“No, you weren’t.”
“Okay, well, if you want me to, I’ll start calling again.”
“I’ll start answering the calls.”
“Okay.” He smiled a little. She smiled back.
A moment later, he turned away with a bashful look. “I’m just going to go outside. I can’t concentrate enough to teleport with you looking at me like that.”
Jacqui watched him go until she lost sight of him through the windows. She stood silently in the empty studio, feeling more alone than ever.
But there was a spark of hope in her chest for the first time in months.
14
SALT IN THE WOUND
MEPH WANDERED TO THE CLOSEST PARK TOIRIS’Sapartment and sat on an ice-crusted swing. It was cold as shit and late, and there was no one around. No one in their right mind hung out in a park when it was twenty below.
But Meph wasn’t in his right mind, so it was all good.
He felt like a dumb-fuck pansy for how he’d acted at Iris’s, and his skin crawled when he thought about it. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, freaking out because of his emotions and, worse, telling her about them after.
Why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut? It wasn’t like he’d expected Iris to return his feelings once he admitted them. It wasn’t like he wanted her to, right?
He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t understand his own emotions because he had existed as an unfeeling void of darkness for most of his life. It was only after he’d met Raum that he’d started trying to be anything different.
He still remembered the night he’d begged Raum for help. He’d fucked with the human he’d been sent to torture so badly that the guy went insane. He’d met his new friend in an alehouse to celebrate a job well done, and the two of them had gotten shitfaced.
Under the influence, it was like a dam broke inside them. Raum had told him how he’d just lost three centuries of memory as heavenly punishment for a crime he no longer remembered. And Meph... All of a sudden, he’d been begging Raum to save his ass, to help him so he never had to go back to Valefor’s lair, so he never again had to lose himself to the abyss of bottomless hunger that was all he’d ever known.
And Raum had agreed.
Meph didn’t know what Raum had been doing on Earth at that time and probably never would—Raum sure couldn’t tell him—but his new friend had dropped everything in a heartbeat to help a relative stranger. It was pretty much the most unde-monic thing Meph had ever heard of, and they’d been bonded ever since.
A hundred years or so later, they’d joined forces with Ash and Bel. Meph hadn’t been able to hold onto his human form indefinitely back then. He would snap under pressure and be forced to shift every so often. Every time, it was a nightmare getting him to shift back. His demon never wanted to relinquish control.
Bel had gotten accustomed to hellfire roasting him within an inch of his life to manage it. Finally, they’d discovered a way to bind his demon permanently with the tattoo, and his days of being fried were over.
And now, here he was. Every day Meph spent on Earth, he felt less and less like his old self, and that constantly nagging beast caged inside him seemed further and further from the surface. He felt balanced. In control of himself. Even... content.
Or hehadfelt that way.
Now, he just felt like an idiot. He’d been fucking a human woman—witch, whatever—for a couple of weeks, and he was ready to confess his love like some pathetic mortal? Had she bewitched him with her magic blue hair?
Worse, he was certain now he hadn’t been able to let other females touch him before because he’d been looking for an emotional connection. That was why he’d gotten panicky interacting with random women. Because there were nofeelingsinvolved.
Sad. Embarrassing.
He’d thought he felt that connection with Iris, which was why he’d never had a problem being intimate with her. Except he’d imagined it. It had all been one-sided.
Even more sad and embarrassing.
No wonder she didn’t want him back. No wonder the idea of a relationship with him repulsed her. He repulsed himself too. He was fucking weak and good for nothing except violence and killing and—
Put it in the art, Jacqui’s voice said inside his head. She was pointing a finger and looking at him with that slightly crazed, passionate look she got when she talked about this stuff.Don’t analyze, don’t dwell, just put it in the art.
Meph jumped off the swing. Fuck sitting here feeling sorry for himself. He was going to do what he always did recently to get his mind off his, well, mind.
