Chapter 15

 

 

WHEN THE police arrived, Mal slipped away and found the clothes he’d scattered and then watched Jory and Neal spend hours answering questions. Jory explained the entire mess, pausing whenever Barnett shouted about spirits and magic, and sniffled, trembled, and looked distraught at all the right moments. Jory even slipped into a stunned pause every time Samael screamed about demons loud enough to be heard through the locked patrol car. His scent was accented with the same adrenaline and smugness that Adam Luhmann had stunk of when Mal first met him, but on Jory it was somehow endearing. Jory even looked older and more respectable, like the minister he’d pretended to be. This was a game to him, and it was one he was damn good at.

Mal was surprised at how easy it was to be Jory’s loving boyfriend, arriving in the middle of this trauma to quietly lend him emotional support. Jory had to give the cops his phone number and address, then agreed that he’d go to court or give a statement whenever he needed to. It was a small price to pay to know that Corbin Barnett and Samael were both locked away.

Louise left with Neal while Mal and Jory rode with the police to fill out the paperwork identifying Luhmann’s body and giving them the number of New Life Ministries in Minnesota.

“Are you sure you want to let the people from your church deal with his remains? No one in that pink warehouse knew him better than you did,” Mal pointed out once the police had let them go. “Does he even have next of kin?”

“I doubt it. But the church hasn’t fallen apart just yet. With Adam ‘sacrificing himself to save his misguided young ministry student from a random act of violence,’ they’ll remember him as a hero. It’s the right thing to do.” Jory paused, smiling despite his grief. “For a given value of right.”

They walked a little farther, finally turning back toward the café. When they reached Mal’s car, he stopped. Jory was looking up at him with exhausted, lost eyes. Jory’s scent changed in a flash, the pain, terror, and fear he’d been tamping down finally coming forth.

“Louise was supposed to give you this and tell you to run,” Mal said, gesturing to the Mustang. He left Jory’s side for a moment, crouched down, and reached behind the front right wheel to the spot where his key was attached to the frame by a magnet. He popped the trunk and looked at Jory nervously. “I figured you’d find it once you were far away, when this was over.” Swallowing hard, he went to the trunk and grabbed the tattered cookbook he’d brought with him from Minnesota.

Jory gasped and snatched the book from his hands, cradling it against his chest. “My cookbook? You had it with you? This whole time?”

“It was the only thing in your room in New Life Ministries that smelled like you,” Mal explained. “I brought it with me to hold on to your scent. I meant to give it back, but I knew that there was no going back once you learned the truth.”

“There’s no going back?” Jory’s voice cracked.

The urge to try to comfort him was impossible to resist. Mal wrapped one arm around his waist, letting out a relieved breath when Jory leaned against him.

“I’m so sorry.” Mal rubbed his cheek against Jory’s hair. “I thought I’d been hired to track down an incubus who’d skipped out on his partner in a con. When I met you, when I learned what I’d really been hired to do, I never wanted to let them find you.”

“Because being a demon makes it so easy to get out of a contract? You went to that hotel to kill him, even if it killed you.”

Mal grimaced. “That was the plan, at least. I knew Eugene’s kid was a vicious little bastard, but I never imagined he’d want his father dead badly enough to sell his soul to a demon lord to make sure Eugene never recovered.”

“Are you kidding me? You were on a first-name basis with him?”

“I’ve worked for him for years. He’s never asked me to do something like this before. And what happened between you and me was never part of it. I knew from the beginning that asking you out was wrong. I told myself a dozen lies to try to justify it in my own head, because after our first date, you were all I wanted in the world. The more time I spent with you, the worse it got. I’ve never wanted anyone like this before. Every time I came close to telling you the truth, I imagined never seeing you again and it hurt.”

Jory looked up, meeting Mal’s gaze. “When Samael had a hold of me, it was hard not to kill you. I felt like my muscles were tearing in half. Even after all the shape-shifting and crazy shit, I never thought about how it would feel to be controlled by someone else. I know it wasn’t the same for you, but I imagine it was close.”

Mal couldn’t help but smile. “No. I had a choice, at least when I agreed to the contract. Hel’s nobility doesn’t give anyone a choice. I couldn’t have fought through a demon lord’s chains. Knowing that you could, that you did, for me, is… it’s….”

