Darkest Before the Dawn (male/male)
In Which Cleaning Was a Good Idea

Felix

Four days passed since Richard had broken into my home and sent me flying through my window like I was a rock. My body had healed within the hour, long before sunrise, like Richard had expected it would. There weren’t any lasting marks, thankfully, although I now actively avoided the broken window while I waited for maintenance to be done on it.

Richard’s words and actions had only encouraged me to continue my work on this investigation.

Despairingly, nothing new about the case had been discovered, and it was a horrible, sinking feeling that I got the longer these women were held captive. I didn’t know where to even begin short of checking Atlanta again, which is where I had found myself the past two nights.

Goldie had been back in Savannah to perform surveillance of the area, attempting to guarantee that there would be no more abductions, at least in that area, since the undercover agents Akiya had sent failed their jobs. Somehow, the BRF members who took Thomasina and Ruby had tricked the Mazerene agents, which earned them an extraordinarily chilly Skype call from me and Akiya.

Already, to combat the loss, Goldie had assisted three families with emigrating to Hell, providing them with the information Akiya had emailed us about the day after the Halloween ball. There had been temporary housing established in Hell to accept many of the new demons for the time being.

The pressure of getting them returned to Earth was settling like a brick in my stomach.

There was no indication of Thomasina or Ruby in Atlanta. Both of their husbands had given me items of theirs to use to track them, much like a bloodhound. Thomasina smelled of rose water and cocoa butter with a light trace of aloe. Ruby had a scent of fresh ink and strawberries, a fragrance her husband explained was due to her penchant for journaling and strawberry wine. They were delicate scents, but they could have been discovered simply within the city if they were there. Like with all demons, there was the hint of warmth from their magic.

When I couldn’t detect those aromas together in the big city, I had to finally admit that they weren’t there, leaving me without leads once again.

Going home that night was dismaying.

Hades greeted me at the front door, exactly as he had done for the past few weeks since I had been working out of Savannah or Atlanta. As much as I enjoyed spending my time with him back home, especially as November kicked into full gear with the autumn leaves trickling over my yard, it was hard to get around the fact that I couldn’t go to Mazerene yet since there weren’t any arrests. All I could do when I got home was try planting myself on my couch or bed and do my Skype calls with my neglected teams to check their progress or get into contact with anyone willing to talk to me about our victims.

That was six dead demons, including the one at the most recent BRF meeting, and now two missing ones. The media coverage of it was nonexistent, like usual, Colin and Akiya already having done damage control to assure that there wouldn’t be anything posted about a Georgian serial killer. Anyone involved with the police was already aware of MMES having control of the situation but were told to allow us to have full access when needed.

Keeping everyone in the dark was for the best—there would have been too many questions about what we did in the shadows and our role within local and federal US government. Even that info was stuff I wasn’t fully aware of. Still, I thought about how nice it may have been to include the community on hunting down Richard and anyone involved with the murders. We could have posted missing signs and sent out alerts, just like they did with human victims.

Yeah, and everyone will absolutely love the idea of an island that served as a base of home for demons and vampires and everything else in between. Witches still received a bad name in modern society, let alone all the other creatures that drank blood or came from other realms.

“At least you accept me,” I said aloud to Hades, who blinked at me slowly from the foot of my bed, clearly a confirmation of love and adoration.

Somehow, I found myself busied with cleaning the house after an hour’s worth of actual work. It may have been that I knew I’d drive myself mad if I kept picking at something that wasn’t there, or it may have been boredom from the lack of any developments. Regardless, I was standing on top of my kitchen counters, dusting the tops of the cabinets, my music shuffled in the background. Currently, Sam Smith was filling the silence.

Cleaning had never been enjoyable to me, not when I was a kid, not when I was a living adult. A Roomba did some of my cleaning, and I hired someone to come in and clean my house twice a month. The last time I had personally deep cleaned my house was after Christmas when I had to put away my decorations. To stave off work further, I worked at the pace a human would while deep-diving into my home, trudging through it, getting a fine appreciation for why Cadence had called to complain to me when they had been packing up their previous place.

My cleaning paused, thinking about Cadence and how much I missed her humor and “screw the world” attitude. Both Palmers were like that, at least on the surface. Growing up in their household, where perfection was the norm, they probably had to develop a thicker shell than others to survive the constant ridicule. Especially Mew.

The song changed to something by City and Colour. It did nothing to help bring up my mood, thoughts now invested in the demonic siblings, hoping there would be news from them soon. This gap had made it easier to collect my feelings about Mew but made it that much worse than I couldn’t tell him or act out on them. Granted, I hadn’t really considered how to put everything into words, hoping they would come to me when we got to that point.

