Page 51 of SIN Bone Deep

“Why what?”

“Well, making dates and catering isn’t exactly demonish, Mal,” I pointed out.

“Why not? Maybe I’m planning on stealing their souls, or leading them down the paths of Hell? It won’t be the first time a bit of wine and some cheese has led to people doing some stupid things,” he replied lightly. “You have a very one-dimensional concept of my job, Nyx.”

“Sorry,” I got the idea that I had ruffled his feathers. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me,” he said although his driving as he swung out on the road said otherwise. “Pinegrove Academy is a cesspool of sinners. They are born of sinners, suckle on the teats of them, absorb the sin like language, and then come here to be educated in how to do it in a civilized manner without being caught. A smart demon can meet his quota of souls very easily walking the hallowed halls of the school. I’m just being smart and multi-tasking.” The grin he sent me was vulpine. “A holiday by the sea, a beautiful witch, and a cauldron full of souls ripe for the plucking - what more could a demon ask for?”

“Mal… Did Ender know?” I asked him the question that above all others my heart needed to know. “Did he know that I was going to die?”

“Of course, he knew,” Mal replied disdainfully, unhappy with the change of topic. “He is Death, after all.”

I had known that Ender had been waiting for me to die like a patient spider on a web, I told myself, and yet it was no less painful to hear.

“Stop,” I reached out and grabbed Mal’s arm. He braked, slowing until the front of the car rested almost at the same point that my bike had been struck by the other car, at the start of the stretch of road where the little girl had died. Where I would have died if Mal had not answered my call.

There was no debris and no blood. “There’s no sign of the accident.” I found that somehow shocking, the erasure of my suffering, the invisibility of my broken heart. Evidence of the little girl’s accident remained - the line of rubber visible on the tarmac. But not even a drop of blood or fragment of the bike showed that I too had almost died.

“Of course not,” Mal’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, keeping an eye on the road behind us, our position perilous if another car approached at speed. “If I left blood, gore, and broken bike behind on the road, people would ask questions about how it is that you’re in one piece, Nyx, and there’s nothing that quite screams ‘witch’ like surviving certain death.”

“Someone tried to kill me,” I felt nauseous as the horror of it swept over me. “He was waiting for me, up the road, and came up behind me on purpose. He could have gone around, but he meant to hit me.”

“Curious,” Mal commented. “But this is hardly a place to linger and chat. A bit morbid, in fact, Nyx,” he put the car back in gear and continued down the road, driving over where I had lain dying. “It hardly matters anyway. No one can kill you now.”

“Because you’re my demon?” I frowned at him puzzled.

“Mhm, and… Well,” he pulled into a car space. “Here we are. To be continued, hmm?” He had turned the engine off and was out of the car before I could protest, rounding the bonnet to open my door.

“It could have been Nova,” I realized as I let him help me out. “I need to warn her and the aunts…” That conversation would go down like a tonne of bricks, I realized. Would Aunt Callista insist on bringing the police in as she had done with the attack on the house? How would we explain that I had been hit by a car and didn’t have a scratch on me?

“Here we are,” Mal took a picnic basket out of the back of the car and carried it over his arm as he led me to the grocery store. “Let’s get what we need and go meet our sinners.” He held open the door and waited for me to pass him.

“We can’t warn my aunts,” I told him quietly as we began to weave our way down the aisles. People stared at us, but then, people always stared, so I did my best to ignore them whilst staying close to Mal’s side and keeping my voice low so that we would not be overheard. “They will want to go to the police, and I really can’t explain what happened without explaining what happened.” I widened my eyes at him meaningfully.

“Camembert or brie?” He debated two rounds. “I can never decide.”

“But I can’t let this man hurt my family,” I continued. All the food around us was making me hungry though, and I grimaced as I pressed my hand to my grumbling stomach.

“You’re right,” he said lightly. “Both.” He added them to the picnic basket. “Is Pate a little tacky? Should we take sliced meats instead?” He continued to add items to the basket.

“You’re not listening to me, Mal,” I scolded him as I trailed along behind him to the fruit and vegetable aisle.

“Grapes,” a woman said from beside me.

I looked at her in surprise to find her smiling at me as if enraptured by my presence.

“You really should try one,” she told me plucking one from the bunch. “They’re the sweetest things.” Before I could protest, she’d popped it and half her finger into my mouth, and then brought her finger back to her lips and sucked it. “Hmm. No, I was wrong. You’re the sweetest thing.”

My jaw hit the floor, and I dribbled grape juice before I managed to close my mouth. She wiped her thumb under my bottom lip, capturing the juice whilst holding my eyes, hers intense and her lips curled into a smile that could only be described as predatory.

“Hey,” a man scowled at the woman. “Hands off. I’m sorry about that,” he added stepping between the woman and me and cupping my elbow. “That was really inappropriate.” He breathed in closing his eyes. “Hmm. You smell so good. Vanilla, and…”

“Lavender. Ah,” Mal interceded, pulling me a little away. “Off with you. Off-off,” he gestured with his hand as if shooing flies. “We should probably go,” he said to me, tucking me in against his side. “Before you start an orgy.”

“What the fuck, Mal?” I hissed at him as he threw notes at the wide-eyed cash register clerk and hustled me out onto the street. “What is wrong with these people?”

“Hey,” a man on the pavement stopped dead and turned back towards us. “I know you, don’t I?” He said to me. “From the coffee shop.”

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