Heck, just last year we had a vampire murdered by an overzealous girl, thinking she was protecting her little brother from being turned into one of the blood-sucking undead. The fact that said brother had signed up for just that and was practically dewy eyed over the idea didn’t matter to her. The end result? Two families ruined, just like that.

  But didn’t Donovan deserve a warning? His entire life could be destroyed. I didn’t know how quickly the ghoul curse would come for him now that the amulet was no longer with Antoine’s body, but I didn’t think I had much time to rectify things.

  Roy would be furious with me, if I went hinting about supernatural business to a mundane. I couldn’t even blame him. Secrecy protected Roy’s entire family too, in their hidden little valley. And look at how explosively my last attempt to help had ended up with a faerie coup and a civil war raging down Main Street.

  But… Taliyah had said she was grateful, in spite of everything. She’d wanted the right to make informed decisions about her own life, even when those decisions were hard and messy.

  It had been the right thing to do. I had to believe that.

  I did believe it.

  My breath shook on the way out, and I thought really, really hard about those cocktails again, but the rum probably wouldn’t help with my credibility, which was going to be strained as it was. So, instead, I dragged my purse across the table and fished out my phone and the card that Donovan Novik had given me days ago.

  Chapter Eleven

  I almost hung up before the second ring.

  My stomach churned, and I had to swallow carefully for fear I might be sick.

  As the phone rang a third time, I wrestled with the agony of being forced to leave the world’s most awkward voicemail, but I ended up being spared that at least, as Donovan picked up the phone, sounding a little out of breath.

  “Donovan, hi, it’s Fifi... From Hallowed Homes... Is this a bad time?”

  “Fifi, hi, yes. No, sorry, I was just getting out of the shower.” There was a muffled sound as Donovan moved the phone, but his voice was clearer when he came back on the line again. “What’s up?”

  And here we went.

  I crossed my fingers, hoping I wasn’t about to make a giant fool of myself. “I was hoping that you might have some time to, uh... because, well, I needed to talk to you.”

  “Oh... Yeah, of course.” A thread of concern wove through his voice. “Is everything okay with my lease?”

  “Your lease is fine,” I assured him quickly. “It’s nothing like that. But I was hoping we could meet face to face.”

  In person was better. He couldn’t hang up on me in person.

  There was a pause before Donovan spoke again. “Uh, sure. Do you need me to come to the office, or–”

  “I can come by your apartment,” I cut in. It was going to be bad enough in private—I didn’t want all my employees witnessing the exchange.

  Another pause, but then Donovan’s voice was tentatively pleased when he said, “Sure, that would be great.”

  “Great.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

  My nerves got the better of me, and I accidentally took a page from Wanda’s book and hung up without saying good bye.

  Okay. This was it. No backing out now, even if I wanted to.

  I grabbed my purse and headed out.

  ***

  It wasn’t until I got there that I realized the logistic problem of guests arriving at the apartment. Did I knock at the bottom door? Go in and knock at the apartment door? What if the first one was locked; how would Donovan even hear me knocking? I technically had keys, but that would be rude, to just let myself in. Not to mention unprofessional.

  It turned out to be a non-issue, because Donovan was waiting for me at the back door, the heavy metal propped open. He smiled when he saw me.

  If I’d thought Donovan was handsome in a suit, in slightly more casual clothes he could have knocked me on my butt. His dark hair was a little tousled, his shirt sleeves pushed up to reveal strong forearms, dusted with a spray of hair. And his jeans looked like they’d been worn and washed until they were downy soft, the dye faded to pale blue. The Succubus within me wanted to reach out and touch them so badly, I had to curl my fingers into my palms to resist.

  My Succubus lifted her head, scenting the air. She murmured a throaty reminder that we’d never gotten to feed properly from Roy the last time we saw him. I stuffed her back down and then stepped on her for good measure.

  Donovan held the door for me, and I slipped under his arm into the back stairwell. He gestured to the stairs.

