The demon looked formidable. Not just in size, but power. I couldn’t explain how he looked powerful. I felt it, though, down deep in my soul, I felt it. He didn’t look that much different from a human, in the sense that he had two legs, two arms, one head, with all the same facial features. It came from his coloring, more than anything. Nothing as out there as red skin, or something equally ridiculous.
The demon’s skin seemed to glow. He had pearly white complexion, and I could swear that the bare illuminance came off his skin, lighting the area around him. He didn’t have any blemishes, wrinkles, or anything that would make his skin look more human. The demon had blond hair, ice blond. It almost looked blue when he turned his head this way or that. Like actual ice had crept into his pigmentation. And he had the palest, coldest, lavender eyes that I had ever seen. He towered over everyone in that room, standing over six and a half feet, easily. Whereas he had the height, he didn’t have broad shoulders. That surprised me, considering how much of an impact he made.
The demon smiled perfectly even, white, flat teeth at everyone in the room. The expression seemed brighter than what I would’ve expected. Warmer, almost. “Good evening,” he called out to everyone in the crowd. “I’m sure most of you already know who I am, but introductions are always a pleasantry that must be made.”
Some people smiled at him, as if he had made a joke.
“I am Landers, owner of this casino.” He gestured to the building around him. “I’ve been its proprietor since before the majority of you were even born. I know, it’s daunting to think I could do this for so many years, and still look young. This place hasn’t driven me into the ground yet, though.”
Some people laughed, and others smiled. I still didn’t get why they reacted to him at all. Maybe they just feared what pissing off a demon meant. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to learn that the hard way.
He gestured behind him, and a woman came onto the stage. She wore a silver silk gown that put the one Seanan offered me to shame. It hugged her hips and seemed to flow like water with every step that she took. The front of the gown cut down almost her bellybutton, but her breasts had been concealed perfectly. She walked like she owned the entire building, with an exaggerated sway to her hips in every step. She had deeply black, almost fluffy looking hair with purple highlights that looked natural. She had accented them with her makeup, putting hits of purple in her eyeshadow and lipstick. Her eyes, though…she couldn’t hide the look in her eyes. Ice blue and as empty as a dry well.
The man held his hand out to the woman, and she stepped into it without hesitation. Neither of them looked older than thirty, but I knew they had to have been centuries past that.
“This is my lovely wife, the mother of my children, and the head of my security,” Landers said with a broad smile. He looked at the woman as if she made the sun rise, and I couldn’t tell how genuine that expression was. She stared at him like a snake would their prey. “Danette.”
The woman looked across the crowd. People squirmed wherever her cold eyes landed, and I couldn’t blame them. It felt like someone blasted me with ice and snow when they passed over our table. It felt like she took catalogue of everyone in that room. My face would go into her metal storage banks, where it would rest forever. What a scary thought.
Three people walked onto the stage together after that. One woman, a man, and as guy that looked my age. I couldn’t tell if that was his actual face, or if he wore a disguise for some reason. They looked like the other two demons down to the way their skin glowed, the odd colors in their hair, their faces, and bodies. If not for the fact that so many of them looked the same age, I would’ve thought these new people were their children Landers didn’t invite any of the new people to hold his hand. He did gesture to them, though. First, the man that had come on stage. “This is my successor,” he said. “Should I ever decide to step down. He runs the casinos by my side every day, and he spends most of those days making me proud. My son, Llewellyn.”
Everyone clapped when the kid smiled. He had his mother’s hair, but his father’s eyes and body and face. He stood proudly next to his father, like he had been born to stand there.
Danette finally deigned to speak, stepping forward to touch her daughter’s shoulder. “And this is my successor,” she said in a deep, sultry voice that had everyone in the room leaning forward as if they could touch that voice. “Danielle. My daughter, and my pride.”
Danielle looked like a carbon copy of her mother, down to the ice in her eyes and the snakelike smile on her face. She shifted her hips, allowing the black dress she wore to shimmy around her, much like her mother’s silk dress would around her. It felt like watching a choreographed show, but everyone in the crowd ate it up. They clapped, laughed, and looked mesmerized by the entire thing.
Landers smiled at his wife, and said, “Let’s not forget our youngest. Still coming into his own, but who will one day run my companies beside his brother. Lochlynn.” Landers put his hand on the teenaged boy’s shoulder. Lochlynn looked like he would’ve preferred to be anywhere but there. He had his father’s blond hair, and it ran partially down his back. That blond hair, cold looking, combing with his mother’s ice blue eyes and the iridescent quality to his skin made Lochlynn look like he had been carved from ice. He had muscle to his shoulders and back that could be seen with every move that he made. Unlike his brother and father, who both wore black suits, he wore a pale gray one with a white tie. It did nothing to make him look warmer. Neither did the hard expression on his face.
