“She’s late,” Severus snarled, pacing in front of the ground-floor window, glaring at unassuming pedestrians. Like a caged animal, agitated, he had prowled to and fro for the last half hour in anticipation of his cousin Cordelia’s arrival. “She’s never late.”

“Technically she still has three minutes,” Alaric said from the kitchen. The clatter of plates suggested he was nearly done unloading the dishwasher, an obtrusive ruckus that made Severus’s lip curl.

“She should be here by now. Doesn’t she know how important this is? Time is of the essence!”

He heard Alaric sigh, but his friend offered nothing further—he knew better than to argue with Severus at this point. Moira had been missing for three days. Three agonizing days. Severus had searched high and low for her, calling in favors and paying people off. A hundred grand—gone, now lining the pockets of demon slime whose tips hadn’t even amounted to anything. It was only last night, after threatening to get Verrier involved—an empty threat, of course, as Verrier couldn’t care less that Moira had been kidnapped—that he had been able to extract useable intel from a demon who worked maintenance at the FHU campus, who finally had the security camera footage to prove it.

Diriel’s boys had taken her. Drugged her, stuffed her in a car, and driven north.

As insignificant as Diriel had been in Hell, with no renowned family name to speak of and no particularly special demon abilities, he had built a small empire for himself in Farrow’s Hollow.

How he’d done it was anyone’s guess. One day he had just appeared, influential and filthy rich, with men and ammunition at his disposal. Unlike the other mob families, he seldom threw his weight around, preferring to spend his time torturing and partying. But he had strength in numbers, and Severus knew it would only waste more time if he worked through the levels of the demon’s network.

And time wasn’t his friend, not after he had finally realized who had taken Moira.

Severus needed to locate her now—if she had even survived three days in Diriel’s hands.

Unfortunately, the one witch who would assist, no questions asked and no fees charged, was in Hell—on holiday. And not answering his personal summons. The only way Severus had been able to get his cousin topside was through Alaric. The hybrid had told his father there was a glitch in the magic hiding their home, and Verrier put a request in for her to return to Earth immediately. Naturally, there was nothing wrong with her enchantments; Cordelia’s skills were legendary, and she offered them only to Verrier and her family.

However, when both parties realized it was all just a ruse to get her back to Earth, Alaric had earned a mild tongue-lashing from his father, and Severus had woken up from his two-hour nap this morning, the first he’d taken since Moira disappeared, to a phone call from a shrieking Cordelia. Still groggy, he had let her rant on and on about her professional integrity and how he’d made Verrier question it. When she was through, a bleary-eyed Severus had explained his predicament, and after some hemming and hawing, she offered to stop by around nine that morning to help.

“Finally,” he growled when he spotted her very distinct figure strolling across the street. Swathed in black lace, she was no more than a shadow navigating the bright, bustling spring morning, and she wore a smile when Severus wrenched open the door to find her waiting on the other side.

“Good morning, cousin,” she greeted, rasping at him in that sultry voice of hers—she always sounded like a bluesy jazz singer from another decade, or a chain-smoker with a touch of elegance. “You look awful.”

When Moira had asked if his cousin was a character from a Tim Burton movie, her style assessment hadn’t been far off. While rather fashionable in Hell, it was all a bit gothic and heavy for the modern times of Earth.

Her heavily cinched corset gave her a teeny waist and generous hips, despite her already slim figure. Today, she had waltzed straight out a Victorian funeral, from the black skirt with its frilly silk bustle to the fitted black button-up jacket over her petite midsection. Lace everywhere, including the soaring neckline that climbed up her throat and flared out delicately beneath her chin. Finally, the tiny hat that sat just off center, a black net dripping down to cover her sharp, angular features, was just plain ridiculous, even for Cordelia.

Her face appeared clear today, much to Severus’s chagrin, the porcelain skin unblemished, and the thick black-blue mane that reached down to her hips had been tamed into an uncharacteristically tidy chignon.

