Chapter 4 #2
The music ended before she could answer. Around them, couples separated and reformed. Victor didn’t let go. They stood there, pressed together in the middle of the ballroom, pretending to be something they weren’t.
“Victor…”
“We should go.” He stepped back, professional distance reasserting itself. “It’s getting late. You have the Morrison deposition tomorrow.”
The ride back was quiet.
Victor stared out his window. Ava watched the city lights blur past.
“Thank you,” she said as the car pulled up to her building. “For tonight.”
“You held your own.”
“I had help.”
He turned to look at her, and for a moment she thought he might kiss her again.
Then Derek’s voice crackled through the intercom from the driver’s seat.
“Are we sitting here all night, or…?”
Victor pulled back. “Goodnight, Ava.”
She climbed out of the car, the September air cool against her flushed skin. At her building’s door, she turned back. Victor was still watching through the window.
She raised her hand. A small wave.
He nodded once.
The car pulled away, leaving her standing in borrowed Prada with a demon’s mark over her heart.
Inside, Ava leaned against the elevator wall and pressed her palm to her chest. The mark pulsed warm beneath the midnight-blue silk, responding to her heartbeat. Or maybe to her thoughts. She wasn’t sure anymore where she ended and the claim began.
The doors opened on her floor. Mia’s light was off, probably still at the gallery. Good. She wasn’t ready for questions.
In her room, she unzipped the dress carefully, hung it on the closet door, and stood in front of her mirror in nothing but her underwear and the jade pendant. The mark was visible now, a faint luminescence against her skin. She traced its edges with one finger.
Poor Celeste.
Who had she been? What had happened to her? And why had the whole room known except Ava?
She pulled on pajamas and climbed into bed. Sleep didn’t come for hours.
The rest of the week passed in a blur of demon law and deliberate avoidance.
Wednesday, she saw Victor in the hallway. He nodded. She nodded. Neither of them stopped walking.
Thursday, they ended up in the same elevator. Forty-seven floors of silence, his reflection in the polished doors carefully not looking at hers.
“The Henderson file…” she started as the doors opened.
“On your desk,” he said, and was gone before she could respond.
They communicated through Derek or brief emails, dancing around Tuesday night like it was a live wire.
Every time she tried to bring it up, Lilith, the dance, the almost-kiss in the car, something interrupted.
A client call. An urgent filing. Victor disappearing into meetings that ran conveniently long.
She wanted to ask about Celeste. The question sat on her tongue a dozen times. But how did you ask your fake boyfriend about the woman whose name made every demon in the room flinch?
Meanwhile, Derek kept smuggling books to her desk.
“’Principles of Infernal Contract Law,’” she read from the latest spine. “Light bedtime reading?”
“Chapter twelve covers soul subdivision.” Derek perched on her desk, stealing her pencil to doodle in the margins of her legal pad. “Apparently you can mortgage a soul in installments.”
“Like a payment plan for damnation?”
“Very popular in the eighties.”
Victor appeared in her doorway. Derek nearly fell off the desk.
“Ava. A moment?”
She followed him to his office, noting the tension in his shoulders. The careful way he didn’t quite meet her eyes.
“The Morrison deposition,” he began without preamble. “You’ll need to take it alone.”
“Alone? Why?”
“I’ve been called to testify in an unrelated matter.” He handed her a thick folder. “Everything you need is here. Don’t let Morrison intimidate you with his true form.”
“His true form?”
“Think of a snake. But with more legs.”
“Comforting.”
“You’ll be fine.” His voice softened slightly. “You handled Lilith.”
“Lilith wasn’t trying to eat me.”
“Neither will Morrison. The paperwork would be excessive.” He moved around his desk. “Derek will accompany you.”
“Victor.” She stopped in the doorway, unsure what she wanted to say. The week had been strange. Dancing around each other. Pretending Tuesday night hadn’t shifted something between them. Pretending she hadn’t spent every elevator ride thinking about the almost-kiss in the car.
“Yes?”
She turned back. He was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.
“We’re not excellent at this fake dating thing.”
“On the contrary. Everyone believes we’re together.”
“But we’re not acting like it. Not when it’s just us.” She gathered the Morrison files. “I think we need practice. A shopping trip, dinner that doesn’t involve other demons. Normal couple things.”
“We’re not a normal couple.”
“No. But we’re supposed to look like one.”
Neither of them broke the silence.
“Tomorrow,” he said finally. “Breakfast, shopping, lunch. The full experience.”
“Really?”
“Unless you’d prefer to explain to the senior partners why our arrangement seems strained?”
Not the reason she wanted. But she’d take it.
“Tomorrow then.”
She left his office feeling lighter than she had all week, then immediately crashed into Derek in the hallway.
“Ow! Derek, what…”
“Hide me.” He ducked behind her, peering around her shoulder. “She’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“The girl. Coffee shop. She’s in the lobby.”
“The one you spilled an entire latte on?”
“Cappuccino. And it was an accident.” He made a strangled sound. “Oh god, she’s looking this way.”
Ava turned to see a pretty brunette talking to Cassandra at reception. “She’s cute.”
“She’s terrifying.”
“You work with demons, Derek.”
“Demons don’t have her smile.”
The brunette finished with Cassandra and headed toward the elevators. Then she veered toward them, holding something.
“Mr. Liu?” She held up a wallet. “You left this at the coffee shop yesterday.”
