“Listen.” I struggle to keep my voice calm without the tremor that has my mouth quivering. “I appreciate you taking care of me after I…” Lost consciousness? Passed out? Had a hysterical meltdown when convinced I’d seen a beast of a man? None of those seem like the safest word choices. I settle on a neutral option. “After I fell, but I really need to be going. My friends will worry about me.” I push to a stand, but my body goes tight and still at the quick sounds of rustling fabric and the clack of hard-soled shoes. Fear traces a ghostly finger of ice along my spine, and chills skate across my flesh.
“You can’t leave. The portal has closed.” He doesn’t sound ominous, merely surprised I hadn’t come to this insane and illogical conclusion myself.
My patience snaps with a crack of my temper. “I’m done with this haunted house nonsense. Your training has clearly been thorough, but you can quit playing whatever part the corporation assigned you.”
“Corporation?” He sounds unsure, and I want to yell at him to stop messing around. “There’s no one else involved in our arrangement. Just you, me, and the matchmaker.”
“Matchmaker?” My heart rabbits in my chest, my throat goes dry, and the word comes out strangled. “What matchmaker?”
“In the human world, he goes by Theo.”
“Theo’s a tour guide. A hot one, I’ll grant you—”
He snickers. “Hot as the hell dimension he escaped from, I’m sure, although I don’t understand how you know this.” His tone goes frosty. “Did he touch you?” He bites out the question in a cruel, vicious clip. “Is that why you seek to call off our bargain? To summon him?” The last comes on a growl that makes me shiver.
Adrenaline races through me in fight-or-flight instinct, with logic yelling at me to run, and my pride insisting that I don’t need to take this jealousy from someone whose face I haven’t even seen.
“Okay, stalker.” Yeah, yeah, redheaded rage—I’ve heard all the jokes, but in my case, there’s truth to the cliché. “You have zero right to question who I talk to or who I allow to touch me. I wouldn’t bother meeting any matchmaker, because I don’t want a relationship. What I need is time, and another jerk of a boyfriend won’t help me with that.”
“Another—?”
I cut off his interruption. “We have no bargain. Now, stop skulking in the shadows, and come out where I can see who I’m arguing with. Or are you the one who’s scared, instead of the one doing the scaring?” A sliver of dread slams into me, hinting that perhaps I should’ve stopped before throwing down a challenge.
“You don’t want me to come out into the light.”
“Yes, I really do.”
No, you don’t, the primitive part of my brain whispers.
He hesitates, remaining hidden. “On second thought, summon Theo and ask him about our bargain.”
Summon him? How? Oh yeah, the stupid plastic jewelry. Theo said to hold the middle sigil for five seconds. I squeeze the center button on my bracelet, expecting a buzz, or a light, or something to indicate that I activated my Host Signal. Reminding myself that this is reality and not a scene from a comic book, I cross my arms over my chest and wait in the silence that’s interrupted only by the demon kitty’s purring.
“Meg?” Theo’s voice comes over a speaker I can’t see.
“Theo?” I feel like an idiot talking when I can’t see him.
His face comes through a mirror across the room, at a pretty vanity like I’ve only seen in movies. Neat trick. I guess the Underworld spent all their money on acting lessons and a special effects mirror, instead of bothering with actual horror scenes. “Are you in danger?” he asks. “Did Leander not find you?”
“I’m here,” my unseen companion says in a grumble. “She doubts our arrangement, though she doesn’t appear feeble-minded.”
“Hey!” I snap.
“Which means the fault must lie with you.” My companion quits insulting me and switches to Theo. He continues talking to the trick mirror that glimmers with Theo’s face. “It would seem, demon, that you left out some of the details of the deal.”
Demon? Deal? What the fresh hell is he talking about? Anxiety spirals in my belly, and I feel sick. I’m finished with both these pranksters and their stupid haunted house. “This isn’t funny, Theo. I want my friends.” I want to go home. “Call off whatever scene this is so I can go.” And I can warn everyone away from this place that has gone past creepy and into just plain strange.
Mirror Theo looks straight into my eyes, as if he can see me. “You and your friends really should learn to read contracts before signing them, little human. Your negligence doesn’t negate the authenticity.” Glancing toward the shadows where my unseen not-a-friend lurks, Theo says, “I’ll forward the contract. It’s valid and binding. She’s yours for fourteen days—until the new moon. Now, I have a situation that’s an actual emergency.” He waves his hand in front of his face and fades from view. “Val, don’t touch—”
Hope sinks in my chest like a worry stone. The contract? The liability waiver on the tablet that I signed without reading what it said. Val’s mention of kink and sex acts. How she assumed the corporation had screwed up the contracts. What the hell did I agree to?
The mirror transforms into a giant screen with text, and I sprint across the stone floor to scroll through the long paragraphs of legalese. The more I read, the more lightheaded I feel. My skin goes clammy.
How did I miss the binding of two weeks, the descriptions of mate and arranged match, the kinky acts that I haven’t seen outside of my naughtiest romance novels? I blush while skimming the page of intimate acts that Val must’ve crossed out. But the most vanilla sexual acts from penetrative to oral? They remain in straight-forward, unapologetic bold print.
I signed a sex contract.
With most of the sex stuff marked out, but still… Me—who doesn’t get those much-talked-about butterflies in her stomach, or anywhere lower, for anything other than an excellent scene in a book. I agreed to this. And without Ava or her mom, I don’t know an easy way to get out of it. My supposed match’s talk of portals, dimensions, and sentinel demons circles round and round in my head. I close my eyes, needing the blank space to process instead of drawing connections from one game point to the next stop.
“Oh, no.” My whisper holds all the horror that this house didn’t come close to conjuring. I can’t go home for two weeks. What will my mom think? Who will feed the stray cats in the neighborhood? How will I pay my rent?
The gravelly voice comes from close behind me this time, and I don’t turn, don’t look, don’t pause the panic attack that no mythical healing spell in any game could cure. Remembering my mom’s instructions for not spiraling, I mentally list off her five steps to managing the manic before it controls me.
Realize this is panic. Check. A thousand times over, I can check this one off.
Breathe. I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth in a slow, measured stream. Better.
No mental time traveling. Digging in, I move to the next step because I can only go forward, not back. I can’t undo what has already been done.