Chapter 8
STELLA
My fear was immediately replaced with the much more familiar feeling of irritation.
Fuck him if he thought I was going to let him think he scared me.
Even if he kind of did.
No. That was wrong. He didn’t scare me. Not knowing what he was capable of was what frightened me. The unknown frightened me more than any man.
I huffed out a breath and swung open the door.
Damien’s office was decorated in the same heavy, ornate style as the rest of the house, barring my room, and Agatha’s kitchen.
The only thing that set it apart was a large painting of the ocean, set over the fireplace mantle.
For a moment, it made me wonder who had decorated my quarters.
The creamy walls and light bedding of my room didn’t exactly seem like Damien’s taste.
He sat behind a large wooden desk, with more carvings engraved into each of the legs.
These ones depicted delicate winged creatures, almost fairy-like.
I leaned in a little closer to instead see terrifying faces carved onto their beautiful bodies.
Jerking away, I studied Damien instead. His dark hair was tousled and pushed away from his face, giving him the illusion of a youth he definitely was not.
He also didn’t bother looking up from his papers as I stood in front of him with my arms crossed. I waited for him to look up at me, to acknowledge my presence, to tell me off. Instead, he was silent, nothing but the quiet scratching of pen on paper separating us.
In another room, a clock tolled the hour, a sickeningly hollow chime. Eleven. Eleven in the morning – or so I assumed based on the bright light that shone in through the kitchen windows. Then again, who was to say all of this wasn’t fabricated, an illusion of the highest kind.
‘You think so loudly, I can practically hear it from here.’
I snapped my head up, but Damien hadn’t bothered to look up at me when he spoke. He acknowledged me, but I was nothing more than another fixture in the room to him.
‘Are you planning on speaking at all to me, or are you just going to hover there for the rest of the morning?’ he continued. ‘Hovering doesn’t bother me, but you’ll probably get tired far sooner than it takes for me to finish.’
Agatha said he would be grumpy being interrupted, but he didn’t sound grumpy. Placating, maybe, laced with something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I shifted on my feet, weighing the words on the tip of my tongue, deciding just how much I wanted to offer up, and how much to keep close to my chest.
‘I don’t understand how this works. Why I’m here.’
‘Because you made a deal with a stranger.’ His pen scraped against the paper, and I willed him to look up at me.
‘That’s not a real answer.’
Damien sighed, finally putting his pen down and running a sharp gaze over my face. ‘Sit.’
I didn’t make a move to sit in one of the overstuffed chairs, and Damien rolled his eyes, taking off the brown-rimmed glasses he wore, and setting them down to one side.
‘Please sit, Stella.’
I slouched into the uncomfortable leather chair across from his desk. He drummed long fingers on the top of his shiny desk.
‘If you’re asking what’s required of you while living here, the answer to that is nothing.
There is nothing required of you being here.
I don’t expect you to clean up after me, or make me meals.
I do, however, expect you to join me for dinner – which I’m sure Agatha already explained – and I appreciate respect in all aspects.
That includes not interrupting me when my office door is closed.
You might not like what you walk in on.’ He raised a dark brow, looking over my shoulder at the heavy door I’d left open.
‘I’ll let it go for today, but you’d do better to remember that next time. ’
A flush rose over my cheeks, and I desperately tried to bury it deeper. I needed to remember he was dangerous.
‘Agatha said time works differently here.’
‘She’s correct. We’re still on Earth, technically, but my estate sits outside of time. It makes it easier going back and forth between your realm and mine. We call it the Fringe.’
I nodded like all of this wasn’t absolutely insane to process. Like everything he’d told me so far was normal, just an average day. ‘Does that… does that mean I won’t get older either?’
Damien cocked his head to the side. ‘Do you want to grow old?’
A lifetime flashed before my eyes: a life I’d never had a chance to think about, and now never would.
A white dress, and a gentle smile in a dark tux.
