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Jun 29

A Beginner’s Guide To Selling Your Soul [Ch.3]

Pairing: Batfamily x Neglected!Civilian!AFAB!Reader (Familial) | OC x Civilian!AFAB!Reader (Romantic) (F/F, F/M, Multi)

Summary: Y/N makes a desperate little love-me-back pact with a demon, only to discover the fine print says “monthly murder required” and “family issues not included.”

Rating: M/NSFW

Content Warning: AFAB Reader, Emotional Neglect/Neglected!Reader, Social Anxiety, Occult Rituals, Demon Summoning, Demons/Devil, Manipulation, Coercion, Future Obsession, Human Sacrifice, Explicit Violence, Dark Humor, Dark Themes, Obsession, Yandere, Murder

WARNING: Some of the content moving forward may be unsuitable for specific audiences. Please read at your own discretion.

Words: 9.7k

A/N:

Official Playlist Found Here

Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Jason had watched the alley footage so many times that the static had started to feel personal.

The footage looped across the cave monitor in washed-out blue-gray. The only sound was the Batcomputer’s low hum and rainwater ticking somewhere off the stone. Victor Sable stepped out the back of his club at 1:17 a.m., coat collar up, phone in hand, his face caught for a second under the crooked security light. Neon from the club sign smeared across his cheek. One guard hung back at the alley mouth. Another slipped out of frame. Victor muttered into his phone, scowled, then headed for the service passage.

Then the camera died.

Thirteen seconds of black.

When it came back, the alley was empty.

No Victor. No attacker. No body. No blood. No car. No shadow out of place. Nothing Jason could grab by the throat and shake until it made sense.

He rewound it again.

Tim, half-buried in three monitors and an obscene amount of redbull cans, said, “If you play that one more time, the file’s going to develop sentience just to ask for mercy.”

Jason ignored him and jabbed the key.

Victor stepped into the alley again.

Black.

Empty.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “There should be something.”

“There isn’t.”

“There should be.”

“I agree with you. I’m just saying it louder won’t create pixels.”

Jason shot him a look.

Tim held up both hands, palms out, too tired to even make the gesture properly defensive. “Don’t shoot the tech guy. The tech guy is also annoyed.”

Across the cave, Dick leaned over a map of the Narrows, sleeves shoved up, hair damp from patrol and curling at the ends. Damian stood next to him, half in Robin gear under a dark hoodie, arms crossed, face flat and surgical. Bruce was a few feet behind Jason, so quiet his stillness felt like part of the room. The case had settled over all of them, but in different ways. Tim picked it apart. Dick tried to keep the air moving. Damian got sharper. Bruce just went cold.

Jason just burned.

“This isn’t just missing footage,” Jason said. “This is everything. The street cam got blocked by a delivery truck that wasn’t scheduled to be there. Traffic light failure rerouted two cars into my path. The club’s internal cameras glitched on separate circuits. Separate, Tim. The guard who saw ‘some girl laughing’ suddenly can’t describe whether she was tall, short, blonde, brunette, wearing a coat, wearing a dress, or actually a hallucination caused by slipping on fryer oil.”

“He did have a concussion,” Dick said.

Jason pointed at him. “Don’t make me hate you.”

Dick lowered his hand. “Noted.”

“And the tracker I planted on Sable’s car?”

Tim grimaced. “Dead.”

“Battery?”

“No.”

“Signal jammed?”

“No.”

“Crushed?”

“No.”

Jason leaned closer. “Then what?”

Tim turned one of the screens toward him. The tracker data showed a clean path for half a mile, then a sudden burst of impossible coordinates, the red dot jumping from Gotham to rural Nebraska, then the Atlantic Ocean, then the roof of Wayne Tower, then nothing.

Jason stared.

Damian’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “That is almost impressive.”

“It’s insulting,” Jason snapped.

“Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Bruce finally spoke. “Magic.”

The word landed hard. Jason hated the relief that came with it. Magic meant at least there was a category. Ugly, slippery, full of people who spoke in riddles and smelled like cigarettes or brimstone or bad decisions. Still, a category.

The problem was that the category had no real limits. Some spells broke locks or erased memory. Others left bruises. Magic in Gotham never rewound time or raised the dead, at least not that he knew, but it could rewrite evidence, twist minds, kill tech like flipping a switch. A toolbox with half the instructions missing. Knowing that changed what came next. No easy fix. No sure weapon. Just a hint of what they were up against.

Jason turned away from the screen and grabbed his helmet from the table. “I’m calling Constantine.”

Tim winced. “We tried.”

“Yeah, you tried. Now it’s my turn.”

“Jason.”

He was already dialing from the secure comm terminal, fingers punching the number harder than needed. The cave filled with a low tone, then a click, then nothing. Jason paced while it rang, boots hitting the stone in sharp, uneven beats. Victor’s face stayed frozen on the monitor behind him, smirking in the alley like he knew something Jason didn’t. “This had better be interesting.”

Jason’s grip tightened. “Constantine.”

“Oh, brilliant. The Bats. Which one’s this?”

“Red Hood.”

“Then this is probably interesting. Lazarus pit got another one of you or what?”

Bruce stepped forward. “Constantine. We need to consult you on a disappearance with possible supernatural interference.”

“Course you do. Nobody rings just to ask how I’m doing. Very hurtful. I’m doing great by the way.”

Jason leaned toward the mic. “Victor Sable vanished. No trace. Cameras failing in ways they shouldn’t, witnesses contradicting themselves, evidence going dead. Feels like magic.”

“Everything feels like magic when you’re frustrated, mate.”

Jason’s smile was all teeth. “I’m about six seconds from making frustration your medical condition.”

Dick muttered, “Great tone. Super collaborative.”

Constantine sighed through the line. “Send me what you’ve got.”

Tim was already transferring files. “Uploading now.”

The progress bar appeared.

Four percent.

Nine.

Seventeen.

The cave lights flickered.

Tim looked up. “That better not be what I think it is.”

The upload jumped to sixty-two percent, froze, then turned into a spinning wheel. Jason stared at it, already feeling the shape of disaster before it arrived. The Batcomputer hummed louder. One monitor flashed white. Another went black. The comm line crackled so hard Dick flinched.

Constantine’s voice warped. “What the hell did you just send me?”

“Nothing yet,” Tim said, typing fast. “It’s frozen.”

“No, it isn’t. My phone’s smoking.”

Jason leaned in. “Constantine?”

A loud clatter came through the speaker, followed by a curse, then the unmistakable sound of someone knocking something glass off a table.

Constantine barked, “Right, that’s on fire.”

“Your phone?” Bruce asked.

“My curtains.”