Cordelia grabbed his chin as she stepped in, giving it a little squeeze and shake in passing. Ah. Rosewood-red gloves—not entirely black today.

“Thank you for your promptness,” he hissed, twisting his face out of reach and slamming the door. “I’ve been waiting—”

“Do not speak to me about punctuality and decorum.” She whirled around, her demon eyes narrowed as she pointed an accusatory finger at him. “I was summering in Pandemonium with Mother when I received Verrier’s summons—his rather annoyed summons, at that. You’re fortunate I’m even here.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve already received the lecture,” Severus grumbled, though he paused to kiss her on the cheek, which she offered with a demure tilt of her head, before stalking toward the kitchen. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“Alaric, darling, you’re looking well,” Cordelia all but sang as she toddled along after him, the click, click, click of her heels across the hardwood making Severus’s eye twitch.

“Hello, Cordelia. Nice to see you again.”

“More than nice, darling. Tell me, are you still a barman? A creature of your talents is destined for greater things! I really must do your cards… In fact, I brought my deck if you’re interested.”

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose; he knew he should have had Cordelia over when Alaric was out. The witch was positively infatuated with Verrier’s son, and she made it known to everyone in the room, Alaric included, that she’d snap him up in a hot second if he so much as smiled at her. His roommate professed to be uncomfortable with the attention, but all his blushing, stammering, and fumbling whenever he was around her suggested otherwise.

Today, however, was not the day for flirtatious banter. Severus had been out of his mind with worry since his little hybrid disappeared. He’d been impatient, snippy, and fidgety, unable to sit still for more than five minutes before throwing himself into another half-cocked scheme to find Moira. The thought of another demon taking her, using her for their own perverse purpose, made his insides boil, but the fact that it was Diriel only made the matter more dire.

Beyond feeling his own special blend of fear and rage, the inner demon had been giving him outrageous heartburn ever since they’d found Moira’s discarded cell phone next to a security pole on the FHU campus. The beast wanted her back just as desperately as Severus did, and if they didn’t find her soon, Severus worried he’d be boiled in acid from the inside out.

“Really, with those good looks, you ought to be a senator,” Cordelia cooed, in the process of peeling off her gloves at the breakfast bar when Severus joined her. Alaric stood on the other side of the counter, at the sink, fiddling with a dishrag. His roommate’s flushed cheeks and nervous smile were telling as ever, and on any other day Severus would have joined the conversation for a bit of merciless teasing.

Not today.

“Focus,” he snapped, slamming his hand down on the granite. Alaric jumped, but Cordelia merely shot Severus an exasperated look before delicately removing her headgear. His gaze darted up to her gloveless hands, littered with scars, many decades old. It was a badge of honor among hell-born witches; magic came with a price, and Cordelia wore her scars with pride. Her face ought to be covered with them, big and small, thick and thin, deep and surface-level, but she always cast an illusion when crossing through the hell-gate.

After all, scar-ridden humans were few and far between these days, and if she wanted to go about her business on Earth without attracting an insane amount of attention, she needed to look normal. It was the same for each and every demon who went topside; the magic of the hell-gates hid their horns and claws, altered their skin. In short, hell-gates made creatures of the underworld palatable.

Alaric, however, had always seemed fascinated with Cordelia’s scarring. When he spied the man eyeing her hands, his lips parted as if to ask a question, Severus put an end to it at last.

“You two can flirt and eye-fuck later,” he growled, looking pointedly between them. “After we find Moira.”

“All right, all right,” Cordelia muttered, waving Severus off as a flushed Alaric glared daggers from across the counter. The witch piled her discarded clothing, which now included her Victorian overcoat, off to the side, revealing the intricate scarring climbing up her bare arms like one mammoth tattoo in varying shades of crimson. She then produced a folded map of Farrow’s Hollow from the depths of her skirt pocket and opened it. “I’ll need something of hers. Something she has recently used.”