I noticed, almost abstractly, that all the demons looked gorgeous. As if their faces had been molded by someone who knew what they had been doing. Symmetry and careful craftmanship. They didn’t feel real.
Landers stepped away from his son and looked at everyone else in the crowd. “Thank you for joining us during this celebration. It means a great deal to my family, and Blackwell Industries at large.” He lifted a glass of that clear liquid, the demon water. “Please, enjoy the night. You are helping us with a new year, full of profit and good fortune.”
Everyone toasted, including us. The only difference being that we didn’t drink from our glasses. We had to remain clear headed and all.
“Let the fun begin!” Lander said, a huge smile on his face.
That seemed to be the cue for the rest of the demons to show up. The main family had introduced themselves, and now everyone else got their chance. They came out of the door that I had been eying, making me thankful that we hadn’t tried anything earlier. Dozens and dozens of demons walked in. They didn’t outnumber the humans, but it felt pretty damn even.
Then their servants came in. I’d never seen vampires and werewolves in person before, and I had always assumed that they would look like humans. I assumed wrong. The things that the demons had done to change them, to make them into something not human…those things showed.
Vampires had that preternatural grace that nothing else seemed to have. Their faces looked pale, even though I knew they could go into the sunlight. Having half their soul leached from their body had done that. I had read somewhere that they fed to replace the half of the soul that demons removed. They could take small bits and pieces from other people, enough to sustain them but not so much that the human’s soul couldn’t heal. After they had been fed, they supposedly didn’t look pale anymore.
Which mean that hungry vampires just walked into the room. When they smiled, I could see the tips of their fangs.
The werewolves looked even easier to spot, because their eyes glowed. All of them, their eyes glowed pale gold behind whatever human color they had come with. They walked like predators stalking prey, looking at everything around them with the kind of fury and hungry that worried me.
The witches were the hardest to tell apart, because they didn’t look physically different from the humans, for the most part. It was their skin. It glowed with the same kind of iridescent light that the demons’ skin glowed with, only paler. Harder to notice.
They flooded the room, and my heart started to beat faster. “All right,” I said, breathing out. “I’m starting to think that we should get this taken care of sooner rather than later.”
Seanan nodded, her eyes wide. “They don’t look the way that I thought they would.”
Seamus shook his head. “We still have to wait for everyone to really start mingling,” he said. “If we tried to walk out right now, after they made their speech and everything, it’ll draw suspicion to us.”
I knew that he spoke the truth, but that didn’t make this any easier on me. The humans started to depart from their tables, walking around the room. I watched as they greeted the nonhuman creatures with smiles and warm eyes. Some of them would touch the demons’ arms, unafraid of the consequences of such an action. Every time I watched one of them do that, my heart would start to pound even harder.
The main family disappeared into the crowd. Everyone but Landers, who stood on the stage with his glass of demon water. He sipped from the top of it and smiled as everyone mingled.
I leaned into Seamus. “Does it kind of feel like he’s lording over us?”
My friend looked up at the man and smirked. “Only a little bit,” he said.
I took that as a yes. I watched everyone talking, and I wondered what they discussed. It could’ve been anything at that point. I pictured deals being made, companies getting help they probably didn’t need. In my mind, I pictured my father at one of these events, walking through the crowds, talking to demons that didn’t care about him. Didn’t care about the things that he had done, or what it would mean for him to sell his soul.
Then I pictured Derrick. I knew that he hadn’t come to one of these events, but I could still picture him in the crowd. Only, in my mind, his eyes glowed gold, or his skin shimmered in the light, or the deep, warm brown had turned to a strange gray shade. I had to shake those thoughts before they started to seem more real than the room around me. I had to believe that Derrick would be fine. I didn’t know the math on souls. How much could one lose before they wouldn’t recover?
Seanan turned to look at us. “Everyone looks distracted to me. What do you guys think?”
Deep conversations had sprung up around the room. I felt like I could’ve blended into the crowd easily. I took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I think we can get going,” I said, pushing away from the table. “If we go through the door we came in, we can say that we’re looking for the bathroom.”
“All of us?” Seamus asked, quirking his eyebrow at me.
“Well…all right, you make a good point. Seanan and I will go bathroom hunting. Why don’t you follow in ten or fifteen minutes?”
Seamus frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about leaving you two to fend for yourselves, but all right. You have your phones on you, right?”
Seanan held up a little clutch purse that she had been carrying with her all night. Our phones got close and personal inside. “Right here. If you get paranoid, just text, and I’ll get back to you.”
Her brother nodded. “Please, just…don’t do anything stupid.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” Seanan said.
