Chapter 25 #2
The air in the city was hardly fresh, but the moment she was outside, she gulped in great lungfuls. The apartment was moldy and dusty, and she hadn’t noticed the difference from Hell. But now that she was outside, it felt like she hadn’t breathed fresh air in weeks.
“There are no stairs,” she said, eyeing the precarious metal roof of the garage below them.
Murmur answered her question by suddenly unfurling a massive pair of leathery black wings. They spread as much as the confined balcony would allow, and her eyes widened.
They were exactly how she’d imagined his wings would look.
The black skin stretching between the slender bones appeared supple and soft.
The top of the wing, the “thumb,” had a curved black claw, much like the ones on his hands.
The bones separating the segments looked delicate and strong at the same time.
He held out a hand, and without a second thought, she placed hers in it. Sometime during her little escapade in Hell, she had started to trust him.
Time would tell if that got her killed or not.
He pulled her closer and wrapped an arm around her, making her feel positively miniscule. And then he picked her up, climbed over the edge of the railing, and leapt off.
His wings snapped out, and he pumped them several times before landing gracefully in the alley below. Anyone in the surrounding apartments could look out a window and see her standing beside a seven-foot-tall demon with horns, a tail, and bat wings.
“Can you shift into human form?” she hissed, looking around for signs of people.
“No,” he replied as if offended by the suggestion. “You know how the Sight works, Suyin. Humans can’t see me anyway.”
“Unless they have the Sight, yeah. In which case, you’d terrify the ever-living shit out of them.”
“Sounds like a good day to me.”
“Murmur …”
He smiled, but it faded quickly. “Can you return safely to your apartment from here or should I walk with you?”
She already recognized the neighborhood, and after living in New York, she would never worry about safety in Montreal. “I’m fine alone.”
“It’s probably for the best. There are certain demons in this city who I’d rather not run into.”
“Iris’s boyfriend?”
“And his so-called brothers, yes.”
“Why can’t they know you’re here?”
“Because we made a bargain. It’s a long story.”
She looked up at him. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause.
“One more thing,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about a police investigation or your friends throwing you a funeral.
” He reached into the pocket of his coat, pulled out her phone and keys, and held them out to her.
“When I first took you, after I stung you the second time, I used your thumb to unlock your phone and then returned to Earth and sent messages to all your regular contacts.”
She snatched the items from his hand. “You what?”
“I told them you were going on a vacation.”
She opened and closed her mouth. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I’m not—”
“For fuck’s sake, Murmur! You could have at least told me! I was stressing about it this whole time, so badly I could barely sleep! Why the hell would you keep that a secret?”
“It didn’t strike me as important—”
“Not important?” She threw up her hands. “I told you how worried I was about my friends and coven thinking I was dead. How could you think it wasn’t important? I asked you multiple times to let me go back. You didn’t think telling me that would have been smart?”
He crossed his arms. “You barely asked. I didn’t think you cared.”
“That’s not—How could you—You frustrate the hell out of me, you know that?”
His lips pursed. “The feeling is mutual.”
“For fuck’s sake …” She shook her head.
“I fail to understand the importance you place on your earthly friendships. All humans die. The death of a human should never come as a surprise.”
She was exhausted at the thought of even trying to explain that to him, so she didn’t bother. “Whatever. Just … what did you tell them? They would never believe I’d just leave—”
“I told them you needed some time alone to practice your wards in a quiet place, away from the interference of so many other minds.”
She opened and closed her mouth. “Shit.” He was a genius. Because that was exactly something she would do.
Pocketing her keys, she looked at the device in her hand and hit the power button. The screen stayed dark. Duh. It had been weeks, surely. The battery was long dead.
She looked up.
“Remember our blood vow, witchling?”
“You return me home unharmed, and I don’t tell anyone about you or your spell. I know.”
He nodded once and then turned to go. Just like that.
“Wait!” she said as he unfurled his wings.
He turned back with a brow lifting in question.
“How can I get in touch with you? In case I need anything …” She trailed off, wincing as he continued to stare blankly at her.
“I will come to you when it’s time to complete the spell.”
“I know, but how do I …” She shook her head. “Never mind.” She was being ridiculous. She didn’t have any reason to contact him, and she didn’t need to worry about him not coming. He needed her blood.
He frowned.
“I’ll wait for you to come get me,” she said with a dismissive wave, forcing herself to sound unaffected. “You’ve proven you can track me down easily enough.”
He searched her gaze for a moment. Then he gave her that little half smile again and said, “See you soon, witchling.”
She lifted a hand in farewell.
He crouched and sprang, and with several pumps of his powerful wings, he was airborne. He flew up to the balcony and then was gone.
Alone, Suyin clutched her jacket over her heart. What the hell was wrong with her? Why did she feel like this?
I think … I might have feelings for him.
She closed her eyes. Surely she was not that stupid.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she transferred her bag of food and goth-boot-camp clothes to the other shoulder and looked down the dark street. It was time to go home and pick up the pieces of her life after Murmur had broken it.
When Suyin made it home, she stood in the hot shower for at least thirty minutes. She thoroughly scrubbed her hair and then let the hot water pummel her shoulders until the stiff muscles started to loosen.
After blow-drying her hair, she threw on her Night of the Living Dead T-shirt and climbed into bed. She plugged her phone in at her nightstand, and when the battery charged enough, she fired it up. The first thing she did was check the date.
