the drive home, with Emil’s occasional complaint as he kicks trash around at his feet. I guess I need to clean up back there. Who knows what the imps left scattered around the back seat. I’m sure glitter now covers Emil’s suit.
By the time we reach the house, Tobias has the heaters cranked to high to stop Emil from icing the inside of the windows.
As soon as he lurches to a stop in front of the house, Emil bolts out of the backseat. “This is a death trap. We are totaling it right now.”
When he yanks his phone from his pocket, likely to call a junk truck, I zip out and around to his side to stop him. “You can’t total the car. We don’t have any other mode of transportation right now.”
“I have a motorcycle,” Tobias points out as he climbs from the car.
“And that is so awesome for you.” I wrestle the phone from Emil’s hold. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You get your cleaning supplies, and I’ll grab some trash bags, and we’ll fix the car up. How does that sound?”
Emil’s frosty gaze turns on the car. “Is there napalm in my cleaning supplies?”
“It’s not that bad.” I duck around him to peer into the backseat and find two water bottles, a liberal dusting of glitter, and two pink slips of paper. “Are you serious? This is what has you ready to total my car?” I crawl in and grab the water bottles, then bend farther to grab the tickets I’ve been avoiding. “You are the fussiest demon I have ever known!”
Ice cracks in Emil’s voice. “You drive around in a cesspool, and you want to throw names around?”
I roll to sit on my butt to glare as I scoot out. “Cesspool?” I wave the trash. “This is not a cesspool! That basement you call storage is a cesspool! Do you know how many times I’ve almost been buried alive?”
The tips of his ears turn red. “It was organized before you started moving things around!”
“What is that?” Tobias breaks in as he leans over the door.
Emil and I turn to him in unison. “What?”
Tobias plucks one of the pink papers from my fist, scanning it.
I shrug. “Oh, that’s just a ticket for my expired tabs.”
“Expired tabs?” Emil wheezes as he throws one hand out to support himself against the car. “We’ve been driving around today with expired tabs?”
Grinning evilly, I add, “They expired a month ago.”
While Emil looks ready to descend into old-timey vapers, Tobias’s expression turns troubled. “Adie, this isn’t a ticket.”
“What?” Dropping the water bottles back to the car floor, I smooth out the one in my hand.
It looks exactly like a traffic ticket, but instead of a fine, neat printing spells out:
Adeline Boo Pond,
Your failure to report to the demon clerk’s office has resulted in a summons, to be carried out on the second Friday of this November, at dusk. To avoid said summons, contacts a representative at the demon clerk’s office immediately.
Sincerely,
The Demon Clerk’s Office
My head jerks up, eyes moving to the skyline, where the sun dips behind the trees. “What Friday is this?”
“The second,” Tobias breathes as he spins to find the sun. “Adie, say nothing until—”
A sucking sensation pulls at my gut, like the car bomb all over again, as I’m forcefully yanked from the human plane.
When I land hard on a tiled floor, I feel like I was turned inside out.
A slender hand reaches down to help me to my feet, and the familiar scent of coconut oil and bedsheets fills my senses. “Oh, darling, I hoped you weren’t part of this.”
I lift my head and meet Julian’s soft, pink gaze. With his white hair sexily rumpled, and his red silk pajama pants and white t-shirt hugging his form, it looks like they pulled him straight out of sleep. “Julian? What’s going on?”
“Ms. Pond.” The voice crackles like breaking bones.
Horrified, I turn slowly to face Victor Hesse.
He folds his stick fingers in front of himself, his milky-blue eyes bright as they lock onto us. “So good of you to join us. Now, we will commence the investigation of what happened to Domnall MacAteer.”
Blood rushes to my ears in a wave of dizziness as I stare at Victor Hesse. He looks like the cat who ate the canary. Or, more accurately, the mortifer demon who ate the fresh corpse.
Dragging my eyes away from his dead, milky gaze, I turn back to Julian and hiss, “What’s going on?”