Tim’s hands flew over the keyboard. “That’s not possible.”

“Tell that to the bloody curtains, hang on, I’m getting disconnected, phone on fire and everythin-”

Then the line shrieked.

The cave speakers popped.

Every monitor displaying Victor’s file went black at once, then rebooted to a Wayne Enterprises quarterly budget presentation from six years ago. Tim stopped typing and stared at the screen as if it had slapped him. Dick blinked slowly.

Damian said, “It appears the supernatural interference objects to being contacted.”

Jason slammed his fist on the table hard enough to rattle the evidence folders. “No. No, we are not doing cute curse bullshit.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed in the middle of it, a small vibration against the edge of the table. He glanced at it once, saw Alfred’s name, and looked back at Tim’s corrupted screens.

Jason was still pacing. “Call him again.”

Tim coughed. “Constantine?”

“Yes, Constantine.”

“I don’t think he’s going to pick up while extinguishing his curtains.”

Jason pointed toward the screen. “That thing knows when we get close. It knows. This isn’t sloppy. It’s not even hiding right. It’s just tripping us every time we get within reach.”

Bruce’s phone buzzed again.

This time, he picked it up.

Alfred: When you have a moment, I should like to discuss Miss Y/N.

Bruce stared at the message for half a second longer than he meant to.

Y/N.

Her silence had been sitting in the back of his mind, not ignored exactly, but shelved. Bruce had shelves inside him. Cases, threats, injuries, disasters, city-wide patterns. Personal things went there too, but the urgent ones always took the front. She had always preferred not to be part of his cases, not after all the nights they spent talking quietly in her teens about why she hated the manor's west wing, or the way she disappeared into the city for hours just to breathe.

Y/N had said she was ill. Alfred had fed her. Alfred had sent a message saying she arrived home safely. Bruce had meant to call. Then Victor Sable’s disappearance had become something stranger than a missing criminal, and meaning to do something had hardened into another failure he had not examined yet.

He looked across the cave at Jason, furious and restless; at Tim, trying to recover corrupted files; at Dick, smoothing tension with one hand while scanning witness statements with the other; at Damian, already watching Bruce because Damian noticed attention shifts like changes in blood pressure.

Bruce stepped away and called Alfred.

The line picked up after one ring.

“Master Bruce.”

“You wanted to discuss Y/N.”

“Yes.”

Bruce turned his back slightly to the cave. “Is she still sick?”

Alfred was quiet, and that quiet pulled Bruce’s focus sharper than any answer would have.

“She looked unwell,” Alfred said. “But I do not believe illness was the source.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “What did you see?”

“Exhaustion. Tremors in her hands. Hypervigilance. She startled at ordinary sounds. She avoided certain objects in the room. She ate as if she had not done so properly in several days.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “Drugs?”

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as one can be without being invasive.”

“Panic attack? Acute stress?”

“Possibly. She looked frightened, sir. Not merely sick.”

The word pressed into Bruce.

Frightened.

He pictured Y/N in the breakfast room, though he had not been there. He pictured her smile first, because that was what she weaponized most: bright, awkward, used too quickly. He had seen it at dinner and mistaken it for resilience. Or convenience. He had let himself mistake it.

Behind him, Jason said, “Tim, get that file back.”

Bruce glanced toward Victor Sable’s frozen face on the monitor.

“What did she say?” Bruce asked Alfred.

“Very little of substance. She deflected.”

“That’s normal.”

“Not like this.”

The cave lights stabilized. Tim muttered something under his breath. Dick answered. Damian moved closer to the main computer.

Bruce closed his eyes for one second. The case had momentum. A dangerous criminal was missing, potentially dead, potentially taken by something supernatural, and the pattern suggested the actor would strike again. Jason was already close to losing patience. Constantine had been cut off. Every hour mattered.

Y/N was frightened.

Y/N was also safe for the moment.

Alfred was with her orbit, close enough to intervene.

“Look into it,” Bruce said, and heard the inadequacy of the words as he spoke them. “Handle it if possible. If you think she’s in danger, tell me immediately.”

“I intend to visit her tomorrow.”

“Good.”

Another pause.

Alfred’s voice cooled by a degree. “Very good, sir.”

Bruce took that quietly. He had earned it.

He ended the call and returned to the table.

Jason looked up. “Everything okay?”

Bruce set the phone down beside Victor’s file. “Alfred is handling it.”

Jason’s eyes flicked over him, reading more than Bruce wanted him to read, but Victor’s corrupted footage flashed back onto the screen before he could ask. The alley loop began again. Victor stepped out. Black screen. Empty.

Jason’s anger reclaimed the room.

The next afternoon, Alfred visited Y/N’s apartment with a canvas bag of food in one hand and the expression of a man prepared to be polite until politeness failed.

The building was worse than he remembered. Wayne money could have fixed it ten times over, but Y/N had refused help with a stubbornness that felt, in hindsight, less like independence and more like a person trying not to owe anyone anything. The lobby smelled of damp carpet, old paint, and fried food. One mailbox hung crooked. The elevator made a grinding sound that suggested a previous life as an industrial accident. Alfred took the stairs.

On the third floor, he found the young man.

Eli sat on the floor outside Y/N’s door with his back against the wall, knees bent, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands. There was a paper coffee cup beside him, untouched and cold, and a reusable grocery bag full of what looked like snacks, medicine, and a folded sweatshirt. His head turned the instant Alfred reached the landing.

Too fast.

Too alert.

Alfred stopped three steps from him.

The hallway light buzzed overhead. Somewhere behind a neighboring door, a television laugh track rose and fell. Y/N’s door was closed, three locks visible, the peephole covered from the inside.

Eli stood.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

His tone tried for casual, but it landed the wrong way. Defensive beneath the softness. Strained. He was young, perhaps mid-twenties, with tired eyes and the unhealthy focus of someone who had stopped sleeping properly. Alfred had seen that look in informants, zealots, and men who convinced themselves that obsession was protection.

“I am here to see Miss Wayne,” Alfred said.

Eli’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not taking visitors.”

Alfred lifted one brow. “Is that so?”

“She’s resting.”

“How thoughtful of you to supervise her rest from the floor.”

Eli’s jaw tightened. “She’s been scared.”

“Has she told you that?”

A pause, just brief enough to be revealing.

“She doesn’t have to,” Eli said. “I can tell.”

Alfred stepped closer, not enough to crowd, enough to make a point. “And how long have you been seated outside her door?”

“I’m making sure nobody bothers her.”

“I see. Then allow me to relieve you of the duty.”

“No.”

The word came out too sharply.

Alfred’s face did not change.

