“Not that kind of cooking,” I agreed as I ripped open the container of salt with my teeth, spitting out the cardboard—hoping it didn’t matter that it was iodized—and spread a line at the base of the door, adding a layer of sage and lavender overthe top. The shadows hissed and retreated when meeting the salt line, but the banging continued.
Had I missed a step? The page turned and I stared at the lines for a half second before adding another heap of white granules and tracing an unbroken square, then a circle inside. My fingers trembled as I traced the pattern in the salt, completing the final curve just as the door bowed inward with a sickening crack.
“Fuck!” Angel cursed and recoiled from the door, fingers of ice crackling down the length of it.
I slammed both palms into position, one against the glowing salt rune, one flat against the icy door. The connection hit like a lightning bolt. Raw power reverberated through my bones, rushing through my arms, my variant mark turning from bright red to inky black as the ward’s golden energy snapped into place. My vision tilted, the power flow too much, and I felt the floor rushing up to meet me, but Angel caught me, dragging me out of the path that would interrupt the ward, even as it wound itself into existence.
I breathed deep as lights bounced and danced in a blinding array I wasn’t certain was reality or inside my head.
The darkness screamed.
For a long minute Angel’s grip was the only thing anchoring me to consciousness as the power crystallized, turning into a glowing barrier over the door. Amber light etched across the walls in a slow crawl of woven pattern, the scent of burning sage and oak washing over us.
Silence.
My heart continued to race as I sucked in air, but the shadows vanished, a dim band of light reappearing below the door, familiar, as I knew the hall lights to be. The peephole’s glow returned, and Nox climbed into my lap as Angel’s hot breath warmed my neck, his arms tight around me as he kept himself between me and the door.
“Is it gone?” Ivan asked with a small voice from the doorway of his room.
“Yeah,” I said, the magic easing away even as I felt every inch of the apartment scribe itself in the threshold ward. Was that supposed to be a spell that substantial? Maybe I’d taken Remi’s choices for granted. But I couldn’t find the energy to do anything other than lie there in Angel’s arms and breathe. “But I think I’m going to need more cake.”
“I’ll call it in,” Angel said, holding me. “And get you all the cake you can dream of.”
Which was good, because the weave of the ward crisscrossing the apartment settled and the last of the magic vanished, leaving me little more than a worn-out ragdoll in my boyfriend’s arms.
7
The hallway lookedlike something had clawed its way out of a nightmare and into my apartment. Gouges tore through the carpet, and deep grooves were carved into my door, as if it had been desperate to get inside. My stomach twisted at the visible damage from the shadow nightmare that attacked in the middle of the night.
Across the hall, Nikki’s door stood untouched. Her night out with her sister had either come at the perfect time or, more likely, meant I was the target. And that made Angel growly.
After calling in the attack, he’d insisted on feeding me, though the food sat like a lead ball in my gut, and exhaustion pulled at me, making me long to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. The ward vanished with my waning energy, leaving me worried, and the place lousy with SED, which at least gave me the chance to meet some of the St. Paul teams, including one tall, familiar brunet who caught me off guard as he escorted my best friend upstairs.
“Hardy,” I greeted, offering my hand.
He took it without hesitation, his gaze flicking to my mark as I caught his. Perception-based?
“Holt.” His grip was firm, and thankfully not hesitant. “Good to see you. Heard you got moved to SED. Bet your office is shitting itself to lose you.”
I blinked. “Yeah. You too—wow.”
He smiled. “I volunteered. Pay bump was worth it. Burnout left me no choice. Either change or quit.”
That explained a lot. The last case we’d worked together had been over a year ago, the worst serial killer investigation I’d ever been a part of. At least the monster had turned out to be human, and we’d put him behind bars for life. Small fucking favors.
“You okay?” I asked Nikki.
She looked pale as a sheet but nodded and held out her phone with shaky hands. “I got a Ring notification when it started and ignored it at first, then this morning lots of notices as everyone started moving around.” She held up the phone for me to see the replay.
Darkness dripped from the ceiling like tar, catching on the sconces beside my door, then pooling on the carpet in thick, viscous ribbons that ran together. My breath hitched as the puddle twitched and bubbled, a living Rorschach blot twisting itself inside out. The camera followed the mass unfolding into spider-leg fingers of shadow stretching across the hallway until they swallowed all light, all space, everything but darkness, all centered around my door.
Nikki’s phone screen went dark, but the afterimage of those creeping shadows burned behind my eyelids. I forced a swallow past the knot in my throat. “Well, that’s fucking creepy.”
Hardy nodded. “I’m assuming this was an uninvited guest?” His tone was light, but his shoulders were tense. “Not often we see this sort of thing on this side of the Veil.”
Nikki pocketed her phone with a shaky exhale, her gaze on me wide. I wondered if our long friendship would come to anend now that she had to worry about creepy things following me home from work.
“Sorry,” I told her. Not certain what else to say.
