Eva POV #5
The taller demon rolled his eyes looking tired beyond human understanding. “How are you arguing like a married couple already?”
“We are NOT married,” I snapped.
My demon tilted his head slightly. “Not technically.”
I pointed at him so fast the blanket almost fell off my shoulders. “You need to stop saying things that sound threatening.”
For the first time all night, the taller demon actually laughed, and the sound caught me off guard because there was nothing cruel in it. Amusement lingered in his eyes as the disaster unfolding in my apartment played out.
Then his expression softened slightly as his eyes found my demon again. “You won't really stay.”
My demon answered without hesitation this time.
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice made something tighten painfully in my chest again, and I hated that it scared me more than the idea of Hell ever had.
Chapter 11
Eva POV
The apartment stayed weirdly quiet after that.
Cold air still drifted through the broken doorway while the candles around the living room flickered weakly against the walls.
At some point during the argument, Nina had dragged a blanket around herself and stolen the cereal box from the kitchen counter like stress eating carbs were the only thing keeping her alive.
Then she eyed between me and my demon.
“So,” she whispered carefully, “your crush is demon royalty.”
“He is not my crush.”
From the kitchen, my demon answered, “You said that with very low confidence.”
I pointed toward him without even turning around. “WHY ARE YOU STILL HEARING THINGS.”
“Prince of Hell.”
Nina sighed deeply. “Right. Forgot the nightmare title.”
Near the broken doorway, irritation steadily crept across the taller demon's face. From an outside perspective, this probably resembled less a demonic political crisis and more a group of partially unstable roommates.
“You are wasting time,” he said finally.
And my demon actually sounded annoyed instead of calm. “Then leave.”
“You belong in Hell.”
My demon went quiet for a second before answering softly, “I know.”
The apartment turned tense again after that because something about the way he said it unsettled me, like he didn’t just suspect it. He believed it.
Nina noticed too because she lowered the cereal box into her lap while looking between both of us carefully. “…Oh.”
I stared at my demon while he avoided looking directly at me for the first time since I’d summoned him.
“You really have to go back?”
His jaw tightened slightly beneath the hood of my sweatshirt. “It’s complicated.”
I groaned softly. “That is the worst answer people give before ruining lives.”
For a second the room stayed tense and still before I heard myself ask quietly, “Are you leaving?”
My demon finally met my gaze then.
And the horrible part was the quiet sadness in his eyes.
“If I stay,” he said carefully, “they will use you against me.”
The way he answered made the idea feel real, and I found myself hating it more than I should have.
Behind him, the taller demon finally sighed and rubbed one hand over his face tiredly. “You are both making this dramatically worse than necessary.”
Nina pointed at him. “Actually, no. You do not get opinions anymore. You arrived through a broken door.”
The taller demon ignored her completely before looking back toward me. “My name is Anderson.”
I blinked once. “Oh. You have names.”
“We are not raccoons.”
“I really didn’t like the implications of that answer.”
Anderson regarded me with profound disappointment before turning back to my demon. “They will continue searching.”
“I am aware.”
“And eventually they will stop asking politely.”
At that, my demon’s expression darkened slightly while Anderson’s attention shifted toward me instead. There was nothing openly threatening in his face now, which only made it more unsettling, and then a soft voice spoke directly inside my head.
If he leaves… there is a way to find him.
I froze instantly. The voice continued calmly before I could panic.
The same ritual you performed while drunk.. Remember that.
Then Anderson turned away like nothing had happened, and the fact that nobody else in the apartment reacted at all terrified me far more than the voice itself had.
Cold air still drifted through the cracked apartment doorway while Anderson adjusted the sleeve of his coat like the entire situation had become deeply exhausting for him personally.
Then finally he faced others near the entrance. “We’re leaving.”
The guy holding the wine bottles sounded relieved. “Thank Hell.” The woman with the gold rings nodded once before stepping away from the doorway. Even the praying guy seemed quite finished with the evening.
Before leaving, Anderson paused beside me briefly. His attention shifted toward my demon first, who was still watching him carefully from across the apartment. Then his gaze settled on me. “Do not summon anything else,” he said calmly.
