I sat in Lochlynn’s car, my suitcase that I ended up packing because Linda couldn’t find any cute clothes sat in the backseat. It felt incredibly strange to be sitting there, staring out the window. My hands wanted to drum on my thighs, while my feet wanted to bounce off the floor of the car. Just sitting still took almost all of my concentration. Not looking at Lochlynn every four seconds took the rest of it.
I cleared my throat. “So, does your family know that you’re bringing a human by?”
“No.”
Oh, so I’m going to die today. Not only am I going to die, but I packed my bag and willingly got into the car, on the way to my death. That felt just wonderful, and not at all like someone had sucker punched me in the chest. Clearing my throat again, I looked over at Lochlynn. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No.”
“That’s it? Just no?”
He glanced over at me, and said, “I could bring up the hypocrisy of you not trusting me, considering how you met. Instead, I’ll tell you that demons bring human pets home all the time. And no, I don’t consider you my pet. I’m just letting you know that my parents won’t find it strange, nor will my siblings.”
Right. He had a brother and a sister as well as his parents. Llewellyn and Danielle. “Just to double check, and it’s not that I don’t trust you or something, but you didn’t tell them about where you’ve been, right?”
“Of course not,” Lochlynn said, looking over at me. “You should probably try to hide your nervousness. No offense, but it’s very obvious, and you’re about to jump into shark infested waters with a bleeding leg.”
Oh, well that did wonders to make me feel better. Didn’t at all have my heart racing even harder or make me go temporarily blind. My rubbed my hands down my thighs, giving into the urge that I had been fighting since getting into the car. It felt good to give in, too. How else would I burn away this nervous energy?
Lochlynn glanced over at me and cleared his throat. “Both my siblings are several years older than me,” he started. “They were adults when I was born. Llewellyn is a bastard, and I won’t let him be alone with you.”
I turned to look at him. “Why?”
Lochlynn shook his head. “I think it’s best if we don’t get into it right now. Suffice it to say that it’s in your best interest to not be alone with him either. He probably won’t be very interesting in you, though. If he sees you at all. He’ll probably be off for your entire visit, with some girl or partying, so you’re safe from that. Danielle will talk to you, and there’s no way around that. I don’t think you have to worry about her, though. She’ll mostly be concerned with the fact that I’ve brought a girl home after being gone for so long.”
“You said they wouldn’t think anything of me.”
“They won’t,” Lochlynn said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t notice you. Danielle will ignore you, and try talking to me instead, to make sure that I’m in my right mind, and whatnot. She won’t care about you one way or another. You’re just another human in a cast of millions.”
“Thanks.”
Lochlynn shrugged, like he hadn’t said something offensive. I went to his house for a very specific reason, and yet, I still felt a tightening in my chest like he said that. How many girls had he brought home before? How many of them had been discarded? And what about his brother and sister? They could’ve done this to humans too, and no one would notice. No one would care, either. Any human that willingly walked into a demon’s home…well, they had to be asking for it, didn’t they?
“My parents might be a littler trickier. If my father sees you, which is doubtful, he’ll ignore your existence entirely, unless you make yourself interesting. I would highly suggest that you don’t do that. If my father shows up, stop talking. I don’t care what he says or does, just stop talking. Better yet, walk out of the room. It’ll be better if he thinks your rude than if he thinks you’re interesting.”
I didn’t even know what to think of that, but I nodded. “Okay.”
“My mother will probably do the same thing. You won’t matter much to her, but if she gets bored, then you’ll become an amusing plaything. That can mean anything with her, because all these games that she plays, they only make sense in her mind, understand?”
“Yeah,” I said, quietly. I understood why he told me this. He wanted me to be prepared for anything, and if he managed to prepare me, then I wouldn’t be so scared. It had worked, up to a point. I now knew to avoid all of his family and try not to wander the house without him there. I could do that. However, I also felt even more nervous than I had before, because it would be so, so easy to do something wrong. To piss someone off and get myself killed. The thought had my heart twisting around in my chest.
The rest of the drive remained quiet. Lochlynn drove without breaking any laws. It surprised me, since even Linda sped and ran stop signs when she thought she could get away with it. He also didn’t have a sporty car, the way I would’ve thought, if I had thought about it. Of course, Lochlynn was so tall that a sporty car would probably feel like hell to him.
Instead, he had an SUV, that would fit his long legs. The only thing in the car that could be considered a feature, at least that I saw, was the sunroof. He had opened the thing up, so that we could see the sky starting to change colors as evening wore on.