Derek turned the color of a fire hydrant. “I… you… wallet?”
“You ran out pretty quickly after the cappuccino incident.” She smiled, warm and genuine, and Derek stopped breathing. “I thought you might need it.”
“Words,” Ava hissed. “Use words.”
“Thank you,” Derek managed. “That’s… thank you, Emma.”
“You remembered my name.”
“Hard to forget when it’s on your name tag. Not that I stare at your… tag. Your name tag.” He was spiraling. “The tag with your name on it.”
Emma laughed. “Well, I should get back. But maybe next time you could stay long enough to actually drink your coffee?”
“Yes. Coffee. Drinking. I can do that.”
She left.
Derek slumped against the wall. “I used words.”
“Barely.”
“She smiled at me.”
“She brought you your wallet.”
“She remembered me.”
“You threw coffee on her.”
“Spilled. Technically.” He straightened, clutching the wallet like a lifeline. “I have to go back there. Eventually. Work up the courage.”
“That’s your plan? Slow exposure therapy?”
“It’s a work in progress.” He adjusted his tie. “Speaking of which, Morrison prep. You should probably finish that.”
“Changing the subject?”
“Desperately.”
He fled back to his desk.
The Morrison deposition started badly and got worse.
Morrison’s human form was a middle-aged man in an expensive suit, silver hair swept back, smile too wide for his face. But his eyes gave him away, vertical pupils that caught the fluorescent light and reflected it back yellow.
“Ms. Feng.” He didn’t stand when she entered. “I expected Victor.”
“Mr. Morningstar sends his regards.” She set her files on the conference table. Derek slipped in behind her, taking the corner seat with the court reporter. “Shall we begin?”
“I don’t deal with juniors.”
“Then you don’t deal today.” She opened her folder. “I have your contract with Pemberton Holdings. Section twelve, subsection C. You agreed to provide ‘consulting services of a supernatural nature.’ Care to define that for the record?”
Morrison’s smile flickered. “You’re very confident for someone so… fragile.”
“I’m very prepared.” She slid a document across the table. “This is your amended filing from March. You claimed the consulting was purely advisory. But we have testimony from three witnesses that you manifested in your true form during a board meeting.”
“They were being difficult.”
“They were your clients.”
His form rippled. Just for a second, scales flickering beneath skin, limbs folding in on themselves, before settling back to human.
“No shifting during depositions,” Ava said firmly. “Section 236 of the Supernatural Legal Ethics Code.”
“You can’t—”
“I can. I am.” She met his yellow eyes without flinching. “Resume human form and keep it, or I’ll file a motion for contempt. Your choice.”
Morrison’s jaw worked. The rippling stopped.
“You’re new,” he said finally. “How do you know that code?”
“I’m good at my job.”
The rest of the deposition was almost anticlimactic. Morrison answered her questions with sullen precision, his form staying firmly human. By the time they finished, it was past eight. The office hummed with Friday night emptiness.
Derek waited until they were in the elevator to punch the air.
“That was incredible! Did you see his face when you cited section 236? He looked like he wanted to eat you!”
“He probably did.”
“But you didn’t even blink! You just—” Derek made an explosion gesture. “Boom. Lawyered.”
“Please never say ‘lawyered’ again.”
“No promises.”
“Pizza?” Derek suggested.
“Can’t. I have things.”
“Mysterious things?”
“Laundry things.”
“On a Friday night?” He gathered his files. “You’re more boring than I am.”
“Says the guy planning to stalk a coffee shop.”
“It’s not stalking, it’s…” He sighed. “Fine. Abandon me. I’ll go practice talking to Emma in my mirror.”
“Practice using actual sentences this time.”
“No promises.”
At home, Mia was waiting with wine and questions.
“So?” She handed Ava a glass before she’d even set down her bag. “How was the week of fake dating your demon boss?”
“Exhausting.” Ava collapsed onto the couch. “I insulted an ancient succubus, learned to waltz, and stopped a snake demon from eating a court reporter.”
“Typical week then.”
“Mia, I’m serious. This is insane.”
“But?”
“But what?”
“There’s always a but. You have but-face.”
Ava sipped her wine. “He’s teaching me demon law.”
“Romantic.”
“And we’re going shopping tomorrow.”
“More romantic.”
“And when we danced…” She stared into her glass. “It felt real.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know.” That was the problem. She genuinely didn’t know. “What if it is? Real, I mean?”
Mia set down her wine and pulled Ava into a hug. “Then you figure it out. But maybe figure it out before the demon mark becomes permanent?”
“It’s temporary. Fifty-one more days.”
“Right.” Mia pulled back, studying her face. “And you’re already counting down.”
Ava didn’t have an answer.
They sat together drinking wine, not talking about breakfast tomorrow, or what it meant to practice being normal with someone who was anything but.
Later, alone in her room, Ava stared at her closet.
What did you wear to a fake date with a demon who might not be fake anymore?
She pulled out the blue sweater Mia had given her last Christmas. Put it back. Too casual? She tried on three different outfits before giving up and texting.
Help. What do I wear tomorrow?
For fake shopping with your fake boyfriend?
Yes.
The blue sweater. Makes your eyes pop.
I hate that we think alike.
You secretly love it.
Ava set down her phone and stared at the ceiling.
Fifty-one days left on her contract. And somewhere in this city, a demon was pretending to be her boyfriend while she pretended not to want it to be real.
She pulled the covers over her head.