Chapter Seventeen
Dylan
Pretending to be calm was not easy when I was this pissed off, but I really needed to get my shit under control. At the moment, I was pissed at the son of a bitch who’d been following Allie, which brought me to the other thing I was pissed about. Why didn’t Marcos have one of his no-neck security guards walking the succubus employees to their cars, especially while there was a killer going after them? No way was I buying that Marcos didn’t know about the other murders. The police definitely would have mentioned it to him since one of his own employees had been murdered.
While I’d given Allie a hard time about not paying attention to the news, I was just as guilty. I hadn’t heard a thing about the murders until I got home and found myself listening to the news, more out of boredom than anything else. Five succubus murders in the last two weeks was hard to miss. After catching the tail end of the story about the most recent murder, a murder I hadn’t known about until that moment, I’d scoured the internet, looking for as many details as I could find. While the police weren’t revealing much about the murders, the press indicated that they appeared to be ritualistic.
Watching Allie walk up the stairs, still looking fragile and shaken, I wanted to hit something, but I reined that impulse in quickly. She’d been through enough tonight, and I didn’t want to make things worse. There was also the fact that she might refuse to go home with me if I acted like an ass, and I had every intention of bringing her back to my place where I could keep her safe.
“The police will be here in about twenty minutes,” I said as I took Allie’s keys from her shaky hands to open the front door. “I asked them if this could wait, but they wanted to interview you now.”
Allie just nodded and walked past me. “How many murders have there been?” she asked. “Marcos only told me about Marissa when he insisted I come in to cover her shift.”
“Five. With any luck, the killer won’t be up to grabbing number six tonight.” I locked the front door and crossed my arms in front of my chest to keep from reaching out and grabbing her.
“This might have nothing to do with the murders,” she pointed out, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than me. “This could just be some random guy who decided to follow me—maybe even a human.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“But you still think it was the killer, right?” she asked in a small voice.
“I do,” I admitted, even though I really wanted to believe otherwise. Hell, I’d gone through all the other possibilities in an attempt to ease my own worries, but I didn’t think it was an unrelated event. In all honesty, my suspicions might be the result of me reading about the killings before calling Allie. It was possible I was being paranoid, but I’d prefer that to risking Allie’s safety.
“How did you do that thing with the fire?” Allie asked, still looking a little shaky, not that I blamed her.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I can cast spells from a distance as long as I can see the person. That’s why I needed to know where you were so I could use a nearby security camera’s feed. Fire is the element my family has the most power over, meaning it’s easiest for me to use in spells from a distance.”
“That’s right,” Allie said, as if I’d just triggered a memory, which was impossible since we’d just met. Then again, she’d obviously heard of me before. “You were some superstar with spells in high school.”
What the fuck? How would she know that? Then I realized Trevor had likely told her about my spell casting skills, even though it seemed strange that he’d been talking to her about our high school days. “I can’t believe you heard about that. Can I take this to mean you’ve been asking Trevor about me?”
Allie’s cheeks flushed. “Not exactly.” There was definitely something she wasn’t telling me, but I could wait until later to find out what that was. “I’m going to change before the police get here. I don’t want to be interviewed wearing these clothes.”
“You look fine, sweetheart,” I assured her as I gathered her in my arms.
She inhaled and let out a shuddering breath, clearly affected by my scent and our proximity. I’d like to say her scent was doing the same to me, but the truth was, her clothes reeked, and I probably didn’t want to know what had caused the smell.
Try as I might, my reaction to her smell must have shown because she laughed and pulled away from me “Maybe I should have started by saying I’d rather smell less like I just cleaned up after a demon orgy.”
“You aren’t joking, are you?” I asked.
“Goddess, how I wish I was. Let me change, and then maybe you can use your nifty fire powers on my clothes,” she said before pulling away and heading toward her room.
