Page 6 of Demon Demands

“Right. So Jack and I had agreed early on to have an open relationship. On this particular day, I’d brought home a female fae and was…” He cleared his throat, and I stifled a small giggle at him not wanting to explain himself.

“Well, we were having sex, waiting for Jack to come home and turn our twosome into a proper threesome. I would like to add that this was consensual; she knew he would be joining us. She’d been over a few times before, so it wasn’t unusual. Anyway. I heard the door open and thought it was Jack, but it was Sloane. She didn’t know exactly how our relationship worked and assumed I was cheating since Jack wasn’t there yet.”

I nodded at him, running my tongue along my teeth. “I’d come over to pester Jack about showing up to family dinner with our parents that coming weekend. I started to turn right back around and walk out when I heard Grim, but then I heard a female, so I went to investigate.”

I gave Grim an apologetic look. “I knew they were having threesomes, and I knew females were involved, but I didn’t hear Jack in the apartment anywhere. When I opened the door, I freaked out. That’s the simplest way to put it.”

Grim chuckled at me, picking up where I’d stopped. “What she means is she really freaked the fuck out on me. She told the fae to run, and then Lo lost it. She morphed and attacked me. To say her demon was not happy would be a massive understatement. I fought back, mostly trying to control her, and we ended up destroying the whole fucking apartment. I’ve been jumped by groups of creatures who’ve done less damage to me.”

I snorted. “To be fair, I destroyed most of the apartment with you. With you? Using you? I don’t know how exactly to phrase that, but yeah.”

“She threw me through the wall, and I landed on the couch. Snapped the base of it completely. Hurt like a motherfucker, too. Like I said earlier; you can’t kill Death, but you can make him wish he was dead.” Grim held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged.

“About that time, Jack walked in, and instead of finding me in bed with the fae, he found me bleeding on the couch with a spoon sticking out of my eye socket. Lo was raging out, throwing silverware at me as she yelled about cheating and trusting me and how pissed she was about ripping holes in her dress when her wings had snapped out.”

I shot Grim a playful smile. “I loved that dress. It was my favorite.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Not the point, Lo.”

We were both over the whole story, but it was a good distraction. It had taken Grim a few weeks to forgive me, but he had, and our friendship had grown stronger from it.

“Anyway, Jack walked in and was fucking pissed. He talked my demon down enough to let me take control again, and I felt like shit for what I’d, uhm we’d, done. My demon and me, not Grim and me. Jack was still angry, not that I blamed him, and he screamed at me for hours. He shouted the entire time we patched Grim up, and even more when I started cleaning up the mess I’d made. And then, because Jack is nothing if not thorough, he told me I couldn’t use magic to clean it up and handed me a fucking broom. What the hell was I supposed to do with that?”

Grim chortled at the disgusted face I pulled, and his laughter was contagious. “There were hardly any unmarred walls left. Water was spewing all over the place. The furniture was trashed. And while Jack made Lo clean up the mess, we sat on the floor watching as we shopped for new furniture at her expense. She had contractors out the next day to start construction, and she put us in some fancy-as-fuck hotel instead of staying at her place until it was done.”

Six sets of wide eyes stared back at Grim and me as we both smiled. It wasn’t like it happened yesterday. We were so far past the event that we could laugh about it. If Jack was here, he’d crack awful jokes through the whole story.

But Jack wasn’t here. And the story was meant to distract me, godsdammit.

Grim sighed dramatically. “The moral to this story, class, is that the King kids always get what they want. And they always avoid telling their parents, if they can.”

I scoffed at him. “That is not the moral to that story.”

“It’s a moral to several stories that you and Jack have, but fine,” he relented. “The moral to this particular story, I guess, would be that Sloane and her demon are totally different, yet one in the same. Her demon perceived me as a threat to Jack and was having none of it. She’s fucking intense, but cares deeply... sort of. I mean, she cares about certain things, but has zero regard for everything and everyone else.

“Lo was aware enough to tell the fae to run before she truly lost her fight with her demon, and afterward Lo felt horrible about what she had done. She went above and beyond to repair not only the material damage but the damage between us as well.” Grim raised a brow at me and snarked, “Is that better?”

I pursed my lips at him. “I’m still sorry about all of that. Not that saying sorry ever made it better.”

“Jack would fight you over saying that again,” Grim reminded me. “You know we both hate that. We’ve all moved past it, Lo. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you and your demon aren’t the same person. Same body, sure. But it’s not really the same at all.”

“Wait.” York shook his head, holding up a hand. “That happened while we were together?”

“Mmm, I don’t think so.” I thought about it for a minute before trying to explain. “Or maybe it did. I’m pretty sure it happened before we started dating, though. Jack had rented out the apartment that he owned, and we moved in here together. Then Grim moved in, and then they moved out shortly after. I think I’d been here like three-ish months before we started dating and you didn’t stay the night regularly until like three months after that. I don’t know for sure. It’s been a long time.”

York opened his mouth, intending to ask another question, when Papi appeared in the yard several feet from the patio. He was frazzled.

The leather messenger bag across his shoulder had shit I couldn’t even name sticking out of the top. He’d clearly been pulling at his hair, his jacket was missing, and his shirt was untucked with the sleeves rolled up.

To everyone else it probably looked like Samuel King was unorganized, but I saw it for what it was. The Second Devil of Hell was on a warpath. He was livid and worried about his son.

“You’ve told them the important rules, yes?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke, already striding to the horseshoe symbol that was left in the charred circle marring my yard. Surveying the damage Hannibal had done when he took Jack, Papi began looking for lingering magical signatures or traces.

“He left nothing,” he called over his shoulder to me, aggravation making his voice sound severe.

“I didn’t think he would,” I admitted softly, knowing that if I was on the edge of losing control, then he would be too. “Grim and I can track him, Papi. We just need to get to Dolyn. I can’t be sidetracked by politics and parties and playing the role of Devil Spawn. I need to find Jack first.”

His sigh was inaudible, but I watched his shoulders droop before they rolled back in true King fashion, sure and ready to fight. “I’ve called Lucy and Charlie already, and I asked them to meet us at Dolyn’s. We’ll head to Hell from there, running interference until you get back. Put your seal on them now, Lo. Before they walk through the portal, I’ll add mine on top. Lucy will do the same when we get to him. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to get the portal up, so mark them and call the hounds. I’ll need a boost from Cronus before I walk through.”