Chapter 8
My magic is what wakes me.
It moves through my limbs in a low, steady current—knowing, as if it has located something familiar and is quietly addressing it.
Awareness settles over me before consciousness fully does, and with it comes scent—leather warmed by skin, clean cotton, something faintly smoky beneath a layer of ordinary laundry detergent.
I open my eyes into darkness softened by moonlight.
I’m in a four-poster bed.
A very large four-poster bed.
The mattress feels like a cloud with a demon trust fund.
The sheets are cool and impossibly soft, a whispered slide against my skin when I shift.
The room around me is dim and masculine in a curated sort of way—dark wood paneling, heavy navy drapes, a fireplace at the far end with a low marble surround worn smooth at the edges.
Books are everywhere, stacked on the mantle, lining built-in shelves, rising in careful, precarious towers on the floor like he ran out of space decades ago yet never stopped acquiring them.
A record player from the seventies rests in the corner beside a milk crate of vinyl and, incongruously, a sleek modern speaker balanced on top.
On the nightstand sits a brass alarm clock with glowing red numbers next to a phone charger and a ceramic dish filled with loose coins from currencies that no longer exist.
The clock reads 11:10. Given the darkness outside, I’m going to assume that’s p.m.
My catsuit is draped neatly over a chair.
Alarmed, I look down at myself. I’m wearing a massive, soft, worn-in T-shirt. And nothing else. I lift the hem carefully and inspect my abdomen.
The claw marks are gone, and only faint, pink lines that look like they’ll disappear by morning cross my stomach in a claw-like pattern. I press experimentally, twisting and stretching all my joints. There’s no pain. I feel… great. Suspiciously great.
How long was I out for?
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand, bracing myself for dizziness or wobbliness, but I’m shockingly steady on my feet.
I pad across the room toward my catsuit, force of habit guiding me toward the dagger hidden in the thigh holster due to the unfamiliar territory.
While I may not be the best slayer at the moment, I may not be the worst. I did just kill a demon. A powerful one.
But then my magic hums again, not warning or screaming. Calm and aware, like the gentle buzz of a bee. It feels him somewhere in the house. It feels that I am healed, that I am cared for. I stop, and I decide that I don’t need the dagger after all.
I move towards the door instead.
A delightfully rumpled form shoots up from a leather couch in the middle of the room. “Mayari?” Jonah rasps.
“Hi,” I whisper. I fiddle with the hem of my sleeve.
I hear an exhale, a noise of relief, perhaps, that sounds like he’s been holding it for a very long time. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” I say honestly. “Actually… great.” I glance around. “How long was I out?”
Jonah squeezes his eyes shut like he’s in pain. “Three days.”
“Three—” I wince. “Yikes. That’s excessive.” I shift my weight. “I’ve never taken that long to heal.”
His expression flickers. “Heal,” he parrots.
“Oh.” I wave a hand vaguely between us. “I should’ve mentioned I’m… similar. Not immortal. But accelerated recovery.”
“I noticed.”
“You noticed?”
“I’ve been checking your wounds,” he says evenly. “They were closing. I could see the tissue knitting together. The way mine does.”
My hand flies to my stomach, at the wounds he’s been inspecting, above an area that has not been covered by underwear. “Did you like what you saw?” I ask playfully.
His face does not change. “No, Mayari,” he says flatly. “I did not like what I saw.”
I feel my cheeks flush hot with embarrassment.
“Well, okay then.” I back away, back towards the safety of my catsuit, suddenly very aware of my bare legs and the fact that I am in a demon’s house at eleven at night and have actually been here, in his bed, for 72 hours, for fuck’s sake! And speaking of which—
“Why didn’t you bring me to a hospital? Why did you bring me here? To your demon lair?”
He buries his face in his hands for a long moment before letting out another aggrandized sigh.
Finally, he drags a hand down his face and pushes to his feet.
Even rumpled in the middle of the night—barefoot, his hair a curly, disastrous mop, dressed in a worn t-shirt and sweatpants—he’s handsome and imposing.
“You must be starving,” he says, entirely ignoring my questions.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically. My stomach betrays me with a humiliating growl as I try to inch away.
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t smile. Instead, he moves toward me with purpose. “Stop,” he orders.
I do.
He’s close now. Close enough that I can see the silver threaded through his irises in the moonlight, pale and luminous against the dark. His hand lifts slightly, hovering near my face like he’s about to cup my cheek.
My magic hums at the proximity, a soft, preening, content buzz that makes the air between us feel charged and alive.
I hold my breath.
He drops his hand before he touches me. “You saved my life,” he murmurs. “At the very least, let me feed you.”
I nod once and swallow the lump that’s appeared in my throat.
“What’s the difference between midnight cheese and regular cheese?” Jonah asks, eyes sparkling in the dimly lit kitchen.
It turns out Jonah and I share a number of highly refined life skills: demonic awareness (that is, awareness of demons), accelerated healing, extended lifespans, and an almost spiritual devotion to finding discounts on imported cheese.
His fridge is packed with wedges of Brillat-Savarin, Morbier, and aged Mimolette; a pungent wheel of époisses wrapped carefully in paper; some kind of crystalline Alpine cheese that might cost more than the median rent in New York City; and a suspicious number of glass jars filled with cheese submerged in oil.
We’ve been standing here for the better part of two hours, leaning against opposite counters, assembling increasingly unhinged cheese-and-baguette combinations while discussing whether or not octopuses dream or if time-travelers get jet-lagged or how vampires would deal, theoretically, with orthodontics.