  “After you.”

  My knees were a little wobbly as I rattled up the metal staircase, and my stomach was jumping with nerves at the thought of what I’d come here to tell him: to try and convince him that this was serious. Regardless of how he might react, he deserved to know the truth, especially because the curse could be a threat to his entire line.

  The smell of raw meat wasn’t helping my stomach. The air was rank with it, flesh with the faint tang of metal. I was surprised Donovan hadn’t complained about it before; it really was over powering.

  We slipped into the apartment, and it was just as cozy as I remembered, especially with most of the lights turned down low. Donovan had moved the kitchen table into the living room, where he’d draped it in a white cloth, and set up creamy pale candles in silver candle sticks. The table was set for two, with clean white plates and gleaming utensils.

  My heart sank. Clearly, he was expecting someone.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blurted, feeling off balance. “I didn’t know you had dinner plans—we can talk another time.” How was I supposed to talk to him about curses when he had a guest coming over? Yeah, not good timing.

  Donovan rubbed the back of his neck, a rueful laugh slipping from his lips. “No, no, I’m not expecting anyone for dinner—I was just in the process of cooking up a few things. And since I hadn’t eaten yet, and I thought, if you were coming over, whatever you needed to tell me might go better with food.”

  Guilt sat like a rock in my belly as I looked over the table. It was really sweet of him to go to this kind of effort. But I also felt extremely uncomfortable, because everything sitting before me had all the shades of a date, without actually being termed as such. And conflicted or not about where things stood between Roy and me, I wasn’t available for dates.

  Something of what I was feeling must have shown on my face, because Donovan looked a little sheepish. “I know what it looks like, but I didn’t mean anything by it, really. I just like to cook, and I was hungry, but I hate to eat alone.” He winced. “Is that okay?”

  The cold lump in my gut didn’t entirely melt away, but the lump softened anyway, and I smiled at him. “I am pretty hungry. Thank you, Donovan.”

  Something in him relaxed, and he gestured for me to take a seat as he started bringing out dishes from the kitchen. And I mean dishes, plural. I watched in growing amazement as he brought plate after plate of food, until the wooden table was all but groaning under the weight of them. There were steaks, a rack of lamb, half a chicken (so much for my theory that Donovan was a vegan), potatoes, green beans with almonds slivered over the top, and a sticky black dish that smelled a bit like iron.

  “Blood pudding,” Donovan explained as I tried not to cringe. “My mother used to make it. It’s kind of a comfort dish for me.”

  I looked around at all the food, not really sure where to start. Donovan took a serving spoon and began heaping his plate. “Are you sure you weren’t expecting someone?” I asked, still pretty shocked as I took everything in.

  “Nope, so dig in,” he said absently, focused on the meal.

  When the man had said he liked to cook, he wasn’t kidding.

  I was used to having meals with a big eater. Roy was closer to seven feet than to six, and he had the muscle to back it up. But even he wasn’t quite this eager about his dinner and he’d certainly never made the two of us a meal that could have fed a whole family (and a large one, at that). As I watched, Donovan fell on the food like he hadn’t eaten for days. Maybe he hadn’t—well, at least cooked something decent for himself in a while. I knew from experience that cooking for one person was a drag.

  The steak was a little rare for my tastes, so I took a few strips from the edges and set them on my plate. That was when I noticed there was a whole lot of meat on the table. I guessed that was what happened when you lived on top of a butcher’s shop and you most decidedly were NOT a vegan or vegetarian.

  I poked at my steak, and managed a few bites of potatoes and green beans, trying to be polite, but my appetite was gone. Between the smell of the meat from the butchery below and what I’d come to talk to Donovan about, I was going to struggle to keep anything down, really.

  I swallowed, searching around for a topic. I just couldn’t leap into talks about curses and magic cold turkey. I finally settled for the tried and true. “So, how has your stay been so far?”

