I nodded and then hurried out the door.

  ***

  On the way back to my house, my brain was bubbling over with thoughts ranging from what it meant that Roy and I had had sex to the fact that I was still missing something in my understanding of what had happened with Tobias Mathison.

  I had a lot to learn about that house and I had a feeling the answers were there somewhere.

  Tobias had been angry and defensive, and I wasn’t sure why. And, furthermore, what murders was he talking about? Why was he so upset about them?

  The man who had greeted me at the door had appeared subdued and depressed, but amicable. Then, he’d turned into this angry and defensive man and with the way he’d gripped my arm, maybe even violent. Or was there more to it than that? Had he known somehow what I was and by touching me, he’d forced those sexual feelings to overcome me? Had all of that been on him?

  But, how was that possible?

  And what about the feelings of dread and misgiving I’d felt within the house? There was something inside that house—a presence. I didn’t think that presence was Tobias, but I did think it had a hold on him. And it was that same presence that had made me react the way I had—it had somehow pulled my succubus to the fore.

  Whatever that entity was, it was powerful. Very powerful. I could only wonder if it also had a hold on Rhea? If so, what was it and what gave it so much power? Were the ley lines somehow feeding it? Was it feeding them?

  There was something wrong here and now I felt even more determined to find out what that was. I couldn’t help but believe Tobias was in danger. Despite his anger with me at the end, I really believed it was the house manipulating his behavior.

  I was fully aware that I wasn’t supposed to do anything but take this case to the council—Roy would have insisted it was a council matter to be discussed and voted on. And since I was a member of the council, I couldn’t feign ignorance. I knew what I was supposed to do. But I also knew what I was going to do and it wasn’t what I was supposed to do.

  At the thought of Roy, of course I started thinking about what we’d just done… it had been incredible and I could still feel the sting between my legs, but it was a good sting. In fact, as much as I thought I might… I didn’t regret it. I’d told him the truth when he’d asked. I didn’t regret even a single second of it.

  But, Roy was right when he’d said sex between us would change things. I felt the truth in that statement, too. I just wasn’t sure how it had changed things between us. I guess that was why he wanted to talk about it.

  Did this mean we were dating now? Or that we’d become a couple? Did it mean we’d continue having sex as friends? Some sort of friends with benefits arrangement? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but my initial instinct was that I didn’t like it. I wasn’t that type of woman—I didn’t like having casual sex or casual anything when it came to relationships. I was looking for the right man to settle down with so I could live out my fantasy of the house with the white picket fence and the children running around the yard. Could I have those things with Roy?

  Or maybe I had it all wrong and Roy would want to go back to how we used to be and pretend it never happened? What if he decided he no longer wanted to feed me at all? Maybe it had all been too much for him? What if he was still hung up on Poppy?

  Stop letting your thoughts run away with you, I told myself.

  Just then, my phone dinged and checking it, I read that Marty and the others had shown up at my house. That was just as well, because I was only a minute or so away.

  ***

  “So, what gives?” Marty asked as he and Henner fetched a second slice of pizza.

  Bailey was in my living room, still working on her first. She was involved in a deep conversation with RJ about sasquatch, as far as I could tell. I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but everyone had managed to keep their lips sealed around RJ so he still had no idea he was surrounded by supernaturals.

  “What do you mean?” I asked Marty, who was looking back at me with a concerned expression.

  “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he answered.

  I nodded and then let out a long sigh as I figured now was as good a time as any to fill them in on everything that had happened at Tobias Mathison’s. Of course, I decided to leave the part with Roy out…

  “Have either of you ever heard of a murder happening at the Mathison house?” I asked, spearing each of them with a worried expression. “Well, plural actually. He made it sound like there was more than one.”

  “No. I’ve never heard anything about murders in Haven Hollow,” Marty replied between bites of Hawaiian pizza.

  “The only thing of interest in that house was the squatters,” Henner answered.

  I looked at him and frowned. “Squatters?”

  Henner shrugged. “After the first owners moved out, the place sat empty for some time. Then there were rumors about drifters who were squatting in the house.”

  “How long were the squatters there?” I asked.

  Henner shook his head. “Dunno. All I do know is heresay from my pops.”

  “Did he see them living there or something?” Marty asked.

  “Nope, when pops worked as a bartender at a bar in Halcyon, some of his regulars would talk about the drifters living in the Art Deco house. And that was about it.”

  “And your father didn’t report it?” I asked.

  “No. Let’s just say the bar wasn’t legit, if you know what I mean.” He gave me a wink.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Then what happened?” Marty asked.

  Henner shrugged. “The drifters eventually left and someone bought the property. End of story.”

  “Hmm, that was no doubt the Mathisons.”

  “I think their name was Johnson,” Henner corrected, shaking his head.

  I frowned at him. “Are you sure it wasn’t Mathison?”

  He shook his head with more conviction. “No, before the Mathisons lived there, another family did. I think their last name was Johnson or Jenson or something like that.”

  “What happened to them? Did they die in the house?” I wondered if maybe the Johnsons or Jensons were responsible for whatever was going on in that awful house now.

