A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) (3 page)

He grabbed the phone from me. His face paled, and he clenched his jaw. A habit he’d adopted recently. According to him, before being fused with Wrath, he’d had some anger management problems. Now that he was free, he hadn’t exactly reverted to docile. In fact, he seemed to have more control issues than before. He’d only moved into his apartment two weeks ago, and already there were four holes in the wall and a pile of broken flatware. Mom theorized that Wrath left a stain on his soul. I was beginning to think she was right.

He took a deep breath, more than likely counting to ten, like Dad had taught him. “My God… That’s me.”

That would explain the strange looks we’d been getting from people. I squeezed his hand tighter and pulled him close so that our shoulders were touching. Some of the tension left his body, but he was still torqued.

Father Saunders leaned closer. “The Scott family was very influential in the early years of Penance. It makes sense that they’d be a featured part of this display. There’s a table around the corner. I recognized your…
cousin
in several of the pictures and thought it prudent to mention it.”

Mom didn’t seem as ruffled as I felt. “I see,” she said. “Again, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Lukas has had a rough time. I’d like to see him settled back in Penance without creating a scene.”

Without a scene? We were Darkers. There was no such thing…

Chapter Four

The Town Hall building was crowded. Wall-to-wall people milling around, looking at old junk.

At least, that’s how I saw it. Mom and Lukas seemed a bit more intrigued. Okay. Maybe that was the wrong word. Mom crept down the aisles, stalking the tables, while her gaze eagerly combed over the displays. I knew she was probably desperate to stop and take it all in, but she was a woman on a mission. Nothing distracted her while on a job. Well, except that one time where she swore she saw Rob Zombie go into the Quickie Mart…

Lukas followed close behind her. He, too, scanned the tables, but it wasn’t interest or duty in his expression. It was a mix of fear and anger. His past was a trigger we avoided. Really, Mom should have insisted he head back to the office. He couldn’t go nuclear and send the entire town into a fit of rage like when he was attached to Wrath, but he could still do damage. And worse than that, draw attention to himself.

Mom stopped in front of a table in the middle row and studied the plaque displayed prominently at the front. I rose onto my tiptoes and peered over her shoulder. She hated when I did that, so naturally I did it every chance I could.

“Scandal in Penance,” I read aloud. “Ha. Finally, something interesting.” I stepped around her to get a better look. Beside the plaque were several pictures of a petite woman in a poufy dress. “Lorna Belfair, of the well-respected Belfair family, was quite the subject of chatter in her day…”

Lukas picked up one of the pictures. “Is this the same Lorna—”

“That helped Simon?” Mom finished for him. “I believe so.”

“It says here that she disappeared in 1880.”

I bent down to get a better look at the writing on the card in front of one of the pictures. “That’s not all it says. Listen to this—Lorna was ostracized by her family due to rumors of nefarious conduct with unsavory characters. She lived alone on the outskirts of town, until one day in May of 1906, her cabin was discovered empty. Lorna was never seen or heard from again.”

Lukas put down the picture. His lips pressed in a grim line, he sighed. “So they drove her away?”

“It’s possible.” Mom put a hand on his shoulder. They’d grown close in the last couple months. She’d taken on the role of a surrogate, and Lukas seemed more than happy to accept. They’d sit for hours huddled together over books, soaking up knowledge like it was going out of style. “But we’ll never know for sure.”

We tried not to ask questions about Lukas’s past, but I couldn’t help it. “Did you know her?”

He looked at me, surprised, then nodded. “We met once. At Simon’s. She was a good woman. Not a typical Belfair.”

My best friend was a Belfair, and I should have been insulted on her behalf, but I wasn’t, because she wasn’t a typical Belfair, either. The rest of the family had a history of being self-serving and dark. They weren’t exactly pillars of the community. Lorna Belfair, though, was different. To help save lives, she’d aided Simon Darker in imprisoning Lukas’s ex, the powerful witch responsible for trapping him with the Seven Deadly Sins.

Mom continued down the row. “Let’s keep going. I want to find the Darker display and see what we’re dealing with here.”

I made a move to follow, but a wave of nausea rolled through me. My stomach felt like it’d been turned inside out, and there was a throbbing in my temples that rivaled the worst sinus headache known to man.

“We can—” Mom froze. “Jessie?”

