Chapter 29: Greer

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Greer

N ovak and Reign leave to handle their stuff, and Seiran offers me my phone. My hands shake as I take it, but there’s no point in avoiding this. I’ll have to tell my family at some point.

I pull up my mom’s contact and hit the video call button.

“You’ve got this,” Seiran says, running his hand up and down my spine as I kneel over him.

“Thank you.” My mom’s big gray eyes and bright pink hair fill the screen, and my chest gets tight. “Hey, Mom.”

“Sweetheart, how are you?” she asks before shushing whoever is talking in the background. “Was your grandmother’s house liveable?” Her nose wrinkles. “It must be taking up all your time just to get it back to a comfortable state. I can’t imagine how much decay could take place in five years.”

Okay, so Hazel didn’t tell them about my transformation.

“I told your dads not to stress. I always get itchy after a breakup too. That’s actually how I met your biological father…” She rambles about how one of her long-term partners decided they no longer wanted to be a part of her harem. It must have been five or more years before I was born, and Mom goes into way too many unnecessary details to get her point across.

I slide off Seiran’s lap, taking a seat on the cushion at his side and leaning against his shoulder. Mom continues to chatter away, and I don’t interrupt. I figure I owe her a few days’ worth of phone calls, anyway.

Once she takes a breath, I twist the phone to pick up Seiran’s face too. “Surprise, I met my mates…”

That finally stuns her enough that she squeals, and several of her other partners cluster around the phone to get a look at my incubus. My biological dad isn’t among them, but Mom will fill him in as soon as we hang up. She loves to gossip. It takes way too long to explain the Cole incident and then reassure her I’m fine.

I’m so exhausted by the time we hang up that I almost don’t call my friend Ember.

Then I remember how Hazel hounded the hell out of me about letting Ember know I’m safe.

“You can put it off until later if you’re drained,” Seiran murmurs, running his fingers through my hair. My insides turn mushy as he sends pure comfort through the bond.

“Thank you. It’s already ringing. Might as well get this call over with too.”

Ember’s long blonde hair fills the screen as she answers. “Holy shit! It’s the middle of the night, Greer.”

“Sorry.” I chuckle awkwardly. “I know it’s late, but you’re usually up working nights. I figured it would be okay to call.” Ember is a bounty hunter. She does most of her jobs through Owen, who works for the paranormal council, but she’s always in and out of The Monster’s Den at all hours.

“You can call whenever.” Ember rolls her eyes. “It just scared me, but then again, you disappeared in the middle of the night. You even had my little brothers freaking out.”

Ember’s little brothers run Venom and are in training to take over The Monster’s Den. They were my bosses before I left Haven.

“Sorry,” I repeat. It’s hard to know what else to say. “Honestly, I didn’t have a choice. Remember when I told you about Cole?” I go on to repeat my story for the third time tonight.

Between Ember, my mom, and Bart, the council guy, I’m a little numb from having to repeat myself over and over. It’s still better to get it out of the way now. Her life seems to have turned upside down as much as mine in the last few weeks, and although the conversation takes longer than I’d like, I end the call feeling better than I have in days.

Or nights.

As a siren, I counted things in days, but now, I suppose I’ll have to get used to tracking things by nights.

Seiran’s clawed hand lands on my chin, tilting my face to his. He bends, giving me a slow and tender kiss. I’m not sure how it happens, but my phone falls to the couch, and I climb into his lap before I can stop myself.

He smiles against my lips, pulling back and palming the back of my head. “Hey, how about we get out of here for a little while? Maybe get some fresh air?”

My god, he’s dangerous with his hair falling around his face and the way those creases form around his mouth when he smiles like that.

I nod. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“Where are we headed?” I ask as Seiran leads me down the sidewalk and away from the club.

“We’ll need to stay around town to remain close to Novak, but it’s the perfect opportunity to enjoy the moonlight.” His massive wings flex behind him as his tail encircles my waist, pulling me close to his side. His wing wraps around my shoulder, and I find the gesture wildly romantic.

Black Cove might be bigger than Haven, but it has that small-town feel that I adore.

Spellbound is around here somewhere, but I’m not familiar enough with the area to know if we’re getting closer or farther away. At some point, I need to stop in and pay Lisette. Also to thank her for attempting to craft a spell for me.

I almost chuckle from imagining Hazel appearing in the old witch’s store. They only relayed the basics, but for whatever reason, Hazel’s magic brought her there when she was searching for me.

Luckily, Lisette knew who she was talking about, but it was extra thoughtful that she showed Hazel to the club. Although, I’m still confused about how the witch knew I would be there. Perhaps her cards told her, or maybe she has scrying as a gift.

