My Stepbrother Is a Demon novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Fine Print

The mark names her ex-stepfather Zane, Ramona signs Ivo's hunter's contract with her own clause that neither can lie, and her first test question gets a yes.

I laughed.

It came out high and wrong, and it bounced off all that marble.

"Okay," I said. "Sure. Who?"

"Hold still."

Ivo laid his whole hand flat over the mark again.

Heat soaked into my wrist, past normal, past a mug, almost a burn.

I tried to pull away.

He held on.

"Look," he said, and lifted his palm.

The gray lines had moved.

They'd crawled together into handwriting, slanted and loopy.

Zane Huxley.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"No," I said.

"You know him."

"He was married to my mom. For four years." I couldn't stop staring at it. "He's the gratitude guy. The Abundance Method. He's on billboards."

"I know who he is."

"He sold my soul?"

"He sold something that wasn't his to sell,"

Ivo said.

"Then he made you sign for it. The mark only takes a signature from the collateral."

The collateral.

That was me.

And then I was sixteen again, all at once.

The arena in Hartford, his first sold-out show.

A concrete hallway backstage that smelled like fog machine and pizza.

Zane in a white linen shirt, sweaty and grinning, holding out a clipboard.

"Crowd release, kiddo. You're in the shots. Sign by the X."

I'd signed by the X.

The pen had pricked my thumb, and he'd laughed and said, "Cheap pens."

Then he'd taken the clipboard and walked away fast.

He never called me kiddo in front of my mom again.

"I remember it," I said.

My voice came out small, and I hated that too.

"Good," Ivo said. "Most people don't."

"What happens in sixty days?"

"Something collects."

"What does it do with me?"

He didn't answer.

"Ivo."

"You don't come back from it."

I put my free hand over my mouth.

The stove light hummed.

Somewhere upstairs my mother laughed in her sleep, or in her phone, or in her new life.

I took my hand away.

"Okay," I said. "So stop it."

He actually looked surprised.

"Most people cry first."

"I'll cry in the truck. How do we stop it?"

"We don't. I do. For a fee."

He opened a drawer by the fridge and took out a folded page.

"This is a hunter's contract. I keep the things off you. You follow the house's night rules. Simple."

The paper was thick and soft as cloth.

The writing on it was brown, almost rust, and very old-fashioned.

"What are the night rules?"

"Stay in after midnight. Keep your window shut. If something knocks and says it's me, it isn't me."

"That's horrifying."

"It's three rules. You can manage three."

"What's the fee?"

"Waived. Family rate."

"I'm not your family."

"Your mother says you are."

I read it twice, which annoyed him.

It said a lot about him protecting me and a lot about me obeying.

It said nothing about him telling me the truth.

"You're keeping things from me," I said. "Right now. I can see it on your face."

"I'm keeping you alive. It's a different job."

I pulled the junk drawer open.

Rubber bands, takeout menus, one blue ballpoint from a dentist's office.

I clicked it and wrote at the bottom of the page, in my best capital letters.

NEITHER OF US LIES TO THE OTHER.

"Don't," Ivo said, a second too late.

The blue ink went black.

It sank into the paper.

Then the whole page flared warm, and something drew a line across the inside of my right wrist.

It didn't hurt.

It felt like a fingernail, slow and deliberate.

A thin black line under the skin.

Ivo hissed and grabbed his own right wrist.

The same line was on him.

He stared at it.

Then at me.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?"

"Added a clause."

"In demon ink. To my contract." He dragged a hand down his face. "That binds both of us. Until this house is clean."

"Good."

"Ramona. It means I can't lie to you. Not a little. Not once."

"That's the point."

"And you can't lie to me."

Oh.

I hadn't thought about that half.

I opened my mouth to say I didn't care.

Nothing came out.

My tongue just sat there, heavy.

He watched me try.

The corner of his mouth went up for the first time all day.

"Go on," he said. "Say you don't care."

"Shut up."

"That one you can say. It's true."

I folded my arms.

Fine.

If I was stuck with it, I was using it.

"Did you know about me before today?"

"We knew someone in your mother's house had a lien. Not who."

"Is your father a demon?"

"Yes."

"Are you?"

"Half."

"Does my mother know?"

"No."

Every answer came out flat and fast.

He looked like he hated it.

I liked it more than I should have.

Then I thought of him leaning into my doorway that afternoon.

How close he'd stepped.

The burnt sugar.

I looked right at him.

"Did you want to kiss me in my room today?"

His jaw worked.

I saw him try to say no.

I saw it not come.

"Yes," Ivo said.

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