Forget not feeling well. In that instant my entire world was spinning. My arms shot out, grabbing for the nearest stationary object. Mom’s lips were still moving, but I couldn’t make out the words anymore. Her hands came to my shoulders. I didn’t feel the weight of them—in fact, I didn’t feel anything except an echoing ring inside my head that kept getting louder.

“Need to get out of—”

Lukas understood right away what I was trying to say. He slipped his arm under mine and half dragged me to the far corner of the room, behind the thick black drapes.

“Hell in a hailstorm,” I mumbled just before the ground beneath my feet disappeared.

My stomach turned over, and a rush of icy wind cut through me as though I was wearing a bikini in a blizzard. The room swam for a moment, Lukas’s face blurred and became watery, and when my vision cleared, I was sitting in a chaise lounge across from a familiar set of aqua-colored eyes.

“Nice of you to drop by, Peaches.” Valefar leaned against his desk. He wore the same thing he always did. Black from head to toe, worn shit-kickers, and the kind of grin that made you wonder what he’d just been up to. In his case, he’d probably been drowning puppies or dropping water balloons full of ink on little old ladies. “Long time, no see.”

I stumbled to my feet, anxious to get away from the chaise. Everything in this office, from the furniture, right down to the clothes on Valefar’s back, were an illusion. Once in a while I’d get a glimpse of what really lay beneath the glamour—and it wasn’t pretty. The chaise was a foul, bloody thing with veins and what could only be described as twitching muscle. I had nightmares about it. I’d sit down and the damn thing would try to swallow me whole. Sometimes it would even laugh. A low, rumbling sound that jarred me from a deep sleep drenched in a cold sweat.

Rubbing my head, I said, “I really wish you’d give me some kind of warning before doing that.”

“I have a solution to that,” he said with a deceptively boyish grin. If he’d been human, that smile would have done a lot of girls in. But, that made sense, I suppose. If you could make yourself look like anyone, why be ugly? “My offer still stands.”

The offer in question was my own personal room in hell. Literally. Since I was one of his minions now, I should maintain a room at
HQ
—his words, not mine. There was something about the word minion. Creepy and cartoony all at the same time. I either thought about stooped, scaly things with razor-tipped teeth and warm, foul breath, or those funny little yellow dudes from that movie…

“Pass,” I said, folding my arms. “Was there something you needed?”

He pushed off the desk and began circling me. Like a vulture, I thought. Just waiting for the opportunity to swoop in and take a nice big bite. “You know, Cookie Dough, you’re the only one who has ever gotten away with talking to me like that. Even your father didn’t go there with me.” He stopped, bringing his face inches from mine. All the humor was gone, replaced by a look that would have scared even the most badass Monster Masher. I swallowed hard, holding my breath, and to my credit, didn’t back away. “Normally, I think it’s amusing. Fair warning, though. I’ve had a trying day.”

Message received. I clamped my mouth closed tight and bit down on the inside of my cheek. Valefar straightened and took a step back, expression thawing just a little. “There are rules in the Shadow Realm. Rules that, if broken, are punishable by things far worse than death.” He clapped his hands once, and a small, brown, leather-clad book appeared. Holding it out to me, he said, “You will need to learn these rules. Obey them. You get one free pass, and you’ve used it.”

I didn’t reach for the book. Other than the fact that I really didn’t want to know anything more about this world than I already did, a moment of clarity—what I called the flashes of reality I got when down here—showed the book was really covered in gore. Throbbing muscle and bits of blood-soaked skin. “You’re saying I screwed up? I broke a
rule
?”

He narrowed his eyes, and I noticed he’d added a piercing to his look since the last time I’d seen him. Through the right brow. It was a small silver thing that looked a bit like a dog. “You broke several.”

I had to tread carefully. If I’d broken a rule, it was because his instructions had been a joke, but I couldn’t really say that. Deep breath. “What rule did I break?”

“You brought a live human to the Shadow Realm.”

I blinked. Was he serious? Well, at least that explained the crazy-eyes I’d gotten when I marched Swain into the building. But how the heck else was I supposed to get him here? In a block of ice à la Walt Disney? “

If that wasn’t what I was supposed to do, you should have told me beforehand. All you said was bring him back!” My voice had exceeded the
safe Valefar tone
I’d adopted, but I didn’t care. It was hard for me to accept that my foreseeable future was going to be dictated by someone else’s whims, but to be expected to know something without being told? Um, no. My partial demon genetics hadn’t come with handy dandy ESP.

