Page 65 of Spit

Trey’s face scrunched in distaste. His roman nose crinkled at the bridge, and his canary yellow eyes narrowed. “I have been alive a long time, so take my words as they are intended. Humans are important. Souls are important. There would be no demons, no hell, no Summerland if there were not human souls to feed into the blanket of power.”

I took a moment to digest his words, but Trey spoke before I could reply.

“You seemed uncomfortable when the human male got close to you.” Trey studied me, unblinking. “He smelled like lust and greed.”

“Ew.” I shook my head to clear it.

“Did he try to touch you?”

My gorge began to rise. “Death and darkness, no.”

“This conversation makes you uncomfortable,” Trey noted.

“Well…”

“Does sex make you uncomfortable?”

“You’re worse than Sev.” I groused. “My sex life is off the table. I am a sex-less being. I do not have sex. I will never have sex.”Again. “I have resigned myself to a life without sex.”

Trey cocked his head to the side. “Are you asexual?” He asked before sniffing. “No. I don’t think so. I have smelled your lust.”

“You shouldn’t be smelling people without their permission.” My voice rose a pitch.

“Why not?” Trey asked. “I can hardly control what I smell.”

I growled with exasperation.

“Sev told me that you had a reaction to his magic.” Trey continued.

That was putting it lightly. “Were you two gossiping like grannies then?”

Trey ignored my jibe. “Sev recognized the signs of sexual assau—”

“Ah!” I threw my hands up. “Why does everyone in Hemlock House want to know about my vagina and its past, present, and future?” The question was rhetorical, but Trey answered it anyway.

“You areinteresting.” He told me.

His gaze sharpened in a way that made me squirm, and the car's atmosphere turned thick—straddling the line between frightening and tense. The kind of tension that came before lightning struck the ground.

The lump in my throat made it too difficult to speak, and I felt my nipples harden, reacting to Trey’s unerring regard. I couldn’t move. I was a rabbit stuck in the middle of the highway, headlights racing towards me, unable to run away.

Trey didn’t move closer to me, but somehow it felt like he was right there. His languid gaze dropped to my chest before rising to my face again. I didn’t know if he was studying the rise and fall of my chest or the way my nipples threatened to cut themselves out of my borrowed shirt.

“Legion likes to rescue women,” Trey told me. “Every woman in his coven was once a human in the Red City, taken advantage of because of their magic.”

The quick subject change was going to give me whiplash.

“Are you one of his rescues?” Trey pressed.

I had no idea what the answer to that question was.

The air changed when we entered Gluttony, and I felt my body relax as tension melted away for the first time since arriving in the city. It felt like coming home.

I wasn’t a rescue.

I was a goddamn null witch.

“No,” I said, feeling my shadow rise behind my eyes—all-consuming.

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