Page 2 of Monsters After Dark

“Leave?” He quirked a dark eyebrow at me. “Now why would I do that? I was invited, after all.”

“I-Invited?” I croaked.

“Invited...” He scooted up the side of my bed until he sat next to me. When he let two fingers walk up my duvet to my hand, I shuddered, too afraid to pull away. His touch was scorching, and this close, his cologne sank into my nostrils. Warm and spicy, with just a touch of something dirty. Animalic. Almost… sulfuric? “…Summoned. Potato, po-tahto. You promised a bargain, so here I am, little dove. Ready to give you what your heart desires.”

I blinked. He… was not a hitman? He wasn’t here for my debt?

Only then did I notice his lack of accent.

Relief numbed my entire nervous system for a brief, exquisite moment. Then realization dawned, followed by rage.

I slapped his hand away and poked him in the chest. Hard. “Kurt, is it? Kurt the demon, here to take all my troubles away? You can tell Barry to go fuck himself. I can’t believe he’d go this far. Give me that book? Okay, ha ha, very funny. But send some strange creep into my apartment while I’m sleeping? That’s too fucking far. Get out.”

Something passed behind Kurt’s dark eyes, something sinister that made me clutch the sheets.

“I told you, darling—I’m not going anywhere before we’ve agreed on a bargain, hmm? I’ve come very far to meet with you. You shouldn’t be rude to a man who’s come to help.”

“Yeah? Traffic bad between Chicago and Hell?” I bit, reaching for my phone on my makeshift nightstand—a rickety old chair that wasn’t strong enough to hold a person. “Get out, right now, or I’m calling the police.”

He closed his strong, warm fingers around my wrist, firmly enough to make me drop my phone. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Okay, this was officially no longer a mean prank. I swallowed and did my best to seem uncowed as I glared at him. “If you don’t let go in the next two seconds, I’ll scream.”

Kurt snorted. “You think your deadbeat roommates will come save you from the big, bad boogeyman? Go ahead.”

“Help me! Help!”I screamed as loud as I could, my voice piercing the quiet morning and echoing through my room. I kept screaming, over and over and over.

No one came.

Slowly, I quieted, panting with mounting terror as I stared into the stranger’s hard eyes. I didn’t have the best relationship with my five roommates—we were all too busy scraping by to socialize much—but I was pretty certain we were on will-save-you-from-madman terms. Or at the very least, someone should have come to check out why I was screeching at ridiculous o’clock. Brian worked until midnight, and got real pissy if awakened before noon.

Someone should have come.

Ice-cold terror gripped me by the throat. “What did you do to them?”

Kurt tutted and finally released my wrist. I pulled my arm close to my body and curled all the way into the far corner of my bed, gaze locked on him.

“They’ll wake up once you and I are done here, darling,” he said softly, reaching out to nudge at my chin.

I swallowed hard and steeled myself against the shiver that went down my spine at his touch. “What do you want, then? Sex? Is that the price Barry wants me to pay for trying to steal from him—getting raped?”

The darkhaired man chuffed through his nose and got to his feet. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and took a few steps to where I’d drawn the salt circle last night before he turned back around to me, lips slightly pursed.

“There seems to have been some… ah, misunderstanding. Did you not read aloud the ritual? Draw the circle? Light cheap candles? …Summon a demon?” He pushed at the salt with his foot, giving me a sardonic look. “Is this a case of mistaken identities, hmm? Do I have the wrong address? Is the real summoner perhaps the little old lady downstairs?”

I shuddered at the thought of this guy sneaking into Mrs. Mckinnon’s bedroom.

“Look, you can drop the act. I get it—this is my fault for playing along with Barry’s witchcraft-is-real bullshit. Ha-ha, desperation will make people do the dumbest things. I don’t know what you’ve done to my roommates, but what’s the plan here? Scare me? Mission accomplished—I’m scared. You can go back to Barry now. Please.”

I didn’t manage to kill the quaver in my voice at the end.

Kurt sighed heavily. “Ah, you’re one of those. I must admit, usually the non-believers who summon me are teenagers too scared to rebel against their parents with drugs, so they play pretend at being witches. Then poof, an actual demon appears, and it’s a whole ordeal. You’re my first adult without a clue. But okay, let’s get this over with.”

He held up a hand, and darkness crept from it in tendrils. Like thick smoke filling the air around him.

I blinked, about to try to rationalize away what I was seeing, when his face sort of… melted off.

“Oh my God!” I croaked, equal parts disgusted and horrified. “What the fuck?!”

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