Seeing no need for her to elaborate, Severus charged up the two staircases from the first floor to the third. He had left Moira’s belongings as they were, as if that would help him forget that she had been kidnapped and was likely being tortured right that very moment. Unsure of what specifically Cordelia needed, Severus stuffed everything—clothes, sunglasses, toothbrush—into Moira’s duffel bag, then carried the lot downstairs.

Just as before, he found Alaric and Cordelia mid-flirt, with his cousin half sprawled across the breakfast bar, the huge map of Farrow’s Hollow crinkling beneath her. His roommate had moved much closer in his absence, and darted back with a hasty clearing of his throat when Severus dropped Moira’s bag on the dining table—loudly.

Cordelia sprang into action, muttering for him to get out of the way as she rooted through Moira’s belongings. Severus stood nearby, closer than she would have liked, surely, and crossed his arms as he watched. It felt wrong for someone Moira would consider a stranger to touch her things—especially when Cordelia settled on a white bra with pink and baby-blue hearts across the cups.

“A brassiere?” he asked dryly.

“It was closest to her heart, you absolute child,” she sneered back. Had they been children, she would have stuck a forked tongue out at him before stomping off. Now that they were fully grown demons, she merely turned in a whirl of black lace and stalked back to the counter without another word. Rolling his eyes, Severus followed, his hand pressed to his chest at a sudden flood of acid reflux.

I’m trying to find her, for fuck’s sake.

Cordelia tossed her head from side to side, cracking her neck noisily with each throw, then rolled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. After instructing Alaric to turn the kitchen light off, she extended her arms over the map, the bra gripped tightly in one hand, the other palm up, and closed her eyes.

Watching his witch cousin perform spellwork was an acquired taste. Her frantic muttering—ancient Aramaic, if he wasn’t mistaken—was akin to the possessed speaking in tongues. If she hadn’t closed her eyes, you’d be forced to watch them roll back in her head. And her voice—guttural and hoarse, the demon within doing all the casting for her. It was old hat to Severus by now, but he’d thought Alaric might find it distasteful; instead, his friend watched with rapt attention, hanging on her every word.

Over and over she murmured the incantation, the air thickening around them. She held Moira’s bra so tightly that her knuckles went white, and suddenly, she hissed, eyes shooting open. Severus and Alaric watched, totally mute, as her palm split, blood pooling in its center. With the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, lips peeled back in a snarl of pain or delight—or, more likely, both—Cordelia turned her hand, whispering the ritual softly now as bright red blood dripped onto the map.

When she finally closed her hand into a fist, the new gash stretching the entire breadth of her palm, the drops of blood on the map unified. Any wayward droplets shot toward the largest, as if summoned magnetically, and Severus moved in closer as the blotch danced around the map—leaving no bloodied trail in its wake. Finally, it stopped, quivering, before the red blob collapsed in on itself, forming a single precise dot that sank into the paper.

Cordelia exhaled, the breath sounding more like a death rattle than anything, before withdrawing both arms and pressing the back of her bloodied hand to her forehead.

“There,” she said, her usual rasp back. “She’s there.”

“Isn’t that just forest?” Alaric asked as he and Severus each leaned over the map. Situated north of the university, the area it would appear that Moira had been abandoned in was a forest at the very edge of the city’s limits—near the hell-gate, actually, which gave Severus a start. However, logic prevailed, and he shook his head, heart thundering, when he recalled what was actually out there.

“No, no, Mammon built an estate there after he created the hell-gate,” he said, hoping his recollection of the city’s history was correct. Master of magic and wealth, Hell’s prince Mammon had built every hell-gate on Earth, and occasionally he wasted a few years away in the nearby cities—should they pique his interest. “The castle was abandoned when he returned to Hell, but I believe it is still functional.”

