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"Yes, exactly!" he answered quickly, and I tilted my head at him. It didn't feel like they were being honest with me, and the mystery behind my oddball roommates just kept getting deeper and deeper. Just what were they hiding? I'd paid for a background check for them before I'd rented them the place—I might've been a teensy bit paranoid, but it made me feel better, so I didn't regret it—and everything seemed to have been okay. There had been nothing noteworthy in their background, so what were they hiding?
"We grew up in a very...close-knit community," Star said, and I glanced over at him. "I guess you could say we're only just starting to realize what the world is truly supposed to be like, which is why we can seem...odd at times."
Oh, so they knew they were oddballs, huh? It took me a moment to process the rest of what Star had said, and I blinked, wondering if the 'close-knit' community meant 'a cult.' It sounded like it, but I decided not to ask anymore questions. If they wanted to tell me, they would.
"You can ask me if you need help with anything," I offered, and Ryk narrowed his eyes at me.
"You won't think we're weird for not knowing?"
I shook my head, wondering just how difficult this whole thing was for them. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be thrust into this world without much knowledge of how you were supposed to survive. It was a miracle they were doing as good as they were.
"I won't. I promise," I said, and Ryk and Nico shared a glance.
"Okay. Then can you show us how the laundry machine works?"
Ten
Ryk
Star was a freaking genius.
Somehow, he'd made Dakota think we used to be in a cult. I hadn't realized that was what Dakota was thinking after Star's explanation, but Nico had told me later that was what Star had implied. So now any odd behavior on our part—read: my part—would be ignored by Dakota. I still couldn't use magic in front of him, of course, but I didn't need to worry as much about saying the wrong thing.
He was at work now, which was why I was on the roof in my true form, sunning myself. I hadn't spread my wings since we moved here, and I was hoping to fly in a bit. Thankfully, I could turn incorporeal, so if any of the neighbors came onto their roof or looked out a window, they wouldn't see me. I could only imagine the trouble I'd cause if someone managed to get a picture of me.
Then again, people could create anything on the computer these days—or so I'd heard—so I doubted anyone would believe it was real, but it was still too big of a risk.
Wait. If I was incorporeal, was my skin even getting the sunlight? Or was it passing straight through me? Leaning up on my arms, I glanced below me, and yep. No shadow. Which meant I'd just been lying here for the past hour pretending to soak up the sunlight.
Shaking my head, I got to my feet, stretching my wings wide. I was almost seven feet tall in this form, and with my wide wings, I couldn't exactly shift inside. While Nico and Star seemed to manage without, I'd started getting antsy after not shifting for so long, so much so that they'd both kicked me out and told me to go shift and not come back until I was feeling better.
"Ryk! Come downstairs!" Star called from inside just as I was about to take flight, and I growled in annoyance. What now?
Shifting back into my human form and becoming corporeal again, I hurried downstairs.
"What is it? I was just about to—oh! Hey, Consort Reece! Kym!" I said as I spotted them sitting in the living room with Nico and Star, and hurried down the rest of the stairs. "Is everything okay?"
Dressed in a white dress shirt and black dress pants, Consort Reece looked poised and ready for a meeting. He always dressed smart, and he had a great sense of style. His auburn hair was perfectly styled, and I’d always been curious about the softness of his beard. Was it really as velvety as it looked? Would King Damien kill me if I asked him?
Kym, on the other hand, was someone I could relate to. He wore jeans and a comfy-looking sweatshirt, and his fox tail was trapped between him and the back of the armchair, his orange ears twitching this way and that.
While Consort Reece sat on the couch, Kym had claimed one of the armchairs, so I made my way to him.
"Everything's fine. Just thought we'd check in and see how you were doing," Consort Reece said, giving me a kind smile. He was the one who'd summoned me and Star, while one of his mates, Consort Artemus, had summoned Nico before they stationed us in the human realm. Our work here—keeping an eye out for a few escaped dark souls while making sure they didn't mess with the town of Mistvale—was more like a vacation, and I was really glad we'd been given this opportunity.
"Hey, Kym!" I greeted, settling on an armchair beside him so I could talk to him as Nico pulled Consort Reece into a conversation.
"I heard you lost all of your fire when you put it into the Burning Chasm. Is that true?" The Burning Chasm was where the evil souls were sent after their death.
Once upon a time, they'd been sent to a place called Underworld instead, where it was the job of us demons to punish them for their crimes in the world.
That system was changed quite a few centuries ago into one where the evil souls burned eternally in the Chasm, but then Kym came along with a power that allowed him to purify an evil soul and give them a shot at redemption.
His power—his purifying fire—was then put into the Burning Chasm so now all the evil souls would get a chance to redeem themselves once they'd burned long enough.
I was really curious about Kym's fire because magic like that had never existed before, as far as I knew. Even other kitsune like him hadn't had a power like his. I wondered what the dark souls experienced when they were burning in the fire. Were they full of regrets? Were they reminded of all the bad things they'd done?
I didn't think it was just pain because pain on its own could never force a person to want to be better. I guess it was a mystery I'd never get to solve...unless I managed to meet someone who'd been burned and made better by Kym's fire.
