Chapter 9

Matt

The look on Dyl's face is one I've only seen a few times before, and never for something good. Even Ian recognizes that something must be wrong.

"Uh…" He glances at me, his eyes asking what the fuck? "Is that not how the online division works? You find shit on the internet that might be demonic activity, or wannabe demon summoners, and create a job for a hunter to check it out?"

Dylan nods. "That's what we do. But that job didn't come from one of us."

My heart starts to pound—and then slows back to normal. Fucking Marc can't even let me have a tense moment. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we all get a notification anytime one of us on the team sets up a job spec. We also have a group server where we keep each other up to date on what we're working on. It's so none of us end up doubling up on shit. Nobody's said anything about a foetidum demon, not here in Reno, not anywhere in North America. Not for months. And I definitely didn't get that notification." He'd put his laptop away when I woke up, but now he grabs it and opens it again. "I want to have a look at this job sheet."

"I don't like this," Gabe says. "Is there some way the notification just didn't work? Like Facebook notifications. In three weeks, it'll pop up just to piss you off."

Dylan doesn't even take his eyes off the screen. "No."

"Dylan's better at his job than the people at Facebook," I boast, and Ian pretends to gag. He needs a new schtick; that one's getting old.

"Okay, here we go," Dyl murmurs. "This all looks normal… wait."

We wait.

And wait.

"Good thing we're not holding our breath," Connor tries to joke, but it would've fallen flat even if his delivery hadn't been off.

"This didn't come from anyone on the team," Dylan says at last, his tone definite. "There's not even any trace of the record being created. It just… appeared." His eyes narrow on it. "Hold on." His fingers start tapping again.

Ian cringes. "How come in hacker movies there isn't so much waiting?"

I hiss, casting a quick look at Dylan, but he's focused on what he's doing and didn't hear. "We don't talk about movie hackers and how they do things that take hours in ten seconds." His last rant on that topic went on for so long, I fell asleep. Then he woke me so we could fight about me not listening to him.

It was okay, though. The make-up sex was epic.

"None of this makes any sense to me," Gabe says. "I thought I was tech-literate, but maybe I should try to learn more."

"Don't worry about it," I assure him. "There's tech-literate, there's tech savvy, and then there's what Dylan can do. He can't guard a gateway; you can't understand the code that's scrolling up his screen right now." I can't, either. In fact, just looking at it makes me kind of dizzy. "We all have our talents."

"Did nearly dying make you a philosophical old man?" Ian muses.

"I'm just wise. But, on the topic of old men, how come I haven't seen Norval?" I sneak a furtive glance around, just in case he's about to pop in. He gets mad when I don't call him "Uncle," even though we're not related. I've never told anyone that I kind of like it, even if being the adopted nephew of a thousand-year-old ghost is… bonkers.

The horrified faces of my brothers are answer enough.

"You didn't tell him ?" Oh no. This is bad.

"This is so fucking bad," Ian whispers, echoing my thoughts. "He's never going to forgive us."

"He… Well… I… Oh, fuck" is all Connor can manage.

"He has to know." Gabe's trying to sound reasonable, but there's an underlying note of panic. "When we left suddenly, he had to know something was going on."

That makes Connor and Ian stop hyperventilating. "True," Ian says. "So… why isn't he here?"

Marc slow claps, and we all look at him. There's a smug quirk to his mouth that announces exactly how much we're all going to hate whatever he plans to say next. "Do you know," he muses, "I assumed this would be a delightful moment, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality. The memory of your faces alone makes all the dealings I've had to have with that ghost worthwhile."

I blink at him, trying to make it make sense. Connor gets there faster.

"If you've hurt him?—"

"He's entirely unharmed. He arrived before you did, on the first night. Ian had dozed off, and Dylan was in the bathroom." He pauses. "I can assure you, he was most displeased that nobody had bothered to inform him of what was happening."

"But he left?" Gabe shakes his head. "That doesn't sound like Norval."

"Once he saw Matt for himself and heard what our plan was, he and I agreed that his presence would be a distraction with so many… normies… around. He requested that I keep him updated, and in return, I was permitted to conveniently forget he ever visited, and thus enjoy this moment."

Ian stares at his boyfriend. "You're an asshole." Weirdly, it sounds like that turns him on.

Connor, on the other hand, isn't turned on at all. "I'm going to kill you," he threatens, his fists clenched.

"Chill, Con," I order. "He's keeping me alive. So… keep him alive." I glance back at Marc. "For now, anyway."

Marc smiles beatifically at me. "Norval has decided his presence will be more effective after you leave the hospital and are fully healed. Something about needing to supervise you for a while, until he's certain of your competence."

Uh-huh. "Now you can kill him, Connor."

"I've got it," Dylan announces, and I'm ashamed to say it takes me a minute to remember what he was even doing. The prospect of an angry Norval—or babysitter Norval—wiped all other thoughts from my mind.