Eli swallowed, then lifted his chin, doubling down with the fragile courage of a man whose fear had dressed itself as purpose. “You don’t know what’s going on.”

“That is true. But I know a young woman should not have to step over a man camping outside her home.”

“I’m not hurting her.”

“Are you not?”

Eli flinched.

For a second, something wrecked moved across his face. Shame, maybe. Confusion. A person buried under compulsion, trying to remember where his own edges were. Alfred saw it and adjusted his assessment, though not his stance. Obsession could be imposed, cultivated, chosen, or suffered. The effect on Y/N remained the same.

“You should leave,” Alfred said.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No.” Eli looked toward Y/N’s door, and the rawness in his expression deepened into something painful to watch. “No, I can’t. What if something happens?”

“Then it will not be prevented by you sleeping in a hallway.”

Eli’s hands curled. “You don’t get it.”

“I get enough.”

“I’m protecting her.”

“From whom?”

Eli hesitated.

Alfred’s voice softened, which made it more dangerous. “Mr…?”

“Eli.”

“Eli. If you continue to harass Miss Wayne, I will contact the authorities. If the authorities prove insufficient, I will pursue other avenues available to me.”

Eli looked at him, then smiled faintly without humor. “You think I care what happens to me?”

Ah.

Alfred smiled.

It was small. Polite. Entirely unpleasant.

“No,” he said. “I rather suspected you did not.”

Eli seemed unsettled by that, but he did not move away from the door.

Alfred let the silence sit there until it became heavy. Then he stepped around him with controlled ease, raised his hand, and knocked.

Inside the apartment, something clattered.

Alfred heard Y/N swear under her breath.

“Miss Y/N,” he called. “It is Alfred.”

There was a long pause. Locks clicked. One. Two. Three. The door opened a few inches, the chain still on, and Y/N appeared through the gap, hair messy, face pale, wearing an oversized sweatshirt and sleep shorts despite the chill. Her eyes landed on Alfred first.

Relief flashed across her face so plainly that it tightened his chest.

Then she saw Eli behind him.

She flinched.

Not dramatically. Not enough that most people would notice. A tiny full-body recoil, shoulders tightening, fingers pulling the door closer before she stopped herself. Alfred noticed. Eli noticed too, and it devastated him.

“Y/N,” Eli said softly.

Her face did the strangest thing. She smiled.

It was immediate and wrong, an expression laid over fear too quickly to belong there.

“Hey, Eli,” she said, voice thin. “Um. Alfred, come in.”

She shut the door just enough to slide off the chain, then opened it wider. Alfred entered. Eli leaned forward as if some invisible tether had been pulled taut.

“Can I just talk to you for a second?” Eli asked.

Y/N’s hand tightened around the door edge. “Not right now.”

“I was worried.”

“I know.”

“I brought you coffee.”

“I saw. Thank you.”

Alfred turned slightly, enough that Eli found himself looking at him instead of her.

“That will be all,” Alfred said.

Eli’s face crumpled in quiet misery.

Y/N looked away.

Then she shut the door.

The moment the locks clicked into place, Y/N pressed her back against it and closed her eyes. The apartment was dim, curtains drawn, lamps off except for one small light in the kitchen. It smelled stale, over-cleaned in patches, vanilla spray over something burnt, laundry soap, ginger ale, and fear. Alfred’s gaze moved without seeming to: dishes stacked in the sink, blanket and pillow on the couch, baseball bat leaning against the bathroom doorway, saltines on the coffee table, a laptop closed too neatly, a patch of floor near the living room that looked scrubbed more than the rest.

Y/N opened her eyes and caught him looking.

Her smile twitched. “I know. It’s giving depression chic.”

“I was not going to comment on the decor.”

“Liar.”

“Not about that, no.”

She laughed, but it broke at the end.

Alfred set the canvas bag on the counter. Containers came out one by one: soup, roasted chicken, rice, cut fruit, bread, tea, and ginger biscuits. He arranged them with the calm precision of a man setting a table in enemy territory.

Y/N hovered near the door. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

“I disagreed.”

“You can do that silently from the manor.”

“I preferred to disagree in person.”

“That’s so ominous for a food delivery.”

He looked at her then, really looked, and she immediately dropped her gaze.

“Who is Eli?” Alfred asked.

The apartment seemed to tighten.

Y/N walked to the kitchen too quickly, pulled open a cabinet, closed it, then opened it again for no reason. “He’s just some guy.”

“A remarkably dedicated some guy.”

“Yeah. He’s…” She swallowed. “He’s harmless.”

“Harmless men do not establish residence outside a woman’s door.”

Y/N flinched again.

Alfred filed it away.

“He delivered food once,” she said, the lie forming badly because guilt kept snagging on the edges. “We talked for, like, a second. I think he got the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea being?”

“That I needed help.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Alfred waited.

Y/N’s hands twisted in the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was having a bad night. He was nice, and I was nice back, and now he’s just…there.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“No.”

“Touched you?”

“No.”

“Entered the apartment?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, never.”

“Has he prevented others from approaching?”

Her silence answered before she did.

“He thinks he’s protecting me.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you?”

Her eyes lifted, sharp with panic. “No.”

Alfred did not believe her.

He also did not press.

“Is Eli the reason you have not been feeling well lately?” he asked.

Y/N went very still.

There it was. The hesitation. The moral calculation moving behind her eyes. Fear, guilt, opportunity, revulsion. Alfred watched her decide to place a burden where it did not fully belong.

Her voice came out small. “Yes.”

Eli, outside the door, shifted. The floor creaked faintly.

Y/N heard it and looked like she might be sick.

Alfred’s expression did not change. “I see.”

“You do?”

“I see that you are frightened by him.”

Her mouth trembled. “Yeah.”

Lie. She wasn’t frightened of Eli, though she’s sure somewhere in the back of her mind she should be.

She was afraid of herself.

A flicker of memory clawed up: Victor’s eyes wide with recognition, while her hands pressed down too tight, the memory of words spoken in the dark and drowned by her own fears of dying. Sometimes she saw herself, sitting on the bathroom floor after it was done, quiet except for the way her breath shuddered. She thought of the contract and what it meant that she had hesitated, had gone against it, and yet here she stands, a hypocrite. She called Victor evil, and yet she killed someone. She directly benefited from Victor's death.

She didn’t fear Eli. She feared what she could become when pressed, what she had already proven she was willing to do.

Alfred watches Y/N for a minute before responding, his voice slightly lower than usual, “Then I will handle it.”

Her head snapped up. “How?”

“Law enforcement first, of course.”

“First?”

Alfred took a container of soup from the bag and set it on the counter with care. The lid clicked softly.

Y/N stared at him. “And after that?”

