A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(29)

Another good point.

Mom leaned across the table and brushed a chunk of hair from my face. She smiled. “You are a good person, Jessie. Independent, strong, and fiercely loyal. But you’re also hot headed like your father, and pushy like him, too. You don’t know when to back off.”

I laughed. “So you’re saying all my bad habits came from Dad?”

“Naturally. Darker genes are flawless, baby girl,” she said with a wink. “My point is, you need to give Lukas some time. This is a huge adjustment, and after everything he’s been through, he needs to deal with it in his own way.”

…

As usual, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for over an hour before I gave up. I still had that math assignment to do for Monday, and I thought about getting it out of the way, but my mind kept coming back around to Lukas. I’d tried calling him twice, but there was no answer, and it was driving me crazy. Maybe because it was our first fight. Was it even a fight? There hadn’t been any name calling or door slamming. I had no idea what the requirements were. And after what he’d said, I didn’t know where we stood.

Before we’d maybe-fought-maybe-broken up, I’d decided to shadow over to his place when I couldn’t sleep. The option was still open, and it would give me a valid—in my opinion, at least—reason to see him.

Mind made up, I slipped from my bed and stuffed my feet into my Keds. Since Dad started hanging out at the apartment, we kept the heat turned down. Go figure. A resident of Hell wasn’t fond of the heat. The sneakers were cold, and I bit back a yelp as my toes slid inside.

I stepped away from the beam of moonlight shining in from my window and closed my eyes, focusing on the warm interior of Lukas’s new apartment. The tug started out as a small itch and built quickly to pressure. In a moment of release, I felt myself blend with the darkness, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing in a small white living room furnished with a fluffy brown armchair and matching love seat.

“Lukas?” I called, rounding the corner and starting slowly down the hall. If he was in a bad mood, the last thing I wanted was to surprise him. Everything was quiet, but it was the feel of the place that told me he wasn’t there. The lack of energy. Of life. It was almost two in the morning. I started to worry, which was stupid. Dad said demons didn’t need sleep. Maybe Lukas was at that stage. Maybe, like me, he was working off his insomnia. Just because he wasn’t here didn’t mean anything was wrong. It wasn’t like there was a half-insane, nameless demon running around with a grudge against us or anything…

Yeah.

I closed my eyes and focused on Lukas himself. The shadow was easier this time, which I found to be the case when I focused on a person instead of a place. Like driving in rush hour traffic compared to driving the open roads.

I came out at the edge of a dense forest that bordered a white Victorian-looking house. Lukas was peering through the brush, a few feet in front of me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around. “And where exactly is here?”

He jumped and whirled around. “Jessie! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I’m not sure that’s possible. You know, you being a demon and all.”

He glared at me but didn’t respond. Wedged between two large pine trees, Lukas was crouched behind a row of thick bushes. The house was dark, but every once in a while a bluish light would flicker in the front first-floor window. Like a television. Nice to know we weren’t the only ones having trouble sleeping.

“Do I wanna know why you’re skulking in the bushes outside this old house?”

He stood and brushed off his jeans. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Men of your age need their rest.” I peered through the brush to get a better look. The house looked familiar, and once I realized the color was lighter and the porch had been removed, I knew exactly where we were. It was the same place in the pictures I’d seen Lukas looking at on the Scott table back at Town Hall. The one his parents had been posed in front of. “I wonder who owns it now.”

“My family still owns it. It’s been abandoned until now.”

“Until now?”

“A man named Patrick Scott recently moved in.”

“Relative?” I mean, obviously he was a relative, but I was trying to get him talking. He wasn’t having it, though.

Lukas sighed. “Really, what are you doing here?”

I shrugged and leaned back against the pine tree. “Things felt weird after you left tonight. I didn’t want to leave it like that.”

“I was abrupt, and I apologize.” He slid back down to the ground across from me. “It was childish.”

“Well, I did kind of ambush you.” I sat down across from him, leaning back against a young pine tree.

“Yes,” he said, looking back at the house through the bushes. The breeze kicked up, making the collar of his jacket flutter just a bit. “You did.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. The sound of the wind, mixed with the occasional chattering raccoon and piercing cry of a hawk, filled the silence between us.

After a few minutes, he sighed. “This is all new to me, too, you know. Not just this new power that’s brewing inside, but us. Our relationship—whatever it is.”