The Demon's Deadline (Demon's Assistant Book 1) by Tori Centanni

brought Cam in with me after all.
    “A body,” Xanan says, as if it’s completely normal. “The corpse of Martin St. Davies, to be exact.”
    “Oh my god.” My stomach churns and I reflexively cover my mouth.
    “I covered him with a sheet for you. What more do you want?”
    “Not to come into a house where there’s a body.”
    A wave of nausea crashes into me. I swallow back bile and stare at the sheet, trying not to picture what’s beneath.
    “People die,” Xanan says.
    “They’re not usually kept around, under a sheet.” My voice is higher than normal.
    Xanan’s inky hair is spiked up in a way that looks messy-messy, not stylishly-messy. He wears a black hoodie and black jeans, and his pale skin is so white and smooth it could be made of wax. If he told me he was a vampire, I wouldn’t even demand proof of fangs.
    “I told you I was busy,” he says, as if that explains everything.
    “With a body?” My pulse races and blood thrums in my ears.
    “Stop being so dramatic. This is why I don’t work with mortals when I can avoid it.” He runs his hand through his hair in a gesture that reminds me of Cam, casual and stoic in the face of weirdness.
    I walk into the kitchen-half of the room, where a counter obstructs my view of the sheet, and stand over the sink for a moment, making sure I’m not actually going to vomit. Xanan taps at his phone and shoves it in his pocket. “What do you need?” he asks.
    “I need to know why there’s a dead person in your house.” My breath hangs in the air like frozen fog.
    “It’s not my house. It’s his.” He unceremoniously points to where the corpse lies out of sight. “I’m here cleaning up the mess Azmos left behind.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Xanan scrutinizes me. Under his icy gaze, I feel underdressed or, somehow, unworthy. I shiver and try to shake it off, but I can’t. “What he does, offering people more time, creates imbalance in the Realms.”
    “Imbalance?” I ask, my mind racing.
    Xanan doesn’t bother to explain. “My job is to balance the scales.”
    The words smack me in the face like a snowball as I realize what he means. He kills them. I am standing in a dead person’s house with his murderer. Most people would be halfway out the door already, so why aren’t I? Maybe something’s wrong with me, because instead of leaving and heading straight for the nearest police station, I take a steadying breath and brace myself against the counter. “So, what, you kill innocent people?”
    “Of course not,” Xanan says, and he sounds offended. “This guy’s time is up. It was up five years ago. Azmos gave him seven years, but someone is throwing off the balance, hence—“ he sweeps a hand toward where the body lies, “—my intervention.”
    “That’s not fair. He made a deal. He should have gotten what he was promised.”
    “If the balance remains out of whack for long, it will tear open the barrier to the Spirit Realm.”
    “There’s a Spirit Realm? Like… Hell?”
    “No.” When I continue to stare, waiting for further explanation, he sighs, annoyed, but resigned. “My Realm, the Demon Realm, is probably what you humans based your concept of ‘Hell’ upon. The Spirit Realm is separate and divides the living from the dead. What Azmos does is shift the balance in the Realms, and doing so too often or with too many spirits throws things out of whack. If the barrier breaks open, it’s the end of life as we know it.”
    He says it casually, like one might say running out of gas causes the car to stop, but he’s not joking. He gives me a withering look that sends chills down my spine. I wonder if I’m upsetting the balance, or if Azmos was serious when he said I was free and clear, no strings attached.
    I suck in a deep breath of icy air. My stomach churns and my pulse quickens.
    “You’re not here to talk about him.” Xanan opens the fridge and stares in. It’s packed full, way better stocked than I think my fridge has