Alfred hummed.

It was a gentle sound. Thoughtful. Entirely unhelpful.

“Alfred.”

“Yes, Miss Y/N?”

“That hum sounded very illegal”

“Was it?”

“You know it was.”

He began placing food in her refrigerator, making space by removing three expired yogurt cups and a takeout container he chose not to inspect. “You need not concern yourself with escalation.”

“That is exactly the kind of sentence that makes people concerned about escalation.”

“Eat before the soup cools.”

“No, don’t parent-voice me out of the possible crime.”

“I have committed no crime.”

“Yet.”

“Miss Y/N.”

She shut her mouth, then opened it again because anxiety had too much momentum. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Alfred turned to her.

“He’s not…” Her voice cracked. She looked toward the door, then away. “He wasn’t like this before. I mean, I don’t know him. Not really. But I promise you, he’s… He’s not bad. I should have been more careful with my interaction with him.”

That part was at least true. Though Y/N would never be able to tell Alfred that part for some time now, hopefully not in the near or distant future.

Hopefully, Y/N could get out of this agreement before anyone found out.

“I would be cautious assigning yourself responsibility for another person’s fixation.”

She almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

If only you knew.

Alfred closed the refrigerator and faced her fully. “You are going to stay at the manor until this situation is resolved.”

Y/N blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“No. No, that’s not necessary.”

“It is.”

“Alfred, I can’t just move into the manor because some guy is being weird in my hallway.”

“You can, and you will.”

Her panic rose so fast she took a step back. “I have work.”

“There is Wi-Fi.”

“My clothes are here.”

“Pack what you require immediately. Anything else can be collected.”

“My apartment-”

“Will be secured.”

“No, Alfred.” Her voice sharpened, then wobbled. “I’m serious. I appreciate it, I do, but I’m not going back to the manor.”

His eyes softened only a fraction. “Why?”

Because the manor was full of people, she could not risk it. Because she did not know what would happen when the next month came. Because desperation had driven her into a pact, one made in too many sleepless hours, signed when hope was nothing but panic dressed as a solution. The contract hidden under loose floorboard insulation behind the couch was supposed to fix things.

She had names in her head, even though she had burned the notebook. Because Bruce Wayne’s house had cameras, staff, locked rooms, family dinners, questions, knives in real drawers, and one of the most famous men in Gotham sleeping under the same roof while his daughter tried to figure out how to become a monthly serial killer without getting grounded.

Because life would get worse in that house. Not maybe. Definitely.

Y/N gripped the counter. “I just need my space.”

“You have had your space. It currently contains a stalker.”

“He’s outside the space.”

“Do not be clever.”

“I’m not being clever. I’m being geologically accurate.”

“Your room remains in immaculate condition.”

Her chest tightened. “It does?”

“Of course.”

She hated that. Hated the warmth that flickered through her anyway. Her room at the manor. Still there. Still clean. Still waiting for an apology, no one said out loud.

“I can arrange for someone to retrieve whatever you need from here later,” Alfred continued. “For tonight, pack essentials.”

“Alfred, please.”

“No.”

The word was quiet. Final.

Y/N stared at him.

For a moment, she understood why Bruce listened to Alfred. Why all of them did, even if they joked about it. Alfred’s authority did not need volume. It had survived wars, secrets, grief, billionaires, children, and excuses in their mouths. It stood in her kitchen now beside a container of soup and did not move.

“I’m twenty-seven,” she said weakly.

“I am seventy. Shall we list irrelevant facts?”

Despite herself, she made a broken little sound that might have been a laugh.

Alfred’s face softened. “I will not allow you to remain in this apartment while a man is sitting and sleeping outside your door. You may be angry with me from a safer location.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You should be, a little.”

“Don’t tell me how to process being kidnapped by a butler.”

“I prefer rescued.”

“Of course you do.”

He handed her the empty suitcase from beside her closet before she had even moved toward it, which meant he had clocked it the moment he entered. She took it numbly.

Outside the door, Eli knocked once.

Y/N froze.

“Y/N?” His voice was muffled, strained. “Are you leaving?”

She closed her eyes.

Alfred turned toward the door, but Y/N shook her head quickly.

“Please don’t.”

He paused.

Eli knocked again, softer. “Y/N?”

Her guilt twisted hard enough to hurt. “I’m fine, Eli.”

“You’re packing.”

“I need to go somewhere for a bit.”

“Because of him?”

Alfred’s expression became very still.

Y/N gripped the suitcase handle. “No.”

“He’s taking you away?”

“No one is taking me away.”

“I can keep you safe here.”

The apartment was filled with the sound of Y/N breathing too fast.

Alfred stepped closer to the door, voice calm. “Eli, you will step away from the apartment.”

“No.”

“You are frightening her.”

Silence.

Then Eli’s voice, wrecked and small. “I don’t want to.”

Y/N pressed a hand to her mouth.

Alfred looked at her, and something in his face changed. A decision is settling into place.

“You will pack now,” he said quietly.

Y/N nodded.

She moved through her apartment as if she were stealing from herself. Clothes first, shoved into the suitcase without matching or folding. Underwear. Socks. Phone charger. Laptop. Medication. Toothbrush. She almost packed the baseball bat, then looked at Alfred and decided she could not handle that conversation. In the bathroom, she paused at the sink where she had thrown up so many times that the porcelain felt like a witness. In the kitchen, she kept her eyes off the knife block. In the living room, she stared at the couch.

The contract.

It was no longer under the cookbooks. After burning the notebook, she hid it inside the lining of an old storage ottoman, taped under a flap of fabric with shaking hands. Even thinking about it made her skin crawl. Sometimes, if she put her palm on the ottoman, there would be a prickle of heat or a faint pressure behind her eyes, like the paper inside was watching her. Or waiting. She could not leave it. She could not take it. Both were bad.

Alfred was in the kitchen, closing containers, giving her privacy without truly giving her privacy.

Y/N knelt by the ottoman and pretended to look for slippers. Her fingers slid under the fabric, found the parchment wrapped in a grocery bag, and shoved it deep into the side pocket of her suitcase, beneath a pile of socks. It twitched once, warm through the plastic.

She almost gagged.

This is bad, she thought, zipping the suitcase too fast. Really bad. Not even funny bad. Just bad, bad. Mega bad.

Her laugh came out under her breath, high and panicked.

Alfred looked over. “Did you say something?”

“Nope. Just mentally losing a debate with the seven voices in my head.”

“Try not to do so on an empty stomach.”

“Noted.”

When she reached the door, suitcase in one hand, Alfred’s food bag in the other, she stopped.