We drove out of the city, which surprised me. “You don’t live near the casino?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “We hardly ever go there. That party was the first time my parents have been in six months, and the first time for almost three years for me.”
I didn’t know why that shocked me so much. “What about to get souls? Where does your father do that?”
Lochlynn glanced sideways at me. “My father has flunkies that do that. They’re given a quota on how many they need to collect a month. If they don’t meet their quota, then they’re punished.”
My morbid curiosity had me asking, “How are they punished.”
“They don’t get to feed off a soul until they fill their quota and make up for the souls they didn’t catch.” His hands tightened on the wheel, and I watched his knuckles turning colors. I swallowed and pushed the thoughts and questions out of my mind. I had wanted to know, but maybe living in ignorance had been better.
Eventually, Lochlynn turned onto an empty street. And I meant empty. The dirt road stretched for longer than I could see, with nothing but empty land around it. Those desert bushes filled that land, but it looked like someone came in and cut them down every now and then. I could see a giant house in the distance, and nothing else. One house. No buildings or other houses.
The closer we got to it, the bigger the house looked. It seemed to take up the entire sky as Lochlynn pulled up to it, after a five-minute drive. He pulled his SUV around back, ignoring the man that stood by the gate. He had on a valet uniform, which surprised me. I couldn’t imagine why someone would need a valet for their own house. I lived well, and we had a lot of money, but not this kind of money.
We came up to a garage so vast, I couldn’t hazard a guess to how many vehicles it could hold, but I saw several when Lochlynn pulled in. Two large, black cars sat toward the front, next to three white cars. Across from those, I saw four red vehicles, all different colors and all of them looking expensive as hell. Next to those, two green cars sat, and they looked more modest, but only bare. Lochlynn pulled his blue SUV into a parking spot and shut the car off.
I looked around the garage, a frown on my face. “Forgive me for asking what might be a stupid question, but are your cars color coded?”
Lochlynn offered a bitter smirk. “They are.”
“There’s only one blue car, though,” I said.
“I don’t need more than one,” Lochlynn responded, and got out of the SUV. I sat there for a second, imagining a world where you color coded your cars, because you had so damn many of them. I thought that being able to buy toys for my friends whenever I wanted felt luxurious and wasteful.
Shaking my head, I got out of the car and grabbed my bag from the back. I put it on my shoulder, and my brain finally threw information at me. I stood in the middle of a garage owned by a demon…Just outside the house that they owned. Where they lived. And waited for their son to return. The son that I kidnapped.
My stomach twisted around, threatening to dump the cake and bread I’d had for lunch all over the floor. Nothing short of willpower kept it all down. That, and the thought of Yesterday finding out I barfed on this guy. She would never let me live it down. Especially since she thought I had crush on Lochlynn. Which I didn’t. It had been a ridiculous notion when she brought it up, and it would continue to be a ridiculous notion for the rest of eternity.
Lochlynn had started to walk away but paused when I didn’t immediately follow. “You okay?” he asked, a knowing tone to his voice.
I glared at him. “I’m fine.”
“Then are you coming?” he shot right back to me.
I started walking, forcing myself not to think about what I walked toward. If I didn’t acknowledge it, then maybe it would go away. Demons existed. Why not miracles?
The garage door had a lock on it, a fingerprint one. Lochlynn pressed his thumb to the pad, and I listened to the little machine beep as it recognized him. The door swung open, onto a mud room the size of my apartment. Hooks had been lined up next to the door, and I could see coats hanging on them. Most of them probably had never been used. I didn’t wear coats most of the time. Just my oversized sweaters, like the purple one that I had on now.
Lochlynn wiped his feet, and hung his car keys on another hook, that had several different sets on them. They all looked shiny and new, making me wonder how often those cars even left the garage.
He had barely finished doing that when a man appeared. He looked huge, though not as tall as Lochlynn, with shoulders that took up the entire doorframe. The guy glanced at me like one would a bug, and then turned back to Lochlynn. He nodded once, and then walked out into the garage without saying anything.
As the door swung closed, I turned back to look at him. “He’s our mechanic,” Lochlynn said.
“Your mechanic needs to look like the Hulk?” I asked.
“It keeps people from stealing the cars,” Lochlynn responded, and gestured toward one of the doors. He opened it up, and I stepped out, into the biggest kitchen that I had ever seen. It had two sets of everything, including islands. People bustled around the kitchen, cleaning and cooking as they saw fit. I could smell some kind of roasting meet, and it looked like someone had been baking pies all day. Four of them sat on the counter.