I wanted to follow her, but I decided it would be best to give her some space. Mostly, I figured it would be smart if I let her change without me ogling her like some perverted stalker, which I kind of resembled at the moment. My transition from the guy who never went crazy over any girl to perverted stalker had been pretty quick. I’d tracked Allie down at her work, obtained her phone number illegally, and then I’d waited on her front porch for her to get home. One could accuse me of lurking in the shadows. Yep, I was seriously turning into the creepy stalker she’d accused me of being. What next? Snooping around in her panty drawer? That reminded me that I still had her panties and had no intention of returning them. It was definitely time to admit I was a creepy stalker.
Allie had asked Trevor about me, so maybe she had a thing for the stalker type.
That reminded me that I wanted to know exactly what Trevor had told her, so I sent him a quick message.
ME: What did you tell Allie about me?
While many people were asleep at this hour, I knew Trevor wouldn’t be, and I was right because he responded right away.
TREVOR: Nada. Haven’t talked to her since the two of you left together.
I decided to clarify my question, even though I thought it was obvious what I was asking.
ME: How about before I met her last night?
There was a longer delay this time.
TREVOR: I don’t think I ever mentioned your name before, except maybe to tell her we worked together. She probably knows plenty about you, anyway. You were big stuff back in high school.
When Allie had mentioned knowing stuff about me from my high school years, I’d assumed her information was coming from Trevor. Allie was at least a couple of years younger than me, meaning we most likely wouldn’t have had many mutual friends, so we could have attended the same high school without ever meeting. She was also a succubus, so she’d probably looked pretty unremarkable back then. That thought made me feel like the biggest dick in the world. I wouldn’t be here now if Allie wasn’t hot. Yes, I liked her for reasons beyond that, but I had no idea if I’d have even given her a chance to show me how awesome she was had she not been one of the sexiest women I’d ever seen. At the moment, I envied Trevor’s ability to see beyond what was on the outside.
“Who are you?”
I turned to find myself face to face with a woman in a sleep shirt and spelled satin wrist cuffs. The cuffs tipped me off to the fact that she was a succubus.
“Name’s Dylan,” I said, giving her my best smile. “I’m a friend of Allie’s.”
“Allie doesn’t bring her friends back here,” the irritated little succubus responded. “At least not since that Chad guy broke up with her.”
“Leave Dylan alone, Delilah. It’s been a rough night,” Allie interrupted as she emerged from her bedroom wearing sweatpants and a baggy shirt. Her makeup had been scrubbed off, revealing a line of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Fuck me! I suddenly wanted her even more.
Delilah shrugged. “I guess he’ll be a good distraction for you.”
Allie looked like she wasn’t sure what to say, so she settled on introductions. “Delilah, this is Dylan. Dylan, this is my roommate, Delilah. The police are going to be here any minute,
Delilah, so you don’t have time to harass Dylan.”
“The police? What did you do, Allie?” Delilah asked.
“Almost got herself killed,” I grumbled because I was still angry when I thought about Allie being in danger.
“I guess someone is killing succubi,” Allie explained to her roommate. “It’s also possible he tried to kill me tonight, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“Really?” Delilah squeaked, looking panicked, which was a smart reaction considering her unsafe living arrangements.
Allie just nodded.
“Maybe we should both stay with my parents until they figure out who the killer is,” Delilah suggested. “Why stick around here and be a target? Plus, this place has shit for security.”
“That’s a great idea,” I chimed in, just as the doorbell rang.
“You should go,” Allie agreed. “I can’t leave or I’ll lose my job.”
Allie’s reaction meant her friend’s parents lived in the demon realm. Demons could only leave there twice a month, which was why so many demons lived in the human realm. While it wasn’t as safe for them here, their movements were less restricted. From what I’d heard, the demon realms also weren’t the nicest places to be.
“It’s just a job,” I said.
“Maybe for a rich warlock like you,” Allie snapped. “For me, this is how I pay my rent and avoid fucking every guy I meet to survive.”
And, now she was really pissed at me. I certainly had a knack for saying the wrong thing to Allie.