Kids running around me, laughing and playing.
My hair growing gray, new wrinkles appearing at the corners of my eyes.
Sunsets lasting just a bit longer, closer and closer together.
I’d spent so many hours mourning the life Grace wouldn’t have that I forgot to dream of my own.
The thing about that life I hadn’t considered was that it only made sense if you weren’t alone. If you had someone to spend it with. I had no one. Not any more.
So when I pulled my eyes away from Damien’s sharp gaze with a shrug, I said, ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t given it much thought.’
Damien made a quiet noise in the back of his throat. ‘You will still age here. Just much slower. However, time will remain as it is for Grace. Nothing will change for her.’
Nothing, except for her older sister disappearing from her life. An older sister that would soon become the younger, as the tides of time wiped away at her life.
When Damien spoke again, his voice was softer. ‘Grace can’t miss what she doesn’t remember, Stella. As far as she’s aware, her life is the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that.’
‘But it’s not, is it?’ I whispered. I snapped my gaze up to meet his steady stare. ‘Why me?’
A flicker of uncertainty flashed through Damien’s eyes, but he didn’t look away.
We stayed like that for a minute, maybe two. Maybe a year, a decade, a lifetime. We dared the other to be the first to speak, the first to crack, but neither of us wanted to acquiesce.
Damien sighed, put his glasses back on, and turned back to his notebook. A dismissal.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t ready to leave. If he wouldn’t answer my question willingly, I’d break him down until I had my answer.
Understanding why I was here felt like the key to unlocking the other answers I was so desperate for.
I looked him over carefully while he stared intently at the small, black notebook.
I almost could’ve read his mind, like he seemed to do earlier, thinking that if he didn’t look up, I’d disappear.
He didn’t belong here. In this role. A curly lock of his dark hair fell in front of his forehead, catching on the edge of his glasses.
Before I could stop myself, I said the thoughts out loud. ‘You don’t look like a devil.’ I couldn’t remember ever imagining the Devil had glasses of all things. Shouldn’t his vision be 20/20? All the better for roasting you alive, my dear.
‘The Devil. Or Belial if you’d rather.’ His face remained impassive, eyes still downcast on his notebook. ‘My apologies. I fear I’ve left my pitchfork in my other dress pants.’
I frowned. ‘Seriously. This is not how all the books depict the Devil looking.’
Damien sighed, realizing his work was futile and I wasn’t planning on leaving without some kind of answer.
Once more, the glasses were carefully removed, slowly folded, and placed on the desk with purpose.
He closed the book with a snap. ‘Look, I know how those monster books make it seem. I’ve read enough of them over the years.
The Greeks probably came the closest. But what it comes down to is that someone is required to transport the souls.
Essentially, they are a gatekeeper to Hell.
A go-between of Earth and Hell. That’s what I am.
So call me whatever you’d like, the result is the same.
And the truth of it is that devils aren’t born, Stella.
They’re made. I was made. I had a life once, like you. I used to be human, once upon a time.’
Blinking, I tried to make sense of the words he was saying. ‘How… how long ago were you human?’
‘A very long time ago.’
Made. I didn’t know much about religion.
My parents had been the kind to believe that church was the sun above you and the grass under your feet on a Sunday.
But I knew enough to know the Devil had just always been.
They weren’t created. And yet, here was Damien telling me the exact opposite. ‘How did you become a devil?’
‘I made a choice,’ he snapped. ‘And I chose this. So now here I am.’
‘How long ago, though? A hundred years? A thousand?’ Despite myself, I was curious to know more about him.
‘The world I grew up in no longer exists. That’s all that matters.
The family I once had are long gone, and anything I would’ve known and understood about the world doesn’t exist either.
It doesn’t matter, Stella. You’ll realize soon enough for yourself.
’ A smirk crossed his face, fleeting and cruel.
