Page 39 of Eat, Slay, Love

“Mayari,” he says evenly, “may I remind you how our first meeting went?”

I fling my hands into the air. “That was different!”

“How?”

“I was wrong!” I yell.

“Mayari!” my father calls from outside. “We brought food!”

I stride up to Jonah and grab his face between my hands. “This has to start somewhere,” I whisper fiercely. “Demons can choose to do good or do harm, and my forte can sense the difference in their intent. I’m going to tell them. Today.”

He nods slowly, already inching toward the window. “That’s so wonderful. I support you. Wholeheartedly. I would simply prefer to support you from… not here.”

“Oh,” Gabriel’s voice rings through the door. “I forgot I have a spare key.”

We lock eyes.

“Shit,” we breathe.

The door flies open.

And then it is, in fact, a war zone.

16

“We’re here to celebrate your first kill in ten—” Gabriel’s voice trails off mid-sentence.

The air changes.

It isn’t subtle—it never is when Magdangal magic flares. The entryway tightens and compresses, charged and electric, like the moment before lightning strikes. The wards along the ceiling pulse awake in response to my brothers’ magic, and every hair on my body stands on end.

Jonah goes still beside me.

“Guys,” I start, hands lifted, palms open in the universal gesture of please fucking relax.

My brothers move first, fanning out in the instinctive, practiced way they’ve done a million times in alleyways and across rooftops, protecting their queen and their king.

“Mayari,” Raf says mildly, as if we’re discussing grocery lists. “Why is there a demon in your apartment?”

Jonah gives a small, awkward wave. “Hello.”

Everyone ignores him.

“And where are your pants?” Leo adds on lightly.

I look down. Must have missed those. “I need to explain something before you all lose your shit, okay?”

Andres’s expression hardens. “It doesn’t seem complicated. You’re fucking something you’ve trained your whole life to kill.”

I may as well have been slapped in the face.

I look to Gabriel, desperate. “Remember the conversation in the kitchen,” I plead. “About our magic. About how it feels different sometimes? This is proof. This is⁠—”

“Enough.” My mother’s voice detonates the room. She steps forward, emerging through the line of my brothers, and the energy in the entryway snaps to attention. “This is hesitation in its most bastard form, Mayari. This demon must be ended. Now.”

I move instinctively to stand in front of Jonah, but pause when I catch a glimpse of him. Of the tight, defensive posture he’s assumed. He’s no longer the soft, disheveled man in my bed from just a few minutes ago. He is entirely carved from stone. Cold. Demon-like. The color drains from his face. I watch emotion flit through his eyes—recognition, devastation, horror, pain, and then…

Rage.