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“Why are you helping us, anyway? Just last night you were out hunting for a new hot bod to wear, I have a hard time believing you just switched sides like that.” I snapped my fingers.
“It’s not a switch, really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to go back to hell. I was looking for a new body to stay here. And I’m going to be honest, even though most demons love to talk about Hell on Earth, the idea of it happening isn’t all that appealing to me. I like Earth just the way it is. The food in incredible and the TV shows are awesome, and frankly the idea of Hell two-point-oh replacing marathons of Orange is the New Black doesn’t sound that nice to me.”
“You’re helping us so you can keeping binge-watching Netflix and eating at In-N-Out?”
“More or less.”
“You know, that might be the most convincing thing you’ve said to me since we met.”
“It’s probably the most honest thing I’ve said since we met. I lied earlier. I have heard of you, you know.”
“Aww, you pretended you hadn’t. Trying to keep my ego in check?” I turned towards him and had to repress a giggle to see him crammed so tightly into the front seat of my car. It might have been a big SUV under normal circumstances, but this hardly qualified as normal circumstances.
“Yes, my kind know about you. The woman who killed Mayhew. The woman who had the Oracle at her beck and call. The one who died but was given another chance at life. It’s the sort of thing that gets around.”
“I wouldn’t say I had Calliope at my beck and call.”
Calliope, better known as the Oracle, was a half-fairy, half-god who had a side hustle where she provided blood to newborn vampires to keep them from attacking humans. Now, more than ever, business was booming.
She could also, as the name suggested, see your future.
She’d seen my death.
Now that I was human, I didn’t see Cal at all. Her realm was only accessible to those of the supernatural persuasion. If I tried to get in, I would be torn to pieces in a pink oblivion between realities. Not a pretty way to go.
When I was in New York, though, I made a point of going to the Starbucks that served as the entrance to her otherworldly home. I liked to imagine some day I might walk through the door and see her again.
“You’re alive today, aren’t you? Because of her.”
How I was brought back to life was an interesting thing since I was dead for most of it and didn’t really know what the whole process had entailed. Even after the fact, neither Calliope or Holden had told me much.
I was guessing something had gone down I might not approve of.
Which probably meant someone had to die so I could live, and they didn’t want to put that on me. I tried not to think about it too much, because the more effort I made to fill in the blanks the more everyone seemed to balk at helping me do just that.
Desmond hadn’t been there at the time—werewolves couldn’t control their urge to shift when they were in Calliope’s realm—so he didn’t have any answers for me. I hoped he would be honest with me if he knew. That whole being-my-husband thing meant he should be able to tell me everything, right?
I liked to think so.
Anyway, it was weird to know that demons had some insider awareness on all of that. That either meant the event itself was pretty famous, or that someone in the demon realm had something to do with it, and man I wasn’t sure I was prepared to think about the repercussions of it being the latter.
“Are people scared of me?” I changed the topic.
“Scared might be a stretch. Wary?”
“I’ll take it, I guess. You know, you sounded like a bad old timey horror movie villain back at the hotel, but now you’ve stopped using the throwback language. What’s up with that?”
“Would you find a demon as scary if it said hey bro, I’m here to snack on your soul or if it said I have come from the depths of Hell to consume that which gives you your mortal vigor?”
“Touché.” I sat back in my seat in time to see two figures in long black robes slink into the shadows and vanish into the alley. A moment later, three more followed.
Bingo.
I sank lower behind the steering wheel out of instinct, which was absurd because we were parked out of sight in the shadows, and if anyone did look over here, there would be no way to hide the presence of a certain hulking demon riding shotgun.
