Chapter 1

Matt

Six months ago

The shrill ringing of my phone pierces my dreams, and I force myself—reluctantly—from sleep. I feel like I only just drifted off, dammit. If this is a job that's not urgent, I'm going to murder the dispatcher.

I roll over and grab my phone from the nightstand that's become as familiar to me as my own, then put it to my ear without glancing at the screen. "H'lo?"

"Matty?"

My best friend's voice has me blinking all the way awake, and I sit up. Ian wouldn't call me at what-the-fuck o'clock if it wasn't important. Has something happened to our brothers?

My whole body goes cold at the thought that the demon Ian's been secretly dating might have done something to him.

"What's happened?" I glance around in the dimness of the room, trying to remember if I brought my kit in or left it locked in the car. It's an eight-hour drive from here to the compound, but if Ian needs me, I can get there faster.

"Where are you and how soon can you get to Mannix? There's shit going down in the otherworld, and… I need you here."

Whoa. So much to unpack there. Belatedly I remember that he and Marc—his demonic boyfriend—are visiting our brothers this week so Marc can do some Q&A sessions at the Illinois compound about why demons aren't all that bad.

"I can leave now. First flight," I assure him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm… Yeah. I am now. Marc had to go back, and for a while I thought he was going to die. But he's okay now… I think. I'm looking up flights for you." There's a note of pained vulnerability in his voice that I do not like. Nobody makes my brother-bestie sound that way.

"I'm in San Francisco," I tell him before he can book me a flight out of San Diego. "What do you mean, you think he's okay? Is he back?"

"What are you doing in San Francisco?" he asks, just as the man I've spent the last few hours wrapped around groans and rolls toward me.

"Why are you being loud?" he mutters. "Who is that? Tell them to fuck off."

"Ohhhh," Ian's voice says in my ear, sounding amused. " That's why you're in San Francisco."

"Text me the flight details," I reply. If he can laugh at me, he's okay. But that doesn't change the fact that he said he needs me. Whatever crap might be going down in the otherworld, it's also likely that our brothers have found out about him and Marc, and I'm not leaving him to face that alone.

"Thanks, Matty." The vulnerability is back. "See you soon."

He ends the call just as a lamp is switched on, and I squint in the sudden brightness.

"You have to go?"

Turning, I marvel as always at the way my heart clutches when I look at him. And god knows, he's not at his best right now, with bedhead and a pillow crease on his cheek, but he's still so beautiful, I want to stop breathing.

Fucked if that makes sense.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. Ian?—"

He laughs, moving closer to rest his head on my shoulder. "Babe, you don't have to say sorry. I've always known that being with you meant adopting Ian too. Is he okay?"

I sigh and lean my head against his. The second-best day of my life was when we went from friends to more. The best was when he said he loved me. "I don't know. He's safe, but something's not right, and he said he needs me."

"Then you gotta go. Want me to dig around online?"

"I don't think it'll help. From what he said, Marc had to go back to the otherworld because there's something going on there." My phone dings in my hand, and I look down at the email notification from the airline. "My flight's in two hours."

He straightens. "You need to get moving, then. Even in the middle of the night, it'll take you time to get there and through the TSA checkpoint. Wanna leave your kit here?"

I don't, but there's no way I'll get it through airport security and onto a plane. Gabe and Connor will have extra equipment at the compound if I need it. "And my car, if that's okay. I'll Uber to the airport."

He throws back the blankets and swings his legs out. "Don't be stupid. I can drive you. And yeah, your car's fine to stay here."

Putting out a hand to stop him, I say, "Please don't get up. I hate having to leave as it is. Knowing I've dragged you out of bed at the ass crack of dawn when we've only been asleep for two hours just makes it worse."

"Matty—"

"Dylan," I say firmly. "Get back into bed. I want to leave you all tucked in and sleepy when I kiss you goodbye."

He rolls his eyes but can't hide his pleased smile as he crawls back under the covers. "You say the sappiest shit, dude."

I lean over for a kiss. "Only to you." It's true. I've never been a sentimental person—well, not unless you count getting teary-eyed during certain Taylor Swift songs. What can I say? She's an outstanding songwriter. But in relationships, never. In fact, most of my past boyfriends and girlfriends have accused me of being emotionally unavailable. Those were the same ones who hated how close Ian and I are, even though he's basically my brother.

Dylan's different.

As he snuggles back into his pillow, I move around the room, getting dressed and grabbing the things I can legally bring on the plane. Basically just clothes and toiletries, which sucks. It makes me nervous to travel without any weapons at all, even though things with demons are so much better now.

I do a quick check around the apartment to make sure I haven't forgotten anything vital, then go back to the bedroom. Dyl's dozing, but when I lean over him, his eyes open.

"Going now?"

