“You’ll protect us, right?” One of the girls clutched the boy’s arm, batting her eyes up at him.

  Another girl took his other arm, giving an exaggerated pout. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’d be too scared to go in, otherwise.”

  I had to laugh at the embarrassed flush on the teen’s face. He didn’t seem to know what to do with all the girls and their over-the-top play-flirting. He met my eyes and looked away quickly, turning a tomato red that was visible even in the dim lights given off by the house.

  I looked away from the kid, giving him the illusion of privacy, and my eyes caught on the people in the crowd behind his group. There was a young woman with her date standing in line, though the standing thing didn’t seem like it would be likely to continue with how hot and heavy they were kissing—it was almost like they were trying to taste each other’s throats.

  My eyebrows shot up my forehead at the display, just for how very public it was. Especially since I was yanking back on my inner succubus’s leash, trying to remind her there were kids here. She didn’t pay any attention to me, but what else was new?

  The lovebirds didn’t seem to share my concerns, or my tenuous self-control for that matter. Something about the girl and the way she was determinedly attempting to eat her date’s face snagged my attention. I was suddenly overcome with a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a while—one of similarity, of compassion, of understanding. The more I watched the girl, the more drawn I felt towards her. And that could only mean one thing.

  If my suspicions were correct, and I was fairly sure they were, then this girl was a blossoming succubus, and now coming into her own. It was in the desperation, the overwhelming desirous need that was billowing off her like steamy, romantic clouds. The way she moved like she’d die if she couldn’t kiss the guy she was with, like she needed his touch more than she needed air.

  I shook my head, turning back to face the front of the line, reminding myself to mind my own business. After all, if I were playing sloppy tongues with Roy, the last thing I’d want was the attention of everyone else. Unfortunately, though, the young succubus was making it harder and harder to rein my own succubus in, and since I didn’t want to cause an incident on my client’s opening night, or get arrested for public indecency, I had to force my succubus down and firmly pay attention to the red lights glittering from the bushes just in front of the house, set up to look like glowing eyes.

  A few moments later and Roy and I had reached the front of the line. Roy purchased two tickets, and then we found ourselves stepping through the front door into the dark, with a chorus of creaks and groans and low, creepy music folding around us.

  Chapter Six

  Of all the things I was expecting, the house being legitimately creepy wasn’t one of them.

  I knew for a fact that Marius, Mihaela and the vampire ‘kids’ hadn’t meant any harm to come to anyone—everything in the house was set up in good fun, but that didn’t stop me from jumping at every sudden movement and unexpected sound. My spine prickled, and I felt very exposed in the dark, my pulse beating faster and faster the further into the house we went.

  The shadows pressed in, until even though I knew we were in a crowded house full of people, it felt like Roy and I were alone in the nightmare that awaited us around every corner and each new room. Up ahead, I could hear snarls and screams, and a low moaning sound that had me aware of every inch of my skin, all the fine hairs on my body standing at attention like they were trying to warn me of incoming danger.

  It was incredible how the Colonial had been transformed into something totally different. I couldn’t recognize any of it. There were hallways leading to mazes inside rooms that led to other rooms, some of which were so dark, you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. Other rooms were set up in themes and each room was spookier than the last.

  We caught up to a group of frat boys and their dates just as we were passing through a room that had been converted into a portrait gallery. Each of the paintings lining the narrow walls was just a little off, disturbing in its own way. Some of the eyes followed us. One, a portrait of a young boy in the style popular in the late Victorian era, revealed a smile that was a little too wide for a human mouth to achieve. Another portrait featured a man in an Elizabethan collar posing with his own head perched on his lap.

  The old fashioned wall paper peeled off the wall in strips, like it had been slashed by a clawed hand, and cobwebs hung from the ceiling, wafting back and forth with the movement of the air. Even though the ornate frames that decorated each wall were liberally caked with dust, the air in the hallway wasn’t choking. It smelled a bit like fresh cut wood and distant rain, which was a trick equal to any magic the rest of the house might hold. And was, no doubt, also courtesy of the Fae—they were the best with scent magic, especially where forests or the elements were concerned. I made a mental note to ask Mihaela for the contact information of whoever had worked this scent magic for her. I would have loved to be able to do something similar with some of the other properties I was selling—that is, no longer having to rely on scented candles and baking cookies for open houses.

  When the group of laughing twenty-somethings reached the last canvas in the hallway, one of a sad-eyed woman in a white nightgown, a misty form exploded out of the painting, mouth wide open, dark eyes hollow pits in its face as it howled silently and reached for them with spectral hands.

  The whole group shrieked, leaping back and almost crashing into the far wall, even as the misty form slithered back into the painting, smiling wide. Heck, I recognized the form of the wraith and I darn near popped out of my skin like a squeezed grape. Even if I didn’t lose my skin, I did scream with everything I had.

  “Easy,” Roy laughed as he pulled me closer. I already had a death grip on Roy’s arm, and if it hurt, he didn’t give any sign. A nervous little laugh huffed out of me, and I forced myself to let go before I dug little half moons into his skin with my nails.

