Page 35 of Eat, Slay, Love

I can’t stop the smile that rises to my mouth. I feel absurdly proud of it, of this piece of myself I’d spent most of my life believing simply wasn’t there.

“Until seven days ago.”

He tilts his head, waiting.

“I think my forte lets me sense a demon’s intent.”

His brows draw together. “Intent?”

“Not thoughts. I can’t get inside your head, and it doesn’t tell me whether a demon is good or bad.” I pause, searching for words for something I’m only beginning to understand myself. “Every slayer can recognize a demon’s magical signature. But I think intent changes the way that energy behaves. It shifts depending on what the demon means to do—where the energy is reaching, what it’s preparing for. Most slayers only feel demon.” I touch my sternum. “Apparently, I can feel what comes next.”

Jonah stares at me.

“At least, that’s what I think I’m doing,” I add quickly. “There’s not exactly literature on this.”

His reaction isn’t resentment or rage or anything I’ve been trained my whole life to expect from demons. It’s wonder and joy, something warmer and more dangerous than either of those. He reaches for me with open arms, and I step into them instinctively, reflexively. His hands settle at my waist as if this is the most natural thing in the world, a demon holding a slayer who saved his life after trying to kill him twice.

“I guess I’m one lucky motherfucker,” he says quietly, almost reverently, “if your forte decided to manifest when you met me.”

My heart drops, then plummets to the ground from the high it was just riding. Because he’s so very, very wrong.

Every instinct I had, every reflex carved into me by decades of training, told me I should have recognized him as an enemy immediately. Instead, my magic stalled. It waited. It chose him.

But it wasn’t the first time.

He feels the shift in me instantly, his hands tightening slightly. “What?”

I pull away before I lose my nerve.

“Mayari?”

I stare down at the map between us, at the red lines and black circles that suddenly feel like artifacts from another life. There is no careful way to say this. There is only truth, and I owe him that much.

“I realized seven days ago,” I whisper. “But I think it actually manifested ten years ago.”

He goes very still, sensing something in my tone. Eventually, he simply sits down and draws me gently into his lap, his arms wrapping around me like something precious, something breakable. “Tell me,” he murmurs.

I settle further into his body, wondering if this will be the last time. “There was a demon,” I begin, my voice trembling despite my effort to steady it. “He was powerful and old. I could feel his signature immediately. There was no question what he was.” I swallow hard. “But my magic…” My fingers curl into the fabric of Jonah’s shirt. “There was something underneath it. Something I’d never felt before.”

I close my eyes, trying to remember the sensation. “Before him, sensing a demon had always been like hearing a single, sustained note. With him, the note was still there—but something moved beneath it, irregular and discordant, like someone striking keys I hadn’t known the piano possessed.”

His arms tighten around me, just slightly.

“He barely fought back,” I continue, forcing the words out past the tightness in my throat. “And his wife and his daughter were outside my circle. Begging. On their knees.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, the memory surging forward. The way his wife had screamed his name.

No, she’d begged, slamming her hands against the barrier. You don’t understand. Please. Listen to me, please!

I hadn’t.

“I told myself hesitation was weakness,” I say, my voice tightening. “That I was losing my edge. That I was embarrassing our family.”

Jonah closes his eyes briefly.

“So I overrode it,” I finish. My voice breaks, brittle like glass, when I do. “I forced the strike.”

I still remember the resistance of his chest against the blade, the way his body disintegrated into ash before it even hit the ground, the sound that tore out of his wife’s throat as she collapsed to her knees. Their daughter, clutching her mother’s arm and screaming like the world itself had split open.