Page 122 of Spit

I had felt freer with the stewards than I had in my twenty-five years on this earth.

I never made rash decisions. I never made decisions for myself, full stop.

I was owning it. “Yes,” I whispered. “What do I do?”

“You just did it.” Sev smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

“What—” I began to say, but my heart stopped.

I’d died; I was sure of it. That was the only reason I could think of why I stood in a medieval castle in front of the King of Gluttony himself.

The table between us groaned with the sheer amount of food on top of it, and I was thankful for the barrier between us.

My hand fluttered to my chest, where I had felt the bite of a blade. I was going to have serious words with Sev if I survived—surely there was some kind of etiquette that came with stabbing someone when they weren’t ready?

I was dead, and that sucked. It looked like Mr. Bub would collect my soul as soon as he finished eating a tomahawk steak right off the bone like some savage dog.

I crossed my arms over my chest, tapping my foot against the stone floor as I waited for him to stop chewing, but it didn’t seem like any time soon with the sheer amount of rotting teeth in Beezlebub’s mouth.

Two demons stood behind him, both in armor made of bones. Their faces were gaunt and hungry behind their helmets. There was no one else at the table, despite the feast.

Mr. Bub waved his hand. “Sit, sit. Come on. Let’s not let the food go to waste.”

I shuddered. I wasn’t sure if eating food in Hell was wise, but it looked hot and fresh despite how difficult I knew it was to bring across. The only things that grew in hell were the grapes of wrath and an assortment of other deadly things—but none were edible without consequences.

From the quality of the spread, I would have expected Mr. Bub to have an entire army of people collecting food for him all over the world—just like I had done more than once.

I didn’t want to argue, and I couldn’t. The demon king owed my soul, and I was doing a shit job of living up to my end of the bargain. After all, I had died in the Red City without really helping. I had been captured and made a mess of the whole thing.

I hoped that my death was temporary.

Mr. Bub reached for the jug of wine on the table and sloppily poured himself a glass, lifting it to his mouth and spilling the contents down his sunken cheeks as he drained his glass.

“Am I dead?” I felt the need to vocalize the question. I had to be dead right. I was in hell, after all. The sky looked utterly dismal outside the window, and I thought I had seen an honest-to-goodness dragon fly by, screeching and blowing flames into the clouds.

Mr. Bub poured another glass of wine, but he nudged it across the table in my direction instead of drinking it. He didn’t reach for more food but knitted his fingers together and rested his hands against the table.

“Alexis.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Insatiable. Just as I.”

Yep.” I held my arms out, gesturing to myself with a close-lipped smile.

Mr. Bub chuckled and shook his head. “You aren’t dead, my Alexis. How can you be when you are part demon. Part shadow. Part of me.”

My brow furrowed. “Part of you?”

Mr. Bub gave me a look akin to pity. “You are my child. Your shadow is a part of you. Your demonic half. It lives inside of you now.”

“I’m not a demon. I’m a witch.” I blinked, skipping over the part where Beezelbub had literally declared himself myfather.

“You’ve never been just that.” Mr. Bub shook his head. “We don’t have a contract, my Alexis. You just weren’t ready to know why I was protecting you.”

“You cursed me!” I said accusingly. “You made me run errands for you!”

“Pah.” Mr. Bub waved his hand dismissively. “You are gluttony. It is not your fault that you are addictive. Our sin is the very essence of addiction. Your null side negated some of the natural control that demons have. It seems to have corrected itself now, though.”

“And the jobs you made me do?” I snapped.

He shrugged. “I’m a demon. What did you expect?”

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