Her heart felt like it would burst, and she smiled up at him. He said the sweetest things sometimes without realizing it, and she loved him all the more for it.
Yes, love. She was in love with a demon.So sue me.
And maybe it would take Ash a while to admit to feeling actuallovehimself, but she knew he felt the same about her in his own way.
“Want to see my bedroom?” she blurted, grinning mischievously. She was suddenly in the mood to demonstrate her affection.
His lips curved. “Do I need to answer that?”
“Nope.” She grabbed his hand again. “Come on.”
He opened his mouth to reply and then froze. His smile dropped, his body became rigid with tension.
“Wh—?”
He jerked to the side and ducked just in time to dodge a huge sword swinging through the air, aiming right where his neck had been seconds before.
Eva screamed.
“Through here,” Jacqui said nervously, ignoring the part of her that wanted to run screaming from the demon beside her. Since telling Belial about that grimoire, the tension had been pouring off him in waves, and her instincts were screamingDANGER.
She fought them with logic—he was angry about the book and the risk it presented, not at her. He was learning to fight his urges and control his temper. He was trying his best, and he really did seem like a nice guy. Remembering their earlier friendly conversation helped her calm down a little more.
“Meph, what did I tell you about touching shit?” Raum hissed.
Jacqui looked back and had to smile. Meph had picked up the vulture’s head from Dan’s sculpture and was holding it up to the neck as if trying to work out how to attach it.
“If you can figure out a way to make that head stay on, be my guest. Dan’s been trying for ages, and no matter what he does, it keeps falling off. He’s ready to scrap the whole project.” The vulture was huge, nearly six feet tall, and constructed out of scraps of metal from old machinery.
Meph studied the head in his hands and then looked up at Jacqui with a grin. “Cool.”
Belial looked skyward. “Meph—”
“It’s okay,” Jacqui said. “I really don’t mind. I’m not kidding about Dan being ready to throw it away, and I like that he’s interested.”
“All right, but don’t be surprised if he breaks stuff. Because he will break stuff.”
“I’ll take the risk. The artist in me can’t stand to discourage someone showing interest in creativity.”
Raum cocked his head and blinked his gold eyes. “You’re an interesting human.”
“Thanks?”
She chuckled, wondering how any of them got by without giving away the fact that they weren’t human themselves. It seemed to her they would stand out like sore thumbs, making comments like that.
“Follow me, you two, and I’ll show you that book.”
She ushered Raum and Belial into Dan’s office while Meph played with the vulture, pointing them to the grimoire on the desk. Dan’s office was a mess—one of the reasons they liked to have their own private workspaces. Jacqui couldn’t concentrate amidst clutter, while Dan always got stressed when she moved anything, claiming it disrupted his creative flow.
“Oh, shit,” Raum breathed as soon as he saw the old book.
Belial bent over the grimoire and carefully flipped through the worn pages. Raum hovered beside him while Jacqui watched from across the desk.
Belial flipped to the bookmarked page, and they all stared at it.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Well, at least it’s not your summoning seal,” Raum muttered, fingering Dan’s hand drawn sketches. “These are just modified tracking sigils.”