A half smile lit Jory’s face, banishing a fraction of his misery. “If I hadn’t remembered what you told me about why no demon tries to enslave an incubus, I would have failed. This demon shit really fucks everything up, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Can we… I mean, could you ever…. That is, if you could forgive me, do you think that….”

“Do you want to try this again?” Jory asked. “We could start over, see where things go. If you want to.”

Mal sighed and melted against him. “I’ll always want to be with you.”

 

 

MAL WATCHED Jory run his fingers over the duct-taped binding of The Professional Pastry Chef. He snapped a quick photo, happy to have fodder for another sketch.

The café kitchen had become a bit more crowded in the past few months with Keygan wandering back into their lives four weeks ago, dejected and hungry. Now, hoping to learn how to do something he could turn into a job, he was constantly working under Jory’s or Selma’s direction. With Mal hanging out more often than not and Neal popping in and out all the time, things were a bit cramped.

Jory quickly flipped through the book and let it fall open to a well-loved page. “I know Selma’s got you watching everything, but you might as well work your way through this entire thing. It’s thorough, and even though it’s decades old, it’s still the definitive work on baking.”

“An entire book about baking?”

“You could fill an entire bookstore with all the books about cooking and baking that are out there. Now, everything starts with bread,” he announced, turning the book so Keygan could glower at the pages.

“What is this script?” Keygan asked, turning his head sideways to try to make sense of the words. “Latin?”

“Okay, maybe it all starts with learning to read English….”

“I still think you should come work with me and Louise,” Mal cut in. “I can just pay you out of whatever I earn.”

“But you’re earning nothing at the moment,” Keygan pointed out.

“It takes time to get licenses lined up, and even more time to finish selling my town house. Without something to use as investment capital, Hellhound Bail Bonds won’t be able to loan anybody a dime to get out of jail.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to get enough money to start your own business by selling your place?” Jory asked.

Mal resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Everybody wants to live in Brooklyn these days, and I’ve owned my town house outright, under one name or another, since 1945.”

Jory looked oblivious. “And?”

“Trust me, I’ll be able to make ends meet. Either way, we’ll have to get Keygan an identity eventually. Otherwise he’s going to end up stuck on the streets with Neal.”

“Why would I need or want one?” Keygan asked.

“Because most places won’t pay you like Selma does,” Jory explained. “She doubled my wages so she could give you half. It’s just as illegal as what Mal’s proposing, unfortunately.”

“Why would being stuck with Lord Astaroth be a bad thing?” Keygan’s cheeks took on a pink tint.

Mal shared a glance with Jory, who was grinning.

“There’s nothing wrong with being with him. But having access to a shower is a good thing. It takes everybody time to adjust and adapt to living on earth, that’s all.”

“I’m not sure Neal ever bothered,” Jory admitted.

“He was preoccupied with finding you.” Keygan came to Neal’s defense readily enough. “And with mourning the loss of his… I still don’t know what Lord Asmodeus was to him. Is to him?”

“Neal doesn’t actually know if Asmodeus is even alive. I’ve heard him say both, and he was lying each time,” Mal said.

“Who knows? And other than Neal, who cares? I get that this Asmodeus guy was important to him, but every time he starts to talk about it, he says he needs a drink and vanishes.”

Keygan looked insulted. “Lord Asmodeus is no more some guy than Lord Samael is some demon assassin.”

“Whatever they want to call themselves doesn’t impact me. We got rid of our feudal system ages ago.”

“He’s your father,” Keygan chastised.

“I get that everybody thinks I should care about that, or at least be all impressed, but….” Jory shrugged. “He’s still just some guy. Some guy who contributed a bit of sperm to my existence, but that’s it. As for Neal, if you get settled here and get an apartment, maybe Neal will end up crashing on your couch.”

Keygan’s eyebrows drew together.

“Sleeping on your furniture out of convenience,” Mal translated. “Or whatever other excuse you two need.”

“Ah.”

“Either way, we’ll be here to help you figure it out,” he promised.

Keygan nodded, smiling.