“Demons preferred to live in town when they migrated,” Cordelia agreed, her words taking on a somewhat dreamy quality as she strolled around the counter and into the kitchen. At the sound of water running, his cousin humming over the sink, Severus turned and bolted for the door.

“What are you doing?” Alaric hurried after him, grabbing his arm. “You’re going out there?”

“We know where she is now,” Severus argued. “I have to go. I have to bring her back—”

“Yeah, because running in blindly seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”

“And what would you have me do instead? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs, as I’ve been doing all this time?”

“No, but some sort of planning would be helpful,” Alaric remarked with a frown. “Don’t be stupid, Sev. We know where she is, sure, but we don’t know how many demons he has guarding her. Diriel’s a twat, but he wouldn’t leave someone that valuable unguarded, and they will gut you the second they see you. Don’t. Be. Stupid. Moira doesn’t need a heroic idiot—”

“Right, right, right,” Severus muttered, silencing his friend with a scowl of his own. Alaric was right, of course. While every fiber of his being urged him on, desperate to get Moira out of whatever hell she was likely enduring, he couldn’t charge in there blind. Besides that, he needed to fuel up; his physical strength was seriously lacking after spending the last three days searching for her. Even a ghoul would be tough to defeat in his current state. “You’re right, but Moira—”

“This Moira certainly has a hold on you,” Cordelia purred, her heels clicking toward them. Severus peered around Alaric, huffing at her, but she remained unfazed by his temper. “I’ve never seen you so flustered before, cousin.”

“She’s…important,” he said, swallowing hard, “to me. She’s important to me, and Diriel will make her suffer.”

“Hmm.” Cordelia stopped beside Alaric, then brought her hand out from behind her back, the other still dripping blood onto the floor, and held up a small, perfectly innocent cupcake. Her eyelashes fluttered as she offered it to him. “I made you a gift.”

“Just… Just now?” Alaric hesitantly accepted the baked good as she nodded. “Well. That’s very…efficient of you.”

Cordelia hummed in agreement, then sauntered toward the stairs, an extra sway in her bustle. “I’ll help you two find this Moira woman, but only if you acquire the building layout to that castle. I can find her exact location to save us some time.” She paused halfway up the stairwell and leaned over the railing. “Until then, I’ll be napping in your room, Severus. Bit jet-lagged…just flew in from Hell and all that.”

The pair watched her until she disappeared upstairs, her heels clacking across the second floor to the next staircase. Then, in unison, they looked down at Alaric’s cupcake—chocolate base, vanilla frosting, a smattering of red sprinkles on top. Just as he went to unwrap it, Severus slapped it out of his hand.

“Don’t eat that,” he hissed, knowing his cousin too well to let Alaric go through with it. “Don’t eat anything she bakes you unless you want to fall head over heels in love with her for eternity.”

“Right. Yeah. Don’t want that.” Alaric wiped his fingers on his pajama bottoms, then scratched at the back of his neck, unable to meet Severus’s eye. “So, what’s the plan then?”

“Haven’t a clue,” Severus grumbled, stalking for the front door and slipping into a pair of shoes. “Think about it while I go find those building plans. We’re getting her out of there tonight, whether we have a plan or not. Do you understand?”

Alaric sighed, arms at his side, the cupcake frosting-side down at his feet. “I understand that you’ll do it even if I object.”

“Damn right I will.” Severus wasn’t about to let Diriel butcher the only person who cared about him, the only one besides Alaric and Cordelia who seemed to enjoy him, the real him. In fact, if he had the opportunity to take that fucker out in the process, he wouldn’t hesitate. Moira didn’t deserve this—any of it. Severus was responsible for her lack of knowledge, her lack of fear around demons. He was the fool who had brought her to the Inferno in the first place; she had outed herself defending him.

He owed it to Moira to get her out, and once he did, he’d hold her to him, taste her, protect her, worship her as she ought to be worshipped—and never, ever let go again.