Chapter 6
six
. . .
The club seemed much larger during the day when it wasn’t filled with monsters. It was so quiet that I could hear the rustle of paper as a guy in a fedora counted money behind the bar.
I stood there for another beat, looking around for Dorian, but there was no sign of him.
Was he really a demon? Was he really okay with me paying him back in a civilized way?
Didn’t demons have to make examples of thieves?
I knew next to nothing about him, about his world.
But here I was, once again out of my safe haven, like a raw nerve being lowered into a boiling stew.
“Drigo hasn’t come in yet,” someone said directly behind me.
I whirled around and there, right against the metal door was the demon, the little one who was probably too old to be my Wilkie.
“Oh.” I stared at him, trying to gauge by his features, his red-orange eyes, his long dark lashes, his coppery skin, something that was too much like Dorian to belong to anyone else’s child, but it was impossible to tell.
I hadn’t known Dorian at the age of twelve.
Because that would be at least four hundred years ago. Gurgle.
“You’re staring at me,” he said with a slight smile. “But not at my wings.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I took a step back and dropped my eyes to his feet, which were bare, with clawed toes. I’d kept my babies nails all clipped and tidy. Were those Wilkie’s feet? I stared for a second before I realized and brought my gaze back up to his face.
He was smiling. “Don’t worry about it. I like it when beautiful women can’t help but stare at me.” He winked.
I blinked at him. Um. Was it worse that a demon with clawed toes was hitting on me or a that a person who was too young for me and may or may not be my child was hitting on me?
He laughed outright, threw his head back, and it was like the few times I’d made Dorian really laugh. That laugh was a ringer. “I’m sorry to tease, but you are too fun to play with. Everyone can tell which demon in the place you’re hot for.”
“I’m not hot. What?” I blinked at him while I tried to figure out what to say without things getting too awkward.
Things were already too awkward. Why didn’t I just tell Dorian that I’d had his baby and ask him to help me find him?
Because I couldn’t have more things that tied me to him.
He was a demon, and more than that, he’d already broken my heart and betrayed me.
I couldn’t survive another broken heart.
He was good with humans, good at manipulating us.
Hopefully I didn’t see him while I worked here.
If I did see him, hopefully he didn’t see me.
The young demon slung an arm over my shoulder and tugged me towards the stairs.
Was this the part where he accidentally ripped out my spine?
“You’re clearly interested in Drigo, or you wouldn’t have come here, particularly with that obvious lie that you were engaged to someone else.
It was just what he needed to send him over the edge.
Did you see his spikes? Of course you did.
How could you possibly miss them? The Zombie Queen’s going to freak out when she hears about them. "
So much in there to panic about. I was supposed to be interested in his boss, my ex-boss?
Not that he wasn’t my boss again. Either way, no, I wasn’t.
I was a human. Humans didn’t get to be interested in demons, not when they were all public about it.
"Dori…I mean Drigo saved you from the Zombie Queen.
Are the two of you related?" There. Normal question anyone would ask even if they weren’t looking for their half-grown demon baby.
Sorry, normal? What even was normal about any part of this? Whatever.
He laughed again, light but with an undercurrent of something tight. “He’s never had any children, but we are the same type, so we’re probably related somehow. It’s this way to the kitchen. So, how do you know the Alpha’s mate and the Grand Master’s bride?”
I stared at him and almost tripped on a step, but his tail snaked around my waist to stabilize me. That was unbelievably weird. Could he rip out my spine with his tail? “Who?”
“Honey and Lucy are what you called them.” His eyes glinted and I knew this is why he was talking to me, because of them, because they’d come here and he was trying to gauge the threat. Interesting.
“Honey is a werewolf,” I said slowly.
His flashing smile was disorienting. “Indeed.”
“They spent some time at the same foster home I lived in.”
“You don’t have parents?”
“I did. Of course, everyone has parents, but they died when I was very young, so I was adopted by an American couple. Then they died a short time after that.” I swallowed hard.
My earliest memories had not been happy.
Probably better than this kid, raised by the Zombie Queen.
