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On the thirty-ninth floor, I find Naamah deep in conversation with a couple of the accountants, and I wait patiently for her to finish. The conversation is getting intense. I see her shoulders tighten, and I imagine her morphing into a demon like Lucifer and punching her subordinates through a wall. Just as I’m thinking that, she looks over her shoulder and flashes me a grin that’s a complete contrast to her previous expression.
“I’ll be right with you,” she calls over, her voice dripping with exasperation.
“No worries,” I tell her. Her assistant—I can’t remember his name—is hovering nervously nearby with a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Oh she’s pissed,” he breathes.
I look at him questioningly. “She doesn’t take that out on you, does she?”
He gives a vigorous shake of his head. “No, no, not at all. She’s just—” He drops his voice to a volume barely louder than a sigh. “She’s so hot when she’s angry.”
It takes me by surprise, and I laugh out loud, drawing attention to myself without meaning to. I cover my mouth and throw half-apologetic glances around. I guess crushing on the boss is a company-wide problem.
The noise seems to have disrupted Naamah’s tense conversation. The tall, thin accountant she’s been staring down is looking at his tablet now, grumbling. She leaves him with a mumbled threat, then withers the other two office workers with a look. When she’s finished terrifying the life out of them, she sashays lightly over to me like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Flash drive?” she asks.
“Yes, please.”
It appears in her hand—I assume from somewhere on her person, but I’m beginning to question those assumptions. Thanking her, I leave in a hurry so her assistant can appropriately melt into a puddle of love-struck pheromones without an audience.
I have the elevator to myself the entire ride down, which is a nice reprieve from the stares and whispers.
The sun kisses my face as I step out onto the sidewalk, heading toward the bank on Naamah’s behalf. It’s a beautiful day, I’m wanted by the most powerful supernatural man on Earth, and there isn’t a single thing that can bring me down from this cloud I’m floating on.
There’s a man leaning against the bus stop, smoking. I barely notice him at first, but he notices me and straightens. The movement catches my attention, and I freeze, crashing back to Earth so hard that my bones vibrate.
Or maybe I’m just already shaking in anger.
“Jason.”
The word leaves my lips like a curse, but it doesn’t seem to deter him one bit. He swaggers over to me with a leering grin, looking me up and down before licking his bottom lip. He’s got a stain on his teeth and a bruise on his arm which tells me he’s been using yet again, although at least his clothes are clean. He must not be too deep yet. The last time he went balls to the wall with his vices, he walked around looking like he’d been run over by thefuck-ittruck.
“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie,” he says. He smacks his lips. “Damn, girl, you clean up nice.”
“One, it’s Sophia, dickweed. Two, what the fuck are you doing here? You nearly got my sister killed! You nearly gotmekilled! You were supposed to stay the fuck away from me.”
“Supposed to? According to who? You? What’s the matter, Soph? Did you miss mothering me? Smothering me? Did you miss driving me so crazy that the only way I could drown you out was to get high? You’re over here acting all high and mighty when this is just as much your fault as mine.”
“My fault?Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You infantilized me,” he says with a superior sniff. “You treated me like I was broken. And because I wanted to please you—people pleasing is my fatal flaw, you know—Ibecamebroken.”
I’m shaking all the way down to my toes.
“I see,” I say, the words sticking in my throat like nails. “You’ve been going to therapy, I take it?”
His face splits in a toothy grin. “Fucking right I’ve been going to therapy. Those guys are suckers. You can tell them anything, and all they can do is quietly piss themselves while they validate your feelings. Best shit ever, swear to God. My own captive audience, paid for by the state of California.”
“You’re a dick.”
A flicker of rage crosses his face, twisting into disgust. He leans forward, getting in my face, “Then do what you do best, bitch. Choke on it.”
Disgusted, I sidestep him and start back toward the bank, shaking with fury.
“I don’t know why you’re taking it out on me,” he says loudly to my back. “It’s your own fucking fault your weak ass sister got hurt.”
Just keep walking…
