Chapter 3

CHAPTER

THREE

"There's my favorite guy."

Dex looked surprisingly friendly when she smiled. I had never seen that look on her before since she typically had the emotional range of an irritated boar with an affinity for chewing gum. Even her bubble blowing was passive aggressive on the best of days, so this was a huge departure from what I was used to. Her tusks fit her smile in shape and sharpness, her oni horns painted in black and white stripes like they were trying to hypnotize us with glee.

"Wow, Dex. I'm happy to see you too!"

My comment made her cheery attitude plunge back to the normal glower, and I was given a snort as she passed right on by as I opened my arms up for a hug.

"Not you, jackass. I mean the guy who pays me."

I stood with my pride in crumpled bits on the floor in Dex's new, shiny lab as my hired tech thug snubbed me to go chat with the guy I introduced her to. All I got was a bubble pop and the cold shoulder while Sias got the beaming smile of a well-paid oni nerd.

"Dex. Lovely as always." Sias's eyes lifted to a lilac, and I flipped off the back of Dex's head. Was I a little jealous she liked him more than me?

Yes.

Was I also simultaneously bitter that she got Sias to do the flower purple eyes even though I know I could easily get him to go full horny pink whenever I wanted?

Maybe.

Okay, yes.

But I never claimed to be an adult about my feelings, and Dex was a butthole.

"What can I do for you?" Dex continued to address Sias, ignoring me as I commented on the amount of neon she had slung all over the place. The lights kept beat with her thumping techno music, the smell of soldered metal and burnt magic assaulting my senses.

"Actually, I believe Dallas has a request," Sias explained like it was a novel concept.

"Yeah, hi." I waved as she rolled her eyes my way. "Remember me? Your previous favorite guy? The one who got you into this cyberpunk rave we're standing in?"

A purple bubble inflated in front of her face and popped with sass.

"What do you want, Wilde?"

Realizing I wasn't going to get any warm apologies or even false sincerity, I got down to business and dug the void-touched piece of wood from my pocket.

"There's been void tears happening in the city. This is a piece of wood that was touched by the tear after it was sealed up."

Dex's bored glare shifted into sleepy surprise as she held out her hand for the piece.

"Ew. It's cold." She cringed the moment it touched her skin, the contact sending a shiver up from her hand that then shook down her body. "Gods, it feels creepy. "

"It's technically a piece of the void, so hell yeah, it's creepy. It's death."

"Metal." She moved to one of the tables stretched out in the technicolored lab Sias had set up for her. Wires, circuit boards, crystal fragments, metal bits, and plastic bobs littered the workspace in a chaos only Dex understood, waiting to be crafted into some genius piece of tech infused with magic.

"What are you wanting to do with this?" she asked over her shoulder as she wrapped some copper wire around the wood. "Harness it? Use it as a weapon? Channel the void into a beam?"

"Can you do that?" I asked the same time Sias was shutting down all of our fun.

"No," he was saying over my excitement. "We will not be harnessing death. Do your best not to go unhinged just yet, darling. We have a lot to do, and we don't need a literal Doomsday device at this juncture."

I booed him and I got a steely glare in return.

"Don't be a brat, Dallas."

My heart did the little pitter patter down to my dick because I knew damn well what that tone meant. I knew that tone so well, in every single position, all over his office, and sometimes in his nice car.

The sizzle of that promise cooled and died before it could go too far, my heart refusing to give the effort to feel much else beyond the ache. A coil of shame wrapped itself around my heart and tightened as the color in his eyes drifted back into blue.

I hadn't seen pink in his eyes in two months.

I didn't know if I'd be able to get them back to pink again with the giant, Zane-sized hole in my chest.

"We need a way of knowing where these tears are happening," I explained, shoving my feelings aside for them to rot elsewhere. "Can you make a location charm with this material? Or at least a magic detector tuned to the void?"

Dex grazed on her gum like a tusked cow, dark eyes narrowed over her tinkering.

"The magic in this thing is faint, yet still very strong, which isn't shocking. The void doesn't behave like naturally occurring magic, I guess because it lives outside of this living world. Figuring out the frequency of death is going to be kinda tricky, but I can give it a shot." She angled her head up to peer at Sias. "Are we sure this isn't going to cause another void? Or like…kill me?"

"If I give you a bonus, would that help ease your fear?" Sias offered casually. "Because this is critical, otherwise I wouldn't have brought this to you. I can't make promises, but I am confident in your abilities to not kill yourself."

