Sin & Spirit (Demigod of San Francisco #4)(85)

“This is so beautiful,” I said, tears in my eyes. “Everything. What you’ve done with this place, the view…”

“You,” he said softly, nuzzling my neck. “I love you, Alexis. I’ll sign your name to this house, right beside mine, if you’ll let me. Anything you want to change or redecorate is totally up to you. I don’t care what you do with it, as long as you’re happy. As long as you and the kids are living under the same roof I am. There’s plenty of space in the garage if you want a different car. You can pick out whatever you want. My father had an extensive collection if you’d rather pick out one of those. He has a hangar full of them.” He turned me so he was looking down into my eyes. “I know my life is crazy, which has made your life crazy, but if I can ease that for you in any way, I will.”

“You think a life of luxury is going to make up for showing my magic to the world?” I asked, my expression not selling my words, largely due to the way my tears were wreaking hell on my makeup.

“I sure hope so, or I’m screwed.” His smile took my breath away. His handsome face was better than any scenic view. “But there is one thing.” He grazed his lips across mine. “The butler comes with the house…and he’s not overly fond of me or change.”

I laughed, deepening our kiss. “Just wait until you meet the spirits in the secret passages. When they aren’t…occupied. Speaking of which, did you get rid of the sex room? And that gross trophy room library?”

“Both, definitely. The sex room is a stylish guest room now. I figure Jack can hang out there until he figures out what he wants to do. The library was revamped.”

I smiled and let my hands trail down his body, letting everything else—the danger, the uncertainty, the animal kingdom situation I’d unfortunately stumbled upon—fall away.

I cupped his massive erection. “Where’s our room?”

He groaned against my lips. “I gutted my father’s old room. I didn’t grow up here, so it isn’t weird for me, and it has a fantastic view. I figured you’d be happiest with that. We can always change to—”

I stroked him through his pants. “That’s perfect. Maybe we could see that now and tour the rest of the house later?”

“With pleasure.” He whisked me up into his arms. “So living here is a yes, then?”

“Yes.” I caressed his soul through our connection. “It will always be a yes.”





34





Magnus





“Sir, a package for you.”

Magnus glanced up, annoyed by the distraction from his work. Why had an import he’d been buying for years suddenly doubled in cost? Gracie held a square box, its size about that of her chest. She set it on his desk.

“It was delivered to your decompression chamber.”

Magnus dropped his pen slowly and sat back, his hands on the chair arms.

His decompression chamber was where he sat when he went into the spirit world. It was fortified to protect his vulnerable body while he was away. Only a select few people knew about it, and he’d trusted those people for hundreds of years. He had a blood oath to keep their silence.

“We’ve tested the package for explosives or anything dangerous.” She looked down at the top. It didn’t say who it was from. “We couldn’t determine what exactly was in it from an ultrasound.”

He read her face and knew she wasn’t lying. He checked their blood link to confirm it. She was anxious and curious and unsettled. Good. So was he.

He pulled the coarse brown string at the top. The thick brown paper reminded him of an old-timey parcel. The plain cardboard box inside wasn’t taped shut.

Gracie scooped out the packing peanuts, letting them bounce across his desk and onto the floor. She looked in and paused before stepping back. “Looks like a chessboard, sir.”

Bewildered, he stood and leaned over the package, hovering his hands at the top of the box. A strange feeling seeped down through his middle.

He delicately removed what was, indeed, a chessboard. The squares were translucent gray and clear. They overlaid a picture of Amos’s severed head.

Magnus hadn’t been able to track Amos down, either in life or in spirit. Now he knew why. The child knew of Magnus’s involvement.

Underneath the board was a plain white envelope. A few carefully folded papers were tucked inside. He skimmed the contents. His stomach dropped to his feet.

He held a list of the various export items from the greater San Francisco Bay Area, a few select trade agreements recently secured by San Francisco that gave Magnus the import answer he’d been looking for, and more information on Magnus’s operation than had ever, ever been made public. To get his records, someone would’ve had to hack into his systems. Except no breaches had been reported. No breaches had ever been reported. How could this have happened?

Magnus glanced back at his computer and the unexplained cost discrepancy he’d noticed earlier. The child was sitting on top of a healthy exporting territory. Vegetables, fruits, tech—their goods were plentiful. Clearly the child knew it, and he was hitting Magnus in a place that made him financially helpless—one of the only places Magnus was helpless.

Valens had always boasted about his son’s knack for the job, about how easily he took to training. Valens had been absolutely right. He had created a nightmare worse than he had ever been.