Page 19 of Infernal Hearts

“No.”

Really? He’s not going to give me more than that? “Ah. Okay.”

“Anything else? I have another case I need to follow up on.”

I wonder if he gives all his cases this amount of effort. It’s a wonder anything gets solved in this town of the police are all like him. “Nope.”

With a single nod, he gets back in his car and drives off. If I wasn’t hopeless before, I’m way closer to it now.

I toss and turn in bed, thoughts bouncing around my head like the world’s loudest pinball machine. The police are so far behind, it took them days to question the people closest to my dad for his disappearance. I have all this excessive energy that I haven’t been able to pour out since I got questioned. I need to do something.

Images of my father flash through my head. Scared. Tortured. Dead. I can’t let any of that happen. Maybe Levi’s deal isn’t so bad—plus I’m feeling like a shitty person for not helping someone who has two weeks to live. That could spell two deaths at once.

I grind my teeth. I swore off magic, and yet here I am, back where I started.

But for some reason, Levi’s words still play in my head.

I know how badly magic can go wrong. Things can wind up worse than how you found them—there’s no such thing as a simple answer in ninety-nine percent of situations. The hard way is often the most effective. You can’t just snap your fingers and make something happen.

But the hard way often takes the longest. With my dad being gone for three days, things are only looking more and more bleak—time is of the essence. Levi must be feeling the same. And I don’t even have a death sentence hanging over my head if I don’t find my father.

But goddamn it, how many of my morals am I sacrificing? After everything I’ve given up, does it make me a hypocrite to just renege and jump at the first magic solution I get? I’ve called the cops. Michael’s called his clients. Valerie’s called his colleagues. No answers to find—so what option do I have left? After all, me searching on my own is a lot less efficient than if I had an incredibly powerful supernatural creature teaming up with me. As much as I hate it, it’s only logical.

The longer I think about it, lying awake in bed, the more my head hurts and the more my stomach hardens. I’ve been clenching my jaw and fists over and over again for hours.

“Motherfucker.” I throw the covers off my body and stomp down the stairs toward Levi’s guest house.

Pounding on the door, I wait for him to answer. It feels like an eternity, going back and forth about whether I should have just gotten over it and stayed in my room. Moments later, the door swings open to reveal a smirking Levi.

“Fancy seeing you out here in the middle of the night.”

“Fine,” I grumble under my breath, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. “How do we make this deal?”

“What changed your mind?”

“The police are totally useless, and I need to take this into my own hands. So again, how do we do this?”

“Easy.” He grins. “We have to fuck.”

I whip my head back toward him with a glare. “I thought I told you to knock it off.”

“Fine, we’ll do it the boring way.” He rolls his eyes and counts with his fingers. “A pen, a paper, and a knife.”

I search through the kitchen drawers for the needed materials and return with all three.

Levi grabs the paper and scrawls a quick circle surrounded by a few runes and sigils. “These channel the magic. A little ancient Aramaic, a dash of Norse, and a hieroglyphic to give the spell a little extra zing. Fortune, protection, and most of all: attraction. It’ll pull your dad back to you, among others.”

I grab his arm to stop him, a memory flooding my brain. “I’ve seen a symbol like this before at my dad’s office.”

Levi’s eyes grow wide. “Then it’s official. That connects your dad to incubus magic, so it’s likely he’s run across my brother once or twice. We definitely need to work together.”

I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat and attempting to control the slight tremors running through me.

Levi finishes up the contract, pricking his finger and putting a single drop of blood in the center. He hands me the silver blade. “Your turn.”

My gaze flickers back and forth between the two. “Seriously?”

He shrugs, squinting his eyes with a twinkle of mischief. “We could still go back to my previous offer if you’d prefer.”

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