No one looked at us as Lochlynn and I walked through the room. As we stepped out of the space, I breathed out, and looked back at him. “You guys have staff?”
He nodded. “They won’t talk to you, and most of them are human. Our security might ask you some questions, but if they do, then just send them to me. They’re mostly werewolves, with a handful of vampires thrown into the mix. You don’t have to worry about that, though. They’re all trained and have full control over themselves. they won’t drain or maul you.”
Everything became a blur of marble and white after that. Everything in the house had been done in whites and grays with splashes of black. It felt cold, and the impersonal decorations only added to that. Even the stair railing had been made out of wrought iron, and it felt like a cage when Lochlynn brought me up those stairs. We ran into people along the way. Maids, security, people in suits whose purpose I couldn’t figure out. When I looked out the huge windows that filled the hallway, I saw gardeners and groundskeepers working outside.
This giant house felt empty and cramped at the same time, and I couldn’t figure out how Lochlynn stood it. I would’ve gone insane if I had to live there.
The downstairs had been done with marble flooring, but the upstairs had wood floors throughout the entire space. Even the bedrooms didn’t have carpet. Faux beams had been placed on most of the ceilings, and it did nothing to make me feel more at home. That rustic touch in an otherwise cold house just made me realize that they had hired a decorator, and probably did every ten years or so, to redo the entire house.
The crowd thinned out when we got up the second set of stairs. The third floor had been split into two areas, with doors and everything. Lochlynn went to the left door and revealed an open space behind it. The room reminded me of a man cave in a way. Or a media room. It had two couches pushed against the wall, both of them looking plush as hell, plus two recliners that had to have cost a small fortune. One wall had a huge TV on it, with all kinds of gaming consoles lined neatly underneath. The space also had a full kitchen. Nowhere near the size of the kitchen downstairs, of course. But it had an oven, stove, and fridge, plus a small sink and dishwasher. Everything that a person would need to make this their suite.
Huge windows lined a couple of the walls, but thick curtains had been put on them, blocking out the light. The walls looked mostly empty, but one had nothing but bookshelves on it, all of them filled with things. Not just books, but videogames, movies, comics. It looked glorious, but I didn’t walk over to look at everything that he had in there.
Lochlynn closed the door behind us, silencing the noise from downstairs.
Once he had quieted everything down, Lochlynn rubbed the back of his neck, and wandered over to one of the curtains. He pulled them open, letting bright sunlight wash into the room. I noticed that he hadn’t painted the walls gray. They had been done in stripes, for one thing. A sky blue next to royal blue. It kept the room from looking boring.
“I take it that this is your suite?” I asked, looking over at him.
Lochlynn nodded. “Yeah. I graduated last year, so I can spend days in there without anyone bothering me, if I wanted.”
That sounded sad.
“C’mon,” Lochlynn gestured to the left, where I could see a door that had been left open. I followed him into his bedroom and looked around. He didn’t have more decorations in there, but I noticed another set of bookshelves, filled with the same kind of things that his other bookshelves had. The room looked huge. A massive dresser had been pushed against one wall, and a giant TV hung over it. He had a walk-in closet and a bathroom suit as well. The bathroom had a checkerboard pattern that matched the color of his striped walls. A large blue rug protected feet from the cold gray hardwood, and his bed looked better than my room.
“You have to stay in here,” Lochlynn said. “It’s the only way that I can make sure you’re safe. You can take the bed or the couch. Your choice.”
He gestured to the leather couch that divided the room in half. “I’ll take the couch,” I said, figuring it wouldn’t be kind of me to steal his bed from him. I set my bag down by the couch, and looked around so more, like I couldn’t take enough of the room in. “Even your suite feels huge,” I said.
Lochlynn shrugged. “At least I don’t have to deal with my parents this way.”
“Where does everyone else stay?” I asked.
“My parents have the entire of the second and first floors to themselves. All those people work for them. I have this floor, and my brother and sister share the one above us.”
The size of this house boggled my mind. I also couldn’t fathom why five people would need this much work.
“What about the other half of this floor?” I asked.
“The rest of this floor houses the vampires,” Lochlynn said. “Most of the staff is downstairs, or they have homes of their own that they go back to.”
“So, I won’t have to deal with anyone, if I just stay here?”
