Chapter 48
Lucifer
Growling woke me from the deep slumber I’d fallen into with Nelly soft and warm in my arms. I reached for him to pull him back snug against my chest, but all I found were cold sheets. I blinked my eyes open to a dark room and an empty bed.
“Nelly?”
I sat up and turned to the source of the noise. Soul was sitting in front of the bed, growling expectantly and drooling copiously.
I looked around and realized what was amiss: firstly, one of the water bottles I’d brought up was gone.
Secondly, so were Nelly’s clothes, and I knew Trony wouldn’t have come in here to take them for laundry while Nelly and I were still busy.
Thirdly, I’d closed the door when I’d come upstairs earlier so I’d be undisturbed while I took Nelly. It was ajar now.
I let my magic flow outward to confirm that it was really only Soul and me in the room. If Nelly had simply decided to go pee on his own, I’d let myself be swayed into forgiveness. If he asked nicely enough.
But no. Just me and the drooling hellpoodle.
“That…necromancer.” I imbued the word with all the force of far more florid curses.
Nelly had left, again, except this time, he’d escaped from right under my nose. From out of my arms, to be precise, and I hadn’t noticed. The cursed poodle had noticed, and judging by the coolness of the sheets, it had taken her some time to alert me.
I got to my feet and pulled on the clothes I’d stripped out of earlier.
“He’s getting chained to the bed this time around, and that’s final,” I told the poodle, who’d stopped growling and now watched me with expectant interest. I looked at her. “You never needed a leash to obey, but one single human necromancer is more difficult than a cursed poodle. Unbelievable.”
I stomped out of the room, glancing at the food I’d left out as I went.
“He didn’t even eat any of the apple slices. Can you believe that?”
Soul huffed in response, then walked ahead of me, clearly wanting me to follow, so I did. I took the stairs two at a time to keep up with her, then let her lead me to the kitchen. I saw well enough in the dark so I didn’t bother with the lights.
Nelly’s wallet and phone were gone from the kitchen island where Trony had left them for him, and instead, my willful boyfriend had left an empty water bottle there. At least he’d hydrated.
“Unbelievable.” I went to the water bottle. “Oh. Oh.”
There was a bill underneath it. I pulled it out with two fingers and looked at it.
The coffee. My necromancer was attempting to repay me for the coffee I’d bought him to soothe his contrary mood. This was like the pizza money, but worse. I’d get payback for this, and he’d not be in a mood to go anywhere after. Ideally, his legs wouldn’t work too well after anyway.
My jaw tense, I headed out to the hallway, Soul at my heels. There, I grabbed a pair of shoes from the closet by the front door. Soul just stood there and looked at the door, letting out a growl much deeper than you’d expect from a canine her size.
“Did you pick up his scent?”
She barked once.
“Good poodle. Good hellpoodle. Let’s head to the garage, take a car.”
As Soul and I made our way through the house, I wondered why Nelly had left, and in the middle of the night at that. It made no sense.
Of course, Nelly’s way of thinking didn’t always make sense.
He’d liked everything I’d done to him, he’d asked for everything I’d given, and he’d not told me to stop.
The man who got riled at the drop of a pin had managed to not say anything acerbic in my bed nor in my arms. He’d come completely undone while I’d made love to him, so clearly, it wasn’t the sex that had made him flee. That was a relief.
Granted, I’d enjoyed holding and having him too much to bother cleaning either of us up after, but he’d given no indication at all of having an issue with that at the time.
And even if my small neglect had been enough to upset him, it was an issue he could’ve bitched about in the morning, at length, and I would’ve happily borne it.
Me failing to wipe him down was no reason to leave our bed, especially not when he still had my cum inside of him.
Yet, if the Dragon Mother found out about this, I was going to be in trouble.
Perhaps she’d understand that Nelly had…issues. I really would’ve liked to have come across him with a nice dose of amnesia, but I’d just have to take him the way he was, even if the Dragon Mother forced me to labor for the pleasure of keeping my lover.
