Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELLISON
“I don’t need a babysitter any longer. Once you drop me off, go home,” I demand as Asmodeus drives me toward my house. Since my car had to be sent off to be fixed up, Valerie had someone bring us a different vehicle that Asmodeus is currently driving.
“Someone just set loose a whole army of villains on us, and you think it was a coincidence? Come on, please, you’re a smart man, are you not?”
I choose to ignore that. “Wait… where did you get the gun back there? They took all of your guns.”
“This one can’t be identified by a metal detector.” He pets it and then pets his ferret. “What happened back there?”
“Back where?”
“In the bathroom.”
I hesitate, not too fond of the idea of telling him any of it. “I was dealing with the trauma of becoming an accomplice in the removal of a mind-controlling criminal from a secure facility and placing him right in the middle of our headquarters.”
“No, no, no. Your face looks like this when rules are being broken,” he says as he scrunches up his nose and bares his teeth. It makes my scowl deepen.
Asmodeus looks away from the road to nod at me. “Yeah! Like how your face currently looks but with more teeth.”
“I do not look like that,” I snarl.
“That’s why I know it wasn’t about breaking rules.”
“I’m going to break something and it’s not going to be rules.”
“Kinky.”
“You think we could swap you for the con man villain prisoner? Why don’t you go live under Valerie’s watchful eye and I will take Nolan? He’s handsome too.”
His head snaps around to face me. “After I confessed my lust toward you, you’re ready to move on so swiftly?”
“You did no such thing,” I say, positive that it’d be easier to have a conversation with that ferret than this man.
My phone beeps, and I lift it up only to see I have a message from my mother. My finger hovers over it but before I can open it up and read it, Asmodeus whips the car into a drive-through.
“I am very peckish. Our dinner was oddly short,” he says.
“It was,” I agree, since I think I got a grand total of one bite before everything went to hell.
Asmodeus goes into the drive-through and orders himself something before turning to me. I give him my order and pull out my credit card to pay. He sets his hand on mine.
“Dearie, no. Let your husband pay,” he says as he drives up to the window and pulls out a card.
“I’m in purgatory,” I decide.
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me. We need pet names. Cute ones, like how August and Landon are always calling each other ‘hon’ and sugary things like that. How about you call me Lord of Darkness and I’ll call you Lord of Suits!”
“Are… you…” I take a deep breath, “calling either of those names ‘cute pet names’?” All I feel is confusion. “And to add to that… we aren’t dating!”
“We aren’t?” he asks, sounding shocked.
I stare at him. “At what point have I agreed to date you?”
Asmodeus beams at me, enjoying his life of being a little shit. He accepts the bag of food from the employee before pulling into a parking spot so we can eat in the car. Likely so he can stare at me while he harasses me since driving and eating adds some difficulty to it.
“Say ‘Thank you, My Lord of Darkness,’ and I’ll feed you. I think adding ‘my’ to it makes it even cuter.”
“Well, I guess starvation is in my future.”
“No! My Lord of Suits, your husband has braved the deepest and darkest pits of hell to acquire the coin to buy this fancy feast for you,” he says as he pulls out my burger and unwraps it enough that the top is exposed so he can try to feed it to me.
“I’m going to sit in the back of the car and enjoy my food, but before I go, I will put an illusion up here that you can play with instead.”
“Ooh, twice the fun. So… serious question.”
I take the burger, not looking forward to another question about my episode in the bathroom.
“Have you ever had sex where your illusions joined in? I wouldn’t mind being spit-roasted by two Lords of Suits, if you get my drift.”
I nearly choke on my first bite. “If I get your drift? How much clearer could that be?!”
Asmodeus smiles, pleased with himself. This man is going to be the absolute death of me. What the fuck. What the fuck?
“I was going to compliment you on your skills earlier today, and instead, I’ve just been met with your delusion! No, I’m not… spi… doing that to you!”
He’s still beaming. “You think my skills are delectable.”
“Definitely not the word I would have used. And I regret even thinking about complimenting you. What if we try eating in silence?”
“I just… I don’t think there is a world in which that would work, even if I begged my demons for their assistance,” he says as he bites into a fry while giving me such a ridiculous look.
How could I ever have found myself even remotely interested in this man?
He’s irritating and out of control and is going to be the death of me.
But he also makes me forget… makes me feel like there’s more to me than a man who has destroyed everything. Who has ruined so many lives. Who is spiraling out of control.
“Ooh, I got a surprise onion ring,” Asmodeus exclaims as he pulls it out of the container. He takes my hand, and I assume he’s giving me the onion ring to eat until he slides it onto my ring finger. “Until death do us part, eh?”
