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“Leander?” I murmur, hoping the kitty can hear my pitiful rasp.
“I’m here, Meg.” A deep voice full of gravel and grit booms from above. That definitely doesn’t belong to a teeny black cat.
The rustle of movement and a rush of warm air has me looking way up. A beast looms over me. Darkness swirls, and my vision goes hazy.
Looks like I might pass out after all.
3
MEG
I come to in a princess bed—which startles me as much as anything else in a haunted house could. My childhood dreams revolved around me being a knight in dented armor or a sorcerer with full spell robes—not a pretty, poufy dress in sight. The scents of earth, damp stone, and spices fill my nose. A netting draped around the four posters hangs in perfect symmetry, as though someone designed this room and this bed for the gauzy, sheer veil that separates me from whatever waits beyond.
Panic has me bolting to a sit. How long did I sleep? Where are my friends? And why did they leave me down here? I grab for the bracelet, ready to call Theo so I can tell him how shitty his establishment is. Ava’s mom would love to sue them for whatever trippy drugs they piped in to make me pass out. Add moving me while I was knocked out, and she’ll be screaming six figure settlement for emotional distress.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” It’s the same deep voice from earlier.
My pulse picks up in a fast thump thump that makes me freeze, and a thrill runs through me. Stop it. Just because he sounds like the bad boy version of my favorite streaming gaming channel host doesn’t mean my body should react. I can’t let hormones stand in the way of me getting out of here. The kitten picks that moment to jump through a gap in the netting and pad across the bedding. With a purr to rival a toy freight train and a swish of a tail, he curls into a ball and settles in for a nap.
“I’m guessing the cat isn’t Leander,” I say to the darkness, since I can’t see anyone else in the room. Maybe hiding in the shadows comes with the haunted house care package.
A sin-soaked chuckle rolls over me, and I push down desire. That’s it. I’m joining a hookup-heavy dating app when my friends and I get back to civilization. I don’t need a relationship messing with my mind or any commentary from asshole boyfriends about my weight, my appetite, my clothes, my hobbies, or anything else, but if I’m going to fantasize about a laugh? It means my dry spell has gone on far too long.
“The cat’s name is Oggie.” The voice moves. “Or at least he goes by that name in his other form. I assume he took this one to lure you through the portal before any of my rivals showed.”
My brain stalls. Theo’s old-timey talk was one thing, but who trained this guy? The Villains’ Mastermind School? “What do you mean, his other form?” The rest of what he said replays in my mind. “What portal? And who has rivals? Like an arch-nemesis?”
Yeah, I speed-read comics and binge-watch sci-fi. No, I’m not going to be ashamed about my hobbies ever again. I stroke the kitten’s soft fur while I wait for answers. He cuddles closer. This freakshow may be a colossal fail as a haunted house, but the pet perks are phenomenal. I stare past the flickering candles but see nothing.
He—or I assume that barrel-chested rumble comes from a man—stalks the shadows just beyond the light. “I have multiple enemies, I refer to the dimensional portal that transported you to me, and Oggie’s short for Oggdalon.” His matter-of-fact delivery sounds as if he ticks off each answer, as though he’s running through a grocery list. The guy should have shelves lined with shiny awards, given his superb method acting. “Oggie’s a sentinel demon.”
“What?” I swallow a shriek and yank my hand away from the kitten as the possibility that I’m petting a demon puts my lungs in a chokehold. “A d-demon?” Said demon yowls, giving me an indignant look before shoving his head against my fingers for more neck scratches.
“One with the important responsibility of standing watch at the portals.”
I can’t even process this conversation, my mind bumping along at a stumbling speed. “So your enemies don’t come through?” Who wrote this awful script?
“Exactly.” The deep rumble is reassuring, but the fact that I can’t see who’s talking has my gut churning.
He sounds big, and big can mean dangerous when pissed off. Even my scrawny cheating ex turned nasty and scary within minutes of being caught. So much so that I took off from the apartment that we shared, not imagining that he would snatch and sell every game board I had hand-crafted. I found out when he broke up with me a week later. If my sniveling ex could be so diabolical after claiming to love me, what might a complete stranger hiding himself in the shadows be capable of?
“Listen.” I struggle to keep my voice calm without the tremor that has my mouth quivering. “I appreciate you taking care of me after I…” Lost consciousness? Passed out? Had a hysterical meltdown when convinced I’d seen a beast of a man? None of those seem like the safest word choices. I settle on a neutral option. “After I fell, but I really need to be going. My friends will worry about me.” I push to a stand, but my body goes tight and still at the quick sounds of rustling fabric and the clack of hard-soled shoes. Fear traces a ghostly finger of ice along my spine, and chills skate across my flesh.
“You can’t leave. The portal has closed.” He doesn’t sound ominous, merely surprised I hadn’t come to this insane and illogical conclusion myself.
My patience snaps with a crack of my temper. “I’m done with this haunted house nonsense. Your training has clearly been thorough, but you can quit playing whatever part the corporation assigned you.”
“Corporation?” He sounds unsure, and I want to yell at him to stop messing around. “There’s no one else involved in our arrangement. Just you, me, and the matchmaker.”
“Matchmaker?” My heart rabbits in my chest, my throat goes dry, and the word comes out strangled. “What matchmaker?”
“In the human world, he goes by Theo.”
“Theo’s a tour guide. A hot one, I’ll grant you—”
He snickers. “Hot as the hell dimension he escaped from, I’m sure, although I don’t understand how you know this.” His tone goes frosty. “Did he touch you?” He bites out the question in a cruel, vicious clip. “Is that why you seek to call off our bargain? To summon him?” The last comes on a growl that makes me shiver.
Adrenaline races through me in fight-or-flight instinct, with logic yelling at me to run, and my pride insisting that I don’t need to take this jealousy from someone whose face I haven’t even seen.
