A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(33)

The receptionist wasn’t a woman with a cheerful smile and impeccable wit, but a stooped, hairless thing with black skin and a squinty blood-red gaze that followed you wherever you went. And behind thin, cracked lips were several rows of sharp, decaying teeth that could probably cut you to ribbons without really trying.

The desk itself was a thing of nightmares. It oozed blood and pus, thick, foul-smelling liquid dripping from the edges. The goo trickled down the sides, collecting on the floor by the base of each leg. I always made sure to stay in the middle. It would be just my luck to slip and fall in the stuff.

“And how are we doing today?” Sasha—that’s what she, or it, insisted I call her—asked in an all too chipper tone.

I bit back a remark that revolved around quartz and the sun not shining and did my best not to focus on the desk or its occupant. “I need to see him.”

She lifted her head to the ceiling, waited a minute, then dropped her gaze to mine. “Go on up. He’s waiting for you.”

I didn’t ask how he knew I was here because I sure as hell didn’t want to know. Arguably knowledge was power and all that, but the less I learned about this place, the better. With a deep breath, I made my way around the desk and down the hall toward Valefar’s office. When I got there, I raised my hand to knock, but the door creaked open before I got the chance.

“Don’t just stand there. Come in.” Valefar was sitting on the edge of his desk, leaning slightly to the left and wearing a demon dog-that-ate-a-human grin. “This is a surprise. You never call. You don’t write…”

“I actually stopped by yesterday. You weren’t here. We have a problem, and I thought I might get your help.”

His brows shot up, and he kicked off the desk, sauntering close with the swagger of a runway model. With a wickedly terse laugh, he said, “My help? Honey, you work for me, remember?”

“It’s about a demon.”

Wringing his hands together, he flashed me an amused grin. “I’m intrigued. Please. Continue.”

“We accidentally freed a demon that one of my ancestors trapped in a mirror.”

His brows waggled. “You should be more careful.”

Oh yeah. Mom owed me big for this. I bit down hard on my tongue and kept going. “This demon that we accidentally set loose is a nasty one. I’m asking for your help because we have a mutual interest in seeing this thing go down.”

“A mutual interest? I find that incredibly hard to believe.”

I folded my arms. The only way to deal with a demon like Val was to appeal to his sense of possession. That’s what I was to him. An item he owned. Or, rented, in my words. “You want me to fill out the deal my grandfather made with you, right?”

“Indeed.”

“And I want to continue breathing topside. This demon has a personal beef with the Belfairs and the Darkers. He’s out there as we speak, looking for interesting ways to takes us out.”

“I see,” he said. “And what kind of demon is it that the mighty Darker women can’t take care of on their own?”

I shrugged. “No clue, but if one of my ancestors locked him away in that mirror instead of taking him down, he had to be hardcore. I think he’s some kind of Elemental demon, but quartz didn’t even tickle him, so I’m not sure.”

“Does this demon have a name?”

I hesitated. “We were told not to speak it.”

Valefar laughed. Not a chuckle, but an all-out belly laugh. It looked so out of place coming from him. “Pumpkin, things like that don’t apply here. Tell me this demon’s name.”

I sighed and hoped he was right. “Gressil.”

The change in him was instant. A violent storm churned behind his eyes, and the sound that came from his throat, a terrifying cross between a bellow and a growl, chilled me to the core. It took a lot to scare me, and in that moment, Valefar was doing a damn good job if it. “What did you say?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but my brain put on the brakes. No way did I want to repeat that name. It was that name that had pissed him off in the first place. I’d never seen Valefar truly loose his shit. Today wasn’t the day I wanted to change that.

“Answer me,” he snarled.

Deep breath. “Gressil. We think its name is Gressil.”

He didn’t say anything. He was corpse-still and utterly silent, staring at me with more hatred than I thought possible—which was saying a lot when you were talking about a demon… With a single, blurring step, he was in front of me. There was a good chance my heart stopped. Why else would every limb go numb and the world turn hazy? I tried to draw in a breath, but there was no air in the room. Only Valefar’s eyes, dark and violent and more demonic than I’d ever seen them, trained on me. “Are you certain?”

Every impulse had me moving away, but I held my ground, determined not to show weakness. Or, maybe it was because my body seemed to have stopped obeying me. The truth was, I couldn’t have moved if I wanted. Fear kept me rooted. “From the information we have, yes,” was my answer. Short, sweet, slightly shaky, but simple.

“Do you know anything else?”

“He’s killing members of the Belfair coven. Two so far… He wants a prison. Thinks we have it. He gave us two days to hand it over…”