Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Beck
Lunch came after a pit stop for shoes—blindingly white trainers with arch support—and now we were strolling down Las Vegas Boulevard with Zephyr in wide-eyed awe.
His red hair dusted his shoulders with each buoyant step as he marveled over every billboard, fountain, and tourist trap like they were treasures. As though he weren’t the most stunning thing on display.
Sunlight bounced off glass towers and chrome signage, casting panes of bright and dark across the pavement, and when I paused to really see it, everything seemed softer somehow.
The Strip had transformed from a carnival of excess to the place I used to love.
I couldn’t remember the last time the city had felt this appealing, like something I might still want.
Like something I hadn’t already used up.
I’d stripped down to just my button-up, then rolled up the sleeves in a futile attempt to outmatch the desert heat.
Zephyr had done the same with his cropped sweatshirt, the sleeves scrunched to his elbows as he pranced along in skintight leggings that clung to every curve.
He worked a pina colada-flavored lollipop around his mouth, the one he’d picked up when we stopped for bottled water.
The water was long gone, but the sucker remained. It clicked against his teeth, making it impossible not to stare at the way his lips moved around the stick.
I wasn’t the only person who noticed him. Most people hurried past, dipping into casinos or street-side shops, too focused on their own business to care. But a few slowed. A few looked. We made an odd pair, and I felt the sudden, stupid urge to reach for his hand.
But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was afraid. Afraid of looking foolish. Of being outmaneuvered by this stunning, unreadable creature. Or worse, of not being worthy of the affection he wore so openly on his face.
He was so young and full of wonder, and I was… changed. Different from the way I’d been before Hell spat me out.
“You’re new in town.” My statement signaled the end of a long stint of silence.
Zephyr’s gaze drifted toward an advertisement for the Museum of Illusions ahead on the left. “Um, yeah.”
“How long?” I asked.
He plucked the sucker from his mouth and held it out, glossy and gleaming in the sun. “Couple of months.”
“Months?” I echoed. “And before that?”
“Hell.” The lollipop slid back between his lips, and I swallowed hard.
Judging by his succinct answers, my choice of topic for small talk was poor. But Colette had dominated the lunch hour, sharing madcap tales about everything from her revolutionary days to romps in what was now known as the Wild West.
Seeing them together brought a strange sort of comfort.
Colette was my closest and most constant companion.
Our arrangement was unusual for a demon and his hellhound; Hell operated on a hierarchy I’d never fully bought into.
Given my prideful inclinations, it would’ve been easy to look down on her.
But any trace of superiority vanished the first time she saved my life.
Zephyr, for his part, was fascinated by her. So captivated, in fact, that I’d felt a twinge of jealousy. That, more than anything, was what drove me to whisk him away—for a little while, at least. I wanted him to myself.
I didn’t know much about him yet. And maybe this line of questioning wasn’t the best way to get there, but now that I’d started, it felt too awkward to stop.
“What about before that?” I tried. “When you were alive?”
He scrubbed his hand down his arm and mumbled so quietly it was a struggle to hear him over the bustle of traffic. “I don’t remember.”
Ruling out his past left only the present to discuss, and I didn’t care to hear about his nights spent entertaining other men.
My visits to the Dollhouse met more than just my physical desires.
They soothed something possessive in me too.
If I was there, watching, waiting to take Zephyr to the limo and have him to myself the way I did now, then no one else could.
It was a small assurance, but one I’d come to rely on.
I didn’t want the illusion of exclusivity tainted by tales of his other lovers and fans.
Fortunately, Zephyr didn’t leave me to come up with another icebreaker.
“Were you ever alive?” He tipped his head toward me.
I smiled. “Not as a human, no. But I’ve been here since the city was founded. Before that, Colette and I spent some time in California. Goldrush territory.”
I had a few stories about that if he cared to hear them. I might not have been as lively a narrator as Colette, but I would gladly take the chance to captivate him the way she had.
“Would you ever go back?” he asked before I could begin.
“To California?”
“To Hell.”
He said it in that same soft voice, gaze gone distant. He remembered something, all right, and it felt like a crime that what lingered was fire and torment, not whatever scraps of joy he might’ve known in life.
There was talent in him. Skill too. Things that didn’t come from nowhere. He was more than Maslow’s possession. More than a pretty face dangled in front of a crowd. I didn’t know what, exactly. But I wanted to. I wanted to see him—really see him—if only so he might look back and see me too.
