? Is it a phone thing or would you still be wondering if you were looking into my eyes?”

“Don’t blow this up.” He paused for a fraction of a second too long. “I’m sure I’m talking to you. I was just checking you were okay.”

Magic flared off my skin, scorching a hole in his damn hoodie.

“You want to know why I really went through the window? So you can decide if it’s me or not?”

Cue his barely veiled annoyance and alpha posturing that I was about to make his head explode with something dangerous that he didn’t really want to hear but that he would ultimately support because Ro always had my back.

The seconds ticked by.

“Well?” he said.

I pressed my lips together tightly for a breath to compose myself, then I launched into my Ilya encounter, the fake torture session, and everything I’d learned. I left out the part about Ilya recognizing me. What was the point? I’d dealt with it. Rohan was probably worried enough that I’d encountered Ilya at all.

It was a terrible way to dump the details on him. I’d have freaked if he dropped a story like that on me from hundreds of miles away.

“Sounds like you’ve got it handled,” Ro said.

I shot the phone the finger.

“We need to find Sienna before Mandelbaum does,” he said.

“Top of my To Do List.” I switched the phone to my other ear and stretched out on my back. “We also need to make sure that he doesn’t learn about Lilith.”

“Do you have any less shitty news to share?”

Fuck you. I wasn’t the harbinger of doom.

“Nope,” I said breezily. “You should actually consider this a mitzvah, Snowflake.”

“I should, huh?”

“Absolutely. If it wasn’t for me, all this info might have been a surprise for you at some later date, blindsiding you.”

“So I should thank you for ruining the surprise?”

“Well, yeah.”

He gave an aggrieved sigh. “You understand that this is not a typical surprise.”

“I’m not a typical girl. Plus, I don’t like surprises.”

He laughed. “It wasn’t your surprise.”

It was the first time I’d heard him laugh unguardedly in a month. My treacherous heart kicked up, while my brain cautioned me to get off the phone before I begged him to care about me again.

“I don’t like them for anyone.” I pulled the sleeves of his hoodie over my hands. “Listen, I gotta run,” I lied. “Meet Leo.”

“It’s almost three am.”

“Pride weekend. After party thing. You know how I roll.”

“Right. Have fun. Be safe.”

Safe like don’t run into a demon in a dark alley because I worry about you or safe like use a condom because I am totally banging all these other people? Had I been friendzoned and not even issued a memo? Ro was a decent enough guy that he’d tell me if we were officially broken up, wouldn’t he?

I burrowed deeper into his blankets, shivering violently. “Rohan…”

“I’ll let you go. Talk soon.” He disconnected.

I couldn’t keep living in this limbo. I had to know where we stood but I dreaded it at the same time. We were very different people and our relationship had had its share of challenges, but I thought we’d make it. Had that deal with Lilith proven to be one thing too many for him to accept? If we were reunited, would he always look at me and see her?

Had all my previous fears about us being us until we weren’t come true and Ro had ditched the relationship persona for the singer-songwriter one?

Or had he found someone else in L.A.? Someone easier to be with?

I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at nothing, feeling everything. Clinging to the thought that at least I hadn’t fallen in love with him like I had with Cole. At least I hadn’t been that stupid.

My own silver lining.

The lights flicked on and I was crushed by a heavy, sweaty body making kissing noises.

“Get off.” I shoved Kane away. “I’m still injured, you jerk. And you’re getting gold sparkle dust all over Ro’s bed.”

Kane rolled off me, sprawled out on the mattress, hogging all the space. He was dressed in blue skinny jeans hanging low on his hips, exposing a strip of taut abs between them and the red tank top that had ridden up.

Ari lounged in the doorway in his usual all-black attire, Mr. Dangerous with his stubble and blond hair that was slightly scruffy. He looked up from his phone long enough to raise an eyebrow at me in concern.

I shrugged. “How was the party?”

Kane shuddered. “It was all children.”

“Says the ancient twenty-five-year-old.” I poked him. “What’s with passing for normal?”

Kane vibrated with outrage. “Breeder is not normal.”

“Calm your tits. I meant normal, fashion-wise. Your choices are usually diametrically opposed to the rest of humanity. But this? It’s almost like you’re not trying to impress the masses for some reason.” I cast a pointed look at my brother.

“I don’t try, babyslay. I just do. My blessing and my curse.” He rubbed his eyes. He looked haggard, shuttered, and totally unlike his glittering self.

I nudged his shoulder with mine. “How you doing there, buddy?”

His answering smile was too bright, too stretched. “Glorious as usual.”

Before I could press him, Ari let out a soft, “Damn.”

“What’s up, Ace?”

My brother frowned at his screen. “Gary Randall was hit by a car. It’s bad.”

Kane dug his own phone out. “How bad?”

I groaned. “Whatever.”

