A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) (5 page)

“You didn’t know they were in love?”

He took the picture back and set it on the table next to another larger one, carefully. Like any sudden movements would cause it to crumble before his eyes. With a sigh, he brushed his fingers across the top of the frame. “Not when this picture was taken. I found out shortly after.” Lukas laughed. “Simon was so worried I’d be angry. That I would find his feelings disrespectful in some way.”

“Did you?”

He picked up the picture next to it. This one was of an old house, with a tall man standing on the porch. It wasn’t as old as the others. In color and clearer. “Not at all. If anything, I wanted him to feel more. To
do
more.”

I slipped my hand into his and squeezed. “You wanted him to take her away from it all.”

“Of course. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be loved. My father treated her like an animal. A slave. She was nothing more than a trophy to him, as I was a symbol of status.” A dark laugh escaped his lips, but it didn’t last. When he picked up the next picture, everything about his demeanor changed. If the pictures of his father stirred anger and resentment, the next one brought something else to the surface. Something far darker than mere anger. Something that reminded me of Wrath.

I made a grab for the picture, but Lukas was too fast. He yanked it away and jumped to the left, out of my reach. The picture, one of him and Meredith, shattered in his fist. The delicate frame bent, and the glass plinked to the floor. “Don’t, Jessie. You can’t change my past, and you can’t shield me from it. Meredith existed. She condemned me to the box. Nothing will ever wipe that away.” Sighing, he tilted his head, listening. With a deep breath, he added, “Elaine is upset.”

“She’s
upset
?”

Lukas frowned. “The arrangement with Meredith’s family is what ended our courtship.”

“You’re dead, Lucy. It’s time to get over it,” I yelled in the direction he was looking. Because, getting all pissy over a relationship that hadn’t worked out over one hundred years ago? That was a little lame. The girl had stalker tendencies.

I should have known better than to snap at her. Lucy—or Elaine—was harmless, but she had her destructive moments. Grandpa had documented a few of them in his journals. She didn’t like change. And, apparently, being told to get over it.

One of the frames on the table in front of us rocketed into the air. It zoomed upward and crashed against the ceiling, raining bits of glass and metal on my head. A second later, another frame took flight, this one rushing straight for my face. I ducked and it missed me, crashing instead into the large, creepy mirror next to the Darker table. The glass exploded. The picture, along with a million shards of glass, plinked to the concrete floor.

I cringed. “Oops…”

Lukas laughed. “I knew you had a unique knack for angering people, but I wasn’t aware that it applied to the dead, as well.”

“All part of my charm.”

He rolled his eyes and bent down to pick up a piece of glass from the mirror. Rubbing it between his fingers, he said, “This is bad.”

I shrugged and kicked at the mess. Several pieces shot across the room and bounced off the wall across from us. “It’s just a mirror.”

He was shaking his head. “This glass…”

“Yeah. It’s all over the place. Big deal? When they notice the Darker stuff is gone, they’ll figure whoever busted in knocked it over.”

But Lukas didn’t hear me. At least, I didn’t think he did. He was staring over my shoulder. I assumed he was listening to his ex rant more about Meredith and the unfairness of death until his mouth dropped open. A funny smell filled the air. Sort of like bananas.

I turned. “What’s…?”

Then I saw what he saw. On the floor in front of the mirror, the broken shards of glass were convulsing, tiny tufts of deep purple smoke rising from them. The shard in Lukas’s hand began to smoke as well.

He dropped the glass and grabbed my arm, pulling back hard as a tuft of the smoke curled around my ankle. “Just a mirror?” He stepped in front of me. “A mirror that wouldn’t happen to have belonged to a Darker?”

The mirror had been next to the table, but it’d never occurred to me that it had belonged to us. I gave a nervous laugh and tensed, ready for anything. “It’s purple smoke. Purple smoke never hurt anyone. In fact, it’s pretty. Kind of like a music video or stage show. That reminds me. I should totally teach you to dance.”

Lukas wasn’t convinced—or interested in dance lessons—and I couldn’t blame him. The smoke was getting thicker, curling upward and taking shape.