"Got what?" Gabe asks. "Did you figure out why there was no notification?"

My boyfriend gives my brother an "are you an idiot" look. "There was no notification because the job wasn't created by anyone on the online team," he reminds us impatiently. "We've been hacked. They even had code there that was supposed to delete the job sheet completely, but it failed."

"Why?" Marc asks, surprising me. I can't remember if I've ever heard him sound curious before.

Dylan makes a humming sound. "I think it's because Ian's an idiot."

"Checks out," I agree, even as Ian lets out a strangled exclamation of outrage. "But please explain."

"The job was supposed to wipe itself five days after Matt was attacked. I'm guessing that's so that when he went missing and someone checked to see what he was supposed to be doing, we'd get his location, but that if we got suspicious about the job later and logged back in to have a look, it would be gone." He hesitates. "Given the condition he was found in, I think we all agree that whoever did this planned for Matt to be dead when the Collective finally tracked him down, right?"

"Wait, maybe I am an idiot," Ian begins, and I grin. Wish I'd recorded him saying that. "But are you saying someone hacked the Collective and set up a fake job specifically to kill Matt?"

"I believe you need more sleep," Marc observes. "Perhaps some vitamins. What do you humans need to maintain mental capacity?"

"Shut up." Ian's face is white. "This isn't an accident or a coincidence?"

Dylan shakes his head. "I can't be sure yet that they targeted Matt. That's the only reason I'm not telling Marc to do whatever he has to so we can get him out of here right now. They might have been after any hunter, and Matt was just the unlucky one."

"You said yet." Gabe leans forward. "You can't be sure yet. "

Swallowing hard, Dyl shrugs. "I have to check the rest of the code. But someone definitely hacked the Collective, they definitely created this job sheet, and if what Ian said before is right, the demonic situation they created it for doesn't exist. So they wanted a hunter to come to Reno, to a place of their choosing. It seems an awfully huge coincidence that after all that, Matt also just happened to end up beaten nearly dead at a location he had no business being in."

"He's never alone," Connor orders. "Until Dylan can check the code, at least one of us is here at all times."

"Relax," Marc murmurs. "I can keep him safe from any danger your fellow humans might pose." He pauses. "Though I much prefer Dylan's idea that I do whatever I have to."

"What if it's not a human who did this? What if it's a demon?" I ask. That seems like the obvious question to me. Who else would want to hack the Collective and kill a hunter?

Who else would even know the Collective exists?

"No lower demon would be capable of such a feat," he scoffs. "Much less pose a challenge to me. " The silence that follows speaks volumes.

"Could it be another higher demon?" Ian's the one who asks. "Is hacking something you demons can do?"

"There are very few things higher demons cannot do." His eyes narrow thoughtfully. "But this plan is too circuitous for one of us. If the outcome was to kill a hunter, there are far easier ways than… hacking… to lure one out. Even if the deed needed to be done in Reno, for whatever reason, it would be easier by far to locate a hunter, transport them to the required location, and kill them." He shakes his head. "This is not the plan of a demon. Beating him near death? Why, when we could crush the mind or cause internal organs to liquefy? Far more satisfying."

I suddenly regret every nasty comment I've ever made to Marc. Dylan reaches out and twines his fingers with mine, face a little green.

"Babe," Ian complains, "you're supposed to be convincing my family how likeable you are."

Marc tilts his head. "I am. Those are all things I can do to them, but didn't. Not even to Connor."

"Yay for me," Connor mutters. "Okay, so… don't liquefy my organs, but what if it is a higher demon, but they wanted it to look like humans did it?"

"An interesting thought." Marc's brows rise. "But still… I'm unconvinced. Why not ensure his death, then? A few more blows would have done the trick—or a solid blow to the head with a blunt object."

"He was close to dead when he was found," Gabe points out. "Maybe they thought he already was."

Marc shakes his head. "A higher demon would not be fooled. Humans cannot sense life, but my kind can."

"Interrupted, maybe? Someone else was close and they had to run off?" Connor suggests, but even he sounds like he doesn't believe that. A higher demon wouldn't need to run away from a vagrant or horny couple who stumbled upon the scene. They could just… wipe some memories.

"We still haven't answered Matt's original question," Dyl points out. "Can a higher demon even hack?"

Marc shrugs lightly. "Theoretically, yes. With time to study and learn, anything a human is capable of is something we could do. But if I were in this scenario, I would not waste time learning such a skill for this one purpose. Instead I would merely plant the job sheet in the system with a thought. And then I would ensure the human was actually dead."

Dylan's eyes widen in horror. "You can do that? Interfere with a secure system with a thought ?"

And here I was thinking he was distressed by the repeated mention of my potential death.

Ian makes a disgusted sound. "He sends emails and text messages without typing, so it's not that much of a stretch."

"But a secure system," Dyl protests, and Marc sighs.

"It's a simple matter of intention. If I intend to bypass security measures, then I will. Would you care for a demonstration?"