Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
I woke up with a lurch while panic clawed at me.
I scrambled out of a mountain of black silk and velvet to stop when I hit the floor of Dorian’s bedroom where Regis had been.
Right on this floor. There was no sign of blood in the dim light.
I took a second to breathe, to press my palm to the cool gray tile before I stood and looked at the bed.
Dorian was stretched out on his side of the mattress wearing black silk bottom, the magma lines in his skin a mellow glowing orange instead of the rage red.
I pressed my palm against my chest and stared at him, longing welling up and spilling over from the time I went to the club and saw him with other women.
Did he really love me? Could a demon love?
A vision of the Halloween display hit me, monsters in love, like a dark and inky Valentine’s display with a hint of fifties diner.
That’s what I wanted, a fairytale happily ever after like those fifties shows I’d watched with my foster siblings, all of us wishing we understood what that life was like.
Security. Stability. Love. And three of us had ended up monsters.
Maybe that’s what idealizing other people’s fictional lives led to. Or maybe monsters were the ideal.
I grabbed my bag and went to sit next to the waterfall while I sketched in my notebook.
This was it, the Halloween candy display that would blow everything else I’d ever done out of the water.
If I had demons working in my shop, I’d use them to make it a Halloween like no other.
Not that I hadn’t already had demons… Anyway, animatronics!
If Regis was technology, he could help make me animatronics no problem.
I was thinking a twenty-foot Frankenstein’s monster that could dispense candy samples.
When Dorian pressed a kiss to my shoulder, I stiffened up like I’d been electrocuted.
“My Queen,” he rumbled, low as he slid his hand down my Frankenstein arm with its demon claws, Tom’s stitches, and Frisco spikes to my hand. “Is that your plan for your Halloween display? Monsters in love? I’m in love with it. It’s so perfectly you. You’ve created so much love out of madness.”
I turned to raise a brow at the ridiculous demon. “Next you’re going to say that you’re in love with me.”
He drew me up and pulled me against his chest, his hands running over my skin like they belonged there, like he couldn’t help himself.
His voice was low, sweet. “You’re absolutely right.
I’m in love with you. And I’ll never stop.
You are the beating heart in my chest, the craving for sweetness on my tongue, the cherry blossoms in a dark, soulless world.
You are the queen of my heart, the love of my life, the joy of my existence.
Will you let me help you with your Halloween display? ”
Of all the things he could have said, that was the most seductive and ridiculous. I pulled his head down, fingers splayed between the spikes coming out of his back, and I kissed him.
Fire and flood. Cinnamon bears and maple syrup. And he’d saved my baby from the Zombie Queen. And he wanted to help me with my work. Was anything sweeter than my demon?
Maybe, just maybe I could trust him not to break my heart again. As long as he didn’t find out I was an angel.
The next week fell into a new normal, mornings in the shop, evenings at the den, where I spent my time working on my display, sending Regis to get everything I needed while Straldi took over bodyguard duty.
The basement became filled with prototypes that Regis found amusing.
Not that he’d mention it. He was far too civilized to mention anything so shocking as the fact that I was obsessing about the wardrobe of my animatronics mini-monsters.
Mixl wasn’t so polite.
He poked my six inch monster statue so it fell over onto the scaled layout of my candy kingdom spread over the floor.
“You have real demons who are willing to dress in ridiculous outfits for you, and some can weave the most complicated glamours I’ve ever seen, but you want a bad robot? That’s stupid.”
I picked up the little monster and placed it carefully upright on the place of honor, where my candy duchess now stood.
“My customers are human. I need there to be an element of obviously fake so that when the spotlight shines on Dorian up on the balcony with his magma chest and glowing eyes, they take it for another human-made robot, or at least a very good costume. You can only push people so far over the edge of normal before they rebel. Rebels don’t buy truffles. ”
“That’s right, little dude,” Straldi said, cutting into an apple, tentacle beard waving. “Have to keep the sheep from running. No offense,” he added to me.
Mixl shot a sideways look at me, dark eyes gleaming. “Sheep is right. Do you ever get tired of being so defenseless and weak?”
Ouch.
I stared at him, his words cutting me deep. Lucy had the whole lethal vampire thing going on, and Honey had always been an amazing fighter, but I’d always been the flaky dancer. “No, I love being defenseless and weak. Thanks for asking.”
He scowled darkly. “You don’t have to be quite so easy to kill. You could work at toughening your baby skin. Straldi said that’s possible for humans to get tougher. Or you could turn into a vampire or something.”
I gurgled a laugh. “That does sound delightful. Unfortunately, I have other things to do. Tell me more about heaven.”
“If you ever went there, you’d never leave.”
“It’s that amazing?”
He wrinkled his nose. “She wouldn’t let you leave. There’s a dungeon in the basement filled with her less stable pets.”
“Is there a key to her dungeon or are they all sealed in? Unable to die, unable to go…” I made it sound as dramatic as possible.
He rolled his eyes. “There’s one key to everything. It unlocks the front door and everything else in the place.”
“Oooh. One key to rule them all! Who has the key?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you want to know? Is this like that time when you went to talk to the White Rabbit?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I’m just wondering how Dorian freed you.”
“Everyone wonders about that.” He frowned and then smiled brightly. “The Jabberwocky has the key. He guards the front door, and the key. No one has ever defeated him. He’s a terror, all fur and teeth, so don’t think about it.” He said that last with a stern frown.
“With eyes of flame, whiffling through the tulgey woods? That one? What is it exactly?”
“Undefeatable. Also, if you actually killed the Jabberwocky, the Zombie Queen would know immediately and come back and kill you. Also, she hardly ever leaves Heaven. Also, stop thinking about it like it’s possible. It’s not.”
“Everything’s impossible until someone does it. Not that I have any intention of assaulting heaven. I mean, look at me, all soft and weak and helpless. It would be suicidal. I’m not suicidal, just traumatized.”
He stared at me with a furrowed brow. “Trauma? Like decapitated limbs?”
“Exactly like decapitated limbs only emotional. Tell me more about Heaven. It’s in a different world, so how do people get there and back? Are hell and fairyland in the same world, or different? And how can a place be heaven when it’s full of zombies?”
He blinked at me. “How do you get there? You did not just ask me that.”
“I don’t mean actually, more theoretically. Like, is there a key that unlocks a door to this other world, or do you need to fall down a hole to get there?”
“A rabbit hole?” He shook his head. “Drigo needs to chain you up.”
“I feel like you’re not supporting my intellectual curiosity.”
“It’s not intellectual if it gets you killed. This is going to get you killed.”
“Asking questions never hurt anyone.”
“Asking questions always hurts people. Don’t you know anything?
No, you don’t. Heaven is a land of immortals who never die, never sleep, just live on in one long miserable state of boredom.
The only thing other than boredom is the Queen’s wrath.
Boredom, as horrible as it is, beats the Queen’s wrath, because then you’re in pain, but also still bored. ”
“That makes no sense. I’d never be bored. There are an infinite ways to decorate a candy store. People have things to do with their lives, however long they are.”
“Sure, like how the Mad Hatter loves to make his hats. And put them on people, and then remove the hats along with the heads. He’s great fun.”
“Well, if it didn’t actually kill you to have your head removed, it probably wouldn’t bother you too much. Just a slight trauma.”
“Stupid, stupid,” Wilkie said, knocking over my mini monster with a swish of his tail.
“My queen is never stupid,” Dorian said from the top of the steps, standing there like he was looking over his kingdom. Yes, I’d have him do it just like that, wings spread, looking like a drama king. Drama king, demon king, what was the difference?
“I’m glad you think that, because the things I’m going to dress you in may strike you as slightly idiotic. There may be tights.” I gave him a wide smile and batted my lashes up at him.
He smiled in return and then launched over the balcony, swooping down to land gracefully beside me.
He bent and helped me to my feet. “And yet I remain resolute. My queen is never stupid.” He nudged Wilkie with his tail.
“Try to remember respect. One wouldn’t want to lose one’s wings just when they were starting to be useful.
” He refocused on me, eyes soulful and magnetic.
“You’ve been working too hard. Would you like to play with me? ”
I glanced at Wilkie because this wasn’t a conversation I wanted my young demon child to hear. I’d woken up with him in bed with me, but he hadn’t ever pushed me for anything more. Also, how could I think about letting him under my skin when he might leave me the second he found out I was an angel?