  Donovan set his cutlery down and picked up a napkin to mop up the thin trickle of juice that had snaked down from the corner of his mouth. “Good. Great, actually. I’ve been digging into my great-grandfather’s past. He was kind of the black sheep of the family, was big on travelling the world. And considering the time period, I’m surprised by all the places he traveled to.”

  Donovan reached out to the half chicken arranged on a platter, and with a deft twist, pulled the leg off and dropped it on his plate. The gesture was so fast and a little shocking, that I jumped in my seat. Donovan didn’t seem to notice my reaction, just wiped the chicken grease off his hand and onto the napkin in his lap.

  “He used to bring back all kinds of weird stuff,” he continued. “He settled down for a while with my great-grandmother, but they separated after having a couple kids. It was apparently a very big scandal at the time.”

  He winked at me, like it was an inside joke or something.

  “He travelled a bit more after that,” Donovan continued, cutting a few bites off the chicken bone. I’d half expected him to just pick it up and chew on it, which was a strange thought, because, for the most part, his table manners were decent. “But then he suddenly came back to the states, settled in Haven Hollow, and never left again, as far as I can tell. It’s been great researching his life. No one in the family talks about him much, so all I’ve had to go on has been little fragments of family gossip.”

  I managed a smile, twisting my napkin between my hands. “That sounds frustrating.”

  “It was,” he admitted, sawing off a bit of lamb from the rack. The blood was very red as it pooled on the plate. My stomach twisted unpleasantly.

  Donovan plunked the lamb onto his plate, ignoring the vegetables entirely. “It’s just… My great-grandfather seemed like this amazing, travelled man, and yet no one ever talked about his adventures. No one even knew where he ended up, until I got the call about his grave being desecrated. To finally have some information about him, well, Fifi, it’s incredible. I just wish I could figure out why he’d settled here, of all places.”

  Donovan shot me an apologetic look, like he’d only just realized how his words could be taken. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Haven Hollow seems like a very nice town. It’s just, for a guy who traveled to Cairo, Thebes, and Istanbul, why decide to settle in a little town just outside of Portland, you know?”

  Oh, I had a pretty good idea of why he’d settled in the Hollow. I just had no idea how I was going to explain as much. Roy was going to be so mad.

  “Yeah. About that.” I took a deep breath, feeling a bit like I was about to step off a cliff into the open air. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Donovan paused, a wrinkle forming between his brows. “You wanted to talk about my great-grandfather moving here?”

  “Kind of?” Great start, Fifi. Excellent conversation skills. I cleared my throat and tried to sound a shade less like I had no idea what I was doing. “Kind of.”

  “Okay,” Donovan said slowly, putting his fork down as he eyed me with a questioning expression. “What about it?”

  How was I going to put this? I didn’t want to spill all the details about the Hollows and the people who lived in them. It wasn’t like it had been with Taliyah. Taliyah was Fae, and always had been, she just didn’t know it at the time I’d told her as much. Donovan was human, even if his family was cursed. With an amulet created just for him, he could live out his days and be normal just like every other human but that didn’t make him any less human. Furthermore, I didn’t want to give him a reason to start poking around Haven Hollow where he might discover certain things we didn’t want him to discover.

  I took a deep breath, hoped like Hell that I was doing the right thing, and let it out in a rush. “I know why your ancestor decided to settle here.”

  “You do?” He appeared perplexed.

  I nodded. “It wasn’t so much about the town. It was about someone who lived here.”

  Still lived here, technically, but even if I wanted to explain that, I wasn’t going to throw Betanya under the bus.

  The corner of Donovan’s mouth curled, just a little. “Fifi, are you trying to tell me that Antoine settled here for a woman?”

  “Um.”

  But he shook his head, interrupting me. “He never married after his first wife, not as far as I can find.” His eyes flared wide, and he straightened up in his seat. “Wait, are you trying to tell me that I have other family members in town?”

