"If this thing says negative, I am never letting you live this down." I pointed across the street. "Go."
For the first time since I had known him, Azrael looked genuinely nervous.
"I'll be across the street," he said, his voice wavering just a bit.
Something about the way he said it, made my throat feel tight in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
"I know," I said.
He left and I stared at the bag containing the pregnancy test.
Demon bae knocked you up didn’t he, I rolled my eyes as I snatched the bag up.
The bathroom was very small and very quiet and the test was very straightforward. I followed the instructions carefully because I was the kind of person who read instructions, and then I set it face down on the counter and set a three-minute timer on my phone and walked directly back out of the bathroom because I could not stand in there for three minutes waiting for something that was almost certainly going to tell me I had a stomach virus.
I made it as far as the front porch.
The evening air was clear and cool, the mountains sitting blue and solid at the edge of the sky the way they always did. The sun was starting its lazy descent across the sky, completely indifferent to the fact that my entire nervous system was currently staging a protest. My coffee was still on the railing where I had left it an hours ago. I looked at it and felt my stomach turn and forced looked away.
My phone timer read 2:17.
"This is ridiculous," I said to the mountains because I needed someone to hear me.
2:04.
"I'm probably sick. I've been under a lot of stress. I moved to a new town, I bought a haunted house, my neighbor turned outto be a five-hundred-year-old demon, these things take a toll on a person."
1:33.
"I cannot be pregnant." I crossed my arms. "I've known him for like." I stopped. I actually counted backward. “A month…”
1:04.
The one month thing sat in the air for a moment. I thought about the basement and the storm and then days between then and now and the claim mark on my neck that Azrael had told me was permanent. Slowly, I pressed my fingers against it without thinking about it.
0:38.
I started pacing.
I hadn’t realized I was pacing until I noticed I had crossed the porch four times and was starting a fifth round. I stopped at the railing and looked across the street. Azrael was on his living room, I could see him pacing back and forth as well.
0:12.
"I'm going to be fine," I said, to no one in particular. "It's going to say negative and I'm going to go back over there and I'm going to make him regret every single smug demon second of this."
0:00.
My phone vibrated.
I stood very still for one moment. Then I turned toward the front door and took one step forward and stopped because a voice came from the edge of the porch that did not belong to Azrael and had not been there ten seconds ago.
"I wouldn't check it yet."
I went cold from the shoulders down.
I turned around slowly to find Ethan was standing at the top of the porch steps with his hands in his pockets. He looked relaxed and unhurried, the way he always looked.
He was smiling, but it was not the smile I had seen at Cue's or the farmer's market. This one was softer and sadder and wrong in a way I could not immediately name.
