Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

When you look like the devil, people tend to treat you like one.

Especially over the holidays.

I had my phone out, and was thumbing through profile responses on a monster dating site—it was bad enough on a day to day basis, me being a satyr, and us having a rep, but Christmastime made it twenty times more dire.

I’ve been a bad girl, Krampus! Come and whip me! popped up in my notifications, from a woman who had snakes in her hair, and I groaned.

“Everything all right over there, Ace?” Royce asked, from where he was putting the final few ornaments on the Monster Security Agency’s lobby tree.

“Just the usual,” I said, closing out my screen with a thick thumb, and tucking it into a pocket on my black leather kilt. “You missed a spot,” I said, jerking my chin at a blank space on the tree.

He grinned. “I know. Mostly so you could help,” he said, offering over an ornament box. He took pride in buying little blown glass ornaments that represented the locations of other MSA branches—Tokyo, Los Angeles, London and more—and used little blown glass knives and guns and grenades that looked like pinecones to fill in the extra space.

It was ridiculous, but it was also fitting.

“You can’t make me be festive, Royce,” I said, pushing the ornament box back in his direction. “And technically I’m off for the holidays in about thirty minutes.”

I was on walk-in duty, which, I hated. I much preferred taking well-organized, well-planned out missions—but sometimes the MSA needed someone to fill in for emergencies, and Royce made sure our branch always had someone waiting in the wings on staff. But in half an hour Sylas was taking over for me and then I was…free.

So to speak.

A mother was pulling a little boy along outside, through a fresh flurry of small drifting flakes, and he saw me through the window. I watched him gasp, and then hold his hands up to his ears to fan his fingers at me, as he stuck his tongue out—and then his mom spotted him, and me, practically grabbing him to haul him bodily along.

Summers were better than winters.

Mostly.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Royce said, coming up beside me.

“Easy for you to say. You can make it down a grocery aisle without people making the signs of the cross in your wake.”

And I didn’t want to get started on what it was like to date—or try to date, as the case may be. The last relationship I’d had had gone down in flames six months ago, when I caught my supposed girlfriend trying to film me coming out of the shower.

I knew I was well-endowed of course, but I didn’t want that shit on the internet.

“Do you have somewhere to go for the week?”

His voice brought me back to the present. “Yeah. Upstate. With my mom,” I lied—the same as I lied every winter, so people wouldn’t think I was spending the holidays alone. My mother had died a few years ago and ever since then, no one else needed to know I spent Christmas Eve playing Call of Duty or working out.

“That looks great, Dad!” Serena said, coming down the stairs, with two coats under one arm and a satchel beneath the other. She was wearing business casual in black, matching her old man, and she smiled warmly when she spotted me. “Are we going to see you at Ellum’s party this weekend, Ace?”

Ellum was a minotaur, who’d cut off his horns for reasons I couldn’t possibly understand, but he was kind enough—there was something about his short red fur and easy-going attitude that humans found charming.

Possibly because he didn’t have square pupils, like I did.

“No,” I said, running a hand through the shaggy black fur behind my head. “I’ll be out of town at my mom’s,” I lied again, then followed up quickly with, I’m not big into holidays, in my mind, since I knew she could read it. But I had to give her grudging respect—she was solid, for a telepath—she never told anyone else a thing.

She snorted and nodded, coming up beside me, the both of us watching her dad put the final touches on the tree. “We don’t celebrate it underwater, so I feel you. It’s as weird as having legs,” she said quietly.

“I don’t know if it’s that weird,” I muttered back. She elbowed me in the side, and then grunted.

“You’re like a fucking brick wall,” she complained, rubbing on her elbow.

“Language,” Royce said, stepping off the ladder, finally through. “An MSA agent only curses in appropriate combat situations.”

Serena looked up at me, and I looked down at her. I don’t know about that, I thought at her, and she laughed.

“In any case,” Royce went on, coming up, to take one of the coats she held, “we have places to be. You’ll check out with Sylas at six?”

“On the dot.” The smoky Nightmare Royce had hired was creepy, but never late.

And then the alarm that indicated someone was coming to the MSA lobby door started beeping softly. The three of us looked over, watching a beautiful blonde woman wearing entirely black clothing arrive. She was bundled up in a black wool coat that flared out from her hips like a cape, she had shiny black leggings on underneath tucked into stylish leather snowboots, and she was holding both a phone and a long thin cane in gloved hands as she reached for the door, feeling for the handle, before pushing her way in.