“Midnight cheese,” I inform him around a mouthful of Morbier, “is cheese consumed after midnight. Obviously.”
“When does it become morning cheese?”
I recoil. “That sounds gross. I want no part in that.”
He throws his head back and laughs, a rich, gravelly booming sound that my magic likes very much, thank you. It exposes the column of his throat, the soft skin there. “Day cheese?”
“That’s just regular cheese!” I say, pointing my silver dagger at him. The one we’ve been using to slice the manchego. It’s fun to use it near him, because it gets all glowy.
“Don’t overcomplicate this. You’re the one with an unreasonable amount of cheese.” I’m pretty sure there are hearts in my eyes. “And so much food. Actually,” I say, sweeping my hand across the span of his apartment, “you have so much everything.”
It’s as if he’s saved the five most important things from each decade since the early 1900’s.
A carved oak writing desk that looks older than the building itself, its surface worn smooth at the edges.
The heavy iron clawfoot tub where I showered hours ago, now fitted with a stainless steel basket holding Le Labo products.
A delicate 1930s Art Deco lamp in the living room casting low amber light.
A mid-century record cabinet stocked with vinyl in careful alphabetical order.
On the mantle, a framed 1945 newspaper folded open to a victory headline.
A 1970s matchbook from a club long closed and a MetroCard in a crystal dish by the door.
Big history beside small keepsakes, heavy furniture beside fragile paper, everything placed with care, because he’s been building this space for just under a century while quietly amassing a shit-ton of wealth.
“I’ve been around for quite some time, Mayari. I’ve lived through some very important events.”
“So have I, but I don’t have Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press shoved into the corner of my apartment.”
Jonah’s answering smile is warm, almost heady, thrilled. Like he’s truly enjoying this. Us. Me. “I believe that was invented almost five hundred years before either of us were born.”
I wave my hand. “Semantics.”
He’s still looking at me like I’m a lovely surprise. “I like to collect things,” he says simply.
“Hoard them,” I correct. “Like a dragon.”
“Possess them,” he replies with a grin, stepping a little closer. “Like a demon.”
I burst out laughing, and something shifts.
His smile changes, slowing and sharpening.
My magic sparks under my skin, alive, atoms ricocheting off one another inside and across my skin. “Whoa,” I breathe.
Jonah tilts his head slightly, studying me as if he feels it too. “Whoa,” he echoes.
His gaze drifts down my legs, up the bare skin, lingering where his oversized T-shirt hangs. There’s a precise moment where he remembers I’m wearing nothing else.
Heat pools low in my stomach.
His eyes trail back up to mine, the blue nearly eclipsed by black.
Another shared trait, apparently. “What was that inconvenient biological trait you mentioned back at the soup kitchen?” I purr, because subtlety has never been my strongest attribute.
“I think you know, brat,” and wow, I like that very, very much. His tongue sweeps slowly across his lower lip. “And slayers?”
“Maybe even more so.”
His right hand spasms, as if he’s consciously stopped himself from reaching for me. “I’ve technically known you four days. And you were unconscious for three of them.”
“In your bed,” I remind him.
“In my bed,” he agrees, voice rougher now. “But all I really know about you is that you wear the fuck out of a leather bodysuit—”
“Catsuit.”
“—Catsuit,” he amends, “your soul holds no rot, you love cheese, and you’re a terrible demon slayer.”
“I also enjoy online rabbit-holes,” I offer. “But who cares? I almost died. Let’s bang.”
A huff, a surprised laugh leaves his mouth at that. But then the air tightens, the space between us stretched tight like a bowstring.
“Like what you see?” I try again.
His eyes travel up and down, impudent now, dragging over all the important bits, as if he can’t decide where to look. “I like seeing you in my clothes,” he admits.
I hook my fingers into the hem of the shirt and peel it upward. The cotton slides over my ribs, my stomach, my chest. His gaze follows the movement with open hunger, controlled but unmistakable.
“Would you prefer them on the floor?” I murmur, dropping the shirt beside me.
To his credit, he doesn’t immediately pounce.
Instead he steps forward and inspects my abdomen, expression sharpening with something protective. His fingers brush lightly over my stomach, tracing where the wounds had been. The touch is careful at first, testing, pressing gently as if confirming I’m truly healed.
The path of his fingers leaves tingles of magic in its wake.
His eyes lift to mine, a silent question.
I nod.
Deliberately, he continues his path down. Down, and down. Without hesitation, he glides a finger through my folds possessively, as if he’s hoarded it and it’s already his.
A moan escapes my lips at the slow caress, at the electricity there.
“My warm, wet Nightmare,” he murmurs, sliding his hand back and forth. He takes my wetness and uses it to circle a nipple. “These are divine.”
“I know,” I breathe. “More.”
He gives me more with his tongue. Pressing his lips to mine and sliding it right in, toying and tangling with mine with a skill and confidence that speaks to decades of experience. Soft nibbles and deep licks, all while his hand works magic at my cunt, circling and spearing with even greater care.
“Jonah,” I gasp. “More.”
Jonah studies me. He understands what I mean. He takes his thumb, now wet with me, and pushes it into my mouth, pressing down on my tongue. I wrap my lips around his finger and suck.
His eyes flash with dark delight, and I feel pressure on my jaw. Downwards. “On your knees, Slayer,” he commands, voice both harsh and full of heat.