‘Everything is temporary. Once you’re on the outside of it all, looking in at the people floating around inside their snow globe, looking for a meaning that isn’t there, you realize how fucking temporary it all is. ’
‘It’s not.’
His tongue darted out, running along the seam of his lips. I followed the movement with my eyes. ‘What?’
‘Temporary.’ I leaned forward until I rested my forearms on his desk, not daring to blink.
I wouldn’t show weakness. ‘None of it is. Just because you’ve been around long enough to see it all happen, and then repeat itself again, doesn’t mean it’s temporary.
I’m not going to forget my sister or my parents.
I’m not going to forget the life I had out there.
And if I don’t forget, and I’ll be around forever, doesn’t that mean my memories are forever, too? ’
The annoyance and cruelty evaporated off Damien’s face, sliding off until he sat expressionless in front of me once more. ‘For your sake, Bambi, I hope that’s true. I truly do.’
The edges of the desk bit into my arms. ‘Bambi?’
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know that story. I thought all humans knew those tales.’ The smirk was back, the sharp gaze that made me question if it was teasing or serious.
‘Bambi, as in the deer.’ God, he was strange.
‘Bambi, as in the sweet, na?ve deer who had no idea what the world was like, watching it all through those big, innocent, brown eyes, expecting a miracle to come out of nowhere.’ Damien twisted one of the silver rings that graced his fingers.
I couldn’t help but watch his graceful hands.
They were beautiful, like the rest of him.
‘That’s how you look at me. Like you’ve seen the worst in the world, and you still somehow expect some good to come out of me. There’s no good in me left.’
I shrugged, ignoring the way my heart began to pick up speed. ‘Maybe I hope for the best in all people. You’ll be disappointed if you’re expecting a na?ve girl with no understanding of the real world, though. Hopeful, maybe. I’d even give you optimistic. Na?ve? Sadly not.’
‘I’m beginning to see that.’ Damien’s voice was a quiet thrum, keeping time with my heart.
I opened my mouth to say more, to defend my honor – or at least what remained left of it – but before I could, Damien held up his hand, narrowing his gaze as he looked past me. My eyes widened. ‘Wha—’
‘Shush.’ His eyes remained focused on something beyond me, until an angry growl escaped him. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
The shock of fear that shot through me was unexpected. I might not have known Damien well, but I knew by the look on his face that whatever he’d heard wasn’t good. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘No. And thanks to your little intrusion in my office, I have no way to hide you. I’m going to need you to listen, which I know isn’t your favorite thing, but if you want to get out of this in one piece, you’ll listen to every damn word I say, okay?’
‘I… I don’t understand.’
Damien strode around his desk and pulled me to my feet before I realized he had even gotten out of his chair.
He pulled my chin up to look at him, and all I could think about was how good his warm hands felt against my skin.
I must have been more touch starved than even I realized, because I found myself fighting not to lean into his hands.
Surely, this one weakness wouldn’t damn me?
‘Listen closely,’ he hissed. ‘Because the head of the Council of Hell just showed up at my door, and with almost absolute certainty I can say they’re here to question me about you.
So you’ll do as I say, and you’ll only speak when spoken to.
If they ask you a question, you’ll answer with a yes or no.
Do not give them more information than they ask for.
Do not give them anything freely. They will use it against you.
Maybe not today, but believe me, nothing goes for free in Hell. ’
‘Information isn’t temporary then,’ I muttered under my breath. From the flash in Damien’s gaze, I knew he’d heard me. ‘What do you mean, Council of Hell? Aren’t you in charge?’
I could hear them now, what Damien must have picked up on far before me: an echo of footsteps trailing down the hall, sure and precise.
‘Checks and balances, Bambi.’ He grimaced, let go of my chin, and pushed me behind him the slightest bit. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was protecting me. ‘Everyone answers to someone.’
As we turned toward the door, my heart hammering in my chest so loudly, I was sure he could hear it, I wondered who I answered to.