Chapter Eight • Aftermath • Lillith
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When I wake up the next day, I feel like hell.
It’s not uncommon for me to feel like garbage the day after a seizure, and this one was triggered by an encounter with a demon, so I’m not surprised that I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.
I reach up to my neck by force of habit and feel my heart sink all over again when I find the Nightingale pearl gone.
It’s surreal in the worst way; the feeling of falling up instead of down and wondering when you and the other shoe will drop.
I’d say it felt like a breakup if I’d ever actually been in a relationship. But, unfortunately I have no past experience to actually contextualize that.
I roll out of my bed and sigh as I stumble out of my bedroom and into the living room.
I make my way toward my kitchen and—Oh, fuck there is a half-naked drummer on my couch.
Uhm.
What?!
He stayed? I remember him taking me home and getting me changed and situated in bed. I remember cracking a joke at how he was suspiciously good at unclasping a bra with only one hand. But things get pretty hazy after that.
I walk on light feet over to him and—oh. Oh my gods. Yes. He is indeed fucking shirtless.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
The piercings and tattoos were already ruinous enough. Tell me why the hells Damien has washboard fucking abs to go along with them?
I look up at the ceiling praying for mercy from the Lady Moon. I look back down at him again and ball both of my fists in front of my mouth to keep myself from groaning when I glimpse the dark blond hair that draws a line just below his navel beneath the waistband of his boxers.
Gods, I need to get laid. When was the last time? Beltane. That’s when. Fucking Bastion and his stupid inability to act like I mean anything to him outside of ceremonial orgies.
You know what?
Pancakes.
Yep. I need to make pancakes.
Better yet? Waffles. Waffles are harder to get right; they’ll require more focus and should be a more comfortable alternative to drenching myself in ice water. They’ll help me keep my hands to myself. Waffles shall be my salvation. Deliver me from horniness.
If I don’t busy my hands, they’re going to busy themselves somewhere on Damien’s body.
Do not touch the beautiful drummer, Lillith. Don’t fucking do it.
I gather up my hair and tie it in a knot as I make my way to the kitchen, focusing on ingredients and waffles irons and anything that isn’t Damien or his split tongue or his happy trail or—
I curl my hands, letting my nail extensions dig into my palm. “Waffles, Lillith. Waffles, gods damn you.”
I reach into the cupboard and pull out a mixing bowl and start mixing dry stuff.
I add flour and cornstarch at a three to one ratio.
Cornstarch, if you didn’t know, is the trick to getting a nice crispy exterior while the inside of the waffle stays soft and pillowy.
I learned this from Nan. She was one hell of a kitchen witch when she was still around.
Then of course, I add the sugar and baking powder. I mix all the dry ingredients together with a wooden spoon and then shift my focus to the wet ingredients.
I don’t keep buttermilk on hand, so I add a tablespoon of lemon juice to a cup of milk to create a substitute for it.
Then some eggs and some vanilla and oil go into a bowl while I let the lemon juice and milk mixture do its thing.
I combine the wet and dry ingredients and put the batter aside while I climb onto a dining chair to get my waffle iron down from over the cupboard over the stove.
And I definitely don’t think about abs or pecs or biceps.
Once I have that done, the batter still has to rest, so I sneak through the living room again to go to the bathroom and do my morning routine.
I brush my teeth, wash last night’s makeup off my face and debate whether or not it’s ridiculous to do a full beat on my face for the hot drummer sleeping on my sofa.
I decide that it is ridiculous and dip into my room to grab my phone and my wireless earbuds.
I pop them in my ears and start up a playlist called Moody Moods on my music streaming app.
It’s a mix of sad lady vocalists, Portent, and a handful of other artists I sprinkled in along with them.
I tidy up my room and make my bed to kill some time, arranging all of my cute plushes perfectly before going back to the bowl of batter and plugging in my waffle iron.
After a while, I start quietly singing along with some of the music playing in my ears.
I almost feel normal. I almost feel like I didn’t lose the only protective charm that made it safe for me to leave Odd Bird and The Buried City.
I almost feel like I’m not a sitting duck for the demon my distant relative spurned.
Almost.
I tighten the knot my hair is in as I stare unseeing down at my waffle iron. Where do I even start to fix this? It’s not as if I can go collect nine generations of remains from my family and put it into a new charm. That demon was powerful and bargains only strengthen the longer they go unpaid.
What does he even need a Nightingale bride for?
I really thought I’d accomplished something by making it impossible to mother children of my own.
Curse lifted if no one can carry it on, right?
I just lacked foresight at the time. I only knew about the demon as a footnote in the story of my bloodline.
Until last night, he was just an abstraction.
A forgotten name on a family tree. A bit of world building in my ancestry research.
An acrid smell creeps into my awareness and when I come back to myself, black smoke is rising from the waffle iron.
“Shit!” I cry out, opening the iron and immediately burning myself. “Fuck!”