Page 21 of Demon Hunter

Chapter 9

Matt

The lookon Dyl’s face is one I’ve only seen a few times before, and never for something good. Even Ian recognizes that something must be wrong.

“Uh…” He glances at me, his eyes askingwhat the fuck?“Is that not how the online division works? You find shit on the internet that might be demonic activity, or wannabe demon summoners, and create a job for a hunter to check it out?”

Dylan nods. “That’s what we do. But that job didn’t come from one of us.”

My heart starts to pound—and then slows back to normal. Fucking Marc can’t even let me have a tense moment. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we all get a notification anytime one of us on the team sets up a job spec. We also have a group server where we keep each other up to date on what we’re working on. It’s so none of us end up doubling up on shit. Nobody’s said anything about a foetidum demon, not here in Reno, not anywhere in North America. Not for months. And I definitely didn’t get that notification.” He’d put his laptop away when I woke up, but now he grabs it and opens it again. “I want to have a look at this job sheet.”

“I don’t like this,” Gabe says. “Is there some way the notification just didn’t work? Like Facebook notifications. In three weeks, it’ll pop up just to piss you off.”

Dylan doesn’t even take his eyes off the screen. “No.”

“Dylan’s better at his job than the people at Facebook,” I boast, and Ian pretends to gag. He needs a new schtick; that one’s getting old.

“Okay, here we go,” Dyl murmurs. “This all looks normal… wait.”

We wait.

And wait.

“Good thing we’re not holding our breath,” Connor tries to joke, but it would’ve fallen flat even if his delivery hadn’t been off.

“This didn’t come from anyone on the team,” Dylan says at last, his tone definite. “There’s not even any trace of the record being created. It just… appeared.” His eyes narrow on it. “Hold on.” His fingers start tapping again.

Ian cringes. “How come in hacker movies there isn’t so much waiting?”

I hiss, casting a quick look at Dylan, but he’s focused on what he’s doing and didn’t hear. “We don’t talk about movie hackers and how they do things that take hours in ten seconds.” His last rant on that topic went on for so long, I fell asleep. Then he woke me so we could fight about me not listening to him.

It was okay, though. The make-up sex was epic.

“None of this makes any sense to me,” Gabe says. “I thought I was tech-literate, but maybe I should try to learn more.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assure him. “There’s tech-literate, there’s tech savvy, and then there’s what Dylan can do. He can’t guard a gateway; you can’t understand the code that’s scrolling up his screen right now.” I can’t, either. In fact, just looking at it makes me kind of dizzy. “We all have our talents.”

“Did nearly dying make you a philosophical old man?” Ian muses.

“I’m just wise. But, on the topic of old men, how come I haven’t seen Norval?” I sneak a furtive glance around, just in case he’s about to pop in. He gets mad when I don’t call him “Uncle,” even though we’re not related. I’ve never told anyone that I kind of like it, even if being the adopted nephew of a thousand-year-old ghost is… bonkers.

The horrified faces of my brothers are answer enough.

“You didn’ttell him?” Oh no. This is bad.

“This is so fucking bad,” Ian whispers, echoing my thoughts. “He’s never going to forgive us.”

“He… Well… I… Oh, fuck” is all Connor can manage.

“He has to know.” Gabe’s trying to sound reasonable, but there’s an underlying note of panic. “When we left suddenly, he had to know something was going on.”

That makes Connor and Ian stop hyperventilating. “True,” Ian says. “So… why isn’t he here?”

Marc slow claps, and we all look at him. There’s a smug quirk to his mouth that announces exactly how much we’re all going to hate whatever he plans to say next. “Do you know,” he muses, “I assumed this would be a delightful moment, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality. The memory of your faces alone makes all the dealings I’ve had to have with that ghost worthwhile.”

I blink at him, trying to make it make sense. Connor gets there faster.

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