Chapter 240

Heather

She blinked a few times. “No. I’ve never had the pleasure and I never want to.”

“He says that I’m the key to opening a portal from hell to here. Some sort of seal has been broken, which happened because the fey disappeared and there are a few missing members in the Council of Seven Alphas that rule all the werewolves. We’ve been looking into it and that seems to line up, but I don’t think I can fix either of those problems. So, it’s up to me to stop him, and I don’t think I can do that without breaking the tie.”

I tried not to feel disappointed as she closed her eyes for a second. I wasn’t sure what else I could say. “Please. You can see the tie, which means you can break it. Right?”

“I don’t know that I can. If it was some simple demon, sure. But Astaroth?” She finally opened her eyes.

“Damn it. You’re really screwed, huh?”

That was pretty accurate. “How can you see the ties? What are you?” From the outside, she looked like a normal girl in a private school uniform. The navy polish on her nails was chipping off. She wore a little too much eyeliner, but besides that and the nude gloss, she wasn’t wearing any other make-up. Her eyes were as gray as a stormy sky, and as I watched, the storm in them roiled and turned dark.

I didn’t smell anything on her besides coconut, rose, and sage. Nothing flowery like the fey. No spice of a Were. Definitely no sulfur smell. And if she were lying about being a witch, she hadn’t brewed any spells lately.

“Don’t worry about what I am. Just know that I’m me. The better question would be what can I do?”

“Okay.” She was right. It didn’t matter what she was, even if I was curious. All I cared about was how she could help me. “What can you do?”

“You know how there are two planes?”

“Two planes?” I thought I knew what she meant, but I wanted to be sure we were on the same page.

“Like the living, mortal one. That’s where we are now. And then the other one. Supernatural. That’s where the underworld is. Where the demons live. Ghosts. All those fun things.”

Ah. That I knew. “Sure. I’m following you.”

“I exist on both.”

Wait. What? “How is that possible?”

“I was born this way. It’s just how I’m wired. I’m part human, part something else, which amounts to something like a medium. Or a medium meets an exorcist?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what to call myself. I can’t really do magic, but I can see the ties as physical things. If someone is possessed, I can usually separate the demon from the human. If there’s a haunting, I can get the spirit to move on to their next life. Usually. Some of them are stubborn as hell.”

Fascinating. The more she explained, the more questions I had, but I kept my mouth shut. I was just thankful she was telling me this much.

“Just know that the more you start messing in the other plane, the more stuff is drawn to you. No one needs that kind of drama, especially not me. Helping you means I’m opening myself up to who knows how many attacks, and I just—” She pressed her lips together, as if to stop herself from saying more than she wanted to. “Apocalypse. How serious were you about that?”

“Extremely.”

“Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

At the beginning? “Like from when I got bitten? Because it’s all sort of snowballed…”

“If that’s where you think the story starts, then yes.”

“It’s going to take a bit.”

“You got somewhere else to be?”

You take your time, Brent said. We’re going to grab some food around the corner, but I can come back in a few if you need me.

Go. I’ll be fine. “I’m good here.” Especially if in the end, she was going to help.

“Lay it on me.” She grabbed a cookie and a glass of lemonade and sat back into the chair.

By the time I was done, the cookies had all been eaten. We’d slid down to the floor to be closer to the plate and made a few trips to the kitchen for lemonade refills.

Samantha leaned against the bottom of the armchair as she stared at the popcorn ceiling.

“Shit.” She looked at me. “Shit. This is really bad.”

“I know. So, do you think you can help me? I’ll owe you big time. Anything you need, any time of day. I’ll be there. Although, I’ll be there even if you don’t help me.” I winced. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“Probably not.” She blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling. “My dad is going to be so pissed.” She stood up and brushed the crumbs off her skirt. “Okay. I’m going to help you.” I started to jump up but she stopped me. “But I don’t know how much I can do for you. I think I can fully break the tie from Astaroth to Claudia. Raphael, too if it’s like his sister’s. Except he’s far away, so that could be an issue. But yours… It’s sticky.”

“But you’ll try.”

“Yes. But I can’t promise anything.”

A zing of triumph ran through me at her words. This was good. I didn’t care that she couldn’t promise anything. That she could see the tie and try to break it was a huge step forward.

This will work, Brent said. We’re coming back.

Good. The sooner we do this the better. I wasn’t sure when Astaroth was coming back, but this was our chance to head him off. I wasn’t about to wait. “What do we need to do to set up?” I didn’t know how she did what she did, but if it was anything like the magic I knew, there were going to be things that had to be done first.

“It’s not so much a set up as a timing thing. 3 a.m. is when the veil between realms is the thinnest—”

“So, we do it at 3 a.m.”

“But that’s also when his hold is the strongest.”

“So not 3 a.m. Then when?”

“I’d say dusk, because it’s an in-between time, but my gut says 3 a.m. But it could get ugly. There’s really not a great answer here.”

I didn’t like the sound of ugly. My stomach twisted into a giant knot and I hoped I wasn’t about to be sick.

We’ll all be there. I won’t let him take you again.

I wasn’t sure Brent would have a choice. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.” One I hoped would work. Because there was one easy solution that no one wanted to talk about.

If Astaroth was tied to me and that tie couldn’t be broken… If him stealing my magic was going to bring on the end of the world… There was one thing I could do: eliminate myself from the equation.

No! Pure, white-hot rage burned through our bond.

Stop. It’s just a worst case scenario. But the fact remained—if it was my life or literally everyone else on the planet, then I couldn’t rule it out.

The SUV pulled into the parking lot of a crappy strip mall. Samantha said she needed supplies and a place to do her thing. So, we’d headed out in the wee hours of the night to kill both birds, but this wasn’t what I’d pictured when she said shopping. Everything was locked up tight.

A boarded-up laundromat took up the majority of the block-long building. The ever ubiquitous but unique to LA combination Chinese fast food restaurant and donut shop took up the last storefront. From the painted hand and tarot deck on the widow of one of the middle stores, I figured that was where we were heading. It didn’t have a name, but it was pretty clear that it was a place to get your fortune read. I used to avoided those places like the plague.

I never was sure what someone else with the sight would see when they met me, and I didn’t want to find out. But if this was where Samantha was heading, then that’s where I’d go.

“Are you sure it’s safe here?” Claudia asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Define safe,” Samantha said as she squatted down to undo the lock on the security grille that covered the front door. “Here we go.”

The metal groaned and clanked its way up, but no one would notice. It was nearly three. Cars were moving up and down the road, on their way to who knew what, but not even one person slowed down to check what we were up to.

If someone had told me that I was going to end up in an apartment above a tarot shop in South Central LA having some sort of a séance today, I would’ve totally called bullshit. But apparently, it was happening.