Opening the door, I found a short, stocky man in a wrinkled brown suit. Actually, he was a shade, like most police officers. It always threw me off when shades chose to look like this. A shade didn’t technically have a body. That left them with two options; either they borrowed one, or they created the illusion of a body. Since borrowing one was illegal, the police created their own bodies. It used more magic, and they were limited on the amount of time they could maintain that body, which resulted in shade police officers needing to take long vacations after each case. Still, it took just as much energy to maintain this body as it did a more attractive one.
“I’m here to take your report,” the shade said with a fake smile that revealed coffee stained teeth. No introductions were made. Then again, shades weren’t known for their social skills. “Who got chased?”
Allie stepped forward. “That would be me.”
“Where were you at?” he asked.
“I’d just turned off of 11th onto Howard,” Allie answered.
“Strange place to be at that hour,” the shade said thoughtfully. “Most clubs are closed by then. You a prostitute?”
“Asshole,” Delilah muttered, and by the sharp look the officer gave her, he’d heard. I was beginning to like Delilah.
“I work at SpellBinders,” Allie said, sounding embarrassed. “It was my night to close, and my boss assigned me extra work, so I got out late.”
“The last victim worked there, too,” the detective said, and I got the impression he was talking more to himself than us. He seemed to be working something out in his mind.
“That’s why I was at work,” Allie explained with a slight tremor in her voice. “The owner needed me to cover Marissa’s shift, but he told me her murder didn’t have anything to do with the club.”
“Tell me what happened,” the detective prompted her.
“Like I said, I’d gotten off work late, and I was walking to my car when I felt like someone was following me. At first, I thought I was just being paranoid after what had happened to Marissa. Then I heard footsteps, and the person behind me kept moving faster when I did. That’s when Dylan called. I never would have walked to my car alone if I’d believed Marissa’s death had anything to do with SpellBinders. I didn’t even know about the other murders until after this happened.”
Allie’s hand shook slightly when she reached up to push her hair back, and I could tell she was having trouble talking about what had happened.
The detective’s wrinkled face softened. “We have no reason to believe any of the killings are connected to SpellBinders, but we can’t rule it out if the killer was indeed after you tonight. Did you happen to get a good look at the person following you?”
“No,” Allie said with a frustrated sigh. “Yes, that would make things easier, but I only looked over my shoulder for a minute, and it was too dark to make out much. Based on the build, I’m pretty sure it was a man. He had on dark clothes and a hoodie, which made it impossible to see his hair or face.”
“I recorded some surveillance footage from a security camera outside one of the clubs,” I offered, pointing to my laptop, which was sitting on Allie’s coffee table. I’d brought it along, knowing the police would want to see the footage. “It’s grainy, but better than nothing.”
“How exactly did you get this footage?” the detective asked casually.
“I used a spell to hack into the feed,” I explained with a shrug. “Don’t try playing the hard ass cop with me. You know as well as I do that human cops are the only ones who care about something like that, and I needed to hack into the system to cast a spell to save Allie. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here now.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” the shade said.
I opened my laptop and played the video file for everyone in the room.
The detective actually laughed when he saw the ball of flame ignite the sleeve of Allie’s attacker’s jacket. I’d watched this video twice, and I was still disappointed that the fire had extinguished so quickly. I really wanted that bastard dead.
“Handy trick,” the shade muttered. “I’m going to need this video file.”
I handed over a flash drive, and the detective nodded. “Now, I just need to go over some standard questions.”
The detective asked Allie about old boyfriends, enemies, and jealous would-be lovers. Thankfully, he didn’t insult Allie by insinuating she was a prostitute again, or I was pretty sure either Delilah or I would have assaulted him. It was pretty obvious Allie had been expecting that, and it made me wonder how often people assumed she was just a sexual object.
By the time the detective left, Allie looked ready to drop.
Delilah left for her parents’ home shortly after the detective. She’d only been willing to leave after securing Allie’s promise that she wouldn’t stay alone. When I returned from walking Delilah to her car, Allie had a lost expression on her face, but she quickly snapped out of it.
“I’ll ask Trevor if I can stay with him,” she said.
And that was how the argument began.