“I feel like that’s fair.”
“And if he disappears,” Anderson continued quietly, “do not wait too long before looking for him.”
My stomach tightened instantly. Before I could ask what that meant, Anderson stepped back toward the hallway again.
Then all four of them were gone. And just like that, the apartment fell strangely quiet without them there. Only the broken door, flickering candles, and cold air remained behind like proof none of this had been a stress hallucination.
For the first time since the summoning, it was finally just me, Nina, and my demon.
Nina surveyed the destroyed apartment before grabbing the cereal box again. “I'm charging somebody rent after this.”
Chapter 12
Eva POV
For the next three days, my demon stayed, and somewhere during that time the situation stopped feeling temporary, which turned out to be a much bigger problem than the summoning itself.
Because somewhere between the broken apartment door getting replaced and Nina refusing to sleep over anymore “for spiritual reasons,” my terrifying demonic prince became part of my actual daily life.
It started with small things.
He fixed my kitchen sink without mentioning it after hearing me threaten it verbally for twenty minutes.
Then he reorganized the disaster shelf above my refrigerator because, according to him, “your storage methods create mental strain.”
Yesterday I caught him standing in the laundry aisle at Target holding fabric softener with the serious expression of somebody making military decisions.
And somehow…that was the moment my life officially stopped feeling normal.
“You cannot keep buying black shirts,” I informed him while pushing the shopping cart down another aisle. “You look like a depressed vampire.”
“I am literally from Hell.”
“That is not a personality.”
My demon pursed his lips, carrying three shopping bags in one hand like they weighed nothing.
The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled low over his dark hair while humans casually walked past us completely unaware that one of the most dangerous beings in existence was currently debating blanket quality beside scented candles.
“You chose this shirt for me,” he reminded me calmly.
“Yes, because your entire wardrobe looks like you threaten kingdoms when you were bored ”
“I HAVE threatened kingdoms before ”
“Nothing surprising here .”
For the first time all afternoon, he almost smiled again, and that had become a problem too because I’d started noticing every small shift in his expression, and worse, he’d clearly realized it.
By the time we returned to the apartment, my arms were overloaded with grocery bags while my demon carried literally everything else without effort.
The hallway outside my apartment smelled faintly like somebody cooking garlic bread two floors down, and for one dangerously normal second, it was less like supernatural chaos and more like we’d slipped into domestic life accidentally.
Then the lights in the hallway flickered. My demon stopped walking instantly. The shift in him happened so fast my stomach dropped instantly.
“What?”
He gazed deeply toward the far end of the hallway.
“Stay behind me.”
The warning sent a cold wave of fear down my spine, and less than a second later something moved near the stairwell darkness so quickly my eyes barely caught it.
A shadow slammed into the hallway wall hard enough to crack plaster before I even fully understood what I was seeing. Glowing eyes flashed briefly in the dark, followed by claws scraping violently across the floor tiles.
I stumbled backward but my demon moved faster. One second he was beside me. The next he had me shoved safely behind him while dark energy cracked sharply through the hallway air hard enough to shake the walls around us.
The creature lunged again, and this time I caught a glimpse of far too many teeth before my demon caught it by the throat just inches away from me.
The impact slammed both of them against the apartment wall hard enough to rattle every door in the hallway. Neighbors started yelling somewhere downstairs while black smoke curled violently around my demon’s hands.
Then the creature remained motionless onto the floor before dissolving into ash.
I stared at the black scorch marks covering the hallway tiles while my heart tried to escape my body permanently.
My demon turned toward me. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head too fast. “What the HELL was that?”
His expression tightened slightly. And instantly, I knew.
“No.”
He went quiet.
“No,” I repeated, fear rising hard in my chest now. “You said you were handling it.”
“I was.”
“That thing tried to kill me in my apartment hallway!”
His jaw tightened again before his eyes settled on the ash still scattered across the floor.
Then quietly, he said, “They’re escalating faster than I expected.”
Something cold settled heavily in my stomach. And I already knew what he was about to say next.
My demon's gaze lingered down the empty hallway for a second while black ash continued drifting across the floor tiles around us. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered weakly again before finally stabilizing.