Hades meowling for food put a stop to my wandering thoughts. He never allowed me to get too deep into my mind, at least. “You’re spoiled rotten, you know,” I whispered to him, shaking the bag of hard food into his bowl while he wound around my legs, getting fur stuck to my pajama pants. It trailed into me doing laundry and vacuuming my hardwood floors. Somewhere in there, I had changed my music playlist to one Goldie had made for me after she had noticed my mood dipped when Mew was gone.

“Goldie’s Ray of Sunshine” playlist was blasting Taylor Swift through my kitchen speakers.

And I found myself dancing with my mop handle and Snapchatting it to Goldie. Just because I knew they wouldn’t see it for a while due to their lack of cell coverage, I sent the horrifyingly embarrassing video to Cadence and Mew, too.

In the middle of “Good As Hell”, I heard the faintest trace of me singing along with “Shake It Off”, the same video I had sent only a few minutes before. I paused the playlist, wondering if I had misheard something, thinking that this was it, I was going crazy like I had predicted. I should have come home and genuinely relaxed, not get myself riled up with work and cleaning. “Please tell me you also heard that,” I muttered to Hades, eyes jumping around my house, checking for any reason I should have been hearing things.

A ding on my phone alerted me to a text.

One of Mew, a selfie of him winking with his tongue out and a peace sign. A very him expression. It was dimly lit, two porchlights and a red door in the background.

Wait.

My socks almost let me slip on my freshly mopped floor, skidding to my front door and unlatching the deadbolt. The rich aroma of a hot vanilla latte filled my senses when I threw open the red door. Leaning against one of the support beams on my porch was Mew, arms crossed, a duffel bag at his feet. His phone screen lit up his face like some brilliant light shining on a fine piece of art. “Has anyone ever told you how cute you are when you sing and dance?”

“You’re back.”

“I owe you a date,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly as if he hadn’t been gone, like he hadn’t made me feel like ice was in my veins at every thought of his absence.

“Yes, you do,” I choked out. I couldn’t say more. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to in case this was an illusion caused by a lapse in my psyche, formed by my desire to see him again.

He kicked the bag at his feet and stood up straight to shove his hands in his pockets. He must have recalled me telling him in a letter that I enjoyed him in casual wear because he was in gray joggers and a Florence and the Machine jumper. “I spent the day with Goldie, made sure my cats were okay, did just about everything I needed to so that we could spend the night together, if you’re cool with that. Cadence just dropped me off and knows not to text us ’til tomorrow.”

My eyebrows furrowed, trying to understand what he was saying. “So you’re back, for real. There’s no catch here, like your parents setting you up o-or you having to go back to Hell in twenty-four hours because if there is, I’d like to properly say good-bye to you this time.” It didn’t dawn on me how badly that had pained me, that he only had time to leave me a voicemail before he left. I couldn’t have told him anything then.

“No catch. I’m here.”

“How?”

He raised his eyebrows and broke out into that taunting grin, the one that sent a heatwave up through my chest and made me question how I had survived for so long without it. “I can leave if you—”

“Please stay,” I interrupted, wrapping my arms around myself. I was torn between my ladened eagerness to yank him against me or allow him to have his personal space. “Come inside.”

“If you insist,” he sighed dramatically, leaning down to grab his duffel. “I can tell you the absolutely riveting tale of me leaving Hell if you want.”

He could tell me how car engines worked, and I’d still be thrilled to hear it.

I welcomed him inside, the house smelling of lemon wood cleaner and apples from my candle. Of all the nights I decided to tidy my house, I was glad it was tonight when everything felt particularly cozy. Mew studied my home, enchanted, like how he had done when he came over for the first time. The same placid smile fell onto his lips.

I turned the music down, Brendon Urie’s voice softening from my speakers. From the corner of my living room, Hades meowed a greeting towards Mew.

He removed his shoes and placed his bag on the floor by the couch when we both took a seat, him settled in the corner with his ankle on his knee and me now swaddled in my throw blanket on the cushion next to his. Tiny cartoon raccoons dotted his yellow socks. His leg was bouncing rapidly, fidgeting in a way I don’t think he realized was normal for him. “Are you alright?” I asked, nodding towards the tapping leg.

He rubbed his eyes and nodded, fingertips pressed into his eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. Tired as fuck,” he explained, prompting a yawn. There was something serene about his energy, his expression reflecting what I hoped he was feeling. It was lax, his blinking lethargic, lips upturned lazily. His golden skin appeared brighter from my recessed lighting, although it didn’t hide the dark, almost purple bags under his eyes. “How have you been, Fee?”

I froze. I didn’t want to talk about me, not when my upstairs window was still shattered, and I had barely made any leeway in the investigation in recent weeks. “Can we focus on you for now?” I asked coyly, wincing when he extended his hands, fingers curling on my cheek in a delicate manner. This side of him was something I hadn’t gotten used to yet, one that was cautious and tender, reserved only for people he deemed worthy of his care.

