CHAPTER 1

AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES I wanted to murder this kid—a new record.

“Damien,” I cry out, my voice as pleasing as I can muster after the last two hours of torment that would break a Marine. “We don’t pour hot sauce on toilet paper.”

The medieval torturer in the guise of a ten-year-old boy tries to dodge as I leap for him. He thinks he’s got the upper hand by rebounding off of the gigantic walk-in rain shower, but he’s used to tiny nannies hunched from age and exhaustion. With my longer arms, I can’t quite snag him, but I manage to tip the hot sauce bottle out of his hand.

I don’t think anything of it and turn for a second go at Damien, but when it kisses the tile the bottle explodes into a million glass chips. With a demonic giggle, the hell beast vanishes out of the guest bathroom to continue his reign of terror. Of course rich people would keep their hot sauces in a crystal vial. They probably have a diamond-encrusted ketchup bottle too.

Cursing in spirit but not sound, I hunch over and try to gather up the shards without stepping on any. The toilet paper, mercifully not gold leaf, is a lost cause. Wadding the red-soaked paper around my hand, I breathe slowly and try to ignore the laugh followed by another sharp shatter somewhere in the mansion.

When I got this job, I almost didn’t take it. An app request for a babysitter at six PM on Christmas Eve—who does that? I got my answer on the ten-minute ride up their driveway. This wasn’t just any mansion. It was the kind of fancy Victorian home that housed columns, buttresses, gargoyles, maids, a butler, a dozen ghosts, Revolutionary gold buried in the garden, a hedge maze, and a cursed beast prowling in the west wing…probably. I’m pretty sure their salt and pepper shakers are worth more than my rent.

That damn need to have somewhere to sleep is why I’m in this mess. Also electricity, phone, being too bougie to starve in the gutter. Typical selfish reasons, really. When I took this job the app gave me an address and time. Usually, there’d be a picture of the moppets I’d be taking on and a list of rules. All I got for this job was a blank silhouette and a request to be discreet. My damn curiosity really fucked me over tonight.

With shards of glass wadded in quickly dissolving toilet paper, I stand. Just another half hour. He said he’d be back from the party before nine. I can do this.

A bullet whizzes just past my face. I jerk back far too late to have dodged. Lucky for me the little shit is a terrible shot. The monster lifts his BB gun for another go at me. “Damien DeVere!”

“The third,” he says petulantly and pulls the trigger. The thing jams, thank God. He starts to shake it, but I stomp forward and grab the end. As I wrench it out of his hands, he doesn’t scream or whine. One dead black eye stares at me.

“You do not shoot people!” I’m in near hysterics at this child casually aiming a gun at me and pulling the fucking trigger.

He blinks slowly as if taking in this information is a challenging process. Then he shakes his head and gives a little laugh. “You forgot to use the third,” he says.

I’ve had some doozies in my tour as a babysitter. There was the firecracker down the garbage disposal incident. The hiding in the trunk of their mother’s car debacle. And, of course, the always fun writing on the walls in their own feces. But nothing compares to the past one hundred and twenty-three minutes I’ve suffered from Damien DeVere the third.

Snarling, I reach to take him by the scruff. Just before I grab his skin, I realize my hand is covered in hot sauce and glass. “Go to bed!” I shout.

“Make me,” he challenges.

My hand clenches tighter around the gun. Gritting my teeth, I lean down to his level. “Go. To. Bed!” As a last resort, I wave my deadly hand at him. It’s probably the soggy toilet paper instead of the threat of glass, but Damien gives a quick yelp and skitters off down the hall.

Then there’s the giggle, always the fucking giggle.

A door slams down the hall and I breathe a sigh of relief. Twenty-six minutes until he’s back. And if his father is one second late, I’m charging him triple. No, quintuple. Exhausted, but seeing dawn at last, I try to smear the toilet paper and glass off of my hand into one of their trash cans. The outside shines like an opalescent pearl. It’s not until soggy hot sauce drips down it that I realize it’s probably covered in actual pearls. Rich people are so fucking weird.

