“Tell me what happened, Gabriel,” Dorian said with another sigh, the alcohol doing nothing for his dwindling patience.
“Well, let’s see.” Gabriel leaned against the shelves behind the bar and casually scratched his jaw as if he’d been asked for nothing more crucial than an accounting of his liquor collection. “Jacinda and I followed a promising lead on Duchanes last night, only to discover that the demon who provided the intel—” He thumbed toward the booth. “—was setting her up for an execution by a cult of mages calling themselves the Keepers of the Dark Flame. I slaughtered them, naturally, which had someveryinteresting side effects on my witch. I suppose that’s because she’s not a witch, but a demon. A hybrid, if we’re being technical. I’m not sure exactly where the family tree branches off, but she also has a sister—an original succubus, of all things—who’s now roaming the city, likely plotting its ruin. But take heart, brothers. The sister of the woman I so stupidly fell in love with happens to be the very demoness who bound Father’s curse all those centuries ago. So…” He shrugged and downed his shot, then poured another, raising his glass in cheers. “One mystery solved.”
“Asuccubus?” Colin said, at the same time Aiden said, “Inlovewith her?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said to both. “But the whole ‘I’m plotting to rip out your heart later’ bit put a damper on things this morning.”
“Wait.” Aiden blinked rapidly, clearly trying to find sense in a story that had none. “You’re in love with asuccubus? I thought you had it bad for the witch?”
“Keep up, Aiden,” Gabriel said.
“Fascinating.” Colin had the look—the same their father used to get when he’d made some new discovery. “I had no idea succubi could manifest outside the dreamspace.”
Dorian took a bit longer than the others to find his words, and when he did, they exploded out of him in their usual dramatic fashion. “For fuck’s sake, Gabriel! A mage cult? A succubus? The curse? What the fuck are you on about?”
“That’s… too many questions in one breath.” Gabriel slumped forward and laid his cheek on the cool surface of the bar, his eyes falling closed. The room spun, but he was beyond caring.
“Why didn’t you call us sooner?”
Dorian again, his insistence like an ice pick to Gabriel’s skull.
“Wasn’t drunk enough.”
“Clearly, neither are we.” Dorian downed the scotch. Sighed. Refilled his glass. Sighed again. Then, in a voice burdened by the new weight these revelations would surely add to his life, “Start from the beginning, Gabriel. Leave nothing out.”
Gabriel rolled himself back into a standing position and let the story spill forth—as much as he could remember through his bourbon-and-demon-blood haze. He told them about his search for Duchanes, the meeting at Shimmer out on Montauk, Jacinda’s glamour magic, the mages.
The near-sacrifice that still had his stomach twisting into knots.
Thanks to some misplaced sense of loyalty—or, hell. Maybe it was shame at his own failure to recognize just how dangerous his little witch truly was—he didn’t get too specific about Jacinda’s response to the murders, saying only that the whole thing sent her into a kind of magical overdrive. He suspected they would’ve pressed him for more details had the next bit not commanded their full attention.
Viansa.
He told them about her break-ins—the one in his apartment as well as the one in his head—and everything Jacinda had deigned to share after the fact.
Far too long after the fact, as far as Gabriel was concerned, but there it was.
His chest tightened again with the hot, sharp sting of her betrayal. He washed it down with another drink, then said, “So it seems, brothers, the traitorous witch is not only half demon herself, but has somehow unleashed a dangerous succubus on this city—one who can’t be smoked out. One who has the power of hellfire, the ability to get inside your head and turn yourightfucking inside out, and a fierce determination to lay waste to any who dare oppose her.”
Gabriel finally looked up at his brothers, finding every one of them staring at him open-mouthed, their faces paler than usual.
Dorian was the first to shake off the shock, quickly snapping back into authoritarian big-brother mode—Gabriel’s least favorite.
“We need to find Viansa before she causes any more damage.” Dorian pulled out his phone. “Did she leave anything behind?”
“We fought with her in my penthouse,” Gabriel replied. “There may be something she touched. That is—unless her sister’s destroyed the evidence.” He wouldn’t put it past the witch. Demon. Whatever the bloody hell she was. “Who are you texting?”
“Cole. He should be able to pick up her scent from your apartment and track her from there. Hopefully, the trail hasn’t gone completely cold.” He finished firing off the text, then speared Gabriel with another scornful glance, his reproach slicing right to the bone. “Next time you decide to set the world on fire, brother, I’d appreciate the courtesy of a phone call.”
“Cole can’t help you,” Gabriel said, trying to ignore the burn of shame in his chest. For fuck’s sake, he’d been alive since before the invention of the printing press, yet Dorian had the uncanny ability to send him straight back to his childhood with a single raised eyebrow and a few curt words. “He’s in Jersey, looking into those real estate leads on Duchanes.”
“Bloody perfect.” Dorian chucked his phone onto the bar, where it skidded right off and crashed to the floor.
“Hope you got the insurance on that one, mate,” Aiden said, eyeing up the broken pieces. “It’s D.O.A.”
“Just like us if we don’t clean up this mess,” Dorian snapped. Then, to Gabriel, “What else can Jacinda tell us? Surely she can manage a locator spell. Get her down here.”
“Jacinda can no longer be trusted—not that she ever could.” Gabriel swallowed another shot, the alcohol burning as much as the admission he knew was coming next. “We need Isabelle.”
