Chapter 5
Malachi
“Little summoner,” I say, sprawled face-down across her plush mattress as I comb through the clutter in front of me, my heels kicked up in the air.
“I feel I must offer a formal apology. Earlier, I referred to you as a gerbil. I realize now that was uncalled for. Because if your sister is the alternative to you, I will gladly accept a lifetime of your petulance.” I let out a long sigh, resting my chin on my hands.
“I mean, yap, yap, fucking yap. Saints below—I thought she’d never shut up. ”
When I’m met with nothing but silence, I look over my shoulder, glancing toward the doorway. Eden is frozen there, hand white-knuckled on the doorknob. Her skin is a horrific pallor of grey. Or green. Or some disgusting mix of the two.
“Oh for Satan’s sake,” I groan. “What is it now? You successfully hid me away. Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”
“Get off my bed,” she whispers, gaze fixed on the center of the mattress.
I rest my chin in the crook of my arm and flash her a grin. “Oh, you’re getting far too bossy. No. I shall not be getting up.”
Beside my hip, the House-Beast lets out a low, vibrating purr, kneading her claws into the duvet.
“See?” I say, a slow grin spreading across my face. “The cat wants me right here. She has much better taste than you.”
Eden’s whole body seems to tremble. “I told you... I told you not to touch my things.”
I look down at the sealed pouch I’d found in her nightstand, and tut. “But these aren’t your things, are they? Unless you lied to me and your name is actually Matthew Fallon?”
The scattered belongings of the man she tried to summon make something like disappointment curdle in my chest.
PATIENT NAME: MATTHEW FALLON
DOB: 30 March 1989
STATUS: (DOA)
HOSPITAL: St. Brigid’s
COMMENTS: Held for collection by next of kin.
It’s a pathetic hoard. There’s a cracked leather wallet, a set of car keys, a watch with a shattered face, and a phone so thoroughly obliterated the glass has burst outward.
I snort as I flip the wallet open with my thumb, peering at the empty slots. “These are the treasures of a realm-rupturing love, Eden? Really? I’ve seen more interesting relics in Hell’s washrooms.”
No tiny bag of drugs tucked into the lining. No folded wad of illicit cash. Not even a photograph of her.
This is it?
Honestly, I wonder if he ended up down in Hell just for being so fucking boring.
I slide a piece of plastic from the leather sleeve. An ID. I grimace immediately, my lip curling back over my fangs.
Oh, what the fuck?
This whole situation would’ve been almost touching. Maybe. If the man in the photo didn’t look like every other bland, dough-soft mortal in existence. The squishy flesh-bag has no horns, ears like dinner plates, hair the color of piss, and a jawline with the structural integrity of a damp scone.
“You fucked that?” I ask, voice dripping with incredulous sarcasm. I hold the ID up, flicking the plastic with a nail. “Really, Eden? This was the pinnacle of your desire? I’ve seen more attractive features on a potato.”
A violent weight crashes onto the curved, obsidian protrusions on my skull.
“Get. Off.” she snarls, the words vibrating through my marrow where my horns meet bone.
She fists a hand around the sensitive, ridged base of the left one and yanks, hard, sending a white-hot spike of pain down my spine.
“Ow! Mother of—Eden!”
I’m a demon, a creature of shadow and silver, but physics is a cruel mistress.
With a leverage I didn’t know her little mortal arms possessed, she hauls me backward.
My heels lose their grip on the mattress, and I go sliding off the edge of her bed like a disobedient hound, hitting the floorboards with a heavy, ungraceful thud.
I scramble to my elbows, hissing, my hair a mess and my pride in tatters. “You could have snapped a cervical vertebra! Do you have any idea how sensitive the root of a horn is?”
The bed groans underneath her as she climbs on top of it, turning her back to me, hovering over that pile of junk like a mother bird over a broken nest.
“Don’t you ever, ever talk about him. Or touch his things,” she hisses.
