A faint voice issued from the cell phone in his hand, and he hit the speaker button.

“Kelvan, this is my friend Sara I told you about,” said David’s familiar voice. “Sara, meet my good friend Kelvan. You’ve probably figured out that Kelvan is a vrell demon.”

I looked at Jordan, who had studied demonology a lot longer than I had. She gave a slight nod, which I assumed meant vrell demons were not dangerous.

“Hi.” I smiled at Kelvan but didn’t extend my hand. I didn’t think he would appreciate my power’s reaction to him.

“Hello,” he replied stiffly, without returning the smile.

David spoke again. “Kelvan is one of the best hackers in the business. He’s actually the one who tracked Madeline to Albuquerque.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Kelvan shifted from one foot to the other. It struck me then that he was not being unpleasant on purpose. He was genuinely afraid of us, afraid of everything if all the locks on the door were any indication.

Someone moved behind me and Kelvan’s eyes widened even further. “David vouches for you, but what about the other hunter and the wolves?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Roland who looked ready to pounce if Kelvan made one false move. Turning back to Kelvan, I said, “Are you going to try to eat us or anything equally unpleasant?”

The look of horror on his face was almost comical. “Of course not!”

“Then we’re good.” I faced my friends. “Chill out, guys.”

Roland’s jaw dropped. “But he’s a demon, Sara.”

I arched an eyebrow, and he reddened. “I didn’t mean it that way. You’re different.”

“David trusts him and so do I. Not all demons are evil, you know.”

They all stared at me like I’d sprouted my own pair of horns, and I could feel Kelvan’s eyes boring into the back of my head.

Jordan looked at Kelvan. “You see what I have to live with? Watch out or she’ll be trying to feed you blueberry muffins next.” She went to the coffee table, grabbed a National Geographic magazine, and settled down in the stuffed armchair as if she hung out in demon lairs every day.

Roland relaxed his stance, and he and Peter took the couch. He picked up the TV remote. “Hey, do you mind if we watch TV while we wait?”

“Um, sure, go ahead,” Kelvan replied weakly as if he didn’t know what to make of the strangers invading his living room.

“If you guys don’t need me anymore, I have something to take care of,” David said. He told me to contact him when I got to Albuquerque then said goodbye and hung up, leaving me standing with a nervous demon. I tried not to stare at Kelvan, but it’s not every day you meet a demon. Sure I’d seen a few, but none that were humanoid.

“David said you have a laptop and some phones for me,” I said to break the awkward silence.

Kelvan nodded and went to the far corner of the living room that served as his office. The large desk was almost impossible to see beneath the computers and multiple monitors that were mounted on stands to make room for them all. Soda bottles and Chinese takeout containers also littered the top, and he muttered an apology as he hurried to clean it up.

I took the opportunity to study the apartment. It was cluttered, but much cleaner than I’d expected based on what I’d seen of the building. Books, magazines, and newspapers lay around the living room, and the kitchen table was covered in what appeared to be model airplane pieces. There was a stereo with an actual turntable and a large stack of albums beside it. The top one was a Fleetwood Mac album, and my fingers itched to find out what others lay beneath it.

All in all, it looked like a pretty normal place, not what I’d expected a demon’s home to look like. But then, I’d never really imagined demons living among humans this way. I’d pictured them living in sewers and abandoned buildings, not in a little apartment with throw pillows and a ficus tree.

I did take note of the thick bars on the windows, and I couldn’t help but wonder who or what Kelvan was hiding from. Granted, it wasn’t the nicest part of town, but his defenses seemed a bit extreme. Maybe he was afraid someone was going to steal all his computer equipment.

“I hope you like Macs. They’re all I use, and David didn’t give me much notice.”

I turned to find Kelvan holding out a thin, silver laptop. “Wow, it’s so light,” I marveled when I took it from him. And small. This would easily fit in a backpack. “Nice!”

“It gets great battery life, and you can go a few days without charging if you don’t use it much. I got you a padded case to protect it.”

“This is great, Kelvan. Thanks.”

Kelvan smiled for the first time, and his fangs flashed again. It was a little strange to be talking computers with a guy who had fangs, but I did my best to act like it was no big deal.

He held up a small rectangular gadget. “This is a mobile hotspot and it’ll let you connect to the internet from almost anywhere. The account is not in your name, and there’s no way to trace it back to you or us. I also installed some of my own apps on the Mac that will allow you to browse the internet and make secure calls that can’t be traced to your IP. Come over to my desk and I’ll show you how to use them.”

Twenty minutes later, I closed the laptop after a crash course in how to use a Mac and Kelvan’s special software. In addition to the laptop, he gave me a bag containing four prepaid cell phones and an envelope containing five hundred dollars in cash. I tried to refuse the money, but he said it was from David, not him. When I asked him if David could afford it, Kelvin chuckled and said their clients paid generously for their services. His statement made me wonder exactly what they did for their clients and why he chose to stay in this rundown building when he could afford to live in a better neighborhood. He seemed like a nice guy, a bit shy around strangers. But then it wasn’t as if a guy with horns could go out and socialize a lot. From the look of his apartment, he didn’t have many visitors either.