Suyin chuckled. “Because you always seem to forget again as soon as you meet the next hot asshole, am I right?”
Iris grinned and elbowed her friend. “What’s with the roast tonight, bitch? It’s my birthday. Give me a break.”
Suyin just laughed at her. She wasn’t known for her empathy.
Iris tried one more sip of the stale beer, nearly gagged, and then gave up and set the drink on the table beside her.
Lily’s friends, Eva and Asmodeus—or “Ash,” as she’d been careful to call him tonight—had volunteered to host the party in their apartment since the wards on Iris’s and Lily’s respective places would light up the second the demons walked in the door, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out how that would go down in a room full of witches. Ash wasn’t concerned about having witches in his home because, apparently, they weren’t a “real threat.” Iris had taken offense to that, but for Lily’s sake, she kept her mouth shut.
Ash and Eva’s open-concept flat was the perfect space for a party. Their grand piano had been covered by a protective cloth and rolled to the side to make a dance floor, and colorful LED bulbs replaced the regular ones in the lamps. Eva had set up her DJ booth on a table in the far corner, and heavy house beats were currently pumping at high volume. Apparently, the old brick building was well insulated, and Eva had assured them it wouldn’t bother the neighbors.
It was possibly the coolest house party Iris had ever been to, and she’d been to a lot. But it still couldn’t fix her sour mood.
“So what’s the deal with them?” Suyin asked, eyes still on Lily and Mist. “How did they meet? And where did he find his friends, is what I want to know, because damn. I’ve never seen a better-looking group of men in my life.”
Iris grimaced. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to have this stupid party. If Suyin knew who those “friends” really were, well... flirting would be the last thing on her mind.
Suyin was the leader of the Montreal coven and a badass blood-born witch. She had no idea Lily’s friends were demons, and Iris couldn’t tell her either. There was no way Suyin would believe the whole “there are good demons” thing. Iris hated keeping secrets from her best friend, but in this case, it was necessary.
“And who’s the fuckboy with the tats?” Suyin asked.
Iris cleared her throat. “Who?”
“Who?” Suyin scoffed. “Yeah, right. You’ve been eyeballing him all night.”
Iris sputtered. “I have not—And how do you know he’s a fuckboy?”
“Look at him. He’s a fuckboy.”
Iris did look. She’d been looking all night, in fact, just as Suyin had said. If she was honest with herself, he was the real reason for the scowl on her face.
But god, he was fine. Just the way his baggy T-shirt clung to his bulky shoulders turned her on. The pristine Jordans on his feet, sweatpants bunched behind the tongues, turned her on. And when he dragged his tattooed fingers through his short black hair and his forearm flexed, all the dark designs on his skin flexing with it... well, that sure as hell turned her on too.
The tats went up his neck, under his hairline, and bled over onto the left side of his face under his eye and over his eyebrow. He had rings in his lower lip, the center of his nose, and up the sides of his ears.
He was insanely, unspeakably hot. He made all Iris’s previous boyfriends look like trolls compared to his godlike hotness.
He was also a demon. A motherfucking, goddamndemon.D-E-M-O-N.
He wasn’t just any old demon either. Mephistopheles was one of the most infamous, feared creatures of Hell, if the legends were anything to go by. So what if he and his brothers had escaped the underworld because they didn’t want to be evil anymore? It didn’t change what he was, and it certainly didn’t make him a good person.
If Iris’s previous boyfriends had been jerks, well, they had nothing on him. Meph was the king of jerks. Duke of the douchebags. Father of all fuckboys. There were so many red flags flying around him, he might as well have been marching in a Canada Day parade.
Iris had learned her lesson about assholes, and she knew better than to fall for the false charms of a creature from Hell. He may have been hot, but she wasn’t touching him with a ten-foot pole.
“So, who is he?”
“Toxic,” she replied darkly. “He’s toxic, and I’m staying the hell away from him.”
“Tell that to your ovaries,” Suyin retorted, and Iris snorted derisively.
This damn party was going to be the death of her. Since she and Lily had rescued Mist from Hell six months ago, Iris had done everything in her power to avoid Meph and his demon brothers. Accepting their presence in her life felt too much like a betrayal to the memory of her parents, who had given their lives to protect her and Lily from their kind.
Iris also wasn’t ready to face her recent feelings of inadequacy, brought about by Lily’s newfound connection with her magic. Her sister, who’d rejected everything about who she was for years, had suddenly become twice the witch that Iris was, when Iris had been the one studying relentlessly since childhood.
And what did she have to show for it? Nothing except crippling self-doubt and a gaping hole in her chest where her sense of purpose had once lived.
So, no, she wasn’t in the mood to party.
