Demon Shadow Read online

  Demon Shadow

  Brimstone Magic - Book 2

  Tori Centanni

  Copyright © 2018 by Tori Centanni

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art by Lou Harper

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Thank you for reading!

  Also by Tori Centanni

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  My private eye office was completely trashed.

  The window had been smashed in and glass littered the floor, along with the contents of my desk drawers and trash bins, which had all been overturned. The vandal had even smashed my glass coffee pot, an act that struck me as particularly evil.

  I stood in the center of the wreckage, surveying the damage. It looked like a tornado had whipped through the room. My laptop had been tossed on the ground. I picked it up and dusted it off, setting in on the desk and turning it on. It still worked, thankfully. It might be the only salvageable thing in the wreckage.

  The disaster felt deliberate and petty, as if the intruder had set out to make the biggest possible mess for no reason. It was one thing to wreck a place while searching for something and another to break things for fun, and this looked like the latter. My blinds were askew, my little pen cup had been swept from atop the desk. My file cabinets were open, all of the files a mess of paper on the floor. Along with the broken coffee pot, the paper coffee filters had been dumped into the sink with my bag of grounds and had water run over them. The only method to the madness was the clear indication that someone had wanted to do as much damage as possible.

  Conor stood in the doorway, his lips pressed together in a tight line, arms folded over his chest. His dark hair was neatly styled and his gray uniform was neatly pressed. His blue eyes tracked me as I spun in circles, trying to decide where to even start cleaning up the wreckage. He was too put together and looked out of place in this disaster area.

  “Can I help?” Conor finally asked, when I caught his eye. A bruise had bloomed on his chin, yellow and brown. He looked as worn out as I felt.

  “Not unless you have an ‘undo’ spell or something up your sleeve.” I was joking, because such magic didn’t exist. There were some witch spells used to clean house but most took the form of potions that were, in effect, just natural cleaners. A lot of magic was far more mundane than most people thought. So this cleaning process was going to be arduous and I was already running on fumes.

  Last night we’d been in a nasty fight with a group of mages and witches who were using demon magic to enhance their power. We’d barely made it out alive and neither of us had fully recovered. We’d just returned from giving statements at the Watcher’s HQ—where I’d had to focus to keep my story straight even when they made me repeat myself a hundred times—when I found my office in shambles.

  “Want me to call this in?” he asked.

  Conor was a Watcher, the Magic Council’s police. But unlike mortal police, witches rarely called them for anything less than life or death. They were willing to help with robberies, burglaries, and less dangerous crimes, but almost no supernaturals wanted the Watchers up in their business that badly. That was where I came in: I worked as a private eye, taking the cases people would rather pay to solve than call in the authorities.

  “No,” I said, with a deep sigh. “I’ll handle it.”

  What I wanted to do was go up to my apartment on the third floor of this building, take a shower, and ransack my cabinets for food.

  “If this is connected to Wilder and his gang…” Conor trailed off, the implication clear. If it was Wilder’s people, then I was in danger.

  “It’s probably not,” I said, though I wasn’t totally sure about that. After all, it felt like a pretty major coincidence that the night after I fought a group of mages who mostly got away, my office was suddenly destroyed. But then, it wasn’t like I was short on enemies. I could think of at least five people who might want to mess with me but would be too cowardly to do so face-to-face.

  Conor looked unconvinced. He also swayed a little on his feet. He’d been injured worse than I had, and had even been knocked out for a while. That took a toll on a person and healing potions and salves could only do so much. What we both needed was a week of rest.

  “This won’t take long to clean up,” I said. Plus, I wasn’t planning on tackling this project tonight. Facing the Watchers had been enough of an adventure. I’d managed to tell my story without giving away my secret—I had demon magic by no fault of my own and had used it to save myself and Conor, though Conor wasn’t aware of that and could never know—and now I wanted a stiff drink and something with cheese served with a mindless reality show on the television.

  “If you’re sure,” Conor said, brow furrowed.

  I was. I didn’t think I had anything incriminating in my office—it’s not like I kept a secret diary about my demon magic or anything—but I still didn’t want a Watcher poking around in my stuff.

  “I’m sure. Just need to call my landlord.”

  Silas was a vampire but it was dark out now so he could deal with the broken window. That was why I paid him rent, after all.

  Two of my three desk drawers had been pulled out, over turned, and left on the floor. The top drawer, which was also the smallest, had been left in the desk but open about an inch. I pulled it open.

  The contents—mostly spare change, random business cards, and breath mints—had been dumped out. But the drawer wasn’t empty. Inside was a small glass vial of a dark liquid. I blinked at it. My heart pounded. Demon blood. I slammed the drawer shut, as if I could make it disappear.

  Conor’s eyebrows went up in question.

  “There’s a spider,” I lied.