"I don't know how stable it is," Dex explained. "Magic has specific properties, rules."

"So does death," I jumped in. "Treat it like you would life magic. They're two sides of the same coin, according to a very chatty head I hang out with."

"Says the human," Dex scoffed. "There's a reason only your lot fucks with life and death, man. The rest of us aren't that arrogant."

She had a point, and I shrugged in defeat.

"Yeah, well. We don't live as long, so we have to be extra stupid to make up for it."

Dex rubbed her hands together as her machines started to light up with the frequency bouncing off the void wood on her table. The dials whipped around like windshield wipers on full blast, the copper wire shaking the wood across the metal table.

"This little thing packs a punch," she mumbled, excitement dancing in her eyes. "This is going to take me a while."

"It seems like most of these tears are happening at night." Sias rotated his wrist to check his watch. "You have a few hours before we'll need it. We'll be back this evening."

"You want me to unlock the secrets of the void's frequency, harness it, then program a piece of unstable technology to home in and direct mortals to its very existence?" Dex's smile was back, ferocious in the promise of uncharted secrets being ripped apart and put back together again in a shiny, probably neon package. "I'll have it ready by eight."

"You are insane," I said. "Why don't we hang out more?"

Dex didn't bother to respond, the grip of discovery upon her and rendering her deaf to the realm of technology illiterate normies like me.

And probably because she didn't like me much, even though we should totally be friends.

"Are you ever worried she's going to sell the inventions she makes for you to other people?" I asked Sias as we left the building, stepping back into the sunlight. "I mean, she's cracking the code to track down the void. That can't be safe in just anyone's hands."

"She signed an NDA when she started to work for me." He strolled beside me, unbothered by the events of the day thus far. "Anything made in that lab is my property, so if she were to flip and sell it to someone else, I would take her father's business, and sue them into a pit. Plus, I pay her well and give her the means to pick apart the fabric of magic whenever she wants. She's not going to give that up."

"Fair. I take it you hire people like Dex a lot if you're used to speaking unhinged so fluently."

Sias hummed, giving me a knowing look.

"I've had some practice."

"Hey, I'm sexy chaotic, she's scary unhinged. They're similar, but different species of crazy." I fell into step as we took a turn different to what I was expecting, veering off course away from his home. "You have somewhere you need to be?

"I need to pick up some supplies since we're out and have time to burn." He lifted his chin in the direction we were heading. "It's not far."

"Doesn't Claudia pick up your stuff for you? She's often complained that my adorable tardiness has held her back from snagging your dry cleaning."

"Not everything," he admitted. "And I'm on leave from the office, so she's on paid vacation until I return."

"You? On leave?" I couldn't help my face from reflecting the blatant shock and open suspicion I had about that statement. "Are you dying? I've never seen you take a weekend off, not to mention a damn vacation."

"I'm taking time to help with Zane, darling." He lifted one golden brow, which sliced me down the middle. "I haven't been back to the office in months."

I felt a bit like a self-absorbed jackass for not realizing that Sias hadn't been back to the office. Scratch that, I felt like a massive, mountain-sized jackass for missing the extent of his presence around his own damn house.

Instead of saying something heartfelt and grateful, like a normal, not asshole would do, I asked, "Won't your stakeholders get anxious or something?"

"You have no idea about the structure of my business."

"I do not, no," I admitted immediately. "But I have heard those words orbiting business lingo before, so I went for it."

He hummed, steering us into the business district of the city. The humble, family-owned buildings made of bricks and history had been bulldozed over to pave the way for tiered parking lots and towering shrines to commerce. The bustle here was different now, the meandering, chatty crowds popping into delis to snag something to eat a thing of the past. Now the passing conversations were quick, snappy orders to buy and sell, heads angled down into phones to make sure they didn't miss a life-changing email.

It was Sias's realm; fast money, cutthroat politics, and an endless sea of backstabs and bankrolls. He swam through the guppies like a shark, the jittery crowd willing to step into traffic so as not to upset his pace. I was the sexy little sucker fish on Sias's underbelly as he guided us toward our destination.

My shark pivoted to a strip of cafes and restaurants that catered to the busy business fishies that now took up residence on this side of town, offering fast, trendy dishes like "organic, hand-fed salads with vegan lettuce tossed in a pretentious dressing of bullshit" or something like that. I'm pretty sure they could legally shoot you if you attempted to order anything that even shared a shelf with processed sugar, and they made sure the prices reflected that.