“This isn’t stupid,” I said. “This is brave.”
“What’s the difference?”
I didn’t have an answer, so the two of us walked away from the table. I braced myself for someone to notice and call me out on it. When nothing happened, my heart started to beat at a regular pace. The two of us reached the door and walked through without anyone saying a word.
Outside, I noticed a sign that actually gave directions to the bathroom, so if we got caught wandering around, we wouldn’t have much of an argument about our wandering. So, we just had to avoid getting caught. Not like that would be difficult, considering they had vampires, werewolves, witches, and security all over the place. I felt better already, and not like we embarked on fool’s mission.
“There’s two hallways,” Seanan said. “What do you want to do?”
I wanted there to be one hallway, but apparently, we didn’t get that lucky. “Give me my phone,” I said, holding my hand out.
Seanan dug it from her purse and placed the brick into my hand. I gripped it, suddenly wishing that I had gone with any phone case but the hot pink one with little skulls flying on it. I felt like it stood out just as much as my hair did. I typed in Seanan’s name, and then pressed the call button. “Okay, we’ll stay on the phone with each other, and split up. If either of us needs help, the other one can come running.”
“Better than nothing, I guess,” Seanan said. “Even though splitting up is probably the dumbest thing that we could do.”
I glowered at her.
“It didn’t work last time, so wipe that look of your face,” Seanan said, and then put the phone to her ear. “All right, Tomorrow, I’m walking away now. I’m going down the right hallway.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned around, and headed for the left hallway. They had dimmed the lights down that way, but I could still see well enough not to trip over my own heels. The carpets kept them from clicking, either, which I silently thanked the heavens for. While also hoping that my shoe didn’t get stuck.
The hallways didn’t have anything interesting down it. I couldn’t even see any doors.
“Find anything yet?” Seanan asked.
“No,” I said. “What about you?”
“Some drunken people trying to use the wall as a bed. I’ve never wanted to see middle aged man penis, and now I’m traumatized for life.”
“What about when you are middle aged?” I asked.
“That’ll be different. I’ll have given up by then.”
My hallway came to two turns. One seemed to go into some storage rooms, while the other led down another hallway. “I feel like I should have brought some breadcrumbs with me, or something.”
“That would’ve just alerted everyone to your presence,” Seanan said, and her voice echoed slightly. I assumed that she had ended up in the bathroom for some reason. Maybe she thought there would be a secret doorway down there.
I turned toward the storage closets and pushed one open. Inside, I found a bevy of cleaning supplies. It smelled like bleach and disinfectant and sawdust. I wrinkled my nose, wondering how often they had to clean up vomit with those cleaning supplies, which did nothing to brighten my mood. I turned from that door to the other closet. When I tried the handle, it didn’t budge.
“Nothing in the bathroom,” Seanan said. “Aside from a drunk girl cawing about how she managed to break the tampon dispenser. Do all drunk people act like this? I thought you mostly passed out and smelled bad.”
“I found a storage closet,” I whispered. “And a locked door.”
“Ooh. Break in.”
“Well yes, that would be the appropriate response, but breaking would require either strength or lock picking skills. I do not have either, believe it or not.”
“Do it anyway.”
I wished that I had Seamus on the phone. He would’ve been more reasonable. I tried the handle a few more times, as if jiggling it would make it open. I thought about looking up a tutorial on lockpicking, using things like hairpins or various cleaning tools. Then I thought that might take too much time.
Looking around to make sure that no one had followed me, I decided to try option B. I slammed my shoulder against the door. It thudded, hurt my shoulder a lot, and didn’t budge in the slightest. Maybe because, as a storage closet, it didn’t open inward like most doors would have.
I rubbed my shoulder, cursing.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna try that again,” I said. Bracing myself for a second impact, I slammed my shoulder against the same edge of the door. My entire arm throbbed in protest, and I didn’t budge the door at all. At least I felt pretty certain that it did, in fact, open inward.
“Maybe we should grab Seamus?” Seanan said. “He’s the size of a house. I bet he could break into the damn room.”
“Yeah, let’s get him,” I said, thinking that we didn’t have another option. I turned around and found that Lochlynn demon standing at the end of the hall with his hands tucked into his pockets. A small shriek ripped its way through my throat before I could stop it.
“Tomorrow?” Seanan asked. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”
I fumbled with the phone and ended up dropping it on the ground without answering.
Lochlynn raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Admittedly, I try to avoid these things as often as possible, so I’m not up to date on my father’s rules. However, I think that humans wandering around his casino looking for things would be prohibited. Especially one that looks twelve.”