"Yeah. I'll text or call when I get there, okay? Not sure when I'll get back, but hopefully it'll just be a couple of days… and I won't get called out right away." It sucks that so much of my job is spent on the road. On top of that, our time together is minimized even more because nobody knows we're together.

I kiss him, enjoying the way his mouth clings to mine even when he's all sleepy, but as I straighten, I hesitate.

"What?" he murmurs.

"Just… maybe, if whatever's going on blows over fast, or if it's not too huge, this might be a good time for me to tell my brothers about us. Since we'll all be in the same room." I swallow hard. "You could fly out to join us, have a mini break. You'll love Mannix Estate." He'll get a real kick out of the ghosts. He's always enjoyed hearing me talk about what they get up to.

But a shadow crosses his face. "It's not the time, Matt. Not while Ian's having some kind of crisis. Do you think he told your brothers about him and Marc?"

Dylan knows that secret, of course. I didn't even have to tell him—he was the one who brought it up like it was just common knowledge, before Ian even officially told me. For someone who spends most of his time online, he's surprisingly intuitive when it comes to people and relationships.

"Did you feel a disturbance in the force as Connor turned to the dark side?" I counter, then pause to consider. "He might have. That could be why he needs me—to back him up." I shrug. "Or it could be completely to do with the otherworld." I try to pretend it doesn't bother me that he still wants to keep us a secret, but he knows.

He always knows.

Sitting up, he grabs my shirt and pulls me down for another kiss. "We'll tell them soon," he murmurs against my lips. "But I want it to be about us and only us, not lost in the drama that makes up your family's everyday life."

I snort. "I wish I could argue that we're not dramatic. Go back to sleep." I leave him curled up with a sleepy smile, and quietly let myself out of the apartment and get down to the street where my Uber is waiting before I let myself finish that thought: Will there ever be a time when his love for me isn't outweighed by his fear of losing another family?

I text Ian from the airport to let him know I'll definitely be on the plane, but I don't get a reply before we take off. Which leaves me with over four hours before I land in Chicago to think.

About what might be waiting for me there.

About whether Ian's really okay.

About whether I'm going to need to find a way to sedate Connor—and probably Gabe too. He might be the levelheaded one, but I think even he's going to shy from the idea of Ian dating a higher demon.

But mostly, I think about Dylan.

Because since we started this thing, for me, everything comes back to Dylan.

Sighing, I lean my head back against the seat. The flight must have been nearly full, because Ian sprang for business class. That, combined with the fact that I don't have his airsick ass trying to eject his insides in the next seat, makes this the nicest, most comfortable flight I've ever taken. The flight attendant even came to ask me what I'd like for breakfast.

But even the comfort and service can't distract me from the fact that I'm so far in love with one of my closest friends that I can't see daylight anymore, and I'm not sure he feels the same way.

He loves me—I know he does—but I don't know if it's as much as I love him. I don't know if it's enough for him to want the world to know about us. Because yeah, my family's always been at the forefront of the action, but he's used to that from us. We've always been magnets for trouble, and it's never bothered him before. It was worth the stress for him when we were just friends. So why is it too much now that we're more than that? Isn't being with me a bigger incentive to deal with that stress?

I don't even know when things changed between us. I mean, I know when we started fucking—that night will be branded on my brain forever—but we were already more before that, even though we started out by calling ourselves friends with benefits.

Closing my eyes, I think back, trying to pinpoint when we went from friends to something else. Friends-plus. There was the fact that Dylan's always online, and he keeps weird hours, so no matter what time zone I was in, he was always available on chat to distract me from my shitty motel room. He's known me forever, and sometimes our brains are stupidly in sync. Kind of like me and Ian, but somehow not. He's smart and funny, and of course he knows everything there is to know about the Collective, demons, and what happened with my family six years ago. He's technically a hunter—he's had the same training as me—but it became clear to everyone very early on that his skills would be wasted in the field. Instead, he does his hunting online, tracking down cults and sects that are raising demons—or trying to—and helping us shut them down and prevent them from preying on innocents. Because a lot of these deluded creeps think human sacrifice is needed to summon a demon, and that's never a good thing.

So yeah, it's nice to be able to be my authentic self with him, no secret-keeping, but at the same time, when we talk about our days, not have them be the same. Chats and texts became phone calls that lasted for hours, and in terms of virtual contact hours, he quickly became the person I spent the most time with. Until one night, while we were debating who would win in a fight, Luke Skywalker or Thor—it all hinges on whether lightsabers would affect Mjolnir—I started surfing TV channels, ended up on some low-budget movie with a naked shower scene, and complained about how long it'd been since I'd had sex.

"I can help you with that," Dyl said.

I'd laughed, then thought maybe he was going to send me a link to online porn. Instead, what I got was the hottest, dirtiest phone sex I've ever had… and trust me, when most of your relationships are long-distance, you have a lot of virtual sex.

That was nearly a year ago, and nothing's been the same since.