Needless to say, I rarely ate in the business district, except when it came to the hipster coffee places.

I'm going to be vulnerable and honest: your man likes the flavored lattes made by dudes named Brice with the cute foam art on top. It makes me feel good, and I'm only a little ashamed about it.

But if you tell a single soul, I'm going to sic Kevin on you.

I was passively admiring the smells of the nearby chain coffee place advertising a new mocha latte masterpiece when Sias held out a piece of plastic with a spending limit higher than my opinion of myself. The promise of reckless spending and a mocha latte curled away from me as I reached for it, and Sias pinned me with a steely lavender look.

"Order food," he commanded. "Something moderately healthy, not just coffee."

"I ate before we left," I protested. "And the sign says it's a limited-time flavor, Sias. Who knows when I'll have another chance."

The lavender threatened magenta as he repeated himself, "Food, Dallas. Don't be bratty with me unless you're willing to pay the price."

Our little cat and mouse game used to lead to so many sexy shenanigans, and it stung all over when I had to pop the flirty bubble by sighing in defeat.

"Yeah, I got it." I held out my hand for the credit card. "Food it is."

The plastic was pressed into my palm, and I warmed when the color of his eyes didn't change. Either Sias was more deprived than I thought, or it genuinely made him excited that I was going to be eating properly.

"Good boy," he purred, which did all sorts of gooey things to my chest. I might be wounded, broken into pieces and hated myself most days, but damn if that didn't glue some of my fragments back together.

Sias drifted off in a different direction, disappearing into a shop as I floated away to find something to eat.

As previously stated, most of the offerings around this section of town catered to crowds in much higher income brackets than myself, but I now had the power of a rich man's credit card in my hands. Unfortunately, my appetite was about as powerful as an anemic, elderly chihuahua, so I ended up with a cup of soup that I forced myself to down at least half of before Sias showed back up.

He gave a sharp look to the cup of coffee I was sipping and I wiggled my half empty soup canister to cool him off. The bag hanging from his arm held a fabric covered box, the logo of which I didn't recognize. Whatever it was, it looked breathtakingly expensive, and I was hesitant to relinquish his credit card back over when he held out his hand.

The travel time back to Sias's mansion was a breeze because he had called his driver to come pick us up. Apparently he had hit his walking limit for the day and didn't care to hoof it back to the house. The ride was short compared to the normal grind of using trains and buses to get around, but it gave me just long enough time to sink into a tornado of thoughts around the suddenness of the void tears.

It had been a long time since a necromancer of this caliber was this crazy or ambitious enough to cause this type of stir in St. Athesall. The last time we'd had a void related fiasco had been almost sixty years ago when there'd been a literal horde of vampires roaming the streets. St. Athesall had been closed down, people trapped within a city sized arena with undead creatures trying to rip them apart, the government having to send in waves of armed zealots to try and quell the madness.

It had been the height of the Saint's Army's power, and it had kicked off what my family lovingly referred to as "the good ol' days." They'd stormed into the city like tyrants, murdered the undead like only holier-than-thou humans could, and made sure everyone knew about it.

Technically, they did save the city.

But they also hadn't been excited to give up the power they had obtained—this was the part I'd had to learn outside of Magnus's schooling. I'd been taught that the Saint's Army being disbanded was because of "bureaucratic bullshit," not because they were a little laissez-faire with the non-human casualties.

The likelihood that my old family would catch wind of these tears was as certain as the sun rising the next morning. They would find out, and I wasn't thrilled at the idea of them crawling into my city in the hopes of getting involved.

Although, if I was being honest, having their skill set tracking this fucker would be amazing.

You know, if they didn't fucking hate me.

I was lost in the idea of having to face Magnus's scowling mug and Austin's piercing disappointment when the car rolled to a stop. Sias was almost all the way out of the car by the time I blinked back to reality, and I was a few steps behind as we headed back into the house.

"You alright?" he asked as we went into the kitchen, gaze flicking in my direction as he began unbagging his expensive, cloth-wrapped box. "You're quiet, which is rare for you."

"Ha. Ha. The incubus has jokes." I swung the freezer door open and snagged the frozen mouse. The tiny corpse rattled inside as I gave it a little shake. "I was thinking I need to step up my game with this whole necromancy shit."