“Personally, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around everything,” Mal continued. “He’s really the Astaroth. Jory is one of Asmodeus’s own kids. It’s a little nuts.”

Jory flung a tiny ball of bread dough at him, obviously annoyed that Mal hadn’t dropped the subject.

“Together we ran a brothel, conned the inhabitants of Hel out of money, and made most of them love us for it,” Neal announced, appearing in a rush of air. “Is it really that much of a stretch to believe I could be good at something?”

“Do you actually want me to answer that?” Jory asked. “How long have you been listening?”

“I can’t not listen.”

“But you can’t hear Asmodeus,” Jory said.

Neal slumped. “I don’t know. I can’t hear his melody, but the song hasn’t ended. It’s like one long rest, but when the orchestra should have moved on to the next measure, they went out to lunch instead. That might just be twenty years of wishful thinking on my part. Life changes, though, and if I’m going to last, I need to change too. I can’t not listen for his song, but I can stop obsessing about it.” Neal reached into one of the cooling racks and helped himself to a dark whiskey sour cupcake. A low moan escaped from his mouth, and Keygan dropped the cookbook on the counter.

Mal glanced pointedly between Neal and Keygan, then met Jory’s gaze with a single raised eyebrow. Jory stifled a laugh.

“What?” Neal asked.

“Nothing.”

“The music thing is hard to believe too,” Mal insisted. He grabbed a cupcake and held it up with a shrug. “So is this, though.”

Neal swallowed a massive bite of cupcake. “There’s more to this universe than magic, monsters, and human ingenuity. Baking is definitely not an incubus thing, but it has its perks. Once upon a time, when there was still fae blood out there somewhere, their magic developed once they became fixated on something. It was how they expressed themselves—and wasn’t magic at all as far they were concerned. But they were magic, so things got weird.”

“You fixated on music?” Jory asked, his eyes wide and curious.

Neal shrugged.

“Jory doesn’t get sick of baking, though,” Mal pointed out, reaching for a second cupcake.

“It keeps me alive,” Jory said, grinning. “It took me a bit to figure it out, but now that I can see each line of power, I get it. I’m not giving away my own power, I’m just channeling background magic. When it goes through me, I can absorb enough to survive without….”

“Don’t ever say you can survive without getting laid,” Neal warned him. “You can survive on bread and water too, but it isn’t worth it.”

“It’s not the same. You don’t kill anything if you eat something other than bread.”

“Chicken,” Mal said, disguising the word as a cough.

“People. You don’t kill—”

“You’re having this conversation with me, a hellhound, and a dragon,” Neal pointed out. “Think that sentence over carefully.”

“Whatever. I don’t kill people. I won’t.”

Selma walked through the door to the café and stopped, her hands on her hips. “You, you, and you,” she said, pointing at Neal, Mal, and Jory in turn. “Get out.”

“But….” Jory shook his head.

“It’s your day off. Keygan and I have got this. He’s not going to learn anything if you keep correcting him before he can even try anything.”

“I’ll stop,” Jory promised, holding up both hands to ward her off.

“No. Mal, honey, find a hobby other than staring at Jory. And you.” She turned on Neal. “I am perfectly willing to take in every stray demon in the area who might need a safe place, but you’re not exactly lost. All you do here is steal cupcakes and buy Jory alcohol.”

“I could wash dishes,” Neal volunteered, talking around the last bite of his cupcake. He looked sincerely hopeful.

She rubbed her temples. “Do you have any idea how long you’d have to spend washing dishes in order to pay for everything you’ve eaten over the last nine months?”

“I’m totally okay with that,” Neal announced. “I mean, what else am I going to do with eternity?”

“Fine. Wash your hands and grab an apron. But no more cupcakes until this place is spotless.”

Jory looked offended. “Wait, he gets to stay?”

“Come on.” Mal tugged at Jory’s elbow. “It’ll still be here tomorrow. I was hoping you’d have lunch with me anyway.”

Jory hung his apron up and reluctantly followed Mal out.

“Thai food? Or Italian?” he asked, reaching for Jory’s hand.

Jory didn’t look as enthusiastic as he’d hoped. He kicked sheepishly at the pavement. “I don’t want to get lunch. I actually had something planned, I just got caught up in there.”