  “No... Well, maybe actually.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t actually know.” I was so making a mess of this. I was saying it all wrong. Why did I always end up the one having to rip the magical band-aid off people? Oh, right, because I couldn’t mind my own business.

  Donovan looked puzzled again. “Did he settle here for a... man then?”

  I waved my hand and shook my head. “No.” Okay, that wasn’t fair. “Well, actually, I don’t know that either. I don’t know much of anything about Antoine Novik.”

  I was losing him. I could see it in the tightness in his face.

  “Okay...”

  I took a big breath. “Antoine came here because one of the people who used to live here was rumored to be a... well, a witch.”

  There, that wasn’t so bad, right? Not too revealing.

  “A witch.” Donovan’s voice was flat, completely without inflection.

  Not promising, but I’d come this far already, so I figured I’d forge ahead.

  “Yes, a witch.” I had to fight the urge to fiddle with the tablecloth. The napkin had already been wrung into a sad, wrinkled mess. “Antoine came to see the witch, because... well, he felt he’d been... cursed.”

  .

  .Chapter Twelve

  “Cursed.”

  I kind of wished Donovan would do a little more than just repeat everything I’d just said. I had no idea what he was thinking. Did I sound crazy, or did he think this was an elaborate joke and he was just waiting for the punchline? Maybe both.

  “Look, I know how this sounds. But at some point, probably on his travels, Antoine got himself and his entire bloodline cursed... and the curse forced them to become ghouls.”

  Donovan opened his mouth, probably to say ‘haha, very funny’ or something similar, so I just kept talking before he could get a word in. He just—he needed to understand that not only was all of this true, but it was important.

  “So, he came to Haven Hollow to try and get some help about his curse, before he and all of his descendants turned into corpse eating, undead monsters.” I full body cringed as I said the words. Apparently, I’d used up all my tact for the day. “But the good news is that the witch was able to help him. She made him an amulet, and as long as he had this amulet, he and his family would stay human—it basically warded away the curse.”

  We sat there in silence for a long moment. Donovan mostly just blinked at me, his mouth moving silently, like he was trying to find words, but they kept eluding him. I wanted to reach out and pat his hand or something, but I’d have had to reach across the table and all the various plates of food, which wasn’t such a simple affair. Besides, I didn’t want to smear a bunch of meat juice all over my blouse.

  “I know it’s a lot.” Wow, queen of the understatement there, Fifi. “But the reason I’m telling you all this is... well, because the person who robbed Antoine’s grave, robbed it in order to steal that amulet from him. Because he’d been buried with it.”

  Donovan looked concerned, but also like he wasn’t sure what to think. “Stole it? To do what with it, exactly?”

  That was a good question. I wished I had an answer to it. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure the grave robber got murdered a few days ago, actually.”

  Donovan gaped at me.

  “I’m sorry, I know this sounds totally nuts. But I needed to warn you, Donovan. And though it might sound bonkers, it’s all true.” I took a breath. “In removing the amulet from the grave, I’m worried that it might have restarted the curse on your bloodline again. So, in order to stop the curse, you need to wear the amulet and have the spell woven again—this time so it’s just for you. And then you need to keep it with you, always. That way neither you, nor your family members will be affected by the curse. It’s the only way you can stay human.” I tried to put as much reassurance as I could into my voice.

  After a minute, Donovan shook his head, blinking rapidly. “Okay, putting aside the fact that all of this sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel... if the thing was stolen, then how would I recharge it with the spell you were talking about? I mean, how am I going to wear it if it’s gone? It could be anywhere.”

  My shoulders slumped, relief weighing them down like a heavy blanket. He wasn’t calling me crazy and kicking me out of his house. I was hopeful that maybe he’d at least hear me out and consider everything I was saying. Even if he didn’t believe me now, and the curse started acting up at some point, he’d remember that I’d been the one to tell him about it and I was fairly sure he’d come back in search of my help at some future date. I was just setting the scene for him to do so.