I sit there on her rug, rubbing the base of the horn that’s still tingling from her assault as the House-Beast looks down at me from the pillows.
A feral string of mumbled curses flows from between her lips as she packs the dead man’s useless treasures back into the plastic bag, the air practically on fire with the amount of grief that’s radiating from her.
She’s really this worked up over a pile of forensics?
I don’t get it. How does a man with such mundane belongings leave a girl in this state? If this pile of trash is all he boiled down to, surely his life wasn’t worth a summoning?
“So, how did he break them?” I ask, pure curiosity lacing through my words. “The glass on that phone suggests a very... sudden stop. Did he sprint headfirst into an industrial blender? Trip into oncoming traffic? Or did he simply miss a step and meet the pavement at terminal velocity?”
A harsh, broken laugh barks out of her, and she jams the bag back into the drawer, slamming it hard enough to rattle the whole nightstand and send the cat leaping for the floor.
“You’re unbelievable,” she chokes out, spinning to face me. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot with a brand of exhaustion I usually only see in the terminally damned.
I shrug from my place on the rug. “And you’re a girl who keeps a bag of trash to remember a man who couldn’t even be bothered to carry your picture in his wallet. We both have our flaws.”
Her hands curl into fists at her sides.
For a moment, all she does is stare at me—eyes narrowed, jaw trembling with fury.
I genuinely think she might hit me. Shit. I almost hope she does.
My left horn is still throbbing, but I find myself leaning into the threat. She’s magnificent when she’s angry—far more vibrant than the panicky thing I’ve known so far.
Go on, little summoner. Do it. Hit me. I dare you.
But she doesn’t strike. She… fizzles. It’s like watching a candle get snuffed out by a cold wind. Her lower lip trembles ever so slightly with a pathetic little tremor that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
Then, her face crumples in what can only be described as a total structural failure.
I recoil, sliding back an inch. “What—what are you doing? Why are you doing that?”
A ragged sob breaks out of her throat and she drops to her knees, her hands covering her face as saltwater dribbles down her wrists.
“Eden?” I demand, my voice rising in alarm. “Stop that. You’re... you’re leaking. Stop it.”
I’ve seen souls shredded in the gears of the Pit—Hell, I’ve inflicted that shredding.
But usually there’s more screaming and less.
.. this. I wonder if this is a part of the post-traumatic stress disorder research from last night.
Did I rattle her brain too hard when I came here?
Or is this just what happens when a living mortal’s processor overloads?
“Cease this at once,” I snap. “It’s highly undignified.”
The wet, hitching gasps that are escaping her little body are making my stomach roil for some unbeknownst reason, and I do not fucking like it. I reach out a hand, then pull it back, hovering in the air between us. I’m a demon of Hell, and I am suddenly, terrifyingly out of my depth.
Fucking mortals.
She lights candles, spills salt, mutters shitty poetry, bleeds, and then has the audacity to act surprised when something answers. She practically screamed for company. But because I’m not the bag of bones she wanted, she’s losing her fucking mind.
Right. Fine. If she won’t stop, I’ll make her.
I stand up, giving her a wide berth, and stalk through the apartment.
I find the metal cylinder her sister left on the side table and unscrew the top.
Inside, there is a yellowish broth with floating chunks of.
.. something. Dead fowl? Root vegetables?
I wince as the steam hits my nose. Disgusting. It smells like wet feathers and salt.
But the sister was adamant she have it—so, have it she shall.
When I return to the bedroom, she hasn’t moved an inch. She’s still just a heap of trembling limbs and soggy fabric.
“Here,” I say, dropping back onto the floor a safe distance away, sliding the flask across the carpet toward her.
She stares at the cylinder, tears still streaking down her pink cheeks.
“And eat these,” I add, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a packet of saltine crackers I found in the grocery bag before depositing them on her knee.