  “No—no one died in that house that I know of,” Henner answered. “The husband, well, he had some sort of ailment that sent him to the hospital for weeks. While he was still recuperating, the wife died of a sudden heart attack.”

  “In the house?”

  Henner shook his head. “Not in the house. I’m not sure where she died. Anyhoo, the husband died a few days later—guess he didn’t want to go home without her.”

  I looked at him in silent awe. “How do you know all this?”

  “When I was in middle school, I helped with the Haven Hollow Gazette and learned all kinds of information about our fine residents. People used to come to me for their daily dose of gossip.”

  “Interesting, but none of this explains why Tobias’ house might be haunted,” Marty pointed out.

  I nodded. “Especially if no one died there, so I don’t understand what might be inhabiting it. It has to be some object within the house.”

  “Well, yeah and no,” Henner replied, looking pensive.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “I went to high school with Tobias. When he was a teenager, he had some sort of a mental breakdown. He became convinced that the house he lived in was haunted.”

  I felt my mouth drop open. “And that was the same—”

  “House he lives in now, yeah,” Henner interrupted.

  “So it is haunted,” Marty said.

  “Yeah, but by whom or by what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Henner answered. “One of the girls Tobias used to be friends with, Jenny Salatore—before he got too weird for her, told me he was having night terrors about a murder-suicide. He told her he’d been having them for a while, but his parents wouldn’t listen. They just thought he had an overactive imagination.”

  “Is that why he thinks murders happened there?” I asked. “He was having nightmares about them?”

  Henner shrugged. “I dunno, but that would be my guess. I haven’t seen Tobias for years other than briefly, in passing at like the supermarket and such. He became a bit of a loner at school after all the rumors about his hallucinations got around. Then, his parents were killed in an accident, and he really seemed to go off the rails. Eventually, he dropped out of… well, society altogether really.”

  “I wonder if the nightmares have ever stopped?” I said, remembering how exhausted Tobias looked when he’d opened the door.

  “It’s possible,” Henner answered. “Like I said, I haven’t seen him for years, which is odd in a town this size.”

  “And the murders he mentioned?” Marty asked.

  Henner shook his head. “You’d have to ask him about the specifics. Who knows for sure if they ever really even happened or if they were just, you know… in his head.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “There was power in that house. I could feel it. It was this crazy sort of energy that was able to penetrate you.” I shut up after that because I didn’t want to say too much and get into a conversation about what had happened to my succubus.

  “That house falls directly in the path of the Haven Hollow ley lines,” Bailey said as she appeared in the kitchen and started for another piece of the mushroom pizza.

  “Is it possible Tobias is picking up energy from the ley lines under the house, which allowed him to somehow know about the murders and have these nightmares?” I asked her. “Maybe he’s become magically sensitive.”

  “Anything is possible,” Marty replied.

  “I think it’s a bit of both,” Bailey responded as she took a seat beside me. I noticed that RJ was still in the living room, watching something on television.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “Well, you know that some people can pick up on sendings. Maybe he does too.”

  ‘Sendings’ was the ability to sense memories of a violent or upsetting event. It was almost like you could get little images, snippets of what had happened in a place. It was as if whatever had happened was so bad, that it imprinted itself in the ether.

  “Does that mean Tobias is psychic?” I asked.

  She nodded and then shook her head. “Yes and no. It depends on how advanced his ability to detect these sendings is. Any psychic ability takes time to truly manifest, so if Tobias started seeing things as a teen, his abilities could have greatly increased over the years. He might have very powerful abilities by now.”

  “Hmm,” I pondered. “Do you think Tobias is in danger, then?”

  She looked at me and cocked her head to the side. “If this energy you’re talking about is as malevolent as you describe, then I think he’s been in danger all this time.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then I guess I’ll have to go back there and somehow… I don’t even know what I’d say to him. He definitely wasn’t exactly thrilled I was there.”

  Marty shrugged. “Maybe you just tell him the truth?”

  “Maybe,” I answered, figuring at this point, it was probably the only option left to me.

  “Speaking of the truth,” Henner started, his lips turning up into a smile. “Are you aware of what Tobias does for work? And why he works the night shift?”

  “No, but I’m imagining it’s to avoid nightmares?” I asked.

  He nodded, but the smile widened. “That’s one of the reasons.”

  “What’s the other reason?” I asked.

  “He’s a male escort,” Henner scoffed.

  Hmm, I thought to myself… I’d at least caught Tobias in one lie because I couldn’t think of any male escort agencies that offered to relocate their employees and that was the whole reason he’d given me for why he’d been thinking of putting his house on the market.

  “Fifi, doesn’t this fall under the jurisdiction of the council?” Bailey asked.

  I nodded. “It does.”

  “Then… won’t you get in trouble with Roy if you continue looking into it on your own?” she continued.

  I swallowed hard. “Probably.” Then I cleared my throat. “But you know how the council is. If we bring this situation to them, it will literally take a month before our next meeting and then it will have to be discussed and voted on. And who’s to say the council even votes to help Tobias? They might, and probably would say that because he’s a mundane, it’s his own issue to figure out.”