I bite into it and quickly chew it off. “Glad that’s over with.”
“It’s fine,” he says, shifting in his seat so he’s facing me. He gives the ferret a piece of his fry and the monster consumes it swiftly. “I can see that thread of fate twirled around your greasy finger that is connected to mine.”
I ignore him, positive that if I do so, I might be able to survive this, but it is Asmodeus I’m dealing with. The man refuses to adhere to any rules that should exist.
He has such a pleasant smile on his face while he leans his head against the door. “I love this. I love all of this so much. I’ve never been so happy in my life.”
I watch him closely as he flashes his smile at me. I want to ask him why he can’t sleep, then, but I don’t want to destroy that smile. Instead, I stuff my face with my burger and pretend that everything is perfectly fine.
We pull into the driveway of my house, and I head inside, but I don’t get far before Asmodeus slides in front of me and presses his sheathed knife against my mother’s throat.
“Ellison, it looks like Lucifer let herself in. Should I exorcise her?” He makes the sign of the cross and mimes throwing holy water at her while my mother scowls.
“Why is he in your house?” she asks.
“I swear we already explained this,” I respond. “Asmodeus, go take a shower or whatever.”
“Fine, fine, fine,” he says as he twirls his knife before putting it away. “Just don’t forget that I can shoot farther than the human eye can see.”
I watch Asmodeus go up the stairs before disappearing into his room, then turn to my mother. “If I wanted to see you, I would have replied to your text. What do you want?”
She slams some photographs against my chest. I lift them up and see a picture of a hollow-eyed teenager staring back at me. It takes longer than I wish to admit for me to realize that the teenager is Asmodeus.
“A detective became quite invested in this… organization,” she says. “He spent years gathering information on a group of killers that man belongs to.”
I flip through the photographs and look down at images of dead people… so many dead. “What are these?”
“The detective could never get evidence because they cleaned up their kills perfectly—that is, until the day one of their own slaughtered them all and left their bodies to rot,” she says. “That is the man you’re letting in your house.”
I stare at the bloodshed before placing the picture of Asmodeus on top. “You might be trying to use this to scare me off, but I already knew this.”
Mother snatches it and then shoves a photograph at me of a dead teenager whose eyes are missing. “What about this girl, Ellison? You still think this is okay? You think letting him in your house is okay? It’s not like this happened twenty years ago. This happened six years ago.”
I immediately push it away. “Why do you care? You’ve never cared about anything in my life, so why do you care about this?”
“He is a psychopathic murderer, and this is who that cursed superhero organization sends to protect you?”
“You act like I’m a good fucking person myself. Have you not hated me my whole life for what I’ve done?” I ask.
“You make it hard to love you.”
“Then get the fuck out of my house!”
“I will expose him. I will show the world what Superheroes United has brought into their lives, has paraded before the public—”
Anger rips through me to the point where I’m afraid I can’t control it, but I manage to tamp it down at the very last second. “If you expose these photographs, I will never speak to you again. You will have no hope of me continuing the business or ever being in your life, do you understand?”
She shoves the photographs at me again. “You just can’t stop hurting me, can you?”
“I don’t think I can,” I say as she rushes out.
The photographs fall to the ground, fluttering around everywhere.
I start to walk away from them before I decide that I don’t want Asmodeus to see them.
Hastily, I gather them up, but as I’m picking up the final one, the one of a younger Asmodeus, I realize that it’s not vibrant blue eyes staring back at me but brown ones.
Brown eyes that seem to have no life left in them.
Does it have something to do with his power that they’re now such a vibrant blue?
I glance up at the room Asmodeus disappeared into. What secrets does he hide from me? How can I blame him when my own secrets hold me prisoner?
I don’t want him to find them in the trash, so I carry them up to my room and hide them with the plan to throw them out when I can. Then I turn to Asmodeus’s room, afraid he heard what she was saying.
My hand hovers, hesitating, because what exactly am I supposed to say?
Then I think about how he never hesitated to come to my aid earlier today. So I let my hand fall and knock on the door.
“Asmodeus.”
Silence.
“How’s this work? ‘I’m going to beat down this door if you don’t answer.’”
The silence continues.
I push the door open but he’s nowhere to be seen and Pocket Lint is curled up, sleeping on his bed. The door to the bathroom is open, so I step inside but he’s not there. I send my illusions out, but he’s not even perched on the roof like he normally would be.
Instead, he’s nowhere to be seen, and neither phone call nor text gets through to him.
Is he gone?
No… there’s no way Asmodeus would leave me unwatched… no… he’s hiding from me.