Page 22 of Veil of Death and Shadow

My gaze lingered on the hoodie.

Only when the dress was neatly pressed between my jacket and a significantly less-revealing black dress did she turn back to me, her chin raised, defensive.

My stomach tightened. I knew what was coming before the word even left her mouth.

"Incendiary."

I snorted, followed her to the closet, ripped the dress off the hanger, and pressed it into her chest. Then, I grabbed the discarded sweatshirt—one I refused to wear but still couldn’t bring myself to let go of. As I shoved the hanger into its neck hole, I resisted the urge to press my nose to the cotton. His scent was long gone. And even if it wasn’t, well, I needed to move the fuck on. It had been years—and if I was honest with myself, I knew it was for the best. For his sake, as much as mine.

Instead, I shoved the sweatshirt carelessly back into its spot, where I could forget about it until the next time I did laundry, or woke up in the middle of the night craving a comfort I was too weak to ignore in that liminal state.

I turned back to her. "Absolutely not."

"Mars,” her head tipped back, and she stared at the ceiling like she was arguing with some invisible god, “do you have any idea how difficult it is to get into that place? The waitlist is, like, six months long. Sometimes more. And tonight isthenight."

"Then it sounds like someone will be very grateful to get our spot. I’m not kidding, Sora. Pick somewhere else.” I leaned against my closet door frame, refusing to back down when her eyes met mine. She was stubborn, but so was I. “Literally anywhere else."

"Tell me why."

"You know why.” Incendiary was a popular club in one of the demon-owned blocks. It was in one of the old warehouses that had been affected by whatever power The Undoing had unleashed. The entire structure flared with it—which meant that it was unpredictable and incredibly dangerous for humans. “Besides, it’s like a sex club, isn’t it? Owned by what, a lust demon? A succubus, if I remember correctly?”

“Don’t get all puritanical on me in your old age.” She rolled her eyes. “And it’s not a sex club. But even if it was, didn’t we just decide you needed to get laid?” She scrunched hernose, studying me. “Which, clearly, you do.” She gestured at me vaguely. “You’re so uptight.”

I clenched my jaw.

It wasn’t just the rumors I’d heard about that place.

I avoided that neighborhood entirely. I wanted nothing more than to stay the fuck away from the unpredictable magic that had overtaken the world, and Incendiary was smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest supernatural hotspots in the city.

Occasionally, when I got lost in my thoughts and accidentally wandered within a street or two of that area, I’d get the same feeling I’d had the day we saw the werewolf murdered.

It crept up my spine, sending a wave of ice through my chest—an undeniable conviction that someone was about to die. In those moments, the world would blur, and I’d see strange, unexplainable hallucinations. Visions I couldn’t put into words, that I refused to even admit out loud.

Death haunted that neighborhood. I was sure of it.

And I couldn’t fight the gnawing feeling in my gut that one of these days, Sora would be the victim of one of those visions.

Sometimes it felt like the more I insisted on keeping us—her—away, the more determined she was to get closer. Like she was a magnet drawn to the supernatural.

Her interest started slowly at first—but more recently, it had grown into an obsession.

“Come on, you used to live for this kind of fun. What happened?”

I shot her a glare. “The world fucking exploded, Sora, what do you think happened?”

“Yes,” she said, stretching the word out, “and we survived. Even more reason to enjoy our lives.”

"Humans who go there are like fucking feeder fish, asking to be killed,” I shot back, though there wasn’t any bite to it.

She rolled her eyes. "That's not true. Incendiary has very rigid safety measures in place for humans. And it’s owned by a succubus, not a vampire.”

"They both feed on humans."

Menace flew back into the room, landing on my shoulder.

I stroked the top of his head absentmindedly. His presence had become like a natural tonic, fighting the tension that built up in my chest.

“Look around, Mars,” she gestured absently, “humans die all the time. And when they’re murdered, they’re murdered far more often by other humans than they are by demons or stray bits of magic.”

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