Wikipedia gave her mythology. Reddit gave her conspiracy theories. None of it matched what she’d seen in that impossible room.
She closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling. The shadows in the corners of her room seemed deeper than usual. Hungrier.
Monday morning. Nine AM.
She could forget. Wake up with a severance check and a blank space where this week had been. Go back to job hunting, to drowning slowly in debt, to being ordinary.
Or she could walk through those doors knowing exactly what stood on the other side.
The pendant grew heavy against her chest. Anchoring. Sure.
Her grandmother had always known this moment would come.
Protect you from hungry things.
Ava spent the weekend pretending she hadn’t already made her choice.
CHAPTER 3
The elevator to sixty-six had never climbed so slowly.
Ava watched the numbers tick upward. She’d chosen her most conservative suit. Charcoal gray. Sharp lines. Armor for whatever came next.
8:55 AM. Five minutes before Victor’s deadline.
The weekend had been a blur. Mia’s questions she couldn’t answer. Her parents’ calls she couldn’t return. Hours spent staring at her laptop, researching demon mythology, finding nothing useful.
Sunday afternoon, she’d walked past three other law firms. Morrison & Reed with its gleaming lobby. Hartwell Associates with the friendly receptionist visible through the glass. Even the small practice on Lexington where she’d interned one summer.
She’d stopped outside each one. Imagined walking in, handing over her resume, starting fresh somewhere normal. Somewhere safe.
At Morrison & Reed, she’d actually reached for the door.
Then she’d thought about the contracts she’d already read. The languages Victor had started teaching her. The way the law suddenly made sense when you understood both sides of it, human and otherwise.
She’d walked away.
“You’re being an idiot,” Mia had said that night, watching Ava pack her briefcase.
“Probably.”
“You could die. You could literally die.”
“I could die crossing the street.”
“That’s not the same and you know it.” Mia had grabbed her arm. “Ava. Why are you going back?”
She hadn’t had a good answer. Just a feeling that walking away from this would mean walking away from something she’d never find again.
So here she was. Monday morning. About to fake-date a demon.
The elevator dinged.
Derek practically fell out of his chair when he saw her. His coffee mug hit the floor, brown liquid spreading across the marble.
“You came back.” He scrambled for paper towels. “Shit. Sorry. I just—most people don’t.”
“Most people?”
