Page 22 of Sin and Salvation

I hoped this meant… that they would want me to stay.

ChapterTen

After I’d showered and pulled on the clothes Tyri had donated to my cause—she was tall enough that I had to roll the waistband of the yoga pants several times so they wouldn’t drag on the floor—I heard a soft tapping on my door.

I answered it, expecting to see Aeron or Zane, or maybe even Crow, but instead I found Kylaea standing there, wearing her own skin-tight athleisure clothes.

“Hi,” she said. She had brilliantly scarlet eyes, and even without makeup, she was gorgeous enough to stop most demons in their tracks. “Do you want to come grab a bite to eat with us?”

‘Us’ was clearly the curvy Tyri, who stood behind her. She held up a pair of black flip-flops. “I brought you shoes. We’re going to Tash’s for lunch. No more dust and air for you.”

I thought of the bucket of money I’d earned last night, and immediately scrambled to grab the rolled-up bills Crow had given me. If that portion was tax-free, then my eating money was going to come out of that.

“I’d love to,” I said, sounding much shyer than I meant to, but I thanked Tyri for the flip-flops and popped them on my feet.

The strippers led me through the warren of the back of the club, and we exited through a barred security door into an alley.

I blinked, somehow expecting that it would be midday after Tyri had said ‘lunch’, but I’d been in the windowless club long enough to have lost some sense of time. It was the middle of the night, the streets lit not by sunlight, but neon.

“Tash’s is open all night,” Kylaea informed me. “The Black Hearts usually run their business at night, so the owner keeps it going for them.”

“It feels a little weird to be eating lunch at three in the morning,” I admitted.

Tyri shrugged, casting a smile back over her shoulder at me. “You get used to it. I don’t miss the daylight at all anymore.”

Fortunately Tash’s was not that far, only a street down from the club. I was used to fine dining on Maxime’s side of Concordia, where the cafés were pretentiously adorned and the restaurants all required a reservation four months in advance, so the sight of a little bodega with mismatched iron tables and chairs out front was a bit of a shock. There wasn’t even room to eat inside; most of the tables were already occupied by demons, and we had to place our order at a window.

Kylaea caught the look on my face before I schooled it into submission.

“We heard you’re from Giraud’s side,” she said, watching me sidelong as we got in line. “I’ve only been over there once, when I was a sugar baby for some journalist. He brought me to Petit Gâteau. I couldn’t believe we needed to call ahead just to eat a literal single bite of cake.”

I couldn’t hold back a snort. “All the restaurants on the south side of Concordia are like that. You have to wait six weeks for your table, and when you get there, they serve things like cucumber mousse on an air cracker.”

Maxime had often dined out, which meant I’d spent a solid hour a day booking reservations for the next month. It was even worse once he instituted the rule that I was to watch my calories, and sometimes the cucumber mousse was the most filling thing I’d eat during a meal while I watched Maxime cut into juicy steaks.

I’d despised every fucking second of it, and when I got to the window of Tash’s and ordered myself an entire basket of fried bat wings and fries, I could’ve cried with relief.

I was free, and I could eat whatever I wanted.

Tyri ordered barbecue, and Kylaea asked for a medium-rare burger with the works. We waited a few minutes longer, then took our spoils to a little table tucked in the corner of the patio.

I almost imploded at the first taste of fried wing dipped in chipotle sauce.

Kylaea nodded, her mouth full of burger. “It’s like, orgasm-good, right?”

I thought of the body-shaking orgasm Aeron had given me only an hour ago. It was a tight race, but Aeron won out.

Barely.

“Now you can put some meat on those bones,” Tyri said with satisfaction. Unlike Kylaea and I, who were hands-on with our food, she was using a fork. “You get better tips when you got hips.”

“Did you just make that up?” Kylaea accused, flinging a slice of pickle at her.

I giggled too, but inside… on the inside, I almost wanted to cry.

They acted like we were real friends. In Giraud Tower, there was no such as friends.

There were straightforward enemies, but worse than that, there were people who smiled to your face while plotting how to stab you in the back to climb the corporate ladder.

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