Eli was still there. She could feel him on the other side, not through magic now, but through sound, through the pressure of knowing, through the fact that she had made him into a person who waited.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Alfred heard.

He did not ask who she meant.

He opened the door first.

Eli stood a few feet away, eyes red, face pale, hands clenched at his sides. He looked at Y/N like she was leaving him at the edge of the world. Like Alfred was an enemy. Like the hallway had become a battlefield, and he had no weapon except pleading.

“Don’t go,” Eli said.

Y/N looked at his shoulder instead of his eyes. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“I’ll be better.”

The words cracked something open in her.

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault. That he had been fine. That she was the thing that happened to him. That the wrongness in his chest had her fingerprints on it, even if he could not see them. Instead, she stood behind Alfred like a coward and held her suitcase hard enough to hurt her hand.

Alfred’s voice cut in, cool and controlled. “You will not follow us.”

Eli’s gaze snapped to him. “You can’t stop me.”

Alfred smiled again.

This time, Eli seemed to understand he should be afraid.

“Let us hope you do not test that theory,” Alfred said.

They walked past him.

Y/N kept her head down. Eli did not touch her. He did not follow immediately. But when the elevator doors closed, she saw him at the end of the hallway, standing beneath the buzzing light, wrecked and motionless, as if she had taken the floor out from under him and left him upright by accident.

In Alfred’s car, the city slid past in wet streaks of gray and gold.

Y/N sat in the passenger seat with her suitcase in the trunk, the contract tucked somewhere at the very bottom, shoved under a fabric lining that was coming apart at the seams, and made a pocket perfect for stashing an infernal contract with a demon from hell.

Alfred’s leftover food sat at her feet, and her phone stayed clenched in her lap. She did not look back at her building. If she did, she would see Eli in the doorway. Or imagine him there. It did not matter. There was guilt all the same.

Her stomach tightened.

He did not look at her. His eyes stayed on the road, hands steady on the wheel.

“I will look into Eli,” he said. “Quietly.”

“Law enforcement first?” she asked, voice small.

“Of course.”

“And after that?”

Alfred hummed again. That stupid illegal hum.

Y/N leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.

The manor waited at the end of the drive, huge and lit and impossible to avoid. Somewhere inside, Bruce was chasing Victor Sable’s disappearance. Jason was furious over a dead man Y/N had buried. Tim was digging through corrupted evidence. Dick and Damian circled the same secret life Y/N did not know existed. Alfred was bringing a frightened daughter home for the wrong reason, but not entirely the wrong one. And Y/N, with hell’s contract in her suitcase and one offering already burned into the dark, was about to sleep under Bruce Wayne’s roof. She pressed her hand to her leg, fighting the urge to bolt even now.

If anyone looked too closely, if anyone guessed the truth, her life would be over before she could even explain herself. All she wanted was to survive another day without someone seeing the monster she had become.

Her smile appeared in the window reflection, faint and horrified.

How am I supposed to become a serial killer in Bruce Wayne’s house?

The thought was so absurd she almost laughed.

Then she remembered Victor’s hands over hers.

The laugh died before it left her throat.

By the time Y/N and Alfred got to the Manor, Y/N had already convinced herself of the one hundred ways this could go wrong. She half-heartedly dragged herself behind Alfred, eyes on the grey suitcase; it bumped softly against each polished step as Alfred carried it ahead of her, one hand on the handle, the other holding the canvas food bag as if relocating a frightened woman and enough soup for a minor siege were entirely ordinary evening duties.

Her mind latched and obsessed over what that grey suitcase held. At first, vacation clothes and college trips. Then whatever she had stuffed into it before she moved to her apartment. Now, the contract was in there, wrapped in a grocery bag, folded wrong, warm through the fabric in a way she tried very hard not to think about. Every time the suitcase knocked another stair, Y/N imagined it splitting open and spilling hell parchment across the runner while Alfred calmly said, Ah. Miss Y/N. Infernal paperwork. How inconvenient.

She followed him with her arms wrapped around herself, shoulders hunched under an oversized sweatshirt, hair tied back too messily to pass as intentional. The manor smelled like floor polish, old books, beeswax, and the faint savory trace of whatever Alfred had left cooling in the kitchen. It smelled clean. Stable. Full of rooms where nothing had ever gone wrong because everything that did went wrong in secret. She hated how much she wanted to lean into it. She hated that her chest loosened when the front door shut behind her, even though this house was not safe. Not for what she was now. Not with Bruce Wayne sleeping under the same roof, not with her brothers moving in and out of hallways, not with Alfred’s eyes catching every tremor she tried to hide.

Jason came out of the library as they reached the landing.

He had a mug in one hand and his phone in the other, wearing sweatpants and a black shirt that looked slept-in or fought-in, his hair damp at the ends like he had showered badly and with irritation. He stopped when he saw Alfred, then the suitcase, then Y/N. His gaze flicked over her, brief but sharp, catching the sweatshirt, the pale face, the way she stood half behind Alfred like she had meant not to and failed.

“You moving in?” he asked.

Y/N’s throat tightened.

The question was casual. Distracted, even. His attention had already started slipping back toward whatever lived on his phone. He did not sound suspicious. He sounded like a guy who had walked into a hallway and found a minor household development between bigger things.

She smiled automatically. “Temporary hostage situation. Alfred’s the kidnapper.”

Jason looked at Alfred.

Alfred did not blink. “A gross mischaracterization.”

“So, accurate,” Jason said.

“Painfully,” Y/N said, because her mouth had survival instincts and no ethical oversight.

Jason’s lips twitched faintly, then his phone buzzed. The small, almost-smile vanished. He looked down, jaw tightening. Y/N watched it happen, the way attention could leave a person even while their body stayed in front of you. She had grown up watching that trick from every angle. Jason did not register the timing. He did not ask why she was really there. Did not ask what had happened at her apartment. Did not notice that the suitcase in Alfred’s hand had one side pocket bulging oddly with socks and one impossible contract.

“Bruce is downstairs?” Jason asked Alfred.

“Occupied, I believe.”

“Yeah. Figures.” Jason looked at Y/N again, but only for a second. “You okay?”

Y/N hated the question because it sounded almost genuine and because the answer was a room full of locked doors.

“Peachy,” she said. “Vibes are great over here. I’m basically glowing, I just did a face mask the other day while crying in my mirror with wine in a bowl.”

Jason’s eyebrow rose, and Y/N felt the compulsion to overexplain before it got even weirder.

“My glasses were in the dishwasher.”

“So your first instinct was to use a bowl?”

“This is classism.”

“Get some sleep,” he said finally, already moving past them.

“You too,” she said before she could stop herself.

He gave a short laugh without turning around. “Unlikely.”

