He switched back to human form immediately.
The man blinked at him, mouth gaping open. He looked around nervously, perhaps hoping for someone else to confirm what he’d just seen, but no one else was watching them. Chaos had been too quick for that.
“Careful who you scold, little man,” Chaos purred, even though technically the man was much bigger than him. Chaos was using poetic license, okay? The man was small inspirit. “You never know whose mind is going to go next.”
The man scurried off with a few more muttered curses.
What a silly bean.
Ah, well.Chaos twirled, blending into the flow of the sidewalk. It was time to return to the apartment.
If Cooper was still asleep, perhaps Chaos would try nibbling at one of those elegant fingers after all. He’d be very careful though.
It wouldn’t do to damage his future mate.
5
Cooper
Cooper woke up on the floor. Again.
At least this time, he was covered by a blanket. And was that a…book under his head? How the hell had he gotten a blanket and a book pillow?
Slowly, with every muscle heavy and leaden, Cooper used his hands to sit himself up. By the light coming through the window, he’d guess it was early evening. He craned his neck, peering into every corner, but he didn’t see any signs of his hallucination from before.
So that was it—it was all over? Just a super temporary psychotic break, nothing to worry about?
He should probably still get checked out. For all he knew, there was a gas leak in his apartment, and this was just a symptom of it. But when he tried searching for his phone so he could call someone—nothing.
Where the hell was his phone?
Cooper stood carefully and checked around his computer, only to see another message from RedRabbit.
R:I’m waiting.
Cooper wrinkled his nose as he stared at the message. The guy was getting pushy, and Cooper didn’t have time at the moment for a throwaway hacker project. He was going insane, for one. He’d lost his phone, for two. And he hadn’t finished either of Ivan’s jobs, for three.
The phone thing would have to be taken care of. Ivan had been shot at, and Sergei was on the loose—Cooper needed to be available if anyone called, if only to be told of his own impending doom. It also meant none of Ivan’s gofers were going to be free for something as unimportant as getting Cooper a new phone.
So he’d need to go get one himself. He could stop at an urgent care clinic along the way, see what they had to say about his…extremely vivid break with reality. After the day he’d had, he would have preferred to stay in the comfort of his own apartment, but he’d already gone outside into the world once today, and all that had happened was a shooting and a visit from an imaginary demon. What was one more errand?
At least Cooper’s normal underlying buzz of anxiety about leaving the house seemed kind of insignificant compared to the bigger issues at hand. He should maybe find his newfound levity alarming, but maybe it was a side effect of the psychosis.
After making sure he still had his wallet and keys, Cooper headed down to the ground floor.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, he heard a commotion coming from the apartment entrance around the corner.
The sound of raised voices had Cooper’s hackles rising, along with a looming sense of foreboding. Because Cooper recognized that voice. His mind had madeupthat voice.
Except how could it all have been in his head, when the voice was talking to the guard at the front desk, who was very much a real person?
Shit.
“Iamallowed,” Cooper heard his imaginary demon say crossly. “I was expressly summoned here. Into this apartment.”
“You’re not on Cooper Zaitsev’s list of guests,” Sam, one of the front desk guards, rebutted. “And I can’t get him on the phone to verify.”
“That’s because Istolehis phone.”