  The group of college kids didn’t run off like I thought they would, though. One of the girls squealed, stepping forward to examine the painting.

  “Oh my God! That was so cool! How did they do that?”

  “Dude, that was sick!” One of the guys high-fived his friend, their terror almost forgotten. “This place is awesome.”

  They moved on, still chattering excitedly, debating on whether the effect had been a projection, or a really specialized fog machine as they disappeared through the doorway. As Roy and I passed the last painting, the Wraith hiding inside the painting pressed forward just enough to wink one dark eye at us before ducking back to wait for the next group. Clearly, she recognized us for what we were—not mundanes.

  The next room I recognized as belonging to part of the kitchen, only due to the floor tiles underfoot. Sickly green light flooded the room, coming from the enormous black iron cauldron that had been set up there, spilling fog onto the floor as it bubbled and spit. There was a woman hunched over the cauldron, stirring whatever was inside with a huge wooden paddle.

  Her back was bent almost double, her tall, skeletal body folded over so she peered out at the people in the room with the backwash up-light spilling from below. It cast her already frightening features, sunken eyes, white and bumpy skin, and blade-like nose, in stark shadows. Her nails were long, yellow and cracked, her face sunken in a way only seen in corpses. There were bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling above her, all of them withered black and crumbling. The hag cackled as she gave the cauldron another stir, yellow mist foaming out the sides to cover the floor.

  I jerked to a stop for a second at the sight of her, and had to give myself a shake to force me forward before Roy thought something was wrong. It was just that I hadn’t been in the presence of a hag since my old boss, Ophelia, and seeing this one now was bringing back a lot of bad memories. Ophelia had been, hands down, the worst boss I’d ever had. And that was before she started murdering people.

  Hags weren’t exactly common, even in Hollows. They tended to have a corrupting aura, causing plants to wither and things to rot with alarming speed. This hag now was putting her abilities to good use by the look of how the paint was flaking off the walls and the bits of herbs used as props were withering into lumps. The whole room held the stench of rot and as I looked around myself, I noticed all the produce that was sitting around, rotting—pumpkins that were caved in with black mold covering them in one corner and on a table in the other corner stood a cornucopia of what once were squash but were now little more than black fur.

  There was a family with kids ahead of us, a little boy and girl, and the hag beckoned to them with one long finger that was as gnarled as an old stick.

  “Well, dearies,” she croaked, watching them from behind a curtain of long gray hair that was as tangled and knotted as the cobwebs clinging to the edges of the room. “Which one of you wants to go into my pot?”

  The kids squealed, hiding their faces in their parents’ legs.

  “No!” The little girl stamped her foot, glaring at the hag from where her face was pressed against the side of her father’s jeans. “I don’t want to be soup,” she cried, indignation in every word.

  I was watching close enough that I saw the hag roll her lips over her cracked and crooked teeth, like she was fighting back a smile. Her bushy brows lowered as she leaned forward, long neck stretching out as she peered at the little girl. Luckily, hags didn’t have a taste for humans. In fact, I wasn’t sure what they ate.

  “But you’d be so sweet,” she said in her rasping voice. I could only hope the vampires had good control over the actors in their attraction because hags were notoriously… bad. Yet this one was simply acting a part, just another employee of the vampires, another employee adding to the realistic attraction of the place.

  The kids squealed again, and were ushered out of the room by their laughing parents. I heard the father not quite whisper to his wife as they went through the door, “That make-up job was incredible.”

  A warm feeling fluttered to life in my chest. The house was amazing, tons of fun, spooky in all the best ways, but my absolute favorite part? The fact that some of the more exotic supernatural species were getting a chance to actually go out and interact with mundanes without having to cram themselves down into disguises or glamours, and in turn, the mundanes loved them. The supernaturals weren’t getting shouted at, attacked, or called freaks. Sure, there were screams, but they were the kind people gave at jump scares in movie theaters, not the real kind. These screams weren’t backed by real fear and misunderstanding. This haunted house had proven itself to be a chance for everyone to let their hair down and have fun with what they were, and I was loving it.

  Though, it was still legitimately scary.

  Even for me, someone who’d been around some of the more… extreme looking supernaturals because I’d made it my goal to get as many of them as I could into Haven Hollow. I wanted the hollow to be a safe haven for creatures of all types—those that appeared more human and those that didn’t.

  I found myself pasted to Roy’s side, huddling against his big body like I was looking for protection, even though I was a demoness in my own right. And even though I was scared certainly, it was also just an excuse to get as close as I could to Roy. The truth was, I’d missed being close to him, feeling those massive arms wrapped around me as I rested my head against his chiseled chest. It was getting harder and harder not to touch him, to just climb his body and hang on like a koala in a Eucalyptus tree. The hand he’d had on my back the whole time had slipped under my shirt now, his big fingers stroking absently over the delicate dip of my spine, just above the hem of my yoga pants, and it was driving me absolutely insane.