"What's really on your mind?" he tried again, seeing past the deflection. "You were scowling way too much for it to have been ‘necromancy shit,' love."

"You've gotten mighty insightful and I kinda hate it." Feeling exposed, I rattled the mouse a bit more to give myself time to untangle the unease coiling in my chest. "You're familiar with the Saint's Army, yeah?"

He gave me a nod, pausing from his task of untying what I realized was patterned silk from around a lacquered box.

"With these tears happening all over the city, there's a good chance they're going to be showing up like a bad odor." My teeth biting at my lip did nothing to distract me from the soup in my belly going sour with nerves. "I kinda grew up there. At their compound, I mean. They're family, and we don't get along."

I rarely got to see Sias surprised, and if I hadn't been admitting that I grew up in a military household of radical, human zealots trained to seek and destroy the undead blight, I would have been delighted by his forehead wrinkles.

"You did?"

"Yep." I watched the mouse roll to the side of the container absently. "I did."

"Ah." He drummed on the lid of the box with his fingers. "When you say you don't ‘get along…'"

"They'll probably try and kill me, and by proxy, you." I winced. "Depending on if we're in their way with these tears. They kinda know about my former powers in a very bad way."

"I see."

"I didn't want to have to pile on." I exhaled, not feeling lighter after airing out some of the skeletons in my closet. "But you should probably know about all the factors trying to murder us, not just the void tears and gangs I've pissed off. Sorry, my family is…complicated, and you're roped into it since we're…uh…" I floundered, trying and failing to conjure the term for whatever the hell we were.

"I don't care what they think of me, love." Sias saved me from my torment, sliding the lid of the dark wooden box open. "And I hope you won't take it personally if I react in kind if they threaten either of us."

"I'm hoping it won't come to that, so we'll see." I gave up on trying to get the mouse to flip as I watched Sias extract a few small, diamond shaped glass vials from the velvet lined box. Each one was topped with a crystal, the contents inside churned like drops of vibrant pigment in floating water.

Sias left his station and came to stand in front of me, a wash of tobacco and sandalwood coated me as his eyes swirled into a rosy color that made my toes curl.

"Don't worry about them. One threat at a time," he whispered, easing my nerves from a wildfire into a much more manageable simmer. I felt my shoulders relax, his charm magic a warm hug coating my body. His hand found a familiar perch on my lower back, the touch gentle, almost sweet. For a few, fleeting seconds, I almost didn't feel like the world was crushing me with one crisis after another, and that my heart wasn't split into pieces.

Just for a few seconds. It was lovely.

The rosy color in Sias's eyes sharpened into an orange, the charm dispelling like a candle being blown out by a blown kiss. I missed his hand when he carefully removed it.

"While you work on speaking with the dead, I'm going to go have another chat with our house guest ."

He meant Reynolds, of course, which made my upper lip snarl.

"Tell him ‘hi' for me, yeah? Maybe a few well-placed ones around his dick with some knives."

"I absolutely will." Sias kissed me beside my mouth and placed the vials he was holding into my palm. "Be a dear and give these to Barnaby since you're heading that way."

I saluted him with my mouse container and accepted the vials, making my retreat out of the kitchen to go track down Barns and his skull.

Out of all the spare bedrooms in the mansion, Barnaby had chosen one very close to my own. He insisted he did so because he didn't want to have to "constantly run around" when delivering Funus to my room, but I suspected he simply wanted to be nearby. I didn't press him on it, because I also didn't want to acknowledge that him being a few doors away made me feel comforted.

He was an annoying little shit who constantly fought me on everything, but he was my annoying little shit that constantly fought me on everything. We had a charming, sibling relationship that meant we'd also have each other's back and we looked out for one another, but it also meant we had to try and kill one another at least once a week.

So it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to knock on his half open door and waltz in announcing, "I've come for some head."

"That's still not funny." Barnaby didn't bother to look up from his book, which was propped in his lap while he lounged in his bed. Beside him on the nightstand was the head I was looking for, placed on his fluffy pillow with the electronic book tablet he read from. Since Funus was missing limbs to turn pages and didn't have lips to use a jabbing device to push buttons, we had a device made he could bite with his teeth to click the digital pages along.

Funus's orange eyes moved my direction, and he let the controller drop from his teeth to speak with me.

"Another round?" he asked, always excited to teach. I appreciated that he never seemed to hate the idea of teaching me, even though I was fucking terrible at the craft he had dedicated his life and afterlife to.