Were there actual, literal zombies? Could I go through my life without seeing any? I’d really really like to do that.
“You aren’t from this country originally? What are you?”
“Oh, I was born Russian. I don’t remember much about my early years. What about you? What country are you from?”
We reached the floor and he dropped his arm, spinning around to smile at me while he walked backwards through the tables like he had eyes on the back of his head.
“I’m from heaven. My mother was an angel.
” His eyes danced with mockery, because heaven and hell were jokes to him.
Silly humans to not understand real angels and demons.
“You remember your mother?” I asked carefully.
He shrugged. “Of course. Demons always remember. I watched her die.”
I tripped on nothing and fell into a table, bruising my knee badly before I slid down to the floor. He’d watched his own mother die. He wasn’t my Wilkie? But that laugh. He was a tailed and winged creature from another world, but not my winged creature. He’d had to watch his own mother be killed?
“Are you okay?” he asked, crouching over me. “You’re crying. Did you break something? I know that humans are delicate, but to lose a fight with a chair…”
I blinked away my tears and beamed maniacally at this person I didn’t know, who wasn’t my baby. Hope crashing and burning. Like usual. “I’m fine. I’m so great.” I wasn’t fine. Or great. I needed to curl up in a ball right there on the floor and die.
He gave me a skeptical look and then frowned in intense concentration before he launched up and away, disappearing from sight.
A thud quickly followed, and there was Dorian, frowning down at me, wings outstretched.
So big, powerful, terrifying. Those spikes were still there, and the tail was ten feet long stretched out behind him.
Ten feet. He was almost that tall. Was he?
I was on the floor so maybe he only seemed that big.
He put a large hand out to me and I automatically let him pull me to my feet.
I stared at that red-skinned hand. He really was a demon.
Whatever. The world had already ended years ago. Nothing else mattered.
“What happened?” he asked as I pulled my hand out of his and tried not to make it weird.
I couldn’t let myself accept comfort or help from him, not when I already knew what monster he was under the demon skin.
The world had not ended. I had to keep going in case my baby was still out there somewhere, even when I didn’t feel like it. Especially when I didn’t feel like it.
“Nothing. I tripped on a chair. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and neither was the other demon, but he didn’t fall. I’m sorry to make a mess,” I added, slowly getting the chair back in its place.
He cleared his throat and folded his wings back so he looked slightly less imposing.
He had a shirt on but not a jacket. Maybe he’d rip it off again.
“Straldi said that you have papers for me to look over. You’re apparently a very competent businesswoman.
” Like that mattered in this world. In any world.
I shook my head. This was not the time for self-pity or fatalism.
I was dealing with demons. They would take advantage of my emotions as surely as they breathed.
I mean, they did breathe, right? Either way, I had to focus and be my own best advocate.
I took a deep breath and met his gaze levelly.
They sure did glow. “That’s right. I have a payment plan that I hope is agreeable to you.
If you need higher payments, I have some leeway while maintaining my business, but not a lot.
” Who cared? The young demon was just another dead end.
And yet, if I was going to work for Dorian—no I should think of him as Drigo—I had to be on my guard.
“Let’s look at them.”
I gave him a cool nod and turned towards the stairs leading up, but Dorian caught my hand and swung me back around to face him so that we were nose to nose.
He was hunched over because he was so much taller than me, so massive and fantastical and warm.
And I had no idea what I was doing there anymore.
I’d never find my baby. I sniffed and tried to look like all my hopes hadn’t been crushed.
He growled, examining my face, “You haven’t had lunch. You’ll show me your papers in the kitchen while you eat.”
“That’s not necessary. You could take the papers and look them over while I go out and get lunch.
I don’t expect anything here to be suitable for humans.
” I sounded like I was used to the idea of human not being the default.
I wasn’t. Not even a little bit. Now I was wondering what all the other monsters ate.
How many ate human? Did they cook human first or just chomp it raw?
I needed to leave. Then I could curl up in a ball and cry.
For years. Every time I got my hopes up, only to have them crushed, I had a hard time coming out of the horrible depression that I could feel myself spiraling into.