He was goddamned ready.
He’d actually miss this place he’d alternately called his prison and his home. But it was time to go. Cormac sucked in a deep breath of air and tucked Lenny into his down jacket. Focusing his eyes on the purple door he’d painted himself with an old can of paint he’d found in the closet, he opened it and strode outside to meet the others, and didn’t look back.
Teddy finally spoke as they sat in Nina’s castle living room, her mouth dry and her mind reeling. “So you’re a demon?”
The enormous round man with high-top sneakers, gold chains and an NFL jersey, who looked more like a teddy bear than a servant of evil, nodded his scruffy dark head. “Yes, ma’am. Flyin’ low under the radar o’ hell like a boss.”
Teddy was still trying to process everything. The castle, the baby vampini, Charlie—who Nina’s husband Greg had whisked off to spend time at Wanda’s house with her husband, Heath. The gentle zombie who went by the name of Carl, and brought her books and a blanket.
The freakin’ hedge maze. She shook her head. A hedge maze. Nina had a hedge maze.
A demon that didn’t want to eat your soul was almost too much. But a demon that looked like you could rest your head on his shoulder while you cried? Insanity.
“So you’re a good demon?”
How could that be? Who were these people, with their weird cult-like group and a hotline for paranormal crisis called OOPS?
Darnell grinned, his teeth glowing in the dimly lit great room filled with all sorts of medieval paraphernalia and a velvet wall hanging of Barry Manilow back in his Copacabana days.
“Yep. Someday when all this has passed, you an’ me, we’ll sit a spell, maybe on Marty’s big ol’ porch swing, and I’ll explain how that all happened. Right now, we gotta keep you and your mister safe.”
Her mister. Hah. Did he mean the man who’d done nothing but give her the cold shoulder since they’d arrived in a blur of a flight on an amazing private jet with the word Pack on the side of it? That mister?
How did this life mate thing work anyway? Did Cormac feel it, too? Because if he did—if he felt this magnetic pull to her like she did to him—he was going to win an Oscar for hiding it on the outside.
She remembered a bit of the legend her mother had once told her a long time ago, but Masha Gribanov had been gone since she was fourteen…sixteen years now. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about her mother, miss her, need her advice. If there was ever a moment she needed her, now was that time.
How could she possibly ask her brothers Vadim and Viktor about something as sensitive as life mates? They wouldn’t know sensitive from a Costco-sized box of condoms.
Marty came and sat by her on the big red and gold couch made of beautiful brocade fabric, and patted her knee. “Glad you decided to join us.”
“I’m just not sure what I’m joining you for.”
Marty simply grinned, wiggling her fingers at Cormac’s cat, Lenny Kravitz, who jumped into her lap and snuggled down. “But! You’ll wake up tomorrow without a bullet between your eyes, and that’s always a comfort, don’t you think?”
Teddy swallowed hard. There wasn’t much she was afraid of, but the unknown rated pretty high. “About that…”
Why did everyone know what was going on with this guy out in the woods but her?
“Oh, hell no. All answers and back story are up to your life mate to disclose, sister. I’m just here for the cheap thrills and Arch’s weenies in a blanket.”
Speaking of Arch—or Archibald, as he was introduced to her with much flourish—he’d once been a vampire and was now human, too.
Though, she had to admit, he was absolutely precious, from the top of his balding, British-accented head right down to the shoes that shone so bright, she saw her own reflection. His suit, silver ascot, and trousers were equally as immaculate. As Marty told it, he was Wanda and Heath’s manservant, and a surrogate grandfather to the many paranormal children in this group of accidental friends.
Not to mention, he was, according to Nina, an amazing cook. The scents flying from the ultra-modern kitchen, where Nina had told her to make herself at home with anything in the enormous fridge but her chicken wings or she’d lose a kidney, were amazing.
Archibald held a tray of those very weenies in a blanket under her nose, the smell making her mouth water. It had been hours since she’d last eaten, and the grumble of her stomach said as much.
“Surely you’re famished, Mistress Jackson? All that frigid mountain air and the call of the wild makes for a hearty appetite, yes?”
Despite the fact that she had not the first clue what she was doing here or why she’d agreed to come other than the fact that her heart, while still attempting to compartmentalize, told her she should be here, Teddy smiled up at him.