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“We’ve been seeing an array of possession attempts, livestock mutilations, and chatter on the occult message boards from California, through the Midwest, and about an hour ago we got a hit on his name in Pennsylvania. The path pretty clearly shows him headed in a beeline right for you. I’m guessing the earlier attempts to open a gate at High Line Park must have marked it for demons as a hotspot of some kind. Something Harry might have been polite enough to mention to us.”
My gaze darted to Harry, who was watching me with interest and not the faintest shred of guilt. Could demons even feel guilt about things? It struck me as a backwards emotion for a demon to have. It would make the whole death-and-possession gig way less fun if you felt bad about it afterwards.
“We can deal with that later.”
“Is he there, at least, or do I have to worry about a hijacked demon plane flying all over the country too?”
“He’s here, and he’s actually being very helpful.”
Considering I was looking right at him, Harry had no doubt who the he I was referring to was. He mimed an aw, shucks gesture at me.
This guy.
“Look, Secret, I’m not here how to tell you to handle your business, but you need to be careful. You saw what happened the last time we faced off against this guy. It was nearly a damn massacre. I want to make sure you and Emilio come back in one piece and we limit our civilian involvement, okay?”
I don’t think Tyler would consider two vampires, a demon, and a human servant as civilians in this instance. Nor would he care if I brought in some backup with Shane and Siobhan if the extra hands were necessary. I was glad to be somewhere there were people I could count on at the drop of a hat.
I was about to assure Tyler I had things here as under control as could be expected, when a sudden, searing pain stabbed into my head so ferociously I collapsed on the sidewalk, dropping the phone as I let out a very uncool yowl of agony.
This was a pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was as if someone had heated a sharpened metal spear in a white-hot flame, and then jammed it right through my eyeball. Tiny, agonizing explosions were going off in rapid succession all throughout my skull. It was so bad I found myself unconsciously pulling at my own hair, hoping to yank the feeling right out of my brain.
Faintly, I heard Tyler’s voice through the phone saying my name. “Secret? Secret, what’s happening?”
He might as well have been screaming right into my ear, because even though his voice sounded far away, each syllable slammed the invisible spike farther into my eye.
Someone was kneeling beside me, lifting my head from the sidewalk and checking my pulse. Must have been Emilio, because he was precise and measured in the way he was doing each check. No clue what he was looking for, but if he could make the searing pain stop, I would welcome whatever he did.
One moment I was trying to tell him what hurt, but the only sound to come out was a scream, and the next minute the whole world went white.
White and quiet.
The burning was replaced with a soothing, perfect nothingness that washed over me like calm waves on a perfectly sun-bleached beach.
I blinked a few times, wondering if I was dead, but as I had some experience with death, I didn’t remember it being anything like this. When I had died, there was no white light, no heavenly waiting room. I had been dead, there had been nothing, and then I was alive again.
So if this wasn’t the afterlife, I honestly had no damn clue what it was.
Like a fog being burned away by the bright sunlight of morning, the whiteness faded, and I was able to see a familiar room. There was a large fireplace on one wall, and the floor was covered in layered Persian rugs. It smelled old and faintly like incense, and it was like stepping right into a cherished memory.
Standing right in front of me, with her Marilyn Monroe face and her hair as dark as midnight, was Calliope, the Oracle herself. Her fingers were pressed to my forehead.
Next to me, Holden wore an expression of uncertainty.
“Cal?” I asked.
“Secret?” She pulled me into a tight embrace, and her familiar smell filled my nostrils, telling me this was real and not a hallucination.
I let out a little burble of laughter, and only then did I realize that my voice didn’t sou
nd right. It sounded…masculine? Lifting one hand, I saw chewed-down fingernails and hairy knuckles. Farther down was the same Ninja Turtles tee my dad had been wearing when he walked through the Starbucks door.
“What the fuuuuuck?”
“It worked,” Holden said.
“What. The. Fuck?” I repeated, slowly in case they hadn’t heard me the first time around. Hearing my words in Sutherland’s voice was so beyond surreal I couldn’t classify it as a grade of weirdness.
“I needed you to see it,” Cal said. She touched my face tenderly, giving me a sweet smile. “Needed it to be precise, and a messenger wouldn’t suffice.” I didn’t think she’d rhymed intentionally, but it definitely sounded like something a mystical Oracle would say.
