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“You have no idea what the fuck I’ve been through, Brooks,” she snaps.
And something in her eyes gives me pause.
I can’t describe the emotion percolating in those hazel orbs, but it’s heady enough to smash my lips together.
Pain.
Horror.
Anguish.
Before I can take a closer look—before I can peel away the mask she seems to wear like armor—she takes a shuddering breath and says, “I’m going down to the lobby to set up more equipment. Call me if any of you get your dick bitten off by a poltergeist. I’ll try not to laugh.”
She stomps away before any of us can comment.
6
SIX: LILY
I’m fuming as I get back into the elevator. Becka’s crystals clang together in my bag when I literally punch the button for the lobby with my fist.
Take that, stupid elevator with your stupid uppey-downyness.
Brooks hasn’t changed. Not one fucking bit.
No. That’s a lie. Somehow—and I don’t know how this is even physically possible—he’s shoved that pointy stick even farther up his ass.
I’m surprised it’s not tickling his tonsils by now.
Brooks and I have always had this verbal sparring thing going on. He’s five years older than me and the twins, and he lords it over us. From the first day that I hopped over the fence into the Belluas’ backyard in my daisy sundress and started playing “monster hunter” with them, Brooks has insisted on being in charge of every game. The twins just let him do it, but I’m always the one who pushes back.
Only, it turns out, none of it was a game at all. All those years we were friends, and they never bothered to tell me the truth—that all the monsters, demons, and ghouls of my nightmares arereal, that their parents are infamous monster hunters, and that they’re following in their footsteps.
If they’d told me, I would have known what to do on prom night when my date came for me and when I found my mom and dad. I would have been able to save my parents from…from…that.
But no. Brooks the Impossible decided I couldn’t handle the truth, so my best friends kept their secret from me. I only found out when my prom date grew fangs and fur and attacked me. The last time I saw Jackson and Orion, they were battling the beast so I could run away.
And I knew from that moment on that things would never be the same.
But Brooks’s face was the last thing I saw before I got the fuck out of Haddenwood. The last thing…after the broken and brutalized bodies of my parents, killed by some kind of demon while I was at prom.
It’s all Brooks Bellua’s fault.
And he has thenerveto step into my job and act like he’s the one in charge? Has he forgotten that for months I’ve been swooping in ahead of him, stealing his monster-slaying glory out from under him? He can’t believe his precious Lily Dean could beat him at his own game—
I have to stop this. I have work to do. I can’t get worked up over a second-rate monster hunter like Brooks. He doesn’t even know about ectoplasm-enhanced infrared.
Becka and I are so far above his pay grade that he feels he has to throw his weight around like an overgrown toddler and…
Dammit, I’m still thinking about him.
I whip out my phone and text Becka. After all her talk about how reckless I get on jobs, I know I need to check in on her before she hexes my ass.
Lily: You won’t believe it. The Bellua brothers are here, and I’m about to go “scorched earth” on THEIR ASSES.
A second later, I get a text back.
Becka: Sounds hot.