“I’m twenty-one,” I said, lifting my chin. “I’m sorry. I know that I shouldn’t be wandering around without permission. I just got curious. I’ll go back to the party.”
I stepped forward, to walk around him, but Lochlynn put his hand out, stopping me as easily as if I were a child. With a lightning-fast movement, he grabbed the phone out of my hand and turned it around in his. “Twenty-one, huh?” he asked, looking at the hot pink case.
“Yes,” I said, my heart shooting into my throat. “Why don’t you give my phone back now?”
“Um, excuse me. Who found who wandering around where they shouldn’t have been?” Lochlynn asked, those ice-cold eyes shooting through me like a spear. It felt like he pushed me underneath a microscope, and I couldn’t squirm away from it. “Maybe you should be nicer to the person who could have a dozen werewolves on you in a hot second.”
My heart leapt into my throat, but I stayed perfectly still. “Please,” I said.
Lochlynn cocked his head and started to thumb through my phone. My heart started to pound. I had pictures of Seanan and Seamus on there, and if he recognized them from the party, we would all be busted. Then I thought of Yesterday, who I also had pictures of, with me in them. My sister wouldn’t be hard to find if they took me, and she didn’t deserve to get dragged into this mess. Then I thought of Derrick. Lochlynn would have to scroll for quite a while to find Derrick, but I had pictures of him on the phone as well. Dozens of them, because no matter how bad and blurry they looked, I couldn’t bring myself to delete those photos.
“Do twenty-one-year-olds usually eat in a cafeteria?” Lochlynn asked, looking at me over his lashes. The amusement on his face did nothing to help my currently anxiety. He turned the phone around, showing me a picture of Seamus, Seanan, and I. The three of us sat in our school’s cafeteria, and while that might’ve been easy to explain away, the tray of school food kind of cinched it.
I cleared my throat and lifted my chin. “Fine, I was lying, and I admit that I shouldn’t be wandering around. If you hand me the phone, then I’ll leave, and you’ll never have to worry about me again.”
Lochlynn’s amusement didn’t fade. He clicked the screen off, and crossed his arms over his chest, keeping my phone tucked in his hand. “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“Oh, I believe that you were lying, and that you aren’t twenty-one. But you’re trying to act tough, and I don’t believe that for a second.”
I kept my hand out there. “Well, I’m not acting.”
Lochlynn leaned closer, and I could feel the power radiating off him in a cold blast. I thought that if I touched him, his skin would actually be cool. My heart leapt into my throat at the thought, and I wondered how I would get away. It would only take him a second to call security, and then I’d have to run. I couldn’t outrun vampires and werewolves, who had been turned into predators. They would kill me.
The demon smiled and sighed, rocking back on his heels. “Luckily for you, I couldn’t care less about my father’s company. Screw him over, steal from him, I don’t care.” Lochlynn turned the phone around, handing it back to me. “Enjoy yours—”
His body jackknifed into the wall, making my jump. Lochlynn fell to the ground, his entire body rattling around on the floor. Seamus stood behind him, holding a taser out, his finger depressing the trigger, his eyes furious. I stared at him in horror, realizing the mess we had just gotten ourselves into.
I jumped over the twitching demon and shoved at Seamus’ chest. “Stop that!” I hissed.
He stared at me. “What do you mean stop that? He was going to hurt you!”
“He was letting me go,” I hissed back. “He said that he didn’t care about what I did here.”
“He was lying,” Seamus hissed.
Seanan came around the corner, her eyes wide. “What happened?” she asked.
Her brother started to explain, and I knelt down next to Lochlynn. I touched his shoulder, expecting him to respond. Tasering someone didn’t make them pass out, I didn’t think. When I looked at his face, though, I knew that something bad happened. He had blood leaking out of his nose and mouth, staining the carpet.
“Guys,” I said, looking at my friends. “What did you do? What kind of taser is that?”
“It’s normal,” Seamus said.
“It can’t be. He’s bleeding.” I jumped up and grabbed the weapon from Seamus. When I stared at the thing, I realized that it looked more normal than I would’ve thought. Well, normal for a taser, I supposed. “What are we gonna do? You just attacked the demon whose father owns this casino, after he caught me snooping.” The words came out breathy and panicked.
Seamus shoved his hands through his hair, looking down at Lochlynn. He shrugged, and said, “There’s only one thing we can do. We have to take him with us.”
“What?” I hissed.
“If we don’t take him with us, then he’ll tell his father that he saw you, and the demons will kill you.”
I stared down at the prone body on the ground. My heart continued to thud in my chest. “What are we supposed to do with him? The second he wakes up, Lochlynn will fry us five ways to Sunday.”
My friends looked at each other, and then back at me. “Actually, we have a solution for that,” Seanan said.