Page 65 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

Stormy growled as if to say I was always dramatic.

“Which I’m not.” I pet Cloudy, the only pup in the house not to betray me for Bez’s favor or consider me dramatic.

I needed to stop worrying about everything. Bez. Our world. My devil essence. Lilith.

I mean, she was just a devil. A world-shattering being. One devil who had contingencies for every possibility, including creating escape routes to worlds she deemed beneath her. Plus, one more devil who couldn’t technically pass through Hell dimensions since I held a piece of his essence. A piece of Beelzebub, which he definitely wanted back. Returned. Refunded. Recounted in his audit of essence. He probably didn’t do audits. I would. If I were a devil. Account for my being. But then again, I wouldn’t feel like I needed to focus on bureaucracy if I were all-powerful. Maybe. Not that I’d know since I wasn’t all-fucking-powerful, and there were currently two omnipotent beings circling our dimension like sharks.

Wrong. Sharks were sweet. Sweeter than folks realized, at least. Most people didn’t understand their habits, their purpose, their—

Dammit.

This was my problem. I got so lost in the details that I often forgot about the… Well, the details.

I couldn’t even look at Bez while he slept. Ignoring the problem. Pretending everything was fine. Perfectly content despite the looming destruction at our doorstep any day.

“Bez, you awake?” I asked, turning away from him, yet finding my tail had nudged him.

I might struggle to look at him when overthinking everything, but I still wanted to see him, talk to him, talk until the stress of the entire world faded away.

“I’m gonna head to work.”

Work didn’t alleviate my stress. It distracted me for pockets of time, a few seconds here when I found myself buried in an intricate artifact, a few minutes there when I got lost in the details of a relic, and then just a return to the gnawing fear of what might maybe possibly happen one day, someday.

It was awful. I didn’t understand how people ignored looming threats and pretended they didn’t exist. Not me. Not possible.

“I’m going to attempt another locator spell,” I said to Tony as I brought out the list of items I’d re-cataloged—which had taken a lot longer than expected given my distractions plus the disorganized mess those witches had left everything in.

“Waste of time,” Kell shouted from her back room, one where she’d kept the door open. A possible side effect of her own anxiety for thieves. However, she didn’t vocalize it while acting as aloof as she normally did. So it was really just an inference on my part.

“I don’t know.” I grabbed a stack of books off the counter. “Tony’s found some pretty useful texts.”

Quite possibly the only person who supported my paranoia. Only Tony wasn’t a person.

He clacked his claws. The familiar bond gave just a fraction of his thoughts, his wavelength of emotion, his empathy, his love.

I shrugged. “Close enough. Besides, being a person is overrated.”

“The flame is made from essence; Diabolics can’t be tracked,” Kell continued. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Maybe.” I carried the stack of books down the hallway. “Maybe not.”

Usually, tracking demons, sensing their powers, was impossible. It proved beneficial when staying off The Collective’s radar. It proved exhausting to locate demon threats on Baron Novus’ villa. It turned out not to matter much here in theDiabolic Oasis where most everyone—conspiring witches aside—focused on a ‘live and let live’ philosophy.

But in Hell, essence worked differently. At least for me. Bez, too, it seemed. There were layers and sensations and a level of intricacy that functioned so much differently than anything I’d experienced. And that was through a filtered lens.

I’d felt and identified essence clearly while in Hell, understanding it in ways I never had before. Maybe if I found a way to tap into my abilities like I had before, then I could