“Oh.” Mal’s mood sank a little. This was the fifth time Jory had blown him off. As much as he liked to think that things between them were okay, he had never been sure.

“You should come with me.”

Mal whipped his head up, surprised. “Where?”

“Let me drive and I’ll show you.” Jory held out his hand for Mal’s keys.

Still confused, he followed Jory to his car and watched as half the city rolled by outside the window. They drove across the bridge and into an old neighborhood lined with small houses.

“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going, are you?”

“We’re here.” He pulled to a stop in front of a small blue house with a rickety white porch and a backyard surrounded by a slapdash mix of neighboring fences and chain-link. Jory flashed him a brilliant smile and climbed out.

Mal joined him on the sidewalk. “An old house?”

“My old house,” he announced. “Finally. It takes forever to close on a mortgage. I had no idea what a pain it was when I started looking for places after that mess with Samael.”

“You’ve been looking for a house since then?”

Jory laughed. “I found this place within a week. It takes six weeks to buy a house. And it’s little—just one bedroom. But it’s got an actual kitchen!”

Mal watched him jog up the sidewalk onto the porch and fish out his keys.

“Come on,” he said, motioning for Mal to follow him inside.

The house was tiny, with hardwood floors that could stand to be refinished and baseboard heaters lining at least one wall in each room. The kitchen was huge, with room for a massive dining table. The hardwood gave way to teal-and-gold linoleum, but it seemed to work with the white finish on the cupboards. On the counter next to an almond refrigerator were Jory’s cookbooks—the one Mal gave him before their first date and the duct-taped cookbook he’d brought from Minnesota.

“I think you have enough cabinets in here to fit every cooking gadget you want,” Mal announced, thrilled that his gift had found a place in Jory’s home.

“That’s what I was looking for in a house.” Jory shuffled into the kitchen beside him, fidgeting with his hands. “I know this is weird. I’m not trying to presume anything, but you spend every night at my place, so I figured I should tell you.”

“So I know where I’ll be spending every night after you move?” Mal snagged his waist and pulled him close. Jory laughed and grabbed on to the front of his shirt with both hands.

“I was hoping you might, but if you’re looking for a place that’s a bit more comfortable than your car, my studio’s going to be available to rent. But… well… when I was debating between a house or a bigger apartment, getting a place where a pug, or a couple of giant wolves, wouldn’t draw too many complaints was the deciding factor. I’m crazy about you, but if we’re not there yet, it’s okay.”

“Jory, you’re….”

“Jumping the gun? I know. We should have just gone out for Thai food.”

Mal bent down and bumped his forehead against Jory’s. “Stop it. I’m not sure when I fell in love with you,” he admitted. “I could make a list of a hundred different moments that all left me in awe—wondering how someone like you could possibly be single, much less willing to tolerate me. The very first one of those moments was when you gave Louise her own plate for the pumpkin cookies.”

“Honest?” Jory asked, his eyes wide.

“Yeah.” Mal tugged Jory closer, rubbing his thumbs in tiny circles. The heat from his skin was still too damn intoxicating. “Not quite love at first sight, but close.”

Jory was beaming. “I think if it’s within five minutes, it counts.”

“Every moment with you since then has had the same effect. I don’t see that changing. But if I move in, I get to buy furniture. Real furniture. A real bed and a real couch. The only good thing about that evil futon in your apartment is that it smells like us.”

The way Jory’s scent shifted left Mal’s heart racing.

Jory trailed his hands up Mal’s shirt and over his collarbone, then followed the curve of Mal’s neck to his jaw. “So that’s a yes?”

“Absolutely,” he said, tilting his head to the side and kissing Jory with an intimate familiarity that left him warm and tingling. “If you’re sure you want me to. It’s your home, so if you want time to… not fill it with any possessions except the bare necessities….”

Jory grinned. “You know, all my life, I’ve felt like I was adrift, like I was floating in this giant sea of people but like I was completely alone. I’ve had rooms, apartments, places where I slept or stayed, but I never had anyplace where I felt like I belonged. Not until you.” He looked up at the angled ceiling and shrugged. “This is just a house. Anywhere I can be with you feels like home.”