Being with Seiran is just easy, and having his wing tucked around me as we explore makes me feel safe.

“So, tell me about you,” I say as we walk past the line of shops. Most are open, and several have customers visible inside through the large glass windows.

“First generation demon.” He shrugs. “Hell was fine. When it’s all you’ve known, you don’t realize how miserable something is. I much prefer the human realm, but when Novak first summoned me, it was overwhelming. In a good way, but still strange.”

“I can only imagine.” I slide my arm under where his wings attach to his back, and my fingers dig into his hip.

“Have you given any thought to what you’d like to do about Granny’s house?” Seiran asks. “It belongs to your family, so the council may allow it to sit vacant, as long as you reside in town.”

I frown, shaking my head. “That seems so wasteful. It’s got, what? Five or six bedrooms? I know how limited the housing choices are in Haven. I’d feel terrible having it just sit there.”

“Renting it out would be an option,” he says, guiding me toward a flower shop. It seems to be open, but that’s one of the few businesses I’d expect to be daytime only. “I try to bring flowers every few weeks to swap out for the ones on Granny’s grave. They have fake options, and I switched to those recently, but with them being out in the elements, I try to replace them before they fade.”

My heart pitter-patters in my chest. He might just be the sweetest incubus in existence.

The cemetery is close, less than a five minute walk. It’s tiny compared to what I would expect to find in a human city, but I suppose that speaks to how few supernaturals die. Even when we do, a lot of cultures lean toward cremation.

Having humans dig up our bones for testing in a few centuries could be extremely detrimental to us being able to hide.

Seiran swaps out the fake flowers, says a few words to Granny, assuring her he’s looking after me, and drops the old bouquet in the trash can as we exit.

Being outside in the fresh air helps ground me. Life has kept right on moving since I died.

It’s hard.

I’m grateful they saved me, but I’m still bitter it was necessary in the first place. The frustration I feel toward myself is a whole different thing. The more I think about what Bart said, the easier it is to see how little I protected my own well-being. I knew essentially nothing about Cole.

Played a foolish game and you lost .

Seiran wraps his arm around my lower back as we head toward the lights of the small downtown area. “I want to court you, even though we’re already bonded. Normally, I would ask to take you out for a meal, but neither of us eats human food.”

I chuckle at how distraught he sounds. “A trip to the cemetery was strangely fitting. Would you mind if we stop by Lisette’s store before heading back to the club?”

“As long as you’re not feeling itchy to get back to Novak, I don’t mind a bit.”

We’re just about to come around the corner to make the right back onto the populated street when two people turn into our path. The two women stand close together, and the one on the right lights up when she spots us.

“Holy shit! Your hair is so pretty. Is it natural?” The shorter woman smiles, rocking on her heels.

I nod. “Yeah, I inherited it from my mother.”

Seiran’s clawed hand tightens on my hip, and something about the way he tenses tells me it was the wrong move to be truthful.

The woman on the left’s face changes as her fangs descend. She points a clawed finger at my chest. “You must be Greer.”

My eyes widen.

No one here should know me.

Seiran’s wing stretches over my head and expands, blocking them from my view. “I don’t want to kill you, when this clearly isn’t your fight, but I will if I have to.”

Oh, fuck!

Do they know Cole?

They have to, right? I have no enemies here. Hell, I don’t have enemies in general, which is probably why no one ever taught me to fight or even how to defend myself.

I’m a liability.

“Step aside, demon,” one of the women hisses.

I peek around, trying to see what’s happening.

“That’s not going to happen. Were you ordered here by your maker?” Seiran flexes his wings, fully blocking my line of sight, like he knows I was trying to get a better view.

“We’re here to play,” the shorter one says. That’s the voice of the one who asked about my hair.

Seiran grunts, staggering back a step, but I still can’t see a fucking thing. His pain slams into the bond, and my stomach flip-flops. “Well, I tried to be peaceful.”

His booted foot flies up, connecting with one of the women. His wings stretch wide, keeping him in the air as his other knee twists to the right, and it sounds like he connects with the shorter woman. He turns back to the left, but the taller woman uses her vampiric speed to zip around him. She wraps a clawed hand around my throat, and I focus on accessing mine.

I suck at being a vampire, because no matter how hard I try, they don’t pop out. Instead, I punch her in the boob. Why didn’t I ever ask Ember to teach me to fight?

She slams my back against the brick wall and hisses in my face.

Shit.

If I live through this, I’m going to beg someone to teach me how to defend myself. My fingers wrap in her long blonde hair, and I tug with every bit of my strength.