“You don’t understand,” Kane said. “Gary Randall is–”

“Left wing with record number of assists,” I said. “Picked by the Ducks in the lottery round, threw around a bunch of tantrum slurs on social media about how he was going to dominate that team and they’d better keep up with him. Subsequently traded to Tampa Bay, his dream pick with an astounding contract, especially for someone straight out of Junior League. Did I miss anything other than the fact that you’re one of the many fanboys who thinks this dude bro is the second coming of hockey?”

Kane propped himself up on one elbow. “You like hockey?”

“Nee hates hockey,” Ari said.

“Our mom loves hockey and I was forced to watch.”

“I willingly watched,” Ari said.

“Because you’re defective. If I never see another puck drop, I’ll be a happy girl.” Still, I peered over Kane’s shoulder to watch the viral footage of Randall drunkenly celebrating his signing, then stepping off the curb and crashing into the front of a car so hard he cracked the windshield. There was even lift off. The footage cut off with him slamming onto the cement while people screamed.

I winced. “Yikes.”

“Will he play again?” Kane was frantically scrolling through his news feed.

“Doesn’t say yet,” Ari said.

Kane rolled off the bed and trudged out the door. “This is a sad, sad day.”

I made a shooing motion at Ari. “Go. Comfort him.”

“I’m not… I wasn’t the one Kane was trying to impress tonight.” His hand tightened on his phone, a flash of annoyance crossing his face before he peeled himself off the doorframe and followed Kane.

That left me lying alone in my absentee maybe-boyfriend’s bed, wearing his clothes like a pathetic security blanket.

Romantically, the Katz twins were nailing it.

3

You had to love a guy who had the balls, literally, to go fully regimental in a kilt while walking on his hands.

Welcome to the Vancouver Pride Parade, the happiest place on earth this sunny Sunday.

My father squinted at the underwearless, upside-down, dangly man keeping pace alongside the float ahead of us for Numbers’ Cabaret, a longtime popular gay club here in town. “How does he keep his balance?”

Hips shaking to the infectious disco groove pumping out of the float’s speakers, I tossed more rainbow-packaged condoms from my beribboned basket at the deliriously pumped-up crowds that lined both sides of Robson Street.

“That’s the question you want to ask?”

“Really, Dov,” my mom, Shana, chided.

One of the barely-clad boys gyrating on the slow-moving Numbers platform, all buff in tight shorts and rainbow beads with dewy skin like silk, tossed my mom a whistle. She caught it one-handed like the star softball player she’d been in her youth, blowing it in time with the beat.

“Okay, my little raver,” I said, clamping a hand over it. “I know you’re pumped up for Pride, but let’s remember that hearing is also important. You taught me that.”

Mom laughed. “No. I taught you listening was important. Admit it, you’re just jealous you don’t have one of my magnificent homemade T-shirts.”

“I’m really not.”

My parents had donned matching bright pink shirts proclaiming “I love my gay son.” Mom was even wearing rainbow-colored leis around her neck. This was the only time of year my mom was less than impeccably groomed, so points to her for how much she loved Ari.

I, however, was wearing the fantabulous “I’m not gay, but my boyfriend is” shirt that a drag queen had bestowed upon me years ago. Technically, I identified as heteroflexible, but that didn’t make for a catchy T-shirt.

I’d already texted Ro a photo, in hopes that the phrasing on the shirt might get me some answers about our status. Also to show how busy I was having fun this weekend. No moping around for me.

My goal for Pride? Find mine because it had gotten sadly lost this past month. It was time for me to move forward with my life and today was the day I decided whether Rohan was going to be part of it.

“Ow!” The burly man who I’d just winged on the head with a condom glared at me.

I waved weakly. “Sorry, safety first!”

Mom nudged me. “Put whatever is worrying you aside and enjoy yourself.”

“You’re right. Today is a happy day.”

It really was. My family had started marching in the parade when Ari was fourteen with the PFLAG group at the University of British Columbia where both my parents taught. It had embarrassed him almost as much as he’d loved it.

I loved it, too. Paradegoers were packed ten deep: everyone from elaborately decked out drag queens to buff women from the Dykes on Bykes contingent in sleeveless tuxedo shirts, to burly men in tank tops and flip flops, and families with toddlers holding melting ice creams as they waved at the floats. Rainbows abounded and smiles were wide. Even the harsh heat couldn’t dampen spirits, and I was determined that no demon would change that on my watch. I tracked loud voices from my left, but it was just some people jostling for premium front-row space.

Behind us, the crowd broke out into hooting cries of appreciation. Mom and I turned around in unison.

“What are they doing now?” I asked, rising onto tiptoe for a glimpse of the LGBTQ firefighters in full uniform behind our group.

“Ohhhh.” Mom’s eyes widened and she stopped walking.

“Mom!” I tugged her forward, her head swiveling around like The Exorcist baby’s. “Multitask. Move and describe in accurate detail.”

“They got out the hose, drenching each other. Very well-built, these first responders of ours.”

Dad sucked in his small gut with a wry look, and then shrugged and let it out, hoisting his “We love all our kids!” sign higher.

“Bitch!” Blair Lisowski, a gorgeous diva who was the only person in the world who could speak to my mother that way, bounded up to us in a cloud of vanilla perfume, and gave us both loud smacking smooches. She wrinkled her nose at my still faintly nicked-up skin. At least I wasn’t limping anymore. “Did you go through a windshield?”

“Kind of?” I said.

“Happy Pride, darling,” my mom said. “You look fabulous as always.”

“Yeah, great look.” I nodded in approval at her crocheted bikini top and the flower swizzle sticks threaded through her hair. “Very Love Boat Lido Deck.”

“Finally. Someone who understands what I was going for.” Blair, who had been Blake when I’d met her years ago at a faculty party for our mothers’ history department, clapped her hands. “Brava, sister from another mister.”

It wasn’t really a stretch. I’d been forced to watch that show with her as teens more times than I could count when our families had our semi-regular dinner parties.

“What am I, chopped liver?” my dad huffed.

“Never. Happy Pride, Studly!” Blair threw her arms around my dad, who hugged her fondly. “What’s shaking in the fascinating world of law?” she said. “Unleash any new courses on an unsuspecting student populace?”

Dad rubbed his hands together, spinning the sign he was holding. “I’m doing a second-year course on the reality of reopening cold cases with their exhausted leads and lack of probable cause versus advancements in technology and how fresh eyes, contemporary methodology, and information sharing can be valuable tools.”

“Love it!” Blair declared. As a social activist, her and Dad bonded over the geekiest topics. “I’ll fill you in on my chat with City Council about the zoning permits for the co-op later.” She rolled her eyes. “Oy vey.”

I threw a handful of condoms to a particularly boisterous group of women coming up on my left, blessing our alternate girl-child for sparing me these yawn-inducing chats with my father.

Dad cracked his shoulder to stretch out a kink. “Where’s your mom?”

“Italy,” Blair said. “That workshop opened up at the last second. You’re my parents today.”

“You got it, kid.”

Blair tossed her gorgeous mane of pin-straight blonde hair. The motion caused her enviable boobs, that were more spot-lit than encased in her tiny bikini top, to jiggle. Female heads in a thirty-foot range swiveled in her direction.

“Where’s your Alphabet person to bestow my glad tidings upon?” she said. “You’re missing the second component of the LGBTQ equation, Katzes.”

“The component was making friends,” Ari said, catching up with us and hugging Blair. He’d lost his boring shirt but gained a plastic red fire hat, a rainbow flag cape, and a sunburn on his nose.

“Way to level up on the attire, bro,” I said, adding in a lower voice, “See anything?”

Ari shook his head. He and Kane had been doing sweeps of the parade ground as they marched.

“Yowza,” Blair squealed. “When did you get hot?” She ran a hand over the tattoo of a roaring lion he’d had inked on his shoulder as a late birthday present to himself. “Me like.”

“‘Like’ from a distance, girlfriend.” Kane locked into step with us, smacking Blair’s arm off Ari. He wore white short shorts that showcased his approximately 600 cut leg muscles, a too-small, pink T-shirt that read “Gay as fuck,” and a purple feather boa slung jauntily around his neck.

“Did you know that ‘Ari’ in Hebrew means lion?” Dad said.

We all stared at him in varying degrees of “all righty,” before my mom said, “Yes, it does, love.”

Blair threaded her arm through Ari’s. “Marking your territory, much?” She cast a scathing glance at Kane’s crotch. “You’ll need a bigger hose. Mosey on over to the firemen and ask if you can borrow theirs.”

“Five bucks on Blair,” Mom murmured into my ear.

I clamped my lips together to stifle a laugh. Joking around with my mom? This truly was the best Pride ever.

I fired off a quick text to Rohan. Mom and I are getting along. Too bad you’re not here to witness this modern miracle.

He answered right away. I’m happy for you.

No little dots indicating more was forthcoming. I glared at the screen.

Pride, girlfriend. Get on that. I was going to have to ask him about us straight out, but in the middle of the parade wasn’t the place for it, so I simply texted him back a “Happy Pride” and resolved to call him tonight.

“You good?”

I threw an arm over Ari’s shoulder and grinned at him. “Yes.” I jerked my chin at Kane and Blair still fighting over him. “Not as good as you, though.”

Ari shrugged. “It’s always good to see Blair.”

“Whatever is going on, he obviously cares.”

“I’m more than some possession to be marked and forgotten.” He shook his head and stepped away from me before I could force him to share that juicy anecdote.

Ari would talk when he was ready. Meantime, I was running low on condoms, so I danced up to the Go-Go boys, waving my basket. We’d lost dangly man somewhere along the line.

The lead Go-Go dancer tapped me on the shoulder with a wand before tossing scoops of condoms into my basket from a stainless steel barrel on the corner of the float.