Chapter 32

Asshole fathers. I was done with all of them. “Your son is a grown man. Go get his promise to stay away from me.”

Natán laughed like I was a particularly amusing child. “Ezra doesn’t always know what’s good for him.”

I rested my hand on the door handle. “You raised him to be a killer, so forgive me if I have my doubts about your suitability as a parenting expert. Besides, I’m not dating him.” Technically true.

“Then why did he stay in Vancouver after the investigation into those murdered infernals wrapped up?”

“Another Prime was killed and Ezra was in a unique position to help us.”

Natán met my gaze, brow raised, as if to say Is that how we’re going to play this? When I didn’t back down, his expression iced over. “Half-breed dhampirs are like rattlesnakes on a path. A lot of noise, and a danger to some, but an eagle can swoop down, ensnare the rattler in its grasp and crush its head.” He clenched a hand into a fist. “They are a weakness, unbefitting of my family.”

“Difficult as it is to ignore the cries from my ovaries,” I said snarkily, “I have no plans to make dhampir babies with Ezra.”

“Perhaps not now, but as for the future?” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You distracted him once from his proper path, Ms. Fleischer, I’m asking you not to do it again.”

I unclenched my jaw, pushed past any ability to shrug this off. Natán could do nothing more than bluster or verbally intimidate me. Well, at least right now. I’d gotten into the car in a public place. I’d be missed.

Any reprisal was a problem for another day.

“If Ezra and I did choose to be in a relationship, that would be none of your business.” There was a bladed edge to my pleasant smile. “That said, if he’s distracted by anything, it’s his duties at the Copper Hell.”

Natán dismissed my comment with a wave of his hand. “It places him in a unique position.”

Oh, don’t you dare quote me back to me, asshole.

“One that is beneficial to my line of work.” Natán’s brows knit together. “There’s no conflict of interest if you two get involved, is there? That’s an eternal dilemma for young women, isn’t it? Having to choose between love and a promising career.”

Sexist and threatening, a two-for-one special. Lucky me. “I may not have your power, Mr. Cardoso, but I’m no pushover and I don’t take kindly to threats.”

“This isn’t a threat. I have the utmost respect for what Michael has achieved, and I’d like to see her daughter soar to those same professional heights. Eva, may her memory be a blessing, would have wanted the same thing.”

This piece of shit was invoking his dead wife? I dropped my now-prickling eyes to my lap before Cherry went full throttle on him.

“That’s why I’d like to help you find the missing blood,” he said. “An easy feather in your new cap.”

“I’m good.” I rapped on the dividing glass. “Stop the limo.”

The driver gunned it through a yellow light.

I crossed my arms and met Natán’s stare. “If you plan to keep me here, at least hit up a drive-through. Buy me a milkshake.”

Natán knocked twice on the ceiling and the limo pulled over to the curb.

The driver didn’t get out to open my door, so I opened it myself.

“Good luck,” Natán said.

He didn’t specify with what: finding the blood, dating his son, saying no to his proposal—and I didn’t ask.

It took the trifecta of the great song playing inside the café, a double shot mocha, and a chocolate brownie for the sugar rush to contravene the ragey adrenaline in my veins, and when I crashed, I crashed hard, utterly wrung out by the time I got home.

Craving the soothing ritual, I placed all eight candles in the menorah, with the shamash in the center to light them on this final night. While I was hunting in the kitchen for a new book of matches, Sachie came home.

I exited the kitchen. “You’re just in time to light the— Fuck me.”

She sported a hell of a bruiser on her left eye.

“You should see the other guy,” she said.

“That’s not funny.” I returned to the kitchen and got her a cold pack from the freezer.

She took it with a nod of thanks. “I wasn’t kidding.” She smirked. “I made Olivier’s ears ring.”

Tuesday. The boxing gym. Right.

I straightened a listing Hanukkah candle. “You have a strange idea of foreplay.”

Her smirk widened. “He doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Nope. Don’t need to know.”

She sniffed herself then grimaced. “I’m going to shower.”

I struck the match then stared at it. Tonight was the last night of Hanukkah. The last night I could hope for a miracle.

Or the best time to step out of the shadows and illuminate who I truly was to my best friend.

The flame almost burned my fingers and I quickly snuffed it out. “Before you go?”

“You want to light the candles? Sure thing.”

“No. I mean yes, but…” I let my eyes turn from brown to toxic green, my horns popping onto the top of my skull, and the fingers of my left hand shifting to claws. I didn’t bring out my scales, though I did change my hair to crimson.

Sachie didn’t say anything, her expression unreadable, and her arms crossed.

My heart pounded in my chest, and I couldn’t help but fidget with the hem of my shirt, my claws clicking against each other in a nervous patter.

Her silence stretched on, each passing moment feeling like an eternity as I searched my best friend’s face for any sign of what she might be thinking. Was she afraid? Shocked? Disgusted? I held my breath, bracing myself for whatever was to come, and yet, I didn’t regret my decision.

Sachie narrowed her eyes. “Your hair is the same color as the sweater Ezra made you.”

“Is it?” I said lamely, running my fingers through it.

She smacked me. “You really told him first? Is that why he dumped you?”

Attuned to her fury via my training, experience, and because her glare was hot enough to incinerate, I dropped into fighting stance. “Yes. Sort of. Where’s your weapon?”

Sachie gestured around the kitchen as though to say, Everywhere?

“Okay,” I said, not particularly loving what was about to happen next but bracing for it. “I’m ready.”

“Ready for what, you weirdo?” She shook her head. “Although you do match our curtains really well. Damn.”

“Ready for you to attack me for deceiving you all this time?” I said.

“It sucks that you kept it a secret, but you didn’t deceive me.”

I did a double take. “You were so pissed I lied about Maud, but not telling you I’m an infernal is okay?”

“Actually, the correct term is half shedim.”

“What is happening here?” I peered into her eyes. “Did Olivier concuss you? Should I call a doctor?”

She pushed my head away. “I could have lost my dad, okay? No. I’m not thrilled you didn’t tell me, but I also thought a lot about what you said. About how Maud lived her life in fear. I don’t want that for you. Especially not from me.”

Without this confluence of events, Sach might not have been able to accept my truth as easily as she was now. But I hadn’t tried, hadn’t spoken up, preferring instead to live with my preconceptions of what she’d think, just as I had with my mother and Ezra.

Without those other relationship shifts, how long would I have continued to justify keeping my secret from her? Ten years? Twenty? The rest of our lives? It had taken some hard acknowledgments that I wasn’t always the wronged party to allow me to be honest. But that pain, that growth, had been worth it.

I squeezed her hand.

Sach worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ve spent the past few days in tense silence with my parents. I don’t want us to become that. Besides, I know who you are. You’re a good person. I may not be able to say that about all half shedim, but I can say it about some. And the rest I’ll judge on a case-by- case basis like I do with every other person on this planet.” She grabbed the matches. “Are we doing this or what?”

I exhaled, a weight floating off my shoulders like a helium balloon. “Yeah. We are.”

“All right then.” She lit the match.

As easily as hope was extinguished, it could be rekindled. But the thing that was even better than hope?

Living in certainty, in the light.

There was still a lot of darkness in the world and a lot of challenges ahead, but standing around these nine dancing flames, with my best friend at my side, everything was peaceful, warm, and for the first time in a long while, absolute perfection.

Thank you for reading BETTER THE DEMON YOU KNOW.