Page 7 of In My Closet

"Listen, I'm sorry… It's just… The whole demon thing is still weird and new to me, and Kastoron didn't inform me exactly who was coming, so I wasn't expecting a sweet-looking girl like you, then the demon popping out of your shadow." I continued to let my awkwardness control my twisting tongue that constantly streamed out every word my mind concocted.

A pair of hands grabbing and jarring me made me shut my mouth. "Gracie, it's okay." Emma chuckled softly while rubbing my shoulders. "We're just here to help, nothing more, nothing less. I mean, I probably should have given you a bit of a heads-up about Levianth. Not many expect my husband to be in my shadow, literally."

Forcing a smile, I averted my eyes and rubbed the back of my neck. "I'm just a little frazzled and weirded out about everything, and I just want to figure out what's going on with my closet."

"We'll do our best, promise," Emma assured me with a bright grin before heading to my room after I took the lead.

The first thing to come out of anyone's mouth the moment Emma and Levianth entered the room was anything but warm. "Kas, you better not have touched anything," Levianth grumbled after nearly shoving Kastoron away from the closet.

"Hey, I know when to not fuck around, this being one of them." Kastoron scoffed with a roll of his eyes. "Not like I can do much besides tear down the place, which we might have to do because I think the actual doorway is embedded inside the walls or something."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I interjected with a frantic wave of my hands, "No one is destroying anything in my place unless it is absolutely necessary. Or if you do, you better put it back together."

Chuckling, Levianth looked at me with a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, nothing is going to be torn apart. There's an easy solution to figuring out the gate and its runes," the bigger demon paused for a second to deadpan at Kastoron, "Without having to kick down some walls."

Levianth settled his hand against the frame of the closet, closed his eyes, and muttered something under his breath. Seconds after he started muttering, the sides of the wall glowed with strange lines of symbols.

"This doesn't look right," Kastoron commented with a deep frown.

Stepping back, Levianth studied everything in a pensive silence before speaking up, "It's not. Someone's tampered with it and removed the keystone."

"Okay, so where does that leave us now?" Not to sound like an ungrateful brat, but I honestly have no idea how all of that played into solving my little problem.

"Well, at least now we know what we need to do to fix the gate, release whatever is trapped in there, then close and destroy the gate," Levianth replied with a flat press of his lips.

"Why can't you just destroy it outright?" Saying it out loud made me wince visibly at how cruel I sounded.

"Because if we don't fix it, then it'll be too unstable to destroy. Yeah, we could try to blow it to bits now, but it could blow back on us badly." I still didn't like the grim tone of Levianth's voice, and the fact Kastoron had kept his trap shut this whole time didn't ease my nerves anymore.

Crossing my arms, I huffed and jutted a hip out. "What are you two not telling me? There's a huge 'but' in the room, and it's definitely not mine." I snapped with a glare at the two demons.

The two demons looked back and forth at each other for a moment before Levianth's shoulders deflated with his sigh. "We can easily craft a keystone and open the gateway… Fixing it though, that's… Uhh… That's going to be rather tricky since it's not either of our areas of expertise. Aesophedus could figure it out faster than us, but he's pretty caught up with some issue of his own." Dragging his attention around the room, he rubbed the edge of his wings a little. "It's going to take a long stretch of research to properly fix the gate without blowing it up."

Groaning, I ran my hands up my face and into my pink hair, gripping it. "So, I have to put up with whatever the hell you two are releasing in the meantime?" I did not sign up to be a ghost sitter!

"Well, we'll take care of it once it's released. We wouldn't just leave you to deal with something like that." Levianth assured me with a small wave of his hand. "Give me and Kastoron an hour, tops, and we'll have a keystone created and this thing open. You girls go eat a quick snack or something." He dismissed us, shoving us out of the room with some shadow tendrils before shutting the door behind us.

"Rude!" Stella huffed, stomping her foot and groaning frustratedly.

Rude indeed, but we couldn't do anything but wait, unfortunately.

Thankfully, it didn't take a whole hour for the two demons to figure out this keystone business.

Not thankfully, were the results of their efforts.

"Why the fuck is there a demon in my closet!?"

Chapter 6

Valphan

I worried my incessant pacing would burn a hole through the floor below at the slow rate the two idiots went at with figuring out and crafting a keystone. Granted, I should give them more credit for handling it at the speed they did since it wasn't up their alleyway. Also, I should be grateful for the fact they could free me.

Still, it felt like forever until they fully set the keystone in and opened the gate, letting me out of limbo to their dumbstruck faces.

Seconds passed to minutes as all three of us stood there staring at each other, the two of them looking at me as if they were watching an angel in a gangbang.

My irritation got the best of me in the next second of waiting around for some kind of greeting from them, causing me to snark at them. "Oh, Valphan, thank the lowest levels of home that you are fine. Oh, Valphan, you're alive, sweet! Oh Valphan, buddy, there you are." Okay, not the best time to be cracking jokes or whatever, but not even a twitch from any of them.

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