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“I’m serious. I mean it,” Greiko whisper-hisses as he returns. “Enough with the southern belle bit already. You look like the couch surfer they’d cast in an all-dude’s version of Gone With The Wind.”
“What a long-winded way to tell me you’re a cruel person,” I reply, picking off an imaginary piece of lint from my deep green Armani three-piece. I snatch every chance I can to wear this out with the swampster. Next to his pea-green hue, I look incredible. Even more incredible.
“I still think ‘bodies in the basement’ when I look at you,” he teases. I think he's joking, anyway. Maybe. Who cares?
I know he means my resting bitch face again. It’s what the humans and other supernaturals Topside call no expression. But in the underworld, one’s ability to remain aloof and unreadable is the greatest of survival tools. A demon king and his army can’t know how his adversary will come for his lands and indentured souls – not if he can’t read his poker face.
And for a demon, if you’re not thriving, you’re not surviving. Any king worth his weight in centuries would never reveal precious information just to look approachable. But then again, I’m in the human realm, not the one beneath it.
Since bribing my way through Briarwood’s illegal open portal, a temporary, mage-controlled gateway connecting the underworld to Topside, I’ve channeled my relentless need to win into a burgeoning investment portfolio along with my and Greiko’s businesses.
“Still dead,” he whispers.
I fix my face as we get nearer to the front of the buffet line. “How about now?”
My first year Topside was spent in Greiko’s swamp, where the creature was under strict instructions to keep me under lockand key as I acclimated to the world above. While I doubt the hippie coalition of mages would risk jail time if Ihadbroken our arrangement – namely, not possessing humans or binding their spirits to serve me in the underworld – I haven’t once been tempted.
Why hide inside a human when I’m not being hunted? Why broker a deal with one when I have no lands of my own for them to worship me? A stupid endeavor for the final son of a defeated king.
Greiko might call my reasons wise as well selfish. He likes humans. But what he doesn’t get is so do I, though the rich history of my culture leads some to believe the opposite. Which is insane to me, given all the good we do.
In our heyday, before the spellcasters closed the portals, demonkind was responsible for some of the greatest inventions in history. And this includes indoor plumbing. And deep dish pizza. How would humans have survived a world of magic without the upper hand from my kind?
“I’m less offended.” He taps the slick green arm beneath his jacket, where I know the last of his poison oak rash is.
“Stop scratching.” I promised his pain-in-the-ass pixie wife, Cyella, I wouldn’t let him scratch the rest of it while she was away.
And considering how he got the rash is more or less my fault, and the rabies he caught mere seconds after, it’s the least I can do.
The narrow and dangerously bumpy road that led to our fishing cabin shouldn’t have been taken at the speed of thirty-nine miles an hour. Not on an ancient golf cart. I can easily admit this in hindsight, especially since, in our haste to Briarwood Falls through the back roads, I forgot Greiko’s meds.
A swamp monster with serious allergies isn’t something you want to see when the cotton trees start blowing. That goesdouble for one who falls off a cart and onto a family of badgers frothing at the mouth.
“I will when it doesn’t itch anymore,” he retorts.
“At least the rabies are gone.” A witch doctor cleared it up for a paltry fee, though Cyella hardly cares that I flew the swampster to the medicine man myself. Is that something an asshole demon does?
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that,” Greiko snaps. I forget he’s sensitive about his shoddy immune system.
Oh, yeah. “So where’s Cyella?”
“Dunno,” he replies. “Work conference somewhere. She was vague.”
We get to the front of the line, where one of the adolescent food servers, a pixie boy, shoots us a near-toothless grin. He holds up a paper plate in one hand and a spoon in the other.
“One scoop or two, mister?” The boy gestures to the steaming mashed potatoes in a tray before him.
I don’t want to. But I’m a good demon. A nice guy. So I nod toward the food.
“One and two-thirds scoop. Placed separately on each side of the paper plate,” I reply, wincing internally as I realize my mistake. And the odd look Greiko’s giving me. “Please,” I add. “One and two-thirds scoops placed separately on each side of the paper plate, please.”
It’s the only way I can pretend to have eaten some without actually eating any. Or what Greiko likes to call, ‘being rude.’ In the four years that I’ve been Topside, I’ve only come across one other dinner guest who can hide their unwanted meal as well as me. Or what Greiko likes to call ‘being rude and playing with food.’
“He’s just teasing. That means he wants a lot, kiddo,” Greiko says, holding two of his webbed fingers up. “This many scoops. Same for me.”
The boy frowns at Greiko, then does what I ask.
“He can count, you know?” a high-pitched voice says from behind us. A name tag on the speaker's bright red dress declares her name is Lucy.“This way, the auction is about to start. Follow the hostess,” she finishes, even though we’re not done being served.