  Bailey nodded. “Yeah, the council isn’t exactly the most helpful.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s why I’ve decided to help Tobias as much as I can and, yes, I realize that could put me in deep water with Roy.”

  Which wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

  Chapter Twelve

  I sat frowning at my laptop for the longest time.

  I wasn’t ready to hit the ‘submit’ button, even though I thought this might be my only chance to see Tobias again. Yet, it wasn’t something I felt good about.

  Hesitating, I got up to fix another cup of coffee before requesting the appointment. It was a last-ditch effort to meet with Tobias. He wouldn’t answer my calls or come to his door both times I’d come calling, so he’d left this as my only choice.

  “Coffee? Will you make me one too?” Angelo chirped as he entered the living room.

  It was a request that would usually be denied with a healthy dose of sarcasm, but he’d been almost tolerable lately, so I pulled down another mug and waited for the Keurig to finish with the first cup. When it was done, I pulled it free and switched out the pod to prepare the second one. Then I sat it down on the long counter that divided our living room from the kitchen and slid the first mug toward him.

  “There you go,” I said.

  “I can wait for the second one.”

  “Just drink that one before I decide I never wanted to make you a cup in the first place.”

  “Thanks, sis,” he answered on a laugh. Then he leaned against the counter and studied me. “You seem different.”

  “How?”

  He continued assessing me for another few seconds, his eyes narrowed in heavy contemplation. “You fed finally, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been feeding.”

  He scoffed at that. “We both know you haven’t been feeding like you’re supposed to be feeding.” Then he was quiet as he lifted his mug to his lips, but I didn’t miss the smile toying with the end of them. “But, it seems you’ve finally fed—fully.”

  “You’re extremely bad at minding your own business.”

  He chuckled. “Was it with the human? That Marty person?”

  I looked up at him and frowned. “No. In case you weren’t aware, he’s dating Poppy.”

  “Oh, I thought she was with the sasquatch?”

  “They broke up months ago,” I answered on a frown.

  “Then you bedded the sasquatch?”

  “We are not talking about this.”

  He laughed again. “I’m just pleased to know you’re now accepting your true nature.”

  “How do you know I’m accepting my true nature?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I don’t.” Then he paused again. “Going back to that mundane.”

  “Marty?”

  “Marty,” he answered on a nod. “When the whole lot of them were over the other night and you reviewed the camera footage from the office?” he started.

  “We didn’t find anything,” I answered.

  His eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “Nothing?”

  I nodded. “Nothing.”

  “And, yet, the spirit was there.”

  “Well, she was outside.”

  “True, true.”

  I watched as he took notice of my open laptop as he reached out for the sugar and poured a ridiculous amount into his cup. Luckily for him, demons couldn’t get cavities.

  “An escort service?” he asked on a smile as he looked from the browser page to me. “Apparently the sasquatch wasn’t enough?” He laughed, a single eyebrow raised.

  “The sasquatch was more than enough!” I railed back at him, before realizing I’d basically just admitted exactly what he’d wanted me to. “Not that it’s any concern of yours,” I added for good measure.

  “Good for you, Sis,” he responded as he motioned to the browser page, which featured a large image of Tobias without his shirt and a sultry expression on his face. “I’m glad to see you’ve finally accepted reason and decided to book a snack during your off hours. It’ll do you good.”

  “That isn’t what you think it is,” I said and scowled at him as I reached over and slammed the laptop down. Then I took another sip of my coffee; I hadn’t bothered to fix it up with cream or sugar. He’d put enough in his for both of us.

  “Regardless, it’s a shame the mundanes didn’t get any footage of our ghostly trespasser, but I’m pleased I missed the whole shindig,” he continued, before arching an eyebrow at me. “Though I wouldn’t mind an introduction to that psychic friend of yours, if you know what I mean,” he finished on a wink.

  “I’m not introducing you to Bailey. She’s way too good for you and I’d never do her such a disservice.”

  He grumbled something unintelligible, and I suddenly found myself shuddering at the thought of all the poor women hopelessly attracted to my dazzling brother—women who found themselves sick in bed for a week after a night out with him, having to recover all the energy he’d drained from them. And, no doubt they’d be nursing broken hearts after realizing they’d been ghosted. Angelo didn’t like to visit the same victim twice. Needless to say, he’d scavenged all the pickings in Haven Hollow, the neighboring towns, and was now working his way through our more distant cities.

  Concerning Angelo and his string of one-night-stands, they might have thought his ghosting them hurtful, but they had no idea what a huge favor he was doing them. Repeated feedings could harm them, even kill them.

  Angelo excused his behavior by saying they’d all been willing, but the truth of the matter was (and he refused to admit as much) that he’d used the power of his incubus to draw them in and subvert their natural will. When a human encountered an incubus or a succubus, they had no control over themselves. All they could feel was desire and a desire the likes of which they’d never known before. So, of course, they gave in. Being ‘willing’, though, wasn’t a fair statement. They had no choice but to be willing. It was part of the reason I so despised what I was.