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“He wants you to go in alone to make sure you can, Dove.” Bastian’s quiet voice, so at odds with his hulking form, wraps around me.
And for a moment, I’m almost certain he really cares.
“Well...” I say, finally breaking the stare Bastian and I share. “We can’t all have what we want, can we?” I jam one hand in Enzo’s, the other in Bastian’s and one of them blinks us out.
Like the heir’s lair, Karloff’s is carved from the earth. The sloping walls have no windows. But this lair doesn’t have wall lighting. The only light here comes from orbs of fae light floating above.
“Ms. Collins, I hoped I’d see you enter on your own today,” Karloff says from the front of the lair.
“Yeah, well, I hoped to only see you once a day, but here I am.”
Ten chairs with attached desks line the middle of the room, and, besides the smart board and Karloff’s desk, the lair is entirely empty. Fully half of the lair is unfurnished, empty space.
I’ve often wondered if they expect far more demons to be in Blackwood U? Or if there’s another reason for such wasted space?
Before I’m even in a seat, Karloff starts in on me. “Since you did so well in arithmancy today, why don’t you stand in the back and show everyone how to form a singularity in space time and pull someone through it.”
“Excuse me?” I know what he wants, and if I could use my native power, I’d open a singularity—or a portal as was called if you weren’t a pedant—right on his big fat head.
Chapter Seventeen
As a race, demons are vile hedonists, singularly dedicated to pursuing their own pleasure and needs. They struggle to form genuine connections as all are too focused on their desirous whims.
- From Realm to Realm: The Creature Encyclopedia
I marchto the back of the room while Enzo, Bastian, and Dashel take their seats.
A shiver runs through me as a wave of energy descends all around.
“Sorry for being late, Karloff. Had to deal with a situation,” Axe says smoothly as he materializes on my right in a perfect blink.
Textbook perfect.
Show off.
He doesn’t look at me once. Just walks off toward his seat. I press my lips together, keeping the unkind words I want to say at bay.
I can’t blame this on my brain. It’s not my faulty wiring that has me wanting to call Axe a bunch of creatively rude names.Ido. Me. I want to stoop to his petty level and say something nasty.
Like a smellycarnichironewithout a birthing sac.
He wouldn’t know what I mean—carnichironeare native to Celestus—but I think he’d catch the meaning just fine.
And that reaction—hells, that I’m having a reaction at all—bothers me.
Why should I care if Axe ignores me? Aside from staying on good terms so he’ll help me, I shouldn’t feel so…
Irrationally angry.
Whatever.
He snubbed me. He’s a demon. They’re notoriously petty.
“We’re waiting Ms. Collins.”
“Right, sorry,” I say, attention back on Karloff.
“This ought to be good,” Olivia says to the blonde demon who approached me and then ran away the other week. She smiles, even laughs at Olivia’s remark. But her gaze never leaves my face. She stares at me with a kind of desperation I’ve never seen before.