A nice set of chains would help fix his attitude problems when it came to sneaking out of my arms the next time he found himself there.
I’d spell them to be soft against his skin but weighty enough that he wouldn’t forget they were there.
If I hadn’t been so angry while walking toward the stairs that led to the garage, I’d have texted Trony to buy me some right then and there.
Soul, good hellpoodle that she was shaping up to be, followed at my heels.
As I grabbed the keys to the hybrid from the row of hooks in the number-locked locker in the garage, I considered teleporting.
It would get me to Nelly faster, even if he wouldn’t much like the experience of me taking him back with magic.
When I’d teleported with him after he’d gotten intoxicated the other day, I’d felt his magic pull against mine with unusual focus for a human.
If he was awake and contrite when I showed up, he might be able to throw my teleportation off before I got to address his behavior in the way it deserved, so the car it was.
Keys in hand, I walked to the hybrid and pulled on the tether that bound Nelly to me—the debt he owed for my looking after Soul. I accidentally double clicked on the fob when I got no sense of where he was, none at all. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth.
I hissed. Soul growled.
“Fucking angel balls.”
I tried again. Nothing. I tried sensing his necromancy. Again, nothing. That was very much not right. I clicked the fob again, opened the door, and let Soul jump in ahead of me.
The poodle moved to the passenger seat, and I started the car and accelerated as much as the space allowed. Outside, the gravel crunched under the wheels while I ground my teeth.
“You,” I said to the poodle, “show me you really want to be a hellhound.” I rolled her window down. “Find Nelly.”
Obediently, Soul put her head out the window and sniffed the air.
I drove down Milton. Nelly couldn’t have gone into the woods, because the magic laid out in the very root channels of the trees would have turned him back around.
The street was the only way in or out of my territory. So much better than an ordinary fence.
At the crossroads, Soul barked, and I stopped the car, reached over and opened her door. She ran to the side of the road, sniffed there, grumbled, and looked at me before she jumped back in.
If I understood her right, Nelly had waited there. Waiting to flag down a car wouldn’t have gotten him much farther, as my magic made people avoid the crossroads.
Which meant…he had called someone? With the phone he’d taken.
He didn’t have many friends that I was aware of.
The only people in his life as far as I could tell were work colleagues, none of them people he seemed to ever see outside of work, other than that man he’d been trying to hook up with in the restaurant.
Now, Nelly was stubborn, but surely he wouldn’t be that naive. That man had not been right. Nelly was a necromancer. I could see why he wouldn’t mind something so tainted if he was horny, but surely…
I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I already knew he couldn’t be left to his own devices.
“I’ll take responsibility for him.” There was nothing else I could do at this stage.
Soul huffed out a bark as if she approved. Then she looked left, so I went that way. Where did he want to go at this time of the night? He didn’t like spending time in cemeteries, so a nightly outing made no sense at all.
Soul kept sniffing the air, and for a hellhound not raised for this kind of tracking work, she was doing a great job indicating which way I needed to go.
She got me to a traffic light, where I parked to let her out of the car so she could sniff the area.
Another motorist dared honk at me, but I looked at him, flooding his heart with terror.
He reversed, floored the accelerator, and tore off the other way.
Soul eventually walked back to me and whined.
“Lost the trail? Damn it.”
I tried to reach for the magic of the debt bond again, and again there was nothing. I tried finding Nelly’s necromancer magic, that very faint, slightly sour scent of him. Again, there was nothing, which meant…
He’d been taken behind some well-made wards.
I knew he’d been looking into the deaths of at least two other magic users earlier in the day, and now I couldn’t find him.
I didn’t like any of this, not one little bit.
In all my time knowing him, he’d never vanished behind wards like this, and it was unsettling.
My anger evaporated, and concern flooded in. I recalled how he’d once walked into a shopping mall with nothing but a pair of abominable socks instead of shoes.
“He needs me.”
Soul made a gurgling sound before whining again.
Nelly barely had a handle on footwear, let alone whatever he was trying to do right now. We had to find him.