Page 47 of Eat, Slay, Love

Andres exhales slowly. Raf looks away. Leo’s face has gone tight.

“We didn’t know,” Gabriel says, voice lanced with pain.

“No,” I say. “We didn’t.” I swipe at my eyes. “But what matters now is what you choose to do after you’ve accepted what you’ve done.”

I take a deep, cleansing breath, then make a decision. I cross the street before any of them can stop me.

The closer I get to the townhouse, the more I feel it. It’s a ward humming beneath the brick and mortar, calibrated specifically against something like me. It repels gently, insistently, as if it recognizes the signature of the slayer who shattered this family. Tasha learned to protect her home from my kind, and the realization lands heavier than any accusation.

I step back, walk to the nearest tree, and reach into the hidden pocket of my catsuit. The letters are creased from years of being folded and unfolded. Apologies written and rewritten, confessions I never had the courage to deliver.

I spear them into the bark with the tip of my dagger.

I look up at the house one last time, memorizing the windows lit warm against the dark.

Then I turn and walk back to my brothers, something settling into place inside me.

“Gabriel and Andres,” I say, and my voice is steady now, sharp. “Go get everything from my apartment. All the prep. Every Baybayin design. Every powder.”

They nod without argument.

“Leo. Raf. Call our generation from the borough families. Not the parents. Us.”

They exchange a glance and then nod.

“Where are you going?” Leo asks.

“Where you all will be meeting me,” I say. “To the soup kitchen. To Jonah. I’m going now, just in case.” It’s not as if Belvedere sent us an invitation with a detailed schedule outlining soul sucking cocktail hour followed by a sit-down dinner of corpse with blood pairing.

I pat my catsuit pockets. “Hey, someone give me some salt and more weapons and shit. This is my spare catsuit.”

My brothers load me up with more weapons and wards than any reasonable person should be able to carry without tipping sideways. Gabriel watches me adjust the straps, eyes narrowing slightly like he’s trying to solve a math problem. “What happened to ‘single for life’?” he asks. “Last month you declared the only reliable companions in this world were Batibat and a well-aged Roquefort.”

I adjust the strap digging into my shoulder and glance up at him. “I found a demon who feeds me all sorts of French cheese,” I say calmly. “So now, he’s mine.”

Whether I’m still his or not.

18

Ifeel it before I see it—something older, heavier, pressing down on the air itself. By the time I round the corner into the alley behind the soup kitchen, the brick walls are trembling, mortar shedding in fine, chalky dust that floats like ash.

It’s already begun.

Belvedere stands at the center of the alley as if the world arranged itself around him. Tall, immaculate, his dark suit torn at one sleeve but still draped over him like ceremony. The shattered floodlights crunch beneath his polished shoes. The air distorts around his body, bending inward toward him, drawn by the gravity of whatever he is.

Jonah is ten feet away, barely upright. Blood pours from a gash that runs from collarbone to rib, soaking the front of his sweatshirt and dripping steadily onto the pavement. His horns curve from his temples, sharp and gleaming, and his claws hang at his sides, slick with blackened demon blood. His chest rises and falls too fast, each breath forced through clenched teeth.

Fuck.

Belvedere turns his head as I step forward, like he sensed me long before I arrived. His mouth curves faintly. “Well,” he says mildly. “She arrives to slay some demons.”

“Just one,” I fire back. “I’m saving my own.” Hell yeah—she's back!

Jonah's head snaps toward me, fear slicing clean through the fury on his face. “Mayari, no⁠—”

But I don’t hear the rest because something strange happens. Belvedere’s gaze drifts between us, almost absentmindedly at first, as though he's cataloging, gauging our magic. Suddenly, it stills. The smile slips from his face, replaced by something entirely unexpected.

Surprise.