The shape of a man.

Chapter Six

When the smoke cleared, a man with dark hair and an angular jaw stood before us. He had a bow mouth and Roman nose and looked to be somewhere in his early twenties, wearing a simple linen tunic and matching pants. Yep. Totally normal—if he hadn’t materialized from smoke coming out of broken glass.

“What is this place?” His voice was deep, and there was the slightest hint of an accent, though I couldn’t place it.

I cringed as the glass crunched under his bare feet. Didn’t he feel that? I’d be screaming my head off. He took a step toward us and stopped to study Lukas, who was standing protectively in front of me.

The man sniffed the air, then froze. The way he looked at me, sort of like a recovering addict presented with a fix, gave me chills. Lips slightly parted, eyes narrow and fixated. There was only one word that came to mind to describe that expression. Obsessed. “A Darker and her demon,” he remarked. His lips curled into a poisonous smile. “My, my, this is my lucky day.”

And that’s when the demon shit hit the fan.

The man, though it was probably safe to say he
wasn’t
a man, roared. A horrific sound that rattled the tables and sent things tipping sideways throughout the room.

I swallowed down a lump of worry. If this thing didn’t kill us, I was in so much trouble. “This is
sort of
my fault,” I admitted, taking Lukas’s hand and backing us away.

“
Sort of
your—”

A large object flew at us. Lukas shoved me to the left and threw his weight hard to the right. Electricity crackled in the air.

“Of course it’s your fault. You provoked Elaine.”

I dodged a bolt of lightning. It flew past and smacked into the wall behind me. An Elemental demon. Hadn’t seen one of those in a long while. “Is it my fault all your exes are prone to temper tantrums?”

“You dare speak in my presence?” the newcomer boomed. “You who are nothing more than insects?”

“Insects?” I gasped and clutched my chest. “That’s so insulting.”

Lukas nodded. There was a wicked grin on his face. The guy might come from a time of stuffy civility and a lack of Ho Hos, but he loved a good fight. “Very insulting,” he agreed. “I think my feelings are wounded.”

I pulled a small vial of fairy dust—what Mom and I had dubbed quartz powder—from my right front pocket, then fumbled in the left for the lighter. We’d been going a different route with the dust lately. By adding a special component made for us from a local alchemist, we could bypass the lighter fluid and move straight to the fireworks. Way less laundry issues that way. I never remembered to take the bottles out of my pockets before tossing my jeans in the wash.

Vial and lighter ready, I shadowed behind the bastard and dumped the entire bottle at his feet, then flicked the lighter and dropped it like it was hot.

The demon watched as the flames roared to life, licking at the edges of his pants and nipping at his exposed toes. The look on his face was classic. I wished to God I’d remembered my cell. I didn’t know who he was, or why he’d been trapped in the mirror, but his goose was cooked now.

The flames rose, engulfing the demon in a cloud of smoke and fire. The subtle sounds of crackling, along with the smell of burning hair and flesh.

“A Darker with demonic abilities,” he said with a chuckle. With a deafening crack of lightning, the fire smothered instantly, leaving nothing more than thick tufts of thick black smoke and a wicked singe mark on the tile all around him. “That is an interesting twist.”

Speechless. For once, I had nothing to say. No witty retort to cover up the building sense of dread in my belly. No snarky quip to mask the mounting fear. All I could do was stare.

He laughed again, this time throwing his head back with hearty enthusiasm. “What’s wrong, little demon? Did you really think to destroy a lieutenant of the Shadow Realm with mineral powder and flame?”

“Jessie,” Lukas yelled. He was on the other side of the room. I saw him start forward, but he was too slow.

The demon grabbed me around the neck with its right hand and threw my body up against the wall, pinning me there. Lukas charged blindly, letting out a scream that tore through the room, but he never stood a chance. This demon was serious news—which, in hindsight, should have been plainly obvious.

One of my relatives had trapped him in a mirror. Not quartzed his ass, but
trapped
. That should have been a neon yellow flag if ever there was one. Whatever his deal was, he was obviously too powerful for a simple takedown. Mom kept telling me I acted first and thought second. She was dead on. The sad part? I never seemed to learn from my mistakes.