She cursed. She’d been gone for a whole month. It simultaneously felt like far longer than that and no time at all.
The same text with minor adjustments had been sent to all her regular contacts, which included Iris, a few of her friends, and members of her coven. Her parents were gone, and she had no living relatives that she was aware of.
In a way, she was just as much of a recluse as Murmur, wasn’t she?
All his creepy stalking had paid off too, because he’d known exactly what to say to make her friends not suspicious of her disappearance.
Iris had sent a reply, telling her to enjoy her time away and let her know when she was back in town.
Her coven members assured her she was well deserving of some time off and they would cover her shifts at the shop as long as she needed.
A few had emailed asking for help with their studies, but they all said their questions weren’t pressing and urged her to take her time and respond when she was ready.
And Murmur, that devious fucker, had phrased her messages exactly in her tone. Was he that masterful at impersonating her, or did they both just suck that terribly at communicating?
She hated that she didn’t know.
She hated that she’d been snatched off the face of the earth and thrown into a dungeon, and no one had been worried about her. She hated that one text message was all it took for the people in her life to forget her completely.
She’d done such a good job keeping everyone at arm’s length, there wasn’t a single person who would miss her if she disappeared. If Murmur had killed her, how long would it have taken them to start wondering where she was? Several months? A year?
It was a depressing thought.
The first person she replied to was Iris. She hadn’t come close to forgetting what Murmur had told her about Iris’s boyfriend.
I’m back. We need to talk, she texted.
There was no response, and Suyin wasn’t in the mood to catch up with everyone at the moment, so she put the phone down and pulled the covers up to her chin.
She was back in her home where everything was familiar, and yet it might as well have been a stranger’s apartment.
Because she was different. Finding out what she was, and what her father was …
She hadn’t really processed it yet, and she was only becoming aware of that now in the quiet of her bedroom.
It would take time, she told herself. One did not simply reconstruct their self-identity overnight. Things would work themselves out. And her life didn’t need to change at all if she didn’t want it to.
What did being a demon-human hybrid really mean to her anyway? How was it going to affect her life? She kept waiting for some sort of existential crisis to hit, but if anything, she only felt a sense of peace in finally having the answers she had so desperately been seeking.
Demons weren’t necessarily evil. Gamigin proved that. Hell, even Murmur proved that. His morals were questionable at best, yes. But he wasn’t evil. He just needed a little coaxing toward understanding, but she believed he could get there if he wanted to. She had seen it in the way he looked at her.
So no, she wasn’t particularly broken up about being half demon, even though it surprised her that her beliefs could change so drastically in so short a time.
But her father—his legacy, his intelligence, his research … She was proud to be his daughter. She was proud to be a part of his work.
And she was glad Murmur had found her and opened her eyes to all of this, even if he’d made her suffer to get there.
She still hadn’t forgotten that he’d locked her in a dungeon and left her to starve, and she’d probably still be down there now if she hadn’t been quick-thinking enough to bargain with him.
She rolled her eyes. Fucking Murmur.
Fucking Murmur. Now that was a nice thought.
Maybe the venom in his tail had given her brain damage, because there was no way her mind should have flip-flopped from remembering his dungeon to being in bed with him.
And yet images of his big body covering hers quickly filled her head, all that shiny, gorgeous hair caressing her skin, the burning intensity in his ice-blue eyes …
She thought about the way he called her “witchling,” and how he’d told her to stay on his lap while he told her about his past, even though he hated feeling restrained.
And she thought about how he’d taken time from his work to teach her about Gamigin’s book, and how he’d trusted her enough to share the true purpose of his spell.
Whether it was foolish or not, her heart gave a pang. Because she missed him already. Because she had feelings. She couldn’t deny it. She’d finally escaped Hell, and her first night home, she wished she was still back there. So, so stupid, Suyin.
The phone rang.
She snatched it off the nightstand, banishing the unwelcome revelations from her mind. Iris’s name was on the screen, and as soon as Suyin accepted the call, she started talking.
“You’re back! How was your trip? How come you didn’t tell me you were leaving?”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“Why did you go? Is everything all right?”
She took a breath. “Yes. And no. Listen, can we talk? In person?”
She lowered the phone and checked the clock. It was one in the morning. Fuck, her sense of time was way off. Was there such a thing as Hell jet lag? Because she had it.
“Want to meet tomorrow?” Iris asked. “I’m just about to go to bed.”
“Sure.”
“We could meet at the cafe by—”
“Let’s meet at Le Repaire. I want to show you something.” And corner you so you can’t run when I confront you about lying.
“Um …” Iris hesitated.
“There are no demon detection wards up right now,” Suyin said.
“Oh, okay. Well, that’s fine. It wouldn’t matter if there was. I mean, I don’t care about—Well, anyway. Yeah, let’s meet there.”
Damn, Iris was a terrible liar. How had they avoided this for so long?
Suyin felt isolated, but maybe it was because she was isolating herself. If she’d really been available to Iris as a friend, it would have been impossible for Iris to keep up this charade.
If she wanted someone in the world to care about her disappearing for a month with only a single text, then maybe she needed to start reaching out to people. Being there for them on a deeper level than just her physical presence.
“How’s eleven a.m. sound?” Iris asked.
“Perfect. Night, Ris.” She went to hang up.
“Su?”
She lifted the phone back to her ear.
“I …” There was a pause. “Just glad you’re home. That’s all.”
“Me too,” Suyin replied. But as she hung up, she wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not.