Galilee shook her head like she was dispelling a hovering nightmare. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.” She tossed her head and grinned at her friends. “You know, I actually feel much better now. Thanks for pushing me to talk about it.”
They smiled back and wrapped each other in hugs while Lucifer frowned on the windowsill. He didn’tmatter? He hadbeggedhis princes, racked his mind trying to come up with a way to save her life, and she was telling her loved ones that he didn’t matter? His winged form roiled in outrage. He should let her die. He should kill her himself, twist her pretty head and pop out her spinal cord, and maybe then she would feel something, enough to admit that he was more than just a quick face-fuck in a corridor.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Lucifer was gliding in through the open window, letting the glamour slip a fraction at a time. From the girls’ perspectives, it would have seemed like he had melted into the room out of thin air, all deadly swagger and unholy sex appeal. Something wild and hungry flashed through Galilee’s eyes when she saw him, but then the other two girls were screaming, and the princess was pulling a gun out of her purse, leveling it at him with surprisingly steady hands.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” she yelled, fear thickening into rage on her tongue. Both Galilee and the storyteller snapped their headstoward her, their eyes round and wide as they stared at the gun in her hands.
“Oriak?, since when you carrying?” Galilee asked, her eyebrows pulling together.
“Since always,” the princess snapped back. Her eyes were trained on Lucifer, and no one in the room was moving a muscle.
“Well, I’ma need you to put it away. Bonbon doesn’t like guns.”
Lucifer glanced at the storyteller, and sure enough, blood had drained from her face, leaving it pale. “Galilee is right,” he said. “Besides, guns can’t harm me.”
Oriak? sneered. “Excuse me if I don’t listen to you, Helel, until you explain why the fuck you’re in Gali’s apartment.”
Bonbon finally looked away from the gun. “Are you stalking Gali?” she asked, and Lucifer paused. Did this count as stalking? Climbing up the side of her building and through her admittedly open window?
Oriak? disengaged the safety on the gun. “Nah, see, you just tookwaytoo long to answer that.”
He rolled his eyes. “Put that away before you hurt one of your friends. I’m just here to speak to Galilee.”
Bonbon moved to block Galilee from his view. “Definitely sounds like you’re stalking her, dude.”
Lucifer snarled. He didn’t mind them being a little afraid—it was a scent he was familiar with from humans, sour and clinging. But Galilee? She didn’t smell anything like that. She smelled just like she had the night before, like immortal armies marching through firmament, like the baying of hellhounds, like bark floating in rushing water, like soil and blood and splitting worlds. Her honeyed face peered around Bonbon, and those sharp dark eyes he couldn’t purge from his memory stared up at him from the bed.
“Howdidyou get in here?” she asked, sounding just curious.
Oriak? waved the gun. “Doesn’t matter. He’s fucking elite secretforces or something. Dad only hires creeps like him, but none of them have ever taken it this far.”
Lucifer held out his hand. “Give that to me,” he said mildly. “Don’t make me ask again.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you’re going to be that way...” He injected a ribbon of compulsion into his voice, dark and pulling.“Just hand it over.”
Oriak? blinked, and the gun lowered a fraction as her eyes began to cloud over. Galilee’s gaze immediately narrowed, and she glared at Lucifer in accusation. “Stop that,” she growled. “She’s my friend.”
Lucifer took his eyes off the princess to give Galilee an outraged look. “She’s aiming a gun at me!” he pointed out. “Exactly how little do I matter to you again?”
In that brief moment of his distraction, Oriak? snapped back into focus, bared her teeth, and pulled the trigger. Sound blew through the room, and Bonbon screamed, throwing herself to the floor. Galilee flinched, and Oriak? exhaled roughly as the echo of the gunshot faded, finally lowering the gun to her side. Galilee slid off the bed and gently took the weapon out of Oriak?’s hand, putting it down on her dresser.
Lucifer touched the torn edges of his shirt, an inch over from his navel. There was a neat bullet hole in the cotton and a faint wisp of smoke drifted from his punctured flesh. He raised an eyebrow at Oriak?. “A gut wound? Seriously?”
She frowned and took a step back, her eyes fixed on the hole in his shirt. “You’re... you’re not bleeding. Why aren’t you bleeding?”
“You could’ve shot me in the heart, even in the head,” he continued, ignoring her. “But the stomach? Were youtryingto torture me?”
“Gali...” Oriak?’s eyes were so large, they were about to fall out of her head. Lucifer could see her pulse slamming in her throat. “Gali, he’s not bleeding.He’s not bleeding.”
Bonbon was huddled on the floor with her arms over her head. She looked up at Lucifer’s perfect bullet wound and his faintly irritated expression, and then she started screaming. Galilee’s head whipped back and forth, panic blooming in her eyes. Lucifer noted with interest that she didn’t seem to have a problem with him both still being alive and very inconveniently not bleeding, but more so with her friends seeing these truths about him.
“What the fuckareyou?” Oriak? asked, a scream building behind her words.
Lucifer grinned and sketched a bow. “I’m the Devil,” he answered casually, letting a little of the black bleed into his eyes and enjoying the naked terror that slammed into the girl’s face.
Galilee jumped to her feet and slashed the edge of her hand through the air.“Enough!”she yelled, and her voice was an avalanche, an order, a biting command.