I scrape the last of it off and wash my hands. The movement catches my eye and I frown at the eye bags and furrowed brow on the creature in the mirror. This kid’s taken a good decade from my life. At least he’s in his room and…

Another door slams shut.

Without thinking, I cock his BB gun and sling it around in my arms. “Damien!” I scream and go after him.

The clock strikes nine as I collapse into an armchair by the fire. It took me five tries to wrangle him into bed. The final straw was when he snuck into my purse, stole my birth control, and flushed them while calling me a whore. Demons could learn a thing or two from that charming young man. In the end, I barricaded him in his room. If his father cares enough to get him out, he can move the chair. Or wait until morning.

“God, I can’t imagine that monster on Christmas morning.” In the old days, Damien would be the kind of kid who’d have had his servants put to death because his porridge was too cold.

I fall back into both the stuffy chair and myself. The hypnotic flames climb into my skull, writhing and fading into smoke while my mind churns with them. Christmas…again. There’s no tree at home. No tinsel. No ham. No one waving a sprig of mistletoe above his head. Another year come and gone, and what do I have to show for it other than the mental scars? Some physical ones too.

Back in grade school, they’d do these ‘What do you wanna be when you’re an adult’ worksheets. Kids would sculpt their hopes and dreams not in clay but crayons and stickers only to reach that coveted age and realize there is no promised land. Adult life isn’t becoming someone, it’s surviving the someone you always were. Doing whatever you can to make it to the next day, then getting up and doing it again. People aren’t happy. They get snippets of happiness from time to time, sure. But deep down, most of us are on standby, waiting for the next crisis to destroy our pathetic little world.

Except for people like the DeVeres. This house is the kind of old money where there’s a safari’s worth of stuffed animals tucked away in an old parlor. They don’t have problems beyond the ones they invent to keep themselves busy.

A little clock on the mantle tolls. Two small men in undertaker suits jerk through tiny doors and bang on a bell nine times. Then they bow and race back inside. I cross my legs and laugh at the fancy clock that’s two minutes late. Selling that thing could probably feed a village, but it can’t keep the time. There’s a joke in there, but I can’t find it beyond enjoying a little bit of patina on the gold.

“Hello? Miss Amaya?”

Here we go . Groaning, I pry myself out of the chair to my feet. My body sways, aching to toss me onto that fluffy rug by the fire, but I can’t. Sheer willpower forces a smile on, and I stand with so-so posture to greet Mr. DeVere.

He’s not what I expected. Everything about this house puts me in mind of a Clark Gable type—tall, thin, with a pencil mustache to boot. Mr. DeVere has the form of a man who paid a lot of money for someone else to get him into shape. Either he keeps his head shaved or nearly. It’s hard to tell under his dark hat. Worst of all, instead of the pencil mustache, he went with a goatee that does little to hide the awkward way he smiles.

There’s nothing wrong with his face—in the older-lady-with-a-certain-kind-of-money circles it might even be considered handsome. But when he talks it’s like he’s wearing a mask that doesn’t fit right. It gives me goosebumps in all the wrong ways.

“I’m in the…I don’t know what room this is,” I call out to him. “There’s a fireplace. And a portrait of a woman in a pink dress.”

“Ah, yes. I’ll be there shortly,” he shouts from somewhere in this castle.

By the time he finds me, I’ve got my coat and purse on my arm and the app all ready to finalize this job. Mr. DeVere nods to me from the door’s threshold. “I trust you had a pleasant evening,” he says. The man’s dressed like he came from the opera, or whatever really rich people do on Christmas Eve.

I work my fingers under my coat so he can’t see them and pinch myself hard. “Yes,” I gasp with a smile. “Damien is a…spirited young lad.”

Mr. DeVere chuckles. “Quite.”

Not about to let him skip out on me, I wave my phone in the air. “Could you please sign me out?” He can do it on his phone, but I learned a long time ago the nicer the house, the harder I have to fight to get them to cough up the money. I’m braced for a full-on war after tonight.

