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I snort before I can stop myself. “I can promise you that I most definitely donothave a death wish.”
There’s too much I need to do…like find the demon who murdered my parents and destroy him once and for all. And also, figure out how to actually destroy a demon once and for all, because so far, all monster-hunters know about demons is that they come from the realm of Chaos, and they are impossible to kill with human weapons. Becka has made me some bolts spiked with angel blood to see if they might work, but we haven’t found a demon so far to test them on.
I live and breathe for my chance at vengeance. It’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. There’s no way I’m going to throw away years and years of work. I refuse to leave this world until the monster who destroyed my life does first.
“I can talk to my professors and see if I can take my exams early…” Becka begins hesitantly.
“Becks.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her close. “I’ll be fine. Promise. This is an easy case. A quick in-and-out. Would it make you feel better if I checked in with you every day?”
She sniffs and turns away from me. “Every hour, bitch.”
“Every five hours?” I relent.
“Three.”
“What about when I’m sleeping?”
“That’s what alarm clocks are for,” Becka retorts. She sniffles again and then blows out a heavy, ragged breath. “I know you’re capable of doing this on your own, Lil, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you.”
“I’ll be fine.” I give her a quick squeeze. “We’ve handled hundreds and hundreds of ghosts.”
Becka straightens almost imperceptibly, seeming to come to some sort of mental resolution. “I’ll give you one week. If you’re not back by then, I’ll drive all the way down to the middle of freaking nowhere and drag your sorry ass back myself. And then, I’ll find a way to hex the shit out of you. Is that understood?”
Her tone brooks no room for argument.
I gape at her in disbelief. “Damn. You can be pretty scary sometimes.”
“Shut up and tell me about the case,” she demands, twisting on the floor so that she’s facing me.
“What about the party and getting laid?” I tease.
She narrows her eyes at me and scrubs her hand through her tangle of curls. “We can party when you get back. After all, yousoooowe me for giving me all these gray hairs.” She points to a blonde strand and wrinkles her nose. “Now…I guess we’d better go over how to perform an exorcismagain. First, you need a vessel to trap the ghost…”
2
TWO: JACKSON
“I’m hungry,” I moan from the bench seat in the back of the Mustang, throwing out my arms dramatically.
“We’re not stopping.” Brooks grits his teeth as he weaves around a slow-moving RV on the interstate.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“You should have gone back in Oakland.”
“I have a cramp in my foot. I think it’s haunted.”
“You think yourfootis haunted?” My brother’s lips wobble. Anyone else would take one look at Brooks in his faded duster, close-cropped golden hair, and the scar running across the top of his eyebrow and run away in terror.
But I know better.
I can tell Brooks is on the verge of cracking.
And all I need to do is give him an itty-bitty,teeny-weenypush over the edge.
At breakfast, I bet my twin brother, Orion, ten bucks that I could make Brooks smile today. Not a laugh or even a giggle—a proper smile, which for Brooks is as rare as a meteorite slashing apart the velvety black sky and hurling towards earth.
I’m not losing that bet.