There were two things striking about her—one, her extreme elegance, she held herself like a dancer, or perhaps a marionette with a master at the strings—and the second was her blindfold, a strap of black satin stretched across her face, hiding both her eyes.

“Hello?” she asked archly, as the door slowly closed behind her. “I know you’re there. My phone has a heat sensor built in—” she said, waving it in front of herself.

Her talking made the three of us shift gears.

“Sorry about that—we were just caught off guard by your arrival,” Royce said, recovering first. “You’re in the lobby of the Monster Security Agency—can we help you?”

“I recognize you!” Serena blurted out.

The woman’s red lips curved up at their ends. “I’m not surprised,” she said coolly. “Although that does mean you’re a woman of taste.”

Serena gave a nervous giggle, and then looked to the two of us to step up. “Oh, come on!” she complained. “Do both of you live in caves?”

“Only my ancestors,” I said wryly.

Serena shook her head in profound disappointment. “This is Satin. She’s an internationally famous sculptor!” she went on, waving both of her arms. “She’s had shows at the MoMa, the Armory, and the Stutenberg!”

“Don’t forget the Auralis Conservatory,” Satin said, taking a few more steps up.

I’d never heard of her, but judging from Serena’s reaction, either she was ridiculously famous or had a cult following I’d somehow missed.

“Well then I am pleased to meet you—especially if my daughter’s a fan. But what can we do for you here, Miss Satin?”

The woman in question’s lips curved down slightly. As she began folding up her cane, I was surprised to realize that it wasn’t an affectation—and perhaps neither was her blindfold. “I believe I have need of your professional services,” she said, tucking her cane under her arm and offering a gloved hand out. Royce came up to give it a firm shake, and just then, Sylas arrived, seeping around the edges of the lobby door without setting off anything, before he coalesced.

“I’m here,” he announced, then flew across the room quickly, winding around the tree, before lifting off one of the pinecone grenades to inspect. “Christmas trees would make so much more sense if they doubled as a weapons rack.”

“Sylas,” Royce said, calling him to heel. “I think I have a job for you,” he said, giving Satin a meaningful nod.

“The hell you do,” I said out loud, surprising everyone else in the room—even me.

Satin tilted her head, and an imperious eyebrows arched over her blindfold.

“Aceon?” Royce asked, giving me a look.

“But I’m here now,” Sylas said, rising himself up to loom.

“And you can butt out—she got here at six-twenty-nine.”

“Don’t you need to visit your mommy?” Serena whispered, in a tone of voice that said she knew I never should’ve lied.

I glared at her, before deciding to ignore the three of them. “Not this year,” I said curtly. “What’s the job?”

Satin’s red lips puckered in amusement. “I’d rather tell you in private.”

“No. That’s not how we do things here—” Royce said, attempting to step in.

“I’ve got a jet waiting,” Satin said, like that was a sentence that anyone could say, at any time.

“I don’t care—” Royce went on—so I cut him off.

“Yeah. That’s fine.”

“Aceon!” he snapped.

I shook my head and moved to stand closer to her. There was something about her that felt magnetic to me—I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her. “Look, either she’s my next job and you get paid, or I’m on vacation and going freelancing,” I told him.

“Hmm,” she said, then waved her phone my direction. I had no idea what it was telling her—or how—but my chest puffed out just in case. “I do think you’ll do.”

Somehow I managed to look over at Royce, and watched him shake his head, before narrowing his eyes. “Whatever this is—if we don’t sign official contracts—you’ll be off the books, Ace. You know the MSA can’t be seen rushing into things.”

I didn’t have even a moment of hesitation. “Understood,” I said, then looked to Satin, walking around her for the door. She trailed after me with her phone, but I got a glimpse of the screen—it really was just a heat reading, like someone might have with night-vision goggles, and it was probably vibrating the information over to her. “Shall we?” I asked, waiting till she was closer before opening the door.

“Lets,” she agreed, reaching under her arm to snap her cane back out. It seemed like a practiced move, one she’d done a million times.

“Make sure you bring him back in one piece!” Serena shouted after us, and I heard Sylas give a dark laugh.