“Of course.” He smiles with his lips a touch too puckered. Mr. DeVere at least pulls out his phone. Then he pries off his leather gloves and drapes them across his arm.

Who wears leather gloves inside? Or while sitting in the back of a limo?

I instinctively take a step back when he looks up at me. His smile drops, but I feel more at ease without it. “I cannot thank you enough for stepping in on such short notice. This shareholder banquet has been in the works for ages, and it’d have been a disaster if I couldn’t attend.”

“Uh, yeah, no problem.” I don’t know what any of that means.

“Sadly, Damien’s au pair had to fly home unexpectedly. Her mother slipped down a flight of stairs.”

Why the hell is he telling me this? “Oh, that’s too bad,” I say, eyeing up the exit. My phone shakes, telling me the funds will be deposited in my account in one to three business days. I ease my way toward the door, but Mr. DeVere’s still standing in the way.

Just as I try to scoot around him, he looks up. Then up more. I try to scrunch down without looking like I am. Men always get defensive when they have to lift their eyes to mine. Men like Mr. DeVere doubly so.

His smile returns and my skin tries to flee without me.

“Incidentally, is there any chance that you would be available for the next few days?”

Excuse me? “I’m sorry.”

“I know, it’s Christmas, but you’d only have to watch sweet Damien for a few hours.”

And in that time he’d probably push me out of a window. No, thank you. “I’m not sure that would be possible.” I ease my way toward the exit, cool air beckoning me to run. The second I’m out of here, that kid’s going on the blacklist with every warning on the app.

“We’re heading to Aspen for Christmas. You’d be invited along, of course. A free ski trip doesn’t fall from the sky every day.”

A single laugh slips out of me before I lock my face in. A month in Aspen, no, a year in the Alps with daily massages and three Swedish hunks in a hot tub is not worth another second with that child. “I can’t miss Christmas,” I say. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to find someone else.”

What if he won’t take no for an answer? What if he drags me back in there? Or ties me up on his plane and forces me to be his demon seed’s punching bag for a week?

Mr. DeVere smiles. “Very well. I do understand the importance of family.”

Oh, thank god. Don’t be stupid. Of course he’s not going to kidnap me. Who does that on Christmas? Feeling lighter, I face the doorway that’s pitch black. Somewhere down the winding hallways is the exit, though I might need a few hours to find it.

“Ah, Miss Amaya.” The sound of a popping cork pulls me back. Mr. DeVere fills a glass up to the top with an amber liquid. “Would you care to join me for a drink?”

I’m sorry, I have to get home to my sad, desolate apartment so I can spend Christmas waiting to head into my other job. Lots of irate people with returns to deal with after all.

He pours another glass from a bottle that gleams like a fire diamond in the light. Gold lines the label and I realize with a gulp that it’s probably real. This is easily the most expensive glass of liquor I’ll ever have in my life, and I’m just going to walk away.

“Okay, but just the one. I have to drive home,” I say.

“Of course.” He smiles. For the first time, it feels genuine. I take the glass, shocked at the heft. “Don’t tell me these are made out of diamonds.” I start to laugh.

“Diamond crystal, yes. Good eye.”

Oh shit. I cup the glass like a toddler learning to drink and take a small sip. Mr. DeVere throws his back without a care. Feeling more secure, I take a longer sip.

It doesn’t burn at all. If anything, the taste is sweet on the lips and slides down my throat with ease. “What’s in thi…?” Wooziness knocks into my head. I reach a hand up to hold it and nausea follows. The cozy firelight scorches my eyes and I open my mouth to scream.

In a panic to escape, I turn, but my knee gives out. The glass crashes to the floor, shattering like the hot sauce. I fight to move, but my body’s shutting down. My limbs harden to steel and my joints give out. I slam to the ground, fighting to keep my eyes open.

Mr. DeVere stands above me slowly sipping on his cocktail.

“What did you…?” My tongue swells and I can’t talk.

After putting his drink on the table, Mr. DeVere reaches to take my arms and my eyelids slam shut.