“Promise to fill me in later, then,” he said, letting me off the hook. “I was worried about you and Goldie all the time, you know. Cade had to help keep me calm because the Klonopin could only do so much.” He paused, appearing now like a child who broke something but didn’t want to confess to it. “Especially after I ran out.”

“You ran out of your medication?”

“And stuck with parents who don’t believe in modern therapy,” he added, snapping and giving a finger gun. “Typically, getting off benzos cold-turkey is not recommended in the medical field.”

Nothing made me want to hold him more, knowing how important his anti-anxiety medicine was for him. “I should say so. Are you going to get a refill?”

“I already set up an appointment with my psychiatrist for next week. You may just have to deal with a semi-neurotic me for a bit.” He shrugged, palms facing upwards. “Whaddya gonna do?”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, giving him a pitiful smirk, staunching a giggle at the absurdity of it. “That would absolutely happen to you of all people. But you survived your parents and hopefully won’t have to see them again for a while.”

He pursed his lips and dipped his head. “Yeah, so, about that and how Cadence and I are back and everything. She and I sat down like three weeks ago and just…talked. We talked about our childhoods, our traumas, the futures we want, and everything else in between. Big sappy cryfest, all that shit. Our ideas sort of lined up with us wanting to stay on Earth for the rest of our lives, so we decided to leave Hell for good. Gave up our citizenship, told our parents goodbye, packed up everything we wanted from our rooms. A classic self-exile, no biggie.”

My thumbnail had been in my mouth until he finished his sentence, my hand gradually falling away from my face. “Mew, you gave up your citizenship for Hell? You can’t go back home now.”

“Hell wasn’t really my home,” he explained apprehensively, as if he was still getting used to the words. It must have been an admission that he and Cadence had discussed. “I was born and raised there, but there’s nothing in Hell that I want that I can’t find here on Earth. That, and Earth has some other things Hell could never give me.” Sunrise eyes studied me, almost like they were prompting me to ask.

“Like what?” I asked, rolling my eyes, knowing I was going to be baited.

“Tree nymphs, for one. Oh, silence from the screaming souls of the damned. Harmonia’s fried ice cream.” He waited until I extended my socked foot to lightly nudge his thigh. “And geeky vampires who were ex-spies. That one is pretty niche.”

Despite hoping I would have been included on his list of “things Hell doesn’t have”, I still turned my head to hide the blush creeping to my face, the warmth covering my cheeks. “I, um, I’m glad you’re back permanently, then. Are you sure you won’t miss your parents or childhood home or anything?”

He scoffed. “Absolutely not. I hadn’t been there in two decades, and I’ve only seen my parents like three times since coming to Earth.” Agile fingers were now playing with one of my curls, gently tugging on it. A faraway expression came to his eyes, focused on my hair now. “Hey, I’m sorry about not sending you a letter. You never got anything back from me because my parents kept Cadence and I under watch once they found out we were writing letters to you and Goldie. They didn’t like us talking to anyone on Earth, thinking it was inappropriate for children of a general of Hell to be communicating with what they deem to be lesser beings.”

“They just get more delightful the more you talk about them,” I said flatly, eyes sliding shut as he ran his index finger over my temple, down into the thick of my hair, tucking some behind my ear. It had grown out longer in the past few months, closer to his length now and ended right where the tops of my ears were. I could only hope Mew liked it that way. “What happened to the ones I sent to you?”

“She burnt them all, including the one I had started writing back to you,” he answered, referring to his mom, I imagined. “I had taken the time to write it out, and it was a very—” He wiggled his fingers and grimaced. “—feely letter for me. Writing stuff down was therapeutic for me, though. Cade convinced me to start journaling, which helped a lot. But, um, yeah. I felt bad that I disappeared on you like that, in multiple ways.”

“What, um, did the letter say?”

Removing his hand from my head, he propped his elbow on the back of my couch and settled his head on his hand. “Can’t we move on to the date aspect of our date?”

I balled myself up tighter into my blanket, not trusting myself to avoid curling up against his warm body in the way I so desperately wanted to. “What did you have in mind?”

Raising his hips, he retrieved his phone from his back pocket and tapped a few things on it. “Cade and I really got into that stupid 20 Questions game when we were stuck in Hell. It helped us learn a lot about each other, so I thought it would be fun for us since you’re so much more interesting than you initially let on.” The app he showed me had a collection of different question types: ‘getting to know you’, ‘understanding you more’, and ‘let’s get updated’. “I was thinking the ‘understanding’ one since those questions don’t ask basic shit that I already know about you.”

Taking his phone, I selected that category, eyeing the questions provided. “We have to answer them all honestly?” I asked, more for his sake since there were some questions on there that I would have killed to hear his responses on.

