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Bianca looked at her and drawled, “Right.” Then she curled her ruby-painted mouth into her secret weapon. “It’s only that Dee was worried about you before she left, and I promised I would check in with you.” She leaned closer, enveloping Eddie in a cloud of juniper. “I know things are not always”—she grimaced—“easy here. What with all the personalities. And I want you to know that if anything is worrying you.” She touched Eddie’s shoulder and comforting warmth radiated from the contact. “Anything at all. I’m here for you.”
“Thanks?” Eddie didn’t think they were that kind of friends, and Bianca had been the one to get Macbeth vomiting its curse all over her theatre. She had to wonder how well Dee really knew Bianca and how she would feel about her once Eddie caught up with her grandmother. “But I really am fine.” She flashed her, admittedly less effective, smile. “Just busy.”
“Hello, Bianca.” Matt scuttled closer. “Have you got a minute? I wanted to talk to you about my role in the play.”
Eddie took the gap and slipped through the door. Hurrying down the corridor, she almost made it to the basement door when Sophia materialized in front of her. “Hello.” The woman was even more stunning up close. There was not one visible pore on her skin, and her blue eyes hit Eddie like an arc light. “It’s Edme, isn’t it?”
She hated that name. “Yes, but everyone calls me Eddie.”
“Eddie.” Sophia made her name sound oddly exotic. “It like it; it suits you.”
“Thanks?” Man, was she ever gathering new friends this morning. “Can I help you, Sophia?” And she really did want to help Sophia. Something about the woman made you want to move mountains on her behalf.
“Oh, no.” Sophia laughed like the chiming of crystal bells. “You looked a bit harried, and I wanted to make sure there was nothing I could do to help you.” Her eyes grew bluer and brighter. “Is there anything I can help you with, Eddie? Anything at all.”
Eddie opened her mouth and the truth damn near came pouring out. She wanted to tell Sophia all about the unstable hell gate, the hoppers and the toad, the hounds and Yesterday, and most of all, about the nearly dead hell prince bleeding out on the basement floor. “No.” She forced the word past her jaw. “Everything is A-okay.”
Chapter
Ten
Much sweating and cursing, and creative use of a scene moving dolly got Shade out of the basement and into Dee’s room. She couldn’t leave the man…hell prince…being down there on the cold basement floor while he was so badly injured. Well, she could have, but she was a nice person. At least, that was what she told herself. It had nothing to do with the sheer mind-boggling beauty of the man…hell prince—screw it. Until another option presented itself, Shade was getting the pronouns him/he and identifying as a man.
If the fucker ever woke up, he could correct her. Fucker seemed to work pretty well as a moniker too. It had taken several warm towels to clean away the blood, and every bandage in the first aid box to deal with his various wounds.
The hounds had insisted on following her up to Dee’s room and had even put their muscular necks against the dolly to help heave him up the stairs. At least they were now not howling the theatre down.
They were kind of sweet, curled up on either side of the bed like massive, furry, fanged, fatal bookends. Realizing she hadn’t eaten all day, she popped into the kitchen for a depressing inventory of the sixty’s fridge that neither Eddie nor Dee had the heart to toss.
Her options were suspiciously old cold cuts, a dried-out block of cheddar, or limp celery. She grabbed her trusty bag of popcorn, tossed some oil into a pot and cranked up the heat on her stove. Today she was really regretting her elitism about microwave popcorn.
The hounds watched her, red eyes glowing faintly through Dee’s bedroom doorway. Now that she wasn’t afraid they were going to tear her apart and gobble her parts, she found their eyes a rather pretty shade of cherry. They hadn’t eaten either. “Are you guys hungry?”
Eddie winced inwardly. Asking them that might be a question she regretted, because if the answer came back as the souls of the living, or the flesh off your bones, she was the only feeding option.
One of them yawned and provided a fang-size reminder of why she shouldn’t have asked.
Shade looked like he was sleeping peacefully now. Was he like other supernatural creatures she’d read about or seen on television that could heal themselves?
“Yesterday?” The little yellow bastard had disappeared around about the time the hard work of heaving a six four, muscular man up the stairs had begun. She added a bit more volume. “Yesterday!”
He appeared with suspicious speed. “What?”
“Where have you been?”
His huge eyes grew shifty. “I was here.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, I—”
Hound two growled and raised his head to glare at Yesterday.
“Fine.” Yesterday pouted. “I am not good at lifting and carrying.”
Hound one added a growl to two’s.
“All right.” Yesterday huffed. “He’s a hell prince, and they’re scary. Demons get dead when hell princes get angry.”
