Page 54 of Demon Hunter

He shakes his head, then nods. “Yeah, just… you know, a random… chill.” He gives me a meaningful look, but his phonerings before I can process it, and he snatches it out of his pocket. Or wait—was he already reaching for his pocket when it rang?

Ohhh. Marc must be talking in his head. So fucking creepy.

“Yeah,” Ian’s saying, then, “What?”

Slowly, I turn my head to look at him, because to anyone else, he might sound surprised, but IknowIan. I’ve plotted with him before, more times than I can count. I know what his fake surprised voice sounds like, and that was it. He wants me to think he’s surprised by what he just heard, but he really isn’t. Which means my bestie is about to lie to me.

Why would he do that? We don’t do that. We’ve held things back sometimes, but never have we lied outright to each other. What would be the point? Neither of us would get offended if the other said, “I don’t wanna talk about it” or “I can’t tell you.”

I really wish I knew if this was a coma dream or reality. Can I trust coma-dream Ian?

Jesus. I never imagined I’d ever be in a place or time where I wasn’t sure if I could trust Ian.

He ends the call and says, “We’ve gotta go to Marc’s place, now.”

Oh-kay. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.” I gesture to Dylan furiously typing and muttering to himself. “Can’t he come here?”

“Dylan!” Ian raises his voice. “We need to leave. Bring your laptop and work on that instead.”

Whoa. I take a step back from my bestie. The love of my life is a pretty even-tempered guy, but not even I would presume to give him an order when it comes to his techie stuff.

Sure enough, the staccato clicking of keys pauses, and Dyl turns a glare on Ian. “This can’t be done on my laptop.”

“Tell Marc to come here,” I add. That’s easier all around, since he’s the only one who can teleport. Or whatever he calls it.

“Guys, I need you to really listen to me, because there are some things I can’t say out loud here, no matter how safe our house is,” Ian says, and there’s a tense edge to his voice now. “We need to go to Marc’s. Now.”

Cold fear races down my spine, and my gaze flies to Dylan. He’s looking back at me, the same fear reflected in his face. We need to go to Marc’s, and Ian can’t talk about it. That could be about his relationship, my healing, or something totally unconnected—but demonic.

“Okay,” Dylan says. His expression is at odds with how calm he sounds. “Then we’ll go. Give me a second to secure this.”

“Do we need weapons?” I ask, and Ian shakes his head, but his face is grim as he goes to get his keys. My tension ramps up. Whatever the fuck this is, it can’t be good.

Two minutes later, we’re out the door and in the car. I wait until we’ve turned out the gates of the compound before I ask, “Can you tell us now?”

Ian sucks in a breath. “There’s a higher demon at Marc’s place.”

“Other than him?” I don’t realize how stupid that sounds until the words are out of my mouth.

“Yeah.”

“Do we know?—”

“All I know is that there’s a higher demon there and Marc said to come ASAP.”

And there it is. The lie. I let it stand for now—if there’s a higher demon at Marc’s place, now isn’t the time for an argument. But he can bet his ass we’ll be having one later.

I wish I knew if this was real or not. The way I’d deal with a coma dream is waaaay different from how I’d deal with reality.

The rest of the ride is tensely silent. None of us knows what to say, and Ian doesn’t even put the radio on. I think we’re all too focused on what might be waiting for us at Marc’s place—me and Dylan because we have no fucking clue what it is, and Ian because he’s not happy about whatever it is. I can tell, because even though Marc’s place isn’t far from the compound, we shouldn’t have made it there this fast.

Parked out front, we sit for a second and stare at the house. It looks the same as usual, and my hunter senses aren’t picking up demonic presences—which means nothing, because higher demons have the ability to mask, something we never knew until six years ago.

Ian opens his door and gets out, and I scramble to do the same. He’s halfway up the front path before Dylan and I are even on the sidewalk, so I guess we’re not going in with any kind of plan.

But then, since he’s lying about what he knows, he probably doesn’t need one. Whatever this higher demon wants that we needed to rush over here for, we’re not in danger—not unless thisisa coma dream and it turns out I can’t trust dream-Ian. In which case, I guess my coma might be about to end?

I grab Dylan’s hand and hurry to catch up.

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