Page 12 of Galen

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“Castor, I swear to god I will chop off your hand if you even think about stealing it,” I said, seeing him creep toward the box out of the corner of my eye.

“You said there was a ring inside?”

“That’s what the human said.”

“I want to try opening the lid again.”

“No.”

After leaving the antique shop, Castor and I had led the shades toward the harbor where we met up with Raiden and Bellamy. The four of us killed the demons before scouting the shop to make sure no more showed up. Once I’d known the human male was safe, we had returned home.

But we couldn’t open the box.

Along with anti-demon warding, there were symbols blocking angels too. If I would’ve noticed them, I wouldn’t have closed the goddamn lid in the first place.

Silence filled our kitchen as we stared at it, each of us feeling the power it contained. Though dulled with the lid closed, it could still be felt.

“I tried contacting Lazarus, but he hasn’t answered me,” Alastair said, displeased.

That was nothing new. Sometimes days would pass before Lazarus finally responded to one of us. Communication happened very much on his terms. And it wasn’t like we could travel to the celestial realm to see him. Because of our fathers’ betrayal, we weren’t allowed to step foot in the heavens.

“Why is there warding against angels?” I asked. “Demons, I understand.”

Alastair glared at the box. “The bigger question for me is how someone even knew the warding to block us. That’s old magic.”

Gray shuffled into the room, wearing a light blue zip-up hoodie with cat ears on the hood and a pink shirt underneath that said “Naps R Fun.” He wore silky boxers and knee-high blue socks. He grabbed a can of Pepsi from the fridge and came over to curl up beside me on the barstool.

“I don’t like that box being here,” he said before yawning and popping open the can to take a drink.

“None of us do,” Castor said, flicking the cat ear on Gray’s hood. “But it’s better for it to be here than out there among mortals.”

“What happened with the human who owns the shop?” Alastair asked me.

“We owe him five grand.”

Castor grumbled. “What? Why?”

He had no trouble spending money on himself, but he hated when any of us spent any. It didn’t matter that we pretty much had an unlimited balance.

“For the box. He walked in on me taking it and attacked me with a baseball bat. It’s what took me so long. I took care of it,” I added, catching Alastair about to bitch at me.

“Did you hurt him?”

“Of course not,” I growled. “He’s innocent in all of this.”

I remembered the feel of his hand on my chest and the frightened look in his eyes. The soft curve of his lips.

“I’ll have Daman transfer the money as soon as possible,” Alastair said. Being around for thousands of years, Daman was one hell of a hacker. He could easily find the store owner’s information to wire the money into his account.

Alastair pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He looked tired. The kind of tired that burrowed deep in one’s soul. He straightened up and walked toward the patio doors. “I’m going to step out for a bit. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“He looks like shit,” Raiden said around a mouth full of chips.

I saw Alastair through the glass door. He stared up at the stars, expressionless. I felt his pain though. We all did.

“He’s spent nearly every night for the past month in the hospital,” I said. “His human won’t make it much longer.”