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But a hand grabbed his elbow, drawing his arm back.

“There’s something in its hand,” Xen said, staring at the spirit’s fist.

Evan followed his gaze but couldn’t make out anything with the black mist obscuring the spirit’s form. “What is it?”

Xen tilted his head, eyes boring right through the thick resentment and peering into that clenched fist. “Golden, pointy, green.”

Evan turned a confused look on him. “What are you describing?”

With a shrug, Xen reached forward and wrenched the thing from the spirit’s fist, effortlessly. Yes, effortlessly, because had he exerted a tiny bit of force, the spirit would’ve been torn apart, not just the arm.

Upon losing the item, the spirit groaned like a wounded beast, looking like it wanted to take it back, but one cold glare from Xen and it shrank.

Xen dropped the tiny thing into Evan’s hand, and to his surprise, it was indeed golden, pointy, and green—an earring. A pea-sized green gem was embedded into the stud, a golden star dangling from it.

A woman’s earring, perhaps Mila’s.

Evan brushed his fingers against the green stone. Traces of resentment clung to it along with a smudge of dried blood on its stud.

“He wasn’t hoarding it out of affection,” Xen prompted.

Evan glanced at him. “What do you mean? This must be Mila’s.”

And they had a strong bond of affection. Wasn’t that love?

Is my dictionary outdated?

Choi glanced at the earring in Evan’s hand. “From what I recall, Mila didn’t have pierced ears.”

“Oh,” Evan turned to Xen, eyes narrowed in suspicion. How had he found out the spirit wasn’t holding onto the earring out of affection? Could he communicate with spirits? Or perhaps read their minds too?

Even if he was just helping, Evan found it difficult to convince himself that this perverted demon was doing so out of sheer goodness of heart. He must have some ulterior motives.

Alas, even if he had his reasons to be wary, Evan had a blood bond tying him down. And unless he fulfilled Xen’s wish, he couldn’t get rid of him.

“I think I’ve seen one of those before,” Choi squinted at the earring, almost shoving his face into Evan’s hand as he studied the piece of jewelry. “Oh, Ihaveseen this.”

“Who does it belong to?”

An unusual darkness blanketed Choi’s face as he straightened, lips twitching in distaste. “Covenant of Nightshade,” he murmured.

Evan’s eyes narrowed before widening slightly in recollection.

Years ago, when he was still a newbie in the business of the supernatural, Evan was prone to running into trouble with hisseniors. People who had been exorcising, cleansing homes, and fortune-reading way before Evan was flung into this little world.

They were usually sour-tongued old men who couldn’t bear to see a newbie advancing up the ladder so quickly and efficiently. But the Blackwood name kept them at an arm's distance, enough that they at least feigned civility when coming across Evan.

Born out of this pseudo civility was an unsolicited advice Evan got a lot back in the day.

“Stay away from the Covenant of Nightshade,” an old man with a silver beard and sunken narrow eyes, whose name Evan couldn’t remember, had told him one day. The wariness around his wrinkled eyelids had deepened as if foreseeing the near future and all the disaster it carried. “Messing with the childrenof the Dark Spirit will bring you misfortune if lucky. If not…certain death.”

Only a fool would sit back and heed warnings for their well-being. Fortunately, Evan was no fool and wanted to know more about these children of the Dark Spirit. His curiosity had been thoroughly piqued and tingled.

Covenant of Nightshade was a cult established who knows how many years ago. They worshipped some deity of unknown origin and called it the Dark Spirit. Rumors had it these people danced naked around ritual fires, had sex under their deity’s figurine, and fed each other their blood, for it “strengthened their bond.”

It definitely strengthened their gag reflexes.

But those were merely surface rumors. Cheap gossip for the churchgoers and the circle of other spiritual practitioners who sat in their empty shops, chasing away flies. Buried under the pile of all the bullshit were whispers that passed from ear to ear, yet were never acknowledged out loud.