  The creaking strain of my willpower was almost louder than the sound effects of the house. I was buckling, hard. It was just that the succubus was so, so hungry. Actually, I couldn’t blame my reaction on her—not entirely, anyway. It wasn’t just the succubus that was hungry for him, I was hungry for him. And I couldn’t get the thought of how very kissable Roy looked out of my head.

  Why was I even keeping my distance in the first place? Whose dumb idea was that? Oh, right, mine. Because we needed to have a talk about clearing up exactly where we stood in our relationship. My ability to care about that conversation, though, was fading with every second of Roy’s skin against mine. Maybe we could just table that talk, have it another time—like tomorrow? No time like the next day, right? The evening was going so well, it would be a real shame to spoil it with serious conversations that really could wait.

  The next hallway we passed through was really, really narrow and dark. We had to move carefully to avoid bumping against the weirdly lumpy walls. One wall was flat, like all the others that had been erected to break up the rooms of the house, but the other one stuck out in strange places, even along the floor. I squinted, trying to figure out exactly what it was that was down there. The shape was oddly familiar.

  Then the shape wriggled, and I realized it was actually huge feet that I was looking at—they were sticking out from the wall, toes curling against the wood, and I snapped my head up to see the being that was pressed against the wall in the dark and almost blending in with his surroundings.

  “Boo,” the troll called happily, his lips curving in a smile around his tusks. He was sitting with his knees tucked against his chest, head bent at an odd angle so he’d fit in the hallway (which he barely did), and he appeared absolutely overjoyed from the way his yellow eyes were gleaming in the dark.

  I shrieked, and leapt away from him, more from the shock of there being someone in the space with us than anything else. I crashed into Roy’s chest, hard enough that he grunted and his arms came up around me automatically.

  I peeked up at him, a little embarrassed by my reaction.

  Roy wasn’t laughing, though. His dark eyes were focused on my lips with an intensity that was enough to set a match to my fraying control, and my whole body went up in flames.

  He wanted to kiss me.

  I could see it as plainly as I could feel something stirring through Roy’s pants, against my abdomen—something I hadn’t visited in way too long. The thought caused fire to shoot through my limbs and pool in my belly, because in that moment, I wanted to kiss him too, more than anything in the world.

  My arms were already wrapped around his neck. It wouldn’t have taken any effort at all to tug him down, to press our mouths together, to feel the hot, wet glide of his tongue on mine.

  “Boo,” the troll said again, as if reminding us he was still there. They weren’t the brightest species. Marius and Mihaela had probably given him the only line they could be fairly sure he could remember.

  Regardless, the troll reminded me that we were standing in the middle of a crowded attraction, and we weren’t even alone in our little space. I dropped my head forward to rest my brow against the muscled wall of Roy’s chest, and felt the rapid beat of his pulse. All the while, I tried to claw back some ragged shred of self-control. But it was slipping. Actually, it had already toppled, headlong, down a steep hill and was now looking back at me in a dazed stupor.

  The more we’d moved through the house, the more I was starting to recognize where we were. I checked my mental floor plan, and now fairly sure where we were, I made a decision. I tipped my head back and went up on my tip toes so I could whisper into Roy’s ear, though he did have to lean down to help me pull it off.

  “Want to check out one of the behind-the-scenes rooms? We could get a little privacy there.”

  Roy didn’t answer me with words, but his hands tightened on my hips hard enough that a human woman might have been bruised, before carefully relaxing his grip. A low sound trickled out of his throat, something close to a growl, and a shiver ran through me from the crown of my head to the base of my spine.

  The rational part of my brain, which I was doing my best to tune out, thought it was pretty tacky to hook up with Roy in someone else’s house and place of business. It was even more so because those people were my clients. But in that moment, I could not bring myself to care. The succubus had taken over and, consequently, I was now burning up, absolutely molten with desire and hunger. And if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Roy was part incubus, because the look he gave me said he wanted nothing more than to devour me on the spot.

  I was used to getting looks like that. I had been since I’d hit puberty.

  But this one was special.

  Not just because it was Roy, but because it had nothing to do with demon pheromones, or magical sex appeal, or anything like that. I’d carefully doused myself with a repelling potion earlier, and that could only mean one thing. It meant that Roy wanted me. Not the succubus, but me, Seraphina, and that was enough to almost make me crazy with want of my own.

  We ducked out of line, slipping back through the room we’d just left and behind some of the torture chamber props. If memory served me, there was a closet at the back of the room with a secret door in the wall that led to a passageway which led to another room.

  I pulled Roy over to the back of the room, which was difficult to make out in the low light but there was definitely the frame of two heavy doors that led to a closet beyond. He opened one of the doors and I slipped through with him right behind me.

  Marius and Mihaela had told me about their plans to add the hidden room within the closet and now I searched for the removable panel in the wall, finding it almost immediately. I pulled the panel away and didn’t miss Roy’s surprised intake of air.

  “How did you know this was here?” he whispered.

  “I make it my business to know the ins and outs of my client’s projects,” I answered with a shrug. The reason for the secret room beyond the closet was owing to the fact that the vampires wanted what they’d termed a ‘panic room’—a safe spot where they could retreat in the event they ever needed to.