Page 114 of Infernal

My eyes were immediately bombarded with mint-green tile and wallpaper, seeping out of the bathroom as the flickering florescent light struggled to stay on. Furious, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to telepathically shatter the lightbulb, but of course, my sorry state of being couldn’t seem to pull enough mojo together to do anything but grunt and moan in the corner of the room as the radioactive glow poured its eye-gouging light into my personal space.

I scowled at Gabriel’s back as he shuffled across the bathroom, grabbing a towel and then turning on the water.

He really had some nerve.

“You don’t actually think you’re getting me anywhere near that cesspool, do you?”

He didn’t answer except for the sound of his boots clomping against the tile as he lumbered around the bathroom.

A few moments later, he reappeared at the doorway, steam fogging the glass behind his head.

“The shower’s ready,” he said expectantly, like he had any chance in hell of getting me in there.

I laughed at him. It was humorless and dry, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

He grimaced again. “Don’t make me do this the hard way, Jemma.”

“I’d really like to see you try,” I said, knowing he didn’t have it in him. This was one war I definitely wasn’t going to lose.

His frown deepened, gathering his eyebrows together and propping them down over his eyes.

Just like I thought.

“Shut the lights on your way out,” I said and flopped my head back against the wall, closing my eyes again.

“Fine. Last chance,” he warned.

I cracked my eye open and snuck a peek at him. He was holding his cell phone in his hand, waving it back and forth as though it were a gun or some magic weapon that could make me do something against my will.

“What are you going to do with that? Tweet me to death?” I rolled my eyes at him.

“No,” he answered, unamused. “I’m going to call Dominic with it.”

My heart seized in my chest at his name. He was playingdirty.

“Like I said, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”

And just like that, another war was lost.

As angry as I had been when I stomped my way to the shower and slammed the door in Gabriel’s face, the moment I stepped under the medicinal warmth of the running water, all the blood, tears and anger trickled off my body like falling rain, only to be swept away down the drain. I had intended to only be in there a few minutes—just enough time to get him off my back and put that damn cell phone away, but when I finally stepped out of the bathroom, it was almost thirty minutes later.

“You look better,” said Gabriel, and I decided to take his word for it. I didn’t have the courage or the desire to look at my own reflection, so I hadn’t.

“What is that?” I asked, toweling my hair as I stared across the room at him. He was standing beside the grungy table by the window, holding a tinfoil plate that looked a lot like takeout.

“Chicken and potatoes,” he said and then held the platter out, coaxing me closer.

My stomach rumbled loudly as the smell of food wafted across the room, and despite my want for continuous penance, my feet were already shuffling around the bed to him, desperate for some kind of sustenance to keep them alive.

I dropped the towel on the bed and took the plate from him.

“Thank you,” I grumbled and sat down on the edge of the bed. I didn’t waste any time ripping the cover off the plate and diving into the dish.

“When was the last time you ate?” he asked as he lowered himself into the chair by the window. He dropped his forearm on the table and studied me.

“It’s been…a while,” I said, not entirely sure how long it had actually been.

Between the agony of losing Trace and the withdrawals from being away from Dominic, my entire body was a wreck. So much so that I couldn’t tell where one injury ended and where the next one began. The pain just seemed to run into each other, never ebbing, never wavering, just a continuous ache that disemboweled every inch of my being.

---