He disappeared down the hall.

Y/N stood there a second too long, watching the space where he had been.

Alfred said nothing.

“That was normal,” she said.

“Was it?”

“Absolutely. Family bonding. Hallway edition.”

Alfred carried her suitcase the rest of the way to her old room.

Her room was exactly as he said it would be. Immaculate. That was the word. Immaculate in a way that made her feel both cared for and haunted. The bed was made with fresh sheets and the soft green quilt she had liked years ago. The curtains had been cleaned. The shelves had no dust. The books she had abandoned during some old emotional exit were still there, lined up in careful order: horror novels, fantasy paperbacks, one baking book she had bought because the cover had little illustrated strawberries on it, and immediately regretted seeing because she had burned a strawberry notebook in a mixing bowl after writing Victor Sable’s name in it. The room had simply stayed ready, which felt worse, in Y/N’s opinion.

Y/N set the food bag on the little desk and forced herself not to cry.

Alfred put the suitcase near the bed. “I shall leave you to settle.”

“Alfred?”

He paused by the door.

She looked at the suitcase. At the side pocket. At the soft bulge beneath folded clothes. “Thanks. For, uh, everything.”

His expression softened. “You are welcome.”

“I’m sorry about all this.”

“I do not recall requesting an apology.”

“You rarely do. You just radiate disappointment and make people confess.”

“An efficient system.”

She laughed quietly. It hurt less than expected.

After he left, she locked the door, then felt ridiculous because it was Wayne Manor and also not ridiculous because she had buried a man in the woods. Both things could be true, which was becoming an exhausting theme in her life. She waited until Alfred’s footsteps faded, then dropped to her knees by the suitcase and pulled the contract out with two fingers. The grocery bag crinkled too loudly in the quiet room. The parchment inside shifted once, like something asleep adjusting under a blanket.

“No,” she whispered. “Do not get cozy.”

She shoved it under the mattress first, then changed her mind because that felt like sleeping on a threat. She hid it behind the bottom drawer of the dresser, then took it out because Alfred probably cleaned behind the furniture as a hobby or as a moral stance. Finally, she tucked it inside an old shoebox full of cosplay scraps, convention badges, and a pair of cat ears she got manipulated into buying at a dealer’s room the boys had teased her about for three consecutive holidays. It was not dignified, but hell had already accepted Taco Bell as ritual garnish, so dignity had left the building early.

The contract warmed through the cardboard.

Y/N shut the closet door.

She slept badly after that. Not fully asleep, not fully awake, drifting through fragments: Victor’s hands over hers, Eli outside the door, Bruce’s text saying Good. Get some rest when she had not told him the truth. She woke before dawn with her heart pounding and her sweatshirt stuck to her back.

By breakfast, she had used concealer as if it could solve all of her problems with one swipe under the eye, and tied her hair up with enough effort to look intentionally casual.

The breakfast room was too bright.

Morning light came through tall windows with wide, pale panels, catching on silverware, coffee cups, white plates, and the bowl of oranges in the center of the table that looked almost offensively healthy. Alfred had set out eggs, toast, fruit, bacon, coffee, tea, and a plate of pastries because, apparently, an emotional crisis at Wayne Manor came with options. Bruce sat at the head of the table, already in a suit, reading something on a tablet. Dick was there in a navy GCPD hoodie, scrolling his phone while eating toast. Tim had a laptop open beside his coffee and looked like he had been awake since the invention of electricity. Damian was reading a medical journal with one hand and cutting fruit with the other, so precisely that Y/N stared at the knife and immediately looked away.

Jason arrived late, which made Y/N’s stomach tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with him personally and everything to do with the way his presence carried the last few days into the room.

He dropped into a chair two seats away from her, hair messy, eyes shadowed, wearing irritation like a second shirt. Alfred set coffee in front of him without comment.

“Thanks,” Jason muttered.

Y/N held her mug with both hands and told herself to act normal. Normal people ate eggs. Normal people smiled at breakfast. Normal people did not flinch when someone buttered toast with a small silver knife. Normal people did not wonder how long bodies took to decompose in damp soil. Normal people did not keep one ear trained for any mention of missing men from the Narrows.

Bruce looked at her over the tablet. “Alfred said you’re staying for a few days.”

Y/N looked up too quickly. “Yeah. Just until my apartment situation gets less…apartmenty.”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Alfred said there was a man outside your door.”

Her stomach dropped.

“Oh, that.” She waved one hand and nearly sloshed coffee onto herself. “Yeah. Eli. Weird guy. Not, like, murder weird. Just slightly damp.”

Jason glanced up at that.

“Damp?” Dick repeated.

“You know. Like a towel someone forgot in a gym bag. Sad and concerning.”

Damian’s eyes lifted from his journal. “That is an unpleasant description.”

“Thank you.”

Bruce’s expression did not change much, but she could feel the evaluation behind it. “Has he threatened you?”

“No.”

“Do you know him?”

“Not really.”

Jason’s gaze lingered on her, now more focused than before. “How does someone you don’t really know end up camping outside your door?”

Y/N smiled. Her cheeks hurt. “I’m charming. It’s a curse.”

The coffee in Tim’s mug paused halfway to his mouth.

Y/N caught it, and for half a second, she fiercely hated herself for speaking out loud so much she forgot to breathe.

Jason snorted faintly. “Yeah, stalkers famously love a good personality.”

“Do not call him that,” Y/N said, too fast.

The table went slightly still.

She lowered her gaze. “Sorry. I mean, he’s being weird. I know. I just…he’s not evil.”

Victor had been evil. Eli was not. Victor had died smiling. Eli sat in the hallway because her voice had turned into a trap. The difference mattered. It had to matter, or she was already gone.

Alfred entered with more toast, and his eyes went to her face, then to the way her hands trembled around her mug. He said nothing.

Bruce did the thing he did when he decided a matter could be handled by someone else for the moment. “Alfred will coordinate security and law enforcement.”

Y/N nodded.

Jason looked back at his phone. “Good.”

Dick tried to soften the mood. “Hey, at least you get Alfred food for a few days. That’s basically a luxury retreat with better security and more emotionally stunted men.”

“I heard that,” Bruce said without looking up.

“Meant for you to.”

Y/N almost laughed, and for one fragile minute, breakfast felt almost survivable.

The curse did not wake here. Alfred, Bruce, Dick, Tim, Jason, Damian, all known to her before the ritual.

They could look at her, speak to her, sit close enough to pass jam, and nothing changed.

Their neglect still hurt in the old human way, but no one’s pupils widened, no one’s face softened with sudden worship, no one became infected by her existence. In this room, with these people who had failed to love her properly, she was paradoxically safer than anywhere else.