  Conor smirked. “You’re afraid of spiders?”

  “Afraid is a strong word,” I said, picking up one of the discarded drawers and slotting it back into the desk. I actually didn’t mind spiders, but I couldn’t let Conor see the vial of demon blood in my possession.

  The mages and witches we’d fought had drunk demon blood to give themselves superpowers. Conor knew I’d beaten a good number of them alone and he suspected I’d used more than my sword.

  So did his boss. I could tell by the way I’d been asked to repeat aspects of my story over and over.

  If Conor saw the demon blood—which was highly illegal to have in one’s possession—it wouldn’t be a huge leap to connect my fighting skills with demon magic. And as much as I wanted to believe Conor, sexy and sultry with his dark hair and intense blue eyes, was on my side, I had to accept the reality that he was first and foremost a Watcher. His loyalty was to the Magic Council. He’d known me for less than a week.

  The thing was, I would never drink demon blood. One, because it was gross. I mean, seriously. Disgusting.

  And two, I already had demon magic, but not because I was chugging the bodily fluids of dark beings from the Underworld.

  Years ago, I’d attempted to summon a spirit and
accidentally gotten a demon, who promptly possessed my body for three agonizing days. Somehow, I managed to fight the demon out. But it left behind some of its magic, making me the only witch I knew of with the ability to wield demon fire and see into the shadows. It would have been a pretty sweet deal if I didn’t still have nightmares and if demon magic of any kind wasn’t super illegal. Enough that being caught using it would mean a life sentence in the Magic Council’s dungeon, or death.

  So Conor couldn’t know my secret. I didn’t even want my secret to enter his head, and the presence of a vial of demon blood would lead to questions. It might even haphazardly lead him to the right conclusions.

  “I should call Silas,” I said, picking up the third desk drawer and sliding it back into place. I’d worry about the drawers’ scattered contents later.

  Conor’s smile faded. He nodded and bid me good night, using a strangely formal tone and a bit of a bow. I ignored that. Let him be a little cranky that I was shooing him off. I had a huge mess to deal with that was a lot bigger than a trashed office.

  “This is going to be an expensive fix,” Silas said, hammering a nail into the board he was using to cover the broken window. Luckily he had a stack of lumber in one of his apartments. Silas was a serious hoarder in need of an intervention, with five apartments full of junk he’d gathered over his centuries of living, but on rare occasions his collection of crap came in handy.

  “Not gonna be cheap to replace all of my stuff, either,” I said. Besides the broken coffee pot, the file cabinet had been dented so the top drawer no longer closed. Small potatoes, maybe, but given that I was only going to barely make my rent, it was going to be hard to find the cash for those things.

  A crow flew in the open door and landed in between piles of stuff on the floor. For once, I was happy to see Penelope, my neighbor and Silas’ only other tenant. She transformed into a human woman with tan skin and inky black hair, wearing a feathered dress woven of illusion. Most shifters didn’t have that kind of magic but Penelope did, for reasons I wasn’t privy to.

  “Who did this?” I asked without preamble. Aside from living across the hall from me on the third floor of the building, Penelope was often out flying around or perched on the window ledges keeping watch.

  “Unfortunately, I did not see,” she said.

  Of course not. That would be too easy.

  “I did note a group of young people loitering on the sidewalk earlier,” she offered, turning to survey the disaster.

  Immediately, my mind flashed to James, a shifter kid I’d forcibly returned to his Alpha when he’d run off with a human girl. He’d been with some of his pack mates outside my office just before we’d headed to Wilder’s last night. In the chaos, I’d totally forgotten. Conor had scared them away (even shifters knew better than to cause trouble in front of a Watcher) but they could have come back for round two tonight and then, pissed that I wasn’t here, wrecked the place.

  “Thanks,” I told Penelope, who nodded sagely.

  “If you know who it is, I want names,” Silas said, stepping back to examine his handiwork. The panel of wood covered the window almost entirely, except for a small gap about a centimeter wide at the top.

  “I don’t have names to give you,” I said. “Just a hunch.”

  “Isn’t solving mysteries what you do?” Silas asked, a wry smile dancing on his undead lips. Silas was tall, pale, and undead, and though he wore jeans and t-shirts beneath collared shirts and looked like a college student, he wasn’t hideous. He was definitely someone’s type. Just not mine. I liked my men alive.

  “Yeah, but I try to focus on the cases I get paid to solve,” I said.

  Silas glanced outside at the lightening sky. Night was almost over and sunrise was imminent. “I need to go,” he said. “If you find out who did this and I can bill them for the new window, I’ll knock some money off your rent.”

  “Good deal,” I said as Silas headed out, although I doubted he’d ever see a penny from the vandal.