Another snap of his fingers, and the book was out of his hands and in the pocket of my jacket. Great. I’d have to steam clean the thing twice before I could wear it again. “We’re finished here.”

And boom. I blinked and found myself transported outside, standing across the river in front of Valefar’s building. I thought about barging back in to try to get more information but decided the best course of action at this point was to leave it be. Maybe Dad knew about this alleged rule breaking so I didn’t have to actually touch that book.

I started walking. It was funny. You had to be able to shadow to get to the Shadow Realm, but you couldn’t use the ability while you were here. I’d never seen a vehicle of any kind, so unless I was missing something, everyone had to hoof it from place to place.

Dad’s building was about a mile away from Valefar’s. A small, unlabeled place. Each demon Master in the Shadow Realm had a cover business located somewhere in the mortal realm. Valefar’s—Value Far Insurance—was just outside the Ledges, the ritzy part of Penance, and dealt in desperation. I only knew this because he’d told me. In excruciating detail. The guy loved the sound of his own voice.

Each demon had a specialty. I didn’t know what Dad’s job was because he didn’t like talking about it with Mom and me. Though, I could totally see him rocking the lock pick gig. As a Shadow demon, it would have been ironic.

“Would you like to cross the river, little demon?” a voice drawled to my right. Accented with the slightest hint of southern twang, it sent icy chills skittering up and down my spine.

“Yes,” I said, without turning to look at him. Kheron was the Shadow Realm version of the ferryman—AKA the
real
version. The first time I’d come here, I’d paid to cross the river with a strand of my hair. Hair that Valefar later used to bind me to him. Just like everyone else, I had my stupid moments.

Thankfully, since I worked for Valefar, I didn’t need to pay the creepy piper to cross, but that didn’t mean Kheron didn’t freak me out. He looked normal. Cute, even—if you were into the deranged-looking type—but there was just something about him that sent the goose bumps jumping up across my skin. Maybe it was the way he stared, without ever blinking, or the way he stood so completely still.

The black river began to bubble and spit, and after a moment, a narrow concrete pathway rose to the surface. “A pleasure as always,” Kheron called as I started across.

I didn’t look back. Moments of clarity had revealed that Kheron was really a skinless, eyeless skeleton in tattered robes made of what looked like human skin. The less I saw of that freak show, the better.

I didn’t know how long it actually took to cross the river, but I lost count at four thousand steps.

Everything in the Shadow Realm was an illusion. The path across the river that looked to be about eight feet long was really more like a mile. Breathtaking foliage could literally take your breath—and pulse—away. Even the buildings were a sham. At first glance, they were normal brick and mortar. Every once in a while, though, the true nature of the place would shine through. I hadn’t made many trips here, but each time I did, there were more and more moments of clarity. I wondered how long it’d be before the illusion was gone altogether. A chill rippled through me. All I’d be left with was an entire realm of nightmare creepies.

By the time I got to the other side, I was sure I’d worn through the soles of my sneakers. I pushed through the door and stepped into the lobby of Dad’s building, surprised to see how empty the place still was. It’d been three months since Valefar had granted him freedom, and there was only a small, single desk at the far end of the room and three ordinary-looking blue folding chairs along the wall to the right. I made a mental note to get him a plant. Maybe a Venus flytrap. He’d appreciate the humor.

“Jessie,” Dad barked in surprise. He emerged from the door across from me with an armload of papers. “What are you doing here?”

“I was
summoned
.”

“By Valefar?”

I grinned. “Actually, it was Bert and Ernie, but I did stop to see good ole Val on the way over. He says hey.”

Dad’s face remained impassive. He didn’t appreciate my particular brand of humor as much as Mom did—especially where the Shadow Realm was concerned. And by the look in his eyes, he was trying to figure out the fastest way to get me out of here.

Until recently, he’d played only a minor part in my life. It was agreed—by him and Mom, I hadn’t gotten a say—that he would keep a safe distance and let me grow up far away from all the danger and drama that came with being a Shadow demon’s daughter. Because the agency was such a cushy gig, right?

Now, though? He was free to be the dad he’d always wanted, and wouldn’t you know, he was the seriously overprotective type.

“You shouldn’t be here, Jessie.”

Even though he was finally able to take an active part in my life, Dad still didn’t want me involved in this particular aspect of his. Funny, considering I was working for his old boss. Sometimes I was convinced he and Mom chose to block things out.