The demon snapped his fingers, and with a grunt, Lukas was thrown backward by a crackling trail of electricity. He took out several tables on the way, knocking ancient trinkets in every direction. His left foot clipped an opulent-looking dresser, too, sending it toppling sideways. It crashed to the ground, pieces coming lose and bouncing cross the floor as he smashed into the wall on the far side of the room. The static left in the air made the hairs on my arm and back of my neck jump to attention. I tried to scream.

Focus back on me, the demon sniffed the air again, then smiled. Every time his eyes met mine, I felt a ravaging chill course through my limbs. Like a total-body ice cream headache. His gaze roamed my body, and I had to bite down on my tongue to keep my teeth from chattering.

With his free hand, he lifted the hem of my shirt and bent to my stomach. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but a second later, a warm, moist trail flicked across my belly, and it was all I could do not to howl and thrash. But that was it. One slimy lick and it was all over. He straightened and released his hold on me, taking a step back. I didn’t try bolting. There was no way in hell I’d make it more than a half centimeter. I’d underestimated him before. It wouldn’t happen again.

“You belong to Lucifer’s lapdog. How interesting.”

“I don’t
belong
to anyone,” I said with bite. Stupid to talk back to the über-demon? Probably. But this was one area where I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was an independent contractor who’d made a deal to save people she loved. I’d rented my soul out for the next fifty-five years.
Rented
—not sold.

He leaned close and sniffed again. His acting like I was one big scratch and sniff was starting to get annoying. “You are an anomaly. Because of that, I won’t kill you yet. I have more important things to tend to.” He placed a meaty hand on either side of my head and leaned in close. His breath, warm and with a hint of sulfur, streamed across my face. “But tell your Master the tides are about to change.”

He took two steps back, and his form blurred. Within seconds, he was nothing more than the purple smoke that had puffed up from the broken glass.

I dashed forward and dragged a semiconscious Lukas over to the pile of antiques. I snatched up the boxes, shoved them at Lukas, and then shadowed us the hell out of there.

…

By the time we got the back to the office, Mom and Dad were waiting impatiently like typical overprotective parents.

Mom held the door open. “Everything go okay?”

“Of course not,” I said, losing the small box I’d stuffed precariously on the top of my pile. It fell to the floor with a soft thud. With the toe of my sneaker, I carefully nudged it over the threshold and across the hardwood floor. “We ran into a little bit of trouble…”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to go looking for trouble?”

“Of course,” I replied, winking at Lukas. He told me all the time. Sometimes three or more times a day. His nose did this little scrunching thing, too. It was all very cute. “But what fun would that be?”

Dad came up beside her and unwrapped the tablecloth I’d used to transport the Darker items from the table display. He picked up several trinkets, cringing when he came to a small silver comb. “It’s a good thing we got this stuff away from them. It’s humming with energy.” He set the comb down and looked up. “What kind of trouble did you say you had?”

“I didn’t say, actually.” I gritted my teeth. Apparently not telling them wasn’t an option. I hadn’t really thought it was, but hey. A girl could dream, right? “But since you’re inquiring so nicely, it was the demonic kind.”

“There was a demon in the basement of Town Hall?” Dad forgot about the comb. “Was it there for the trinkets?”

This was my least favorite part. Confession. “It was kind of
in
one of the trinkets…”

Mom gave an exasperated sigh, and Dad’s eyes grew impossibly wide. Oops. This was his first official Jessie-screwed-up speech. “Actually, in was in a mirror
next
to the table, but yeah. You get my point…”

“You let it out.” Mom glanced sideways at Dad, then fixed her gaze on Lukas as if to say,
you were supposed to be watching her
. He turned away.

I was nothing if not generous, and it would have been wrong of me to take all the credit. “If you want to split hairs, another one of Lukas’s deranged exes let it out.”

“One of his exes?” That caught her off guard—not an easy thing to do. Score one for me!

“Apparently, he was quite the player back in his day. Lucy? Yeah, her name’s really Elaine—how was he even able to see her, anyway?”