  I thought of the vial of demon blood stowed away in my desk. James may have been a little shit, but he wasn’t a bad kid, all things considered. I could see him and his friends throwing a brick through my window and trashing my office, but not leaving behind illegal paraphernalia.

  Honestly, that part confused me most of all. Demon blood was illegal, sure, but it went for thousands of dollars on the black market. A vial like that, holding a few ounces, could easily fetch enough to buy a used car or a new laptop.

  Demon blood was rare because in order to harvest it, one had to hold a physically manifested demon in place and draw it out of them while they were alive. Not an easy task. Once a demon died in our world, their physical form basically melted. Good luck getting blood out of that gloopy, stinky mess.

  Leaving it behind felt like a very specific message, albeit one I couldn’t decode. Was it a threat? An offer? An attempt to get me arrested?

  “You know who did it,” Penelope said, watching me with her head slanted sideways, her dark eyes so intense it was as if she could read my thoughts. Maybe she could. I didn’t know the extent of her powers.

  “I have an inkling,” I admitted.

  And a very dangerous souvenir.

  Penelope transformed back into a crow and flew out the door. I looked hopelessly around the mess as exhaustion slammed into me. The last two nights of fighting mages, using too much magic, and dealing with the Watchers finally caught up with me.

  I opened the top desk drawer and, making sure no one was out on the sidewalk looking in, shoved the vial of demon blood into my pocket. Then I locked the office door and went upstairs to crash until I could function again.

  Chapter 2

  There was a bang at my door.

  My eyes popped open and I sat straight up in bed, reaching for my sword. My sword wasn’t in its usual spot. Normally it was propped next to my night stand in case of emergencies. In my exhaustion early that morning, I’d left it on the kitchen counter.

  I groaned as I dragged myself out of bed. Muscles I didn’t know I had screamed in pain as I shuffled to the door. It didn’t seem fair that the soreness was worse two days after the fighting than it had been yesterday.

  The banging started again.

  I looked through the peephole and saw a young man with fiery red hair wearing a suit. I frowned. My first thought was that Silas had sent over some kind of insurance adjuster to deal with my office.

  I checked the clock on the microwave. It was only eleven in the morning. That was the equivalent of waking a mundane at one am. My brain felt fuzzy. I needed a gallon of coffee, a pile of carbohydrates, and another three hours in bed.

  I opened the door and glared at the man. “What?” I demanded.

  His eyebrows rose. They were a light brown that didn’t match his red hair. He gave me a once over and his expression twisted in confusion, no doubt wondering if he’d made a huge mistake. My long brown hair was a chaotic bedhead mess. I wore a pair of blue pajama shorts and a t-shirt. My arms and legs were covered in fading bruises.

  “I’m looking for Daniel Warren,” he finally said.

  I snorted. “You’re looking at him.”

  The man opened his mouth, closed it again, and checked something on his phone.

  “It’s Danielle,” I said, deciding to give this guy a lifeline. He wasn’t the first person to assume “Dani” Warren was a dude, especially when they heard stories of my exploits. Some guys assumed a woman couldn’t take down an angry, newly-turned vampire or out-smart a vindictive fae lord, so this Dani person must be a dude.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding to himself. And then he stood there, doing and saying nothing. After practically breaking down my door, he now seemed pretty reticent to explain why. In my experience, this meant he wanted something.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, hoping my less-than-friendly tone would scare him off and I could go back to bed.

  “I’m Travis Conway. I need to hire you,” he said.

  I h
adn’t gotten paid yet for the job I’d finished two nights ago, and that would put me about where I needed to be to cover my rent for next month. But that didn’t include bills or groceries, and I was trying hard to get ahead of my finances for once. So I was hardly in a position to turn down a job. Still, I felt grumpy at being woken up.

  “My office opens at five,” I said. I started to shut the door.

  Travis put out his hand and stopped it. “Please. It’s an emergency.”

  I stared at him. He lacked that little glow around his aura that would mark him as a witch. He wasn’t a vampire and I really didn’t think he was a shifter.

  “Is this about your wife cheating?” He shook his head. “Husband?” He shook again. I sighed. “Is it actually an emergency or are you just saying that?”

  He hesitated and I seriously considered smacking his wrist to get his hand out of the way and slamming the door in his face. But his brown eyes were pleading and he did look helpless. I supposed I could at least hear him out.

  “Give me five minutes,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the Denny’s near the freeway. You know where that is?”

  “Yes,” he said, relief obvious.

  “Good. You’re buying me breakfast.”

  I shut the door and went to put on clothes.

  I slid into the booth across from Travis about fifteen minutes later. I ordered a coffee immediately and then opened the menu. Travis already had a coffee but left his menu closed.

  When the waitress came back, I ordered a cheese omelet with hash browns, pancakes, and a side of bacon. Travis didn’t order food. I didn’t care as long as he footed the bill.