Still, Tim's eyes lingered on her a heartbeat too long when she passed the sugar. Jason's gaze flicked from his phone to her hands, catching the trembling just before she gripped her mug tighter as if nothing were wrong. It was nothing, probably. But in this family, sometimes noticing was the first step to knowing.

Then Jason said, “Victor Sable’s body hasn’t turned up.”

Y/N’s fork hit her plate.

The sound was small. Too small, maybe, for anyone but Alfred to notice. But Alfred did notice. His gaze moved to her hand.

Y/N stared at the eggs she had not eaten.

Why would Jason know that?

Her pulse began to pound.

Jason continued, unaware of the way her stomach dropped through the floor. “Four days missing and no body, no ransom, no credible sighting. Guy had a security detail and somehow everybody suddenly went blind.”

Tim’s eyes flicked toward Bruce, then back to his laptop. “It’s been in the news.”

Y/N’s brain had to catch up with her body and restart her breathing manually. The tiny person sitting up was cranking some invisible lever and yelling to the rest of her to get it together.

Y/N could not get it together. Her heartbeat felt too out-of-body; she could hear every shift, every move. The chair creaked under Jason’s weight as he shifted in irritation, Damian’s fork scraped against the plate despite his careful handling of the knife, and Tim took a sip of whatever caffeine monstrosity resided in his oversized mug.

There was something in Jason’s voice. Not gossip. Not casual interest. Not the sort of true crime curiosity people brought to breakfast because Gotham had ruined everyone’s sense of appropriate topics. It was personal. Focused. Angry in a way he was trying not to show.

Y/N’s skin went cold.

“What does that have to do with you?” she asked.

The question came out too directly.

Jason’s expression closed. “Narrows thing.”

“What, like neighborhood watch?”

Dick coughed into his coffee.

Tim looked down.

Damian’s mouth tightened almost invisibly.

Bruce said, “Jason has contacts.”

Y/N turned to Bruce. “Contacts.”

Jason leaned back in his chair. “You say that like you’ve never heard of knowing people.”

“I know people.”

“Do you?”

“Wow. Okay. Hurtful.”

“Accurate?”

She tried to smile. “I know Alfred.”

“Everyone knows Alfred. That’s cheating.”

Alfred, from the sideboard, said mildly, “I am delighted to be a social credential.”

Y/N’s laugh caught in her throat. It would have been funny. It was funny, technically. But Victor Sable’s name sat on the table like a bloody handprint no one else could see.

Jason looked away first, still distracted by whatever internal thread he was following. “Sable was dirty. Worse than dirty. Somebody took him off the board, and every piece of evidence collapsed like it was cursed.”

Y/N’s mouth went dry.

Cursed.

Tim said, carefully, “Maybe don’t say cursed at breakfast.”

“It was cursed,” Jason said. “Or hexed. Or pact-protected. Something. Tech doesn’t fail like that by accident.”

Y/N gripped her mug. It was warm enough to hurt.

Pact-protected.

She heard Victor again, breath wet and intimate. I love you so much.

Her stomach lurched.

Wait. Tech was cursed? Why would Jason have tech?

Did Jason know Victor?

She stood too fast. The chair scraped. “Bathroom.”

Alfred stepped forward. “Miss Y/N?”

“Just a little nausea,” she said, already backing away. “You know me, resident tummy ache survivor.”

She made it out of the breakfast room, down the hall, around the corner, and into the nearest powder room before she dropped to her knees and threw up into the toilet with one hand braced against the wall. She could hear breakfast continuing far away, muffled voices, silverware, and the normal sound of people who did not know there was a dead man in the woods because she put him there.

She vomited until her throat burned.

Then she sat back on her heels, shaking, and stared at the little decorative hand towel embroidered with a W.

Why is Jason looking into Victor?

Her mind chased itself in tight circles. Jason knew things he should not know. Bruce knew things. Tim’s laptop, Dick’s reaction, Damian’s silence. They were rich. Connected. Gotham people. Maybe that was all. Bruce Wayne probably kept tabs on criminals. Jason probably knew people in the Narrows because he was Jason, and Jason moved like a man who had private wars. It did not mean anything.

It could not mean anything.

Her family was neglectful, not secretly involved in vigilante cases. That was insane. That was comic-book insane.

Y/N laughed once, then gagged again.

When she returned to the breakfast room, she had rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face, and pinched her cheeks until they looked slightly less corpse-adjacent. No one commented. Alfred had cleared her plate and replaced it with dry toast and ginger tea. Bruce looked at her for a moment too long, but his phone buzzed, and he looked down. Jason was muttering to Tim about corrupted camera packets. Dick was pretending to read the news while listening to everything. Damian was watching Y/N with narrowed eyes over his medical journal.

“Still takeout?” Damian asked.

Y/N sank into her chair. “Are you diagnosing me, Doctor Baby Wayne?”

“I am not a doctor yet.”

“Then stop practicing on me.”

“Your pallor is concerning.”

“My pallor would like privacy.”

Jason snorted.

Bruce’s phone buzzed again. He stood. “I need to take this.”

Of course he did.

Y/N looked down at her toast and tried not to feel anything about it.

After breakfast, Alfred ran Eli through every database available to a man who had once served the Crown and now served a family whose security needs were not compatible with ordinary privacy laws.

He did it in his office with the door closed, tea cooling beside his keyboard, his face calm and his mind increasingly less so.

Eli Mason, twenty-five. Delivery driver. Prior work at a grocery warehouse. No criminal record beyond a parking ticket and one minor citation for riding a bike on the sidewalk at nineteen. Rent was paid late twice, but paid. Mother in Blüdhaven. Younger sister at community college. Social media is ordinary to the point of dullness: food photos, rainy street shots, one old post about adopting a cat that had apparently chosen his roommate instead. No extremist forums. No restraining orders. No pattern of harassment. No violent complaints. No history of fixation.

Nothing.

Before the night he met Y/N, Eli Mason was exactly what she claimed he had once been.

A person.

After that night, his phone records changed. Delivery app routes clustered near her building. Purchases at the pharmacy below her apartment: cold medicine, tea, bandages, and pepper

Alfred sat back.

A stalker, then. But one without the usual soil around the roots. No escalation history, no prior target, no record that explained the sudden turn. It unsettled him more than a long history would have. Patterns could be interpreted. Absence required more imagination, and Alfred distrusted explanations that required imagination before evidence.

He printed the file anyway.

Then he locked it in his drawer.

In the cave, Jason’s day got worse.

Constantine refused the next call outright.

The comm rang twice, then disconnected. Jason stared at the screen.

