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I wanted to believe it could be true, but a sense of apprehension lurked beneath my growing fascination. A nagging feeling of unease, despite his charm, that a part of me couldn’t shake. I couldn’t let myself forget that, as much as I craved Reaper’s undivided attention, he was dangerous. I’d seen how brutal he could be, and I had no idea what kind of darkness he hid.
“How’d you end up tangled with Ivan?”
Pointing at myself, I raised an eyebrow. “I told you already. Stupid homeless teenager?”
“But now that we’re not running around the murder house, there’s time for more juicy details.”
I ran my finger around the rim of my cup, chewing on my lip, unable to meet his eye and sighed. “Fine. Living on the streets as a teenage runaway was rough. Harder than I thought it would be. I was starving, among other things, and Ivan saw a vulnerable girl he could manipulate.”
Maverick listened without judgment, sipping his wine. “Why’d you run away?”
“After my mom died when I was young, it was just me and my dad, and he wasn’t a good guy either. I thought I’d be better off on my own. It was naive of me, but by the time I figured it out, I couldn’t go back.”
“Was your dad as bad as Ivan?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. My breath shuddered. “He never hurt me, but I couldn’t trust my father, and I couldn’t be around him anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I started to see my visions when I was really young. I didn’t know what they were at first. I thought they were daydreams, like dreams at night, except when you’re awake.” I laughed. “I didn’t realize daydreams usually mean an intentional imagining. I didn’t know why I kept having dreams about my dad hurting people, but I never told anyone. He never hurt me, but he did have a temper, and I tried to keep out of his way. By the time I was twelve years old, I started to piece together some of my visions with things that really happened. A vision of my dad with a red plaid shirt on, choking some woman the morning he wore the same shirt, and then I heard him leave the house after I was in bed. A vision of my friend falling off her bike, and then ithappened. A vision of a classmate’s sister getting hit by a car, and then it happened.”
“How many people did your dad hurt?”
“My dad was a serial killer, probably dozens, maybe even my mom.”
“You think he killed your mom?”
“She went missing when I was three.”
He winced. “Shit.”
I shrugged, my throat tightening with thoughts of the woman I’d never know. Mothers and daughters have such an iconic relationship, whether good or bad, that when there is nothing, the emptiness is always distinctly painful, like an open sore in your chest. Like a brick in your pocket whenever you think about it. I preferred not to. “I barely remember her…” Swallowing the lump in my throat and breathing it away, I didn’t want to let this get any heavier. “Anyway, how about you? What was your childhood like? Better than mine, I hope.”
He gave me a wily look that told me I was in for a ride. “I, too, grew up in Hell.”
“Haha, what was it like?”
His eyes twinkled with, in retrospect, the knowledge he was about to blow my mind. “Not as hot as you mortals think, but warmer than New England in the summer. I do prefer it here on this plane, though, despite the fact that I’m always avoiding the seraphim hunters.”
I stilled and peered over at him, unable to create words on my tongue. My mouth went dry as I searched for a response. I took a sip of my wine for both the plausible delay and the liquid refreshment. After I swallowed, I turned back to him again. He watched me patiently, a tinge of amusement in the lines around his eyes. “Did you say Hell?”
He nodded. “Not the underworld, where your tainted souls, like your father, will go. Your ancestors got the facts all muddled. Hell is another world, like the fae realm. Which is in Hell.”
“The fae realm is in Hell?”
“It’s a part of hell. There are three sectors, the seraphim, the devils, and the fae.”
“Oh,” I squeaked.
“I didn’t have a childhood like humans do here. I manifested as a fully grown adult…” He thought for a moment and gave me a half-smirk. “But of course, I had a lot of growing up to do anyway.”
“Thousands of years ago,” I whispered.
He nodded, sipping his wine with an amused smirk, all without taking his eyes off me. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said in equally hushed tones.
“It’s a secret?”
“It’s actually very important you don’t tell anyone. I can trust you, right?”
