Page 88 of Villains Never Die

veilknight:I thought you were storing the book in your warehouse.

j-aust13:I keep the important things close.

veilknight:You’re sure it’s the right ritual.

j-aust13:I translated the Italian. I’m positive.

veilknight:Who had the grimoire before you?

j-aust13:That’s confidential information. Why do you care? You’re the one who told me how to kill her.

veilknight:Because I thought you were full of shit.

j-aust13:Then you don’t know much about me.

veilknight:I know you were given a gift and you’re wasting it. If you want my advice, burn the book and get on with your lives. Before something worse happens. Death is not your enemy.

A cold sense of dread tickled the back of my neck, and I looked around my room to make sure I wasn’t being watched, even though the notion was absurd. No one but the spirits lurked around here.

j-aust13:How do you know about me?

veilknight:It’s my job to know about people who have had encounters with Death. Leave her alone.

The cold intensified. I shivered with it, staring at her words on the screen.Leave her alone. Burn the book. Your warehouse.I thought back to the night Gray died, to all the details of the fire I’d only picked up in passing as I’d tried to wake him. The flames hadn’t been blue or dramatic. They’d been orange and raging and fueled by magic, not an accelerant.

j-aust13:You burned down my warehouse.

veilknight:You were getting too close.

j-aust13:When I find out who you are, I’m going to kill you.

A final message came through before the chat ended.

veilknight:You already know who I am. Stop looking for me, Austin.

Chapter Thirty-Two

veilknight has left the chat.

“No. No!” I slammed keys on my keyboard, clicked frantically, but she was gone. I went into the messages and clicked her name.

That’s two people you’ve taken from me. You’re a dead woman.

If she could be called a woman. A demon. A monster. I closed my laptop and failed to take deep breaths as my world rearranged itself around months of messages. Leads and questions that didn’t seem so prying at the time.

I loosened my tie, as if it were the thing trying to strangle me. I needed to move, to smash something, to doanythingto heat the cold and expel the rage building inside of me. But there was nothing to do, no work to finish, no one in the basement to take it out on. Gray was dead, and everything had come to a standstill in his absence.

I couldn’t stay here. I stood, grabbed my phone and keys, and took the lift down to the parking garage. Sitting in my car, I stared at the steering wheel, then pounded it until I accidentallyhit the horn and it scraped my ears, loud in the night. I turned the key in the ignition and peeled out onto the street.

Disaster didn’t begin to describe what had just occurred. How long had she been watching me? Did she follow as closely as the spirits that still hadn’t returned?

Did she know I’d taken some of her power?

An invisible thread pulled me through the city, guiding me with little thought, until I pulled up outside Rook’s apartment. I knocked hard on the door, my fist loud enough to wake him.

But when he opened the door shirtless in sweatpants, he was alert. His jaw dropped at the sight of me. I knew I looked like a wreck, pale and rumpled in yesterday’s clothes.

“I know you said you need space, but I didn’t know where else to go.” The words came stilted, like they were fighting to escape my mouth.