Tim, still trying to rebuild the corrupted Victor files from backups, said, “Maybe his curtains were emotionally significant.”

Jason dialed again.

This time, the call connected just long enough for Constantine to say, “No,” and hang up.

Jason’s eyes narrowed.

Dick, seated on the edge of the table with a coffee he had stolen from upstairs, winced. “That was pretty clear.”

Jason dialed again.

The line clicked.

“Listen, Hood,” Constantine snapped, voice rough and closer than before, like he had the phone pressed hard to his ear while walking somewhere windy. “I’ve had three fires, one screaming mirror, and a packet of files that tried to bite through my wards. Whatever Bat-shaped nonsense you’ve got, I’m not touching it blind.”

Jason leaned over the console. “Something infernal touched our system.”

Silence.

Tim stopped typing.

Bruce looked up.

On the line, Constantine did not speak for three full seconds.

Then, quietly, “Say that again.”

Jason’s anger cooled into focus. “The Victor Sable files. When Tim tried sending them, something came through. Not just a virus. Not tech. You said your curtains caught fire.”

“Curtains don’t usually combust from corrupted JPEGs, no.”

“Then what was it?”

Constantine exhaled. Jason could hear him lighting a cigarette. “A brush. Not a full presence. Something with infernal residue dragged its greasy little fingertips along the transfer.”

Tim mouthed, Greasy?

Jason waved him off.

Bruce stepped closer. “Demon?”

“Possibly. Or someone carrying a contract. A pact. A favor. Could be a curse protecting the actor, could be an entity protecting its investment. Hard to say from ‘my flat tried to become a barbecue.’”

Jason’s grip tightened. “Investment.”

“Demons don’t usually do charity.”

“No kidding.”

“Tell me about Sable.”

Jason told him the clean version: criminal target, disappearance, impossible coincidences, dead cameras, contradictory witnesses, no body. He did not mention every detail because Constantine did not need them, and Jason did not trust anyone who sounded that casual around the word "demon". As he spoke, the cave monitors dimmed once, then stabilized. Tim’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, not touching. Damian stood near the stairs, listening with the intense stillness of someone pretending he had other reasons to be there.

Constantine was quiet when Jason finished.

“Could be a new player,” he said.

“That’s what I said.”

“I didn’t say you were wrong. Don’t get clingy.”

Jason ignored that. “Someone using magic?”

“Maybe.”

“Someone made a pact?”

“Maybe.”

Jason’s eyes moved to Victor’s frozen image on the monitor, the last living frame before the black screen. “Why take Sable?”

“Bad men are useful offerings.”

The cave went still.

Jason’s voice lowered. “Offerings.”

“Don’t get dramatic. Could be power. Could be revenge. Could be debt. Could be some poor idiot signed something they didn’t read.”

Y/N’s face flickered through Jason’s mind then, oddly and without invitation: pale at breakfast, joking too fast, leaving the room when Victor’s body came up. He dismissed it immediately. She had no connection to Sable. She was Bruce’s daughter, who worked in HR and once cried during an animated movie Damian had called childish. She was strange, sure. The whole family was strange. Strange did not mean demon pact.

Tim pulled up another file. “If infernal residue is attached to the case data, can you trace it?”

Constantine made a sound like a laugh left out in the rain. “Trace infernal residue through a corrupted digital transfer while whatever it is actively doesn’t want to be found? Sure. I’ll just ask nicely and invoice your billionaire father for my cremation.”

Bruce said, “Can you help or not?”

“I can tell you this much. If there’s a pact involved, the person at the center might not be the demon. Could be a human carrying the terms. Could be cursed. Could be feeding something. If bodies start dropping in a pattern, look at timing. Moons, dates, anniversaries, ritual markers. Demons love a calendar. Makes them feel classy.”

Jason’s jaw flexed. “And if we get close?”

“Expect more nonsense. Not big lightning bolts. Little failures. Keys snapping. Cameras blinking. Witnesses forgetting. People tripping at exactly the wrong second. Infernal contracts can be petty as hell, and yes, that was intentional.”

Tim rubbed his forehead. “That matches.”

Jason looked at Bruce. Bruce’s expression had gone hard and unreadable.

Constantine continued, “And Hood?”

“What?”

“If this is some desperate idiot bound to a demon, they’re still dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than someone doing it for fun. Desperation makes people creative, and hell loves creativity.”

The line crackled.

Jason leaned closer. “Can you come to Gotham?”

“No.”

“Constantine.”

“No. But send me what you can without setting anything else on fire. Carefully. Old-school if you have to. Paper. Salt the envelope. Don’t ask.”

The line went dead.

Jason stood in silence for a moment.

Then he looked at the black screen where Victor vanished for the hundredth time.

“A new villain,” Damian said.

Jason’s eyes did not move. “Maybe.”

“Or a civilian with a pact,” Tim said.

Jason hated that more. Villains made sense. Villains had lairs, grudges, symbols, and ego. Civilians with pacts had apartments, excuses, and faces that blended into crowds. They made mistakes. They panicked. They did damage without knowing how much blood was stuck to the edges.

Jason thought of Victor Sable. Thought of the girls whose statements had vanished. Thought of the missing body, the impossible trail, the bloodless alley. If someone had taken Sable because he deserved it, Jason understood the impulse. He had lived half his life inside that impulse.

But magic changed the math.

A demon made it worse.

He set his hands on the table and leaned in until Victor’s face reflected faintly in his eyes.

“Whoever they are,” Jason said quietly, “I’m going to find them.”

Upstairs, Y/N stood in her old bedroom with the door locked, one hand pressed over her mouth, listening to the house settle around her.

She had not heard Jason. She had not heard Constantine. She had no idea that beneath her feet, her family was mapping the edges of her curse with better tools and worse assumptions. All she knew was that breakfast had nearly broken her, the contract was hidden in a shoebox full of cat ears, and Victor Sable’s missing body had somehow become a topic in the one place she had thought she could hide from it. Sooner or later, someone would get too close to the truth or catch her flinch at the wrong name, and the careful balance she kept would shatter in the open. When that happened, she was not sure if she would confess, collapse, or do something far worse. But she could feel the pressure rising under her skin, an answer waiting to break her silence the next time someone asked the right question and refused to let her run.

Her phone buzzed.

For one horrible second, she thought it was Eli.

It was Alfred.

Alfred: Lunch will be at one. You will attend.

Y/N stared at the message, then sank onto the edge of the bed.

Her laugh came out small and panicked.

How am I supposed to become a serial killer in this house?

No answer came.

Only the manor breathing around her, full of secrets she did not know, while her own waited in the closet, warm and patient and very much alive.

Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

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