"We have some time to kill before Dex has the void locator done. Now's as good a time as any to get some mouse-o-mancy lessons in. Barns." I dangled the vials as he looked over. "Delivery from Sias."

"Oh, wonderful. I was feeling peckish." Barnaby closed his book and set it aside on his pillow, sliding off the bed to accept the vials.

"What are these?" I asked as Barnaby considered the color options placed in his hand, opting on a glittery tangerine vial while the others were set aside in a drawer.

"Concentrated intimacy energy vials," he explained, priming the top of the crystal with two quick turns. "They're similar to the sex crystals you'd trap your encounters in for me, but much better. Those crystals could only hold one encounter, these vials have dozens. Just a small drop fills me for two days."

"Damn. They look and sound expensive as hell." I watched as Barnaby pulled a dropper similar to perfume bottles out from the top. A swirl of magic clung to the tip, dropping like heavy mist onto his tongue as he held it out. His eyes flared the same color as the vial for a moment and he sighed happily.

"Ah. Delicious." Barnaby capped the bottle and twisted it shut, burping a little. "And to answer your question; yes. They are breathtakingly expensive for this level of concentration and verity. I told Sias he didn't need to shop for my meals in the same place he gets his, but he was rather insistent."

"He's really pushy about food." My attempt at commiserating with him backfired, as the fussy incubus turned on me. I got the full assault, complete with finger wagging and the furrowed brow of a disappointed grandfather.

"He's pushy because you haven't been taking care of yourself, Dallas Wilde. You're not eating properly and you've been exerting yourself too hard."

"You can't be on my side for two second, can you? It's physically impossible." I turned from my assailant and looked down at the skull watching from the sidelines. "Ready to go do some terrible necromancy?"

"Nothing worthwhile is ever brilliant from the start, Dallas," Funus chimed in with his version of a smile, which was a pleasant tone and bright eyes. "Each time you practice, you continue farther along on your journey."

"You are so delightful, Funus." I scooped him up and tucked him under my arm like a football. It always made Barns bristle, so I did it constantly. The battle between scolding me on my eating habits and correcting my handling of Funus flushed Barnaby's face to a cherry red.

He glared for a full breath, too annoyed to find anything else to say besides, "You are impossible ."

I blew a kiss his way as we flounced out of his room, and he didn't even bother to catch it. So rude.

"At the risk of you rolling me down some stairs, I do have to point out that he's right," Funus whispered to me once we made it safely down the hallway. "You're working very hard on channeling your magic, which will drain your energy very quickly. Proper nutrition is important to maintaining your strength."

"Yeah? You're a dead guy and you do great. I don't see you chomping down some trail mix." I placed Funus on his pillow near my alter, and set the sealed mouse container onto the floor. Twig was sound asleep against Zane's ashes, her cheek pressed against the glass while her tail wrapped around the jar. I decided to let her sleep, so I just touched the lid to let Zane know I was home.

"That's a perk of being dead," Funus was telling me from his pillow. "I don't need to eat. But you're still very much alive, I'm afraid, so you'll need to continue the tradition of burning calories."

"The downside of being alive," I explained to the head on the floor as I gave Kevin some bloodworms. Sias had been spoiling him with some top-grade bloodworms that had extra minerals or some shit like that. I had insisted that Kevin liked the store brand best, but was proven wrong as soon as he had his first taste. I was pretty sure Kevin loved Sias more than me because of the new treats. "Is that you tend to feel like shit when someone you love dies. Kind of fucks up your drive to eat."

Kevin snatched a freeze-dried worm from the surface and gobbled it down, flipping his tail my direction. He totally agreed with me, because he was a true friend.

"I'm sorry to say, that doesn't go away after you die," Funus said remorsefully. "Grief transcends that barrier. Us grieving dead get to skip the physical ailments, but the heartache sticks around."

"Well, that sucks." I flopped down onto my pillow opposite of Funus. "Who did you lose? Is it okay if I ask?"

"I've been undead for two centuries, child." His eyes flared in a weak Funus style smile. He always sounded like a sweet, old grandpa when he called me "child," but this time it sounded as heavy as a gravestone. "I've lost everyone I've ever known. My grief will continue on after I am dust, but my memories of them keep them alive in my afterlife. It is my bittersweet solace."

"That's beautiful, Funus."

"I have my moments." Another weak flare of a smile. "Let us begin."