“It’d defeat the purpose if we didn’t, dork,” he teased. “Cadence and I played it where you ask the question but also had to give an answer, too. It made it less awkward since we both had to share.”

“Ooh, then let me start,” I insisted, leaning back from him when he made a dive for his phone. “No, no, allow me!”

“Fee,” he griped, halfway hovering over me, my back almost touching the seat cushions now, arm extended so that he couldn’t reach his phone. We paused briefly from the teasing, those rum-colored eyes searching my face while he lingered above me. His throat jumped when he swallowed. “Fine, you can start,” he conceded, voice tight, returning to his original spot in the corner of the sofa.

I almost wanted to throw the phone somewhere and crawl into his lap. I held his device tighter in my hand instead, focusing on how thrilled I was that we got to learn more about each other. “Okay, first question: what’s a career that you think you’d be bad at?”

No hesitation. “A teacher, by far. I’d be yelling all the time and would make them cry a lot. Not that I don’t like kids, but my patience with them is paper thin.”

“Definitely a farmer. Even removing the sun from the equation, that’s a job I couldn’t handle, but respect the hell out of.” I finally returned his phone to him so he could ask his question. “Your turn.”

He scrolled down for a moment, finally selecting one that made him smile. “What’s something you recently changed your opinion about?”

I snickered, glad he also had to answer this one. “Funny enough, reality TV shows. You know I used to absolutely despise them, but Goldie got me started on a few, so now I’m obsessed with these bratty, obnoxious people who work on those million-dollar yachts. It’s like a bad train wreck that you can’t help but to watch. I can almost guarantee if you turned on my TV, it’d be on Bravo or TLC right now.”

“That girl is gonna rot your brain with those shows,” he warned, shaking his head. “I think mine is my views on people, including myself. Being away from everyone made me respect humans a little more with all their weird idiosyncrasies and odd beliefs. I hate myself a little less. I hate you a lot less and, you know, find you tolerable now.”

“I think if you only found me tolerable, you wouldn’t currently be sitting on my couch having a date with me.” That got him to turn pink in the face, his sun-kissed complexion hiding most of the redness. Flustering him was still enjoyable, all done with a self-satisfied curve on my lips. “Just tell me you like me back, Mew. It’s not that difficult.”

“I think it’s your turn to ask a question.”

“Do you like me the same way I like you?” I wouldn’t let up. Something in me had to hear him say it, despite him having made it clear how he felt about us. It was an egotistical thing, brought on from years of being with Madeline, I’m sure, a trait reluctantly adopted from her.

“Oh, goddammit, are you really gonna make me say it?” he grumbled, sounding more chagrined than resentful. Bringing his feet up onto the couch and settling his legs against his chest, he rested his forehead on his knees, hiding his face from me. “I like you. A lot. Like a stupid amount. My mom found the letter that was supposed to be going back to you and lost her absolute shit because—” He huffed. “The letter had a lot of my feelings in it. I had reconsidered writing it or sending it a thousand times because it was so much exposure on how I felt.”

I was thankful that I couldn’t sweat and didn’t have a properly functioning heart. I would have been a mess if I were still human. Despite the vampirism, my stomach had turned itself inside out, and it was as if ants were crawling under my skin. If this is how Mew regularly felt with his anxiety, I couldn’t help but feel pitying towards him. “I wish she hadn’t burnt that letter, then,” I admitted quietly. Having Mew’s feelings and thoughts put on paper, the ones pertaining to me, would have been a treasure, something that would have helped me get through the past month and a half.

The dislike towards his parents grew ever more.

“Um, game, date,” Mew choked out, squeezing his eyes shut and tapping his fingers on his calves.

“Do you want something to drink or a snack? I keep human stuff around for Goldie.” He worked best with distractions and people talking to him, a trick I had learned working with him, a note about him I had mentally kept since the night he had a panic attack during Madeline’s questioning.

Sucking in a deep breath, he eased back into some semblance of a comfortable position. “No, I’m okay. Getting positive emotions out is still a learning curve for me, which is why I had it written down for you.”

The muscles in my face hurt from the nonstop grinning I had been doing since he showed up. It was the most I had smiled since Halloween night when I was with Marigold. “Okay, so you like me, I like you. . .what are we going to do with that information?”

That must have loosened him up again because he shrugged and cocked an eyebrow. “Well, that depends on how the rest of this date goes. I’m exceedingly difficult to please, you know.”

I snorted, the most unattractive sound coming from the back of my throat that only caused him to stare disbelievingly at me. “You probably could have just stopped at the word ‘difficult’, honestly.”

“I’m fucking delightful, thank you,” he argued, using his thumb to slide through the questions again. “What’s a skill you think everyone should have, and if you give me a sarcastic response, I’m asking you an embarrassing question next.”

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