“Probably not,” Lochlynn said. “All the offices are downstairs, though, so if I have to break into another computer, we’ll have to go down there. For right now, though, you’re fine.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Lochlynn smirked at me. “Were you worried that you’d be sleeping next door to my father, or something?”
“I don’t know what I worried about,” I said, shrugging. “It just seemed like a dangerous thing, to be coming into a house filled with people I didn’t know, and who might want to kill me.”
Those cold eyes watched me. “But it doesn’t feel dangerous right now? With me?”
I answered honestly. “No.”
“Why not?”
I thought about it for a second and answered as honestly as I could. “Because you could have killed me. I opened that cage door once to feet and I walked in another time. Either would’ve been the perfect chance to kill me, and escape. But you didn’t. It couldn’t have come from some kind of fear, because you’ve never look afraid of anything. I have to assume that you just…didn’t want to kill me.”
“I didn’t,” Lochlynn said, nodding. “Glad one of you is capable of understanding that.”
“Seamus didn’t mean to hurt you like that. He just wasn’t thinking clearly.” It felt strange to be defending my friend, when he had done something wrong. The words just popped out of my mouth, though.
Lochlynn’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he asked. “Because if I had attacked you, what would you have thought about it? Would you think that, of course the demon attacked you? Or would you think that you had it coming, for all the things you had done?”
When put like that…I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. When I closed it, Lochlynn nodded.
“It doesn’t upset me. Most demons would have slaughtered you the second they got the chance, and not looked back. Humans fear us for a reason. We deserve the way you look at us, and the way you squirm away from us.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Even if you aren’t mad, I shouldn’t think like that. I’m sorry for doing it.”
He nodded once and started to say something when a chime went throughout the suite. I looked around, frowning. “Was that a doorbell?”
Lochlynn nodded, while walking past me. Who the hell installed a doorbell for a suite inside a house? Couldn’t someone just knock? So caught up in our conversation and those thoughts, I walked right out of his bedroom without thinking about who could’ve chimed.
Lochlynn’s sister came into the suite. Danielle looked the same as she had on the stage, what felt like a lifetime ago. She wore a different suit, but nothing else had changed. She had brought her hair up into a bun, and her arms crossed over her chest when she looked at Lochlynn. “Are you coming down for dinner? It’ll be ready in twenty minutes, and I’m tired of being left alone with them.”
“I’ll be down,” Lochlynn said, while I stood frozen.
Danielle’s eyes drifted over to me, and one purplish black eyebrow rose. Those ice blue eyes seemed to freeze me down to my core. “Who are you?” she asked, a curious note to her voice. And although she asked me, her eyes went back to Lochlynn. “Have you brought a pet home?”
I felt too nervous to bristle at her words.
Lochlynn gestured to me. “This is Tomorrow. She’ll be staying with me for a few days.”
Danielle sighed. “Is that where you went off to? You were spending time with your little human?”
“Yes,” Lochlynn said, and he didn’t even have to lie. Though, I could only imagine the things that Danielle assumed at that point. She probably thought that the two of us had hooked up all over town.
The girl sighed, rolling her eyes. “It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose. Bring her down to dinner. It’ll make the meal so much more fun.” Danielle turned on her heal, and the light played off the purple highlights in her hair as she walked away. “We could use a little fun in this house.”
The door closed behind her, and I turned to stare at Lochlynn. “I don’t have to eat with you guys, do I?”
He rubbed the back of his head and looked at me. “Unfortunately, you do,” he said, and shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on eating with them, but I don’t want you up here alone. It’d be dangerous.”
“So, you’re telling me that I have to eat dinner with your parents? Who, although I don’t know, looked like two of the coldest people that I’ve ever met?”
Lochlynn nodded. “Yeah. I wouldn’t make you if I didn’t have to.”
I thought about when he had been in the cage, and he had said that his parents wouldn’t notice his absence. He had said a lot of little things like that, things that made me think his parents didn’t treat him right. Now, I watched Lochlynn start to shut down, and wished that I could do something about that. I wanted to erase the nihilistic gleam to his eye, as dumb as that sounded.
My worry for him started to fade as I realized what eating with them meant. I stared down at my oversized sweater and torn jeans and felt my heart starting to trip in my chest. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, looking back up at Lochlynn.
He sighed. “If it makes you feel better, I usually don’t dress up either, so it’s fine if you wear that.”
“Nope. Doesn’t make me feel better,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
From the start of that day, it felt like I had made a mistake. Not until that second had I realized just how big of one. Not only had I come into the lion’s den, just like I thought I would, but I would be dining with them.