Surrounded by creatures who terrified me, I opened my mouth and no words came out. Only a faint croak. My throat was aching from all the screaming, but mostly I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. What did they want with me? Why was I locked in here?
“How’s your head feeling?” Bennett asked, softening his words.
I hadn’t recognized his voice at first because it was so different from the snarl he’d used when I’d caught him fucking the pixie. Two different sides of him. The beast and the man. It was a small comfort that the pixie didn’t look uncomfortable in his presence; the encounter had likely been consensual. “Fine,” I whispered, forcing my throat to work. “Better than it should be feeling. Didn’t I drop like a rock when I fainted?”
“Abraxas caught you before you hit the ground. Your neck snapped to the side pretty roughly, though.”
He gestured to the snake man, and I nodded hesitantly in thanks. Instead of pure black, his eyes were a vibrant red with a black slit of a pupil. Closer to what I would expect snake eyes to look like.
“So, which one of us was the most terrifying?” Kirin asked, crossing one leg over the other with a smirk, like this was some kind of game.
“Kirin, get that flirtatious tone out of your voice. You’re going to scare her,” Bennett said firmly.
“Fine. Less flirtatiously, which one of us was the most terrifying?”
“That question is irrelevant,” Bennett said.
“Irrelevant or not, I’m curious about the answer,” the pixie chimed in.
Bennett sighed. He must be exasperated for ninety per cent of his life with these men. The casual banter had me relaxing into the sofa cushions a bit, adrenaline dissipating. If they were going to attack me, they would have done it already. Or, they were lulling me into a false sense of security to get information out of me first. Though, I had no valuable information. I knew the least about this situation.
“The ghost,” I answered before an argument had time to start.
Five sets of eyes turned to stare at me, eyebrows scrunching together in confusion. “You came face to face with Abraxas right after a disrupted nap, andZanis the one you’re terrified of? Fuck, what about me? I’m scarier than the do-gooder ghost,” Kirin said, half offended and half bewildered.
“You want to fuck her and you also want her to fear you?” the pixie asked sarcastically. “Zan would’ve been my guess too. She screamed bloody murder.”
“Why Zan? He’s the nicest one of us,” Bennett asked.
I swallowed, my throat dry and body starting to shiver. Without the adrenaline, the cold was getting to me. A broken window in the far corner of the living room let a breeze through. My pants being damp and sticky with my blood and sweat didn’t help. Abraxas moved before I’d figured out how to answer, and I tensed up all over again. Silently, he slithered over to a sideboard on one edge of the room, pulling out a blanket.
Then he slithered back over, and I couldn’t stop myself from watching every movement. He was so graceful, but the amount of muscles he must have in his tail to be able to move… I knew there was a reason I’d always found snakes kind of creepy. Because those tails were capable of wrapping around you and squeezing so hard your internal organs burst.
Pushing the thought away, I accepted the blanket when he offered it to me. He was careful to ensure our fingers didn’t touch. The blanket across my lap helped to ward off the chill. “She was cold,” Abraxas said to the group, settling in where he’d been leaning before.
Kirin grunted at the exchange and relaxed back into the couch, while the pixie — whose name I still didn’t know — rolled his eyes. Bennett had placed his hands on his temples and was massaging aggressively. Zan anxiously hovered in the distant background, and I was sure he was the only one still interested in the previous topic of conversation.
I didn’t consider talking about my trauma as a wonderful use of time, but the ghost was so… sensitive. Nervous. He looked like a naughty kitten, worried about having done something wrong. Nothing like the vengeful one I’d had contact with in the past, and it wasn’t his fault I was terrified of him.
“I was attacked by a ghost a couple of years ago. Almost died,” I said, watching Zan specifically. He backed up farther, cringing. “Since then, they’ve been my worst fear.”
“Good job, Zan, wake her up with her worst fear hovering over her,” the pixie said, laughing in a snarky way that bothered me.
Zan shrank in on himself, continuing to move farther away. Any more backing up and he would sink right through the wall and out of the room. “It’s not his fault,” I said, trying to avoid shooting an annoyed look in the pixie’s direction.
When he’d said pixies and demons weren’t well liked, he’d been right. Both were known for being difficult to deal with, quick to anger, and manipulative. If he was some odd and impossible combination of the two, he had to be worse than either race individually. He lifted an eyebrow at my defence of the ghost. “Zan managed to charm you with his cute, shy ghost blush. Impressive, considering you were screaming over the mere sight of him about an hour ago.”
“There’s no need to start shit, Waylon,” Bennett said. There was a hint of a smile on his lips. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, and we have actual relevant questions for you.”
“Why don’t you start?” I offered.
If I started asking all the questions running around in my head, I wouldn’t stop. I pulled the blanket tighter around me and snuggled back into the couch. A change of clothes would be the next step after this inquisition. “Well, how did you find Hadley House? The entire property is spelled so humans walk right past it.”
Hadley… House? Uncle Felix had never met me, not once. Why was he going around naming graveyard mansions after me? I chewed on my bottom lip, unsure if I should be worried about giving them my name. What had they heard about me?
“I’m not technically a human,” I said, ignoring the name of the house for a moment. “I’m a witch.”
Waylon lifted an eyebrow, hopping from his perch on Bennett’s lap to come closer to me. I avoided direct eye contact, but didn’t flinch at the closeness. Despite not liking him much so far, they’d been right about him being the least outwardly intimidating. He could kill me easily, but didn’t trigger my fight-or-flight response.