Aside from Colette, there wasn’t a soul on this plane who’d call me more than an acquaintance.
Well, maybe one. Stefano Rossetti walked the Earth again.
He’d left a void in me I’d spent decades guarding.
I’d never tried to fill it. Not because it didn’t ache, but because I was a coward.
I was afraid that if I examined the damage too closely, I’d find it wasn’t a crack; it was a chasm wide enough to swallow me whole.
But Zephyr had asked about Hell. And frankly, that was easier to talk about than the angel who once loved me.
I gazed down the sidewalk at the sea of people while pondering how to explain. “I don’t fit there anymore,” I settled to say. “The space I left closed behind me.”
“What things happened?” he asked.
A rueful smile twisted my lips. “Things older than you.”
“Things you don’t want to talk about.” He plucked out his sucker and waved it at me, so quick with the comeback that it put me on my heels. I’d forgotten how direct he could be, a quality often diminished by his relentless hunger.
“People I don’t want to talk about,” I clarified.
A tourist group barreled past, too busy snapping photos on bulky cameras to notice Zephyr and me. Snagging him by the waist, I pulled him out of their path, then left my hand coiled around his hip. Heat bloomed everywhere we touched, but I didn’t push him away.
Instead, I leaned in, putting my mouth close to his ear and whispering, “And why talk about him when I have such a beauty on my arm?” Zephyr’s cheeks flamed as I straightened then added, “This is a rare treat for me. I don’t get out much, and I’ve been recently informed that my life is dull.”
He laughed while staying tucked in the crook of my shoulder. After a few more steps, he gestured to the cityscape that boxed us in on every side.
“How can life be dull when you’re surrounded by all this?”
A sigh escaped me as I surveyed the too-familiar street. “That remains a mystery.”
Silence resumed as we carried on, dodging sightseers and vendors hawking souvenirs, when a flash of movement caught Zephyr’s eye. Street magician.
I clocked the setup instantly. Close-up tricks, a portable speaker playing tinny jazz, and a crowd corralled in a loose semicircle. Nothing I hadn’t seen a thousand times.
I veered left to avoid it, but Zephyr stopped short.
The magician wore suspenders and a checkered vest, and he was currently wrist-deep in some guy’s fedora, pretending to fish around inside. With an exaggerated flourish, he yanked out a playing card and held it aloft like he’d just drawn the damn sword from the stone.
“Ooh, a show!” Zephyr chirped, pulling free of me to inch closer to the performance in progress.
The magician returned the card to his deck, then held it aloft. “Ladies and gents! My next trick requires a volunteer. Preferably someone with excellent taste and dazzling style…” He scanned the gathering, then locked onto Zephyr. “What about you, gorgeous? Don’t be shy.”
Zephyr gave me a quick, excited look. “Can I?”
“Do you need permission?” I asked dryly, but I couldn’t stop the smile tugging at my mouth.
He bounded forward and assumed his position at the magician’s side, attentive and eager. Somehow, he’d managed to find a spotlight out here in the open, and he basked in the glow of delight while the magician handed him a fan of cards.
“Pick one, but don’t show it to me. You can show your tall, brooding boyfriend over there if you want.” He nodded in my direction.
Zephyr laughed, a little flustered, then drew a card. “Oh, he’s not my boyfriend.”
The magician threw a wink my way. “Maybe not yet.”
The trick was simple, textbook misdirection and muscle memory, but Zephyr was spellbound. He gasped when the card vanished from his hand, yelped when it reappeared tucked behind his elbow, and applauded when the magician followed it up by pulling a quarter from behind his ear.
“You’ve got good energy,” the magician said, patting Zephyr’s shoulder. “People like you make the magic work better.”
Zephyr beamed at the praise. It made me think of how he shrank from Maslow’s cutting words, his inner light dimming with every slur and scornful glance. Why have such a vibrant thing only to snuff it out? Why diminish what could be so spectacular?
Hadn’t Colette accused me of the same?
Keeping my relationship with Zephyr small so I could feel large?
The magician took a theatrical bow, and the crowd clapped. While Zephyr stood aside, examining the quarter as though it had secrets to reveal, I stepped in and slipped a twenty into the magician’s palm. The performer’s eyes flicked to mine, surprised, then grateful.