Dad shrugged. Casual as could be. “Shadow demons can see the dead.”

Huh. Wasn’t that handy. “Well, she’s the one who broke the mirror.”

The corners of Lukas’s lips tugged downward. “I have no idea what a player is, but something tells me you’re not speaking about sports.”

“Blame isn’t important,” Dad said, ignoring him. I disagreed, but whatever. Adults were entitled to their opinions—even if they were wrong. “What exactly did you two let out?”

At least he’d included Lukas in it. “Some demon—didn’t catch his name. Probably because he was too busy laughing at me as I tried to quartz him.”

Mom’s mouth fell open. “Quartz didn’t work?”

“Didn’t even tickle him. All I know about him is that he was flinging lightning like bananas from a monkey. Had to be an Elemental.”

“I can give you a sketch,” Lukas said. “Maybe that will help identify him. He seemed to know of Valefar and was very interested in Jessie’s ability to shadow.”

Dad slammed a hand down on the desk. Several of the boxes wobbled, one toppling over the side, and I jumped about ten feet in to the air. “You shadowed in front of him?”

“Um, I didn’t realize we were keeping it on the demonic down low…”

He whirled on Mom. “We need to find out who came out of that mirror.”

She threaded her fingers through his and nodded. “Anything not killable with quartz is going to be a problem, though that doesn’t sound like an Elemental demon. They’re quartzable on their best days.” She fixed her attention on Lukas. “We’re going to check out the basement at Town Hall. You’re in charge.”

My mouth fell open. “Seriously? Put the embodiment of rage in charge? I’m deeply wounded.”

“The
ex
-embodiment,” Lukas corrected with a shift of his shoulders. He was trying not to grin, but I saw the smirk anyway. “I’ve proven myself to be the more responsible one.”

Was he kidding? He’d nearly leveled half the town a few months ago. Granted, he’d been toting Wrath around, but still. “Give me one example.”

He folded his arms. “That harpy a few weeks ago.”

“No way,” I said, jabbing a finger at him, then turned to Mom. “He’s the one who instigated the whole thing.”

Lukas ignored me and kept going. “Last month, there was the nest of hellhounds behind the park.”

“Oh no. I’m not taking the blame for that one. You totally looked at them crooked. Then set them off by sneezing. We would have been fine if you’d been quiet.”

He didn’t waiver. “And then, last week, there was the gulan.”

“Oh. Well, that one I take a little credit for.”

Mom balked. “A little credit? Didn’t you throw a soda can at it?”

I had, but it’d only been half full. Not like I chucked a rock or fired a bottle rocket at its head. “It was going to charge.”

“It was eating!” Lukas exclaimed.

He seemed to be forgetting a crucial detail. “It was eating a
person
.”

Mom grabbed her coat and poked me in the arm. “Am I going to have to separate you two?”

I rolled my eyes and threw an arm around Lukas’s shoulders despite the fact that both my parents were standing right there. He didn’t like touching me with parental supervision. Especially Dad. “Aww, that’s my mom. The Drama Diva.”

“Anyway,” Mom said. She was fighting a grin. “There’s some research that needs to be done. All the information is in the file on your desk.”

“Consider it done,” Lukas said.

“Suck up,” I whispered as they walked out the door.

…

Since my parents left about an hour earlier, we’d been answering phones and doing drone work. Verify this. Check out that. One hundred percent mindless and boring. So boring, I was thinking about knocking over one of the Darker trinkets from Town Hall in hopes that something exciting would pop out.

Finally, we’d finished most of what Mom wanted us to handle. Well, Lukas had. I’d supervised while surfing the Internet. Found a really cute pair of boots, too. Sadly, I lacked the funds to follow through. Mom and I were in better shape than we were a few months ago financially, but we weren’t out of the woods. Dad offered to chip in, but Mom refused, too independent for her own good.

I shook my head at Lukas and made my way into the small kitchenette area at the back of the office waiting room. The song blasting from the speakers on my laptop changed, and Lukas gave a satisfied grunt.