“You have the broth of a dead fowl and the dried wheat squares. Is the leaking going to stop now, or do I need to find a blanket to contain you in too?”
“What?” she whispers.
“People do it to their babes,” I tell her. “Sometimes wrapping them tightly in fabric stops the noise. I could attempt it on you too, though I suspect I’d need a larger sheet for you. Perhaps the duvet?”
“It’s called swaddling,” she rasps. “And I’m not a baby.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You’re doing a remarkable impression of one,” I point out, nudging the flask another inch toward her with my toe. “Drink. Before the grease congeals. And since you’re so adamant you aren’t a babe, perhaps you’d like to share why you are currently crying?”
She lets out a disbelieving scoff, and she finally moves, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes.
“Share why? Are you fucking kidding me? You came through instead of Matthew, then you insulted him, touched his things, and now you want to have a chat? You’re a demon!
You’re a literal, actual monster from Hell.
I don’t want to share anything with you! ”
Huh.
I pause, gnawing on my bottom lip with a fang. I suppose, when she puts it like that, her… everything… makes a shred of sense.
She stares at me, chest heaving, looking like she wants to scream or throw the flask at the wall. But the bite in her eyes flickers for a second, dulled by the fact that she’s clearly running on an empty tank.
Slowly, as if it pains her to give in even an inch, she reaches out, fingers trembling as she unscrews the lid of the flask. The smell of salt and chicken fat wafts up as she takes a cautious swallow.
“There…” I reach out with my foot, giving her ankle a tiny, blunt nudge of approval. “Much more dignified than melting into the floorboards. Good... mortal.”
The look she gives me is purely murderous, a flash of that red-rimmed heat returning to her eyes.
“Don’t,” she bites out, her voice still thick with the remnants of her meltdown. “Don’t talk to me like I’m Vesper.”
I just offer a thin, razor-edged smile in return. I don’t particularly care if she thinks I’m treating her like the House-Beast. To me, a creature is either calm or frantic; I have merely returned her to a state of equilibrium. The mortal is stabilized.
Success.
“Now,” I say, “shall we talk about our joint collapse last night? Or do you require more soup first?”
The dry crunch of her biting into a cracker fills the space where an answer should be. She isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s looking through me, her gaze fixated on the wall as if I’ve already become part of the cheap furniture.
“No.” she says, tired and devoid of all emotion. “Get out.”
I pause, raising a single brow. “Excuse me? I must have misheard.”
“I need you to leave my room.” She still doesn’t look at me, her thumb now tracing the rim of the flask in a slow circle. “I need to process... whatever the fuck this is. Alone.”
I stop her from leaking, I force her to eat, I perform a miracle of modern stabilization. And she repays me with an eviction notice? Unbelievable.
“And where, exactly, do you suggest I spend the rest of the day? The closet? Or perhaps tucked under the bed with the rest of your skeletons?”
“Leave the apartment,” she snaps. “Go back to Hell. Go back to whatever sulfur-soaked void you crawled out of. I don’t care.”
I tilt my head, studying the way her hands tremble against the fabric of her covers. “Well. There is a slight technicality. I don’t think I can. Which is still something we need to—”
“Then don’t leave!” she bites back desperately. “Fine! Stay! I don’t care!”
“And where do you suggest I go?” I ask.
“The couch. The floor. The bathtub,” she lists with a defeated whisper. “Just get out of my sight. I can’t look at you anymore.”
Without waiting for a rebuttal, she simply turns her back on me and crawls onto the bed.
She pulls the covers up to her chin, disappearing into the sanctuary of her linens, shortly followed by the House-Beast, who hops up and curls into the small of her back, a tiny, furry sentinel guarding a broken queen.
“The couch it is,” I murmur as I push up from the floor.
I stand there for a moment, looking down at the broken lump under the duvet.
“But do not mistake this for departure. I am simply moving to the next room, not back to Hell. I will still be here when you decide to leave your hiding spot, little summoner.”