I ran for Steve’s car, lungs heaving, heart thundering, and slammed myself into the driver’s seat, fumbling for my keys. I jolted out into the street almost before I’d shut the door.
It took another seventeen blocks before I even understood where I was, and where I was heading. I was driving back out of town.
I pulled over to the side of the street and cut the engine, breathing hard. I wasn’t going back to Max’s. I’d done what Ihad to do. I’d given Mordechai’s nephew the document about the Graham house. He’d know what to do with it. Whether he wanted to work with Max’s family or not, he’d know what he was looking at when he read the report. I was done. I was out of it.
So now what?
I needed to go home. Steve would want his car, after all. It was his car. I had to get it to him.
But when I pulled into the duplex’s driveway, there was no Steve. The afternoon faded into evening—still no Steve. I texted him; no response. He wasn’t my job, he wasn’t my responsibility, but a gnawing, growling restlessness tapped at me, poking and pulling, refusing me rest. Steve was in danger, I somehow knew. He was weak, open—too open.
He was also my friend.
Standing in the middle of my kitchen, still covered in demon scrawl, I felt something twist inside me at that thought. Twist and shiver, as if looking for a place to hide.
I held out my over-scrubbed hands, turned them over. Curled them into fists.
“Did you do something to Steve?” I asked the air around me coldly. I turned, confronting the fridge because I had nowhere else to look. “Did something bad happen to him because of you?”
No—the voice began, but I had no patience for it now, because I knew—knew! what was going on. Somethinghadhappened last night, when I was coating myself in Sharpie ink. Things had gotten out of hand. Wet, pulsing darkness had built up and spilled over, poisoning everything in its path.
“You told somebody about Steve, didn’t you?” I stared at my muddy reflection in the fridge, feeling almost incandescent with rage. “You also woke up whatever hellstorm was sleeping in Max’s house to get me to go back out there, but you couldn’t leave it at that. You had to push.”
You needed pushed.
“Iknewit.” I was fairly spitting now. “And to make sure I was, you told somebody—something—about Steve, didn’t you? Who? One of your noxious little fucking demon friends? What’s next? Are you going to send Claire a fucking possessed doll?”
Claire wouldn’t have stopped you.
All the blood drained out of my face. “Did you hurt him?” I challenged the microwave glass, spinning around to try and get a glimpse of the thing inside me. “You fuckingbastard.”
The thing inside me fell silent, but my mind was off and running now. Steve would be the perfect target for a demon. He was trusting, sweet, gentle. Good—but not strong. Not hardened. And he walked a shadowy line between partier and addict that got narrower with each passing month.
But where the fuck would a demon take him? Wherewashe?
Nearly blind with rage, I tore through Steve’s clothes and his backpack, pawing through way too many cards and flyers from bars and liquor stores. One place kept showing up, though, one place that resonated in a strange, sick way. A strange, sick way that wasn’t unlike the demon writhing inside me.
But perhaps what I was feeling wasn’t the demon, this time. Maybe it was truth coiled up and ready to explode, and the demon would be collateral damage.
Either way, the creature inside me said not a single word as I stared down at the coaster in my hand. Some club called The Descent. Grabbing my phone, I searched for it—and frowned. Okay, this place was super high ticket. Definitely not Steve’s vibe.
Still…
I checked the clock. It was pushing midnight, and my tension ratcheted tighter. I didn’t care how the evil shitstorm had found Steve, it had. Because of me.
But I wasn’t the kid anymore who’d stumbled across Mordechai while I was out walking my neighbor’s dogs. I wasno longer the girl who trailed him around, mimicking his every move, memorizing each word and sigh. I was the woman who’d evicted a demon on my own, who’d gotten paid $10,000 to take on a totally different houseful of demons out in the middle of goddamned nowhere. The woman with shit scrawled all over my body and cold hard fury thumping through my veins.
And I was also the woman who was going to kick one fucked-up, Sharpie-loving demon right out onto his ass really, really, soon.
But first…I was going to go get Steve.
Chapter
Eighteen
As I prowled through the streets of downtown Chicago, letting my intuition guide me in a way I’d never even considered a possibility before, I realized I’d made a mistake, allowing myself to have a housemate. I’d wanted someone to share the loneliness of my mother’s home, to mask her absence, to make me feel normal.
But I wasn’t normal. I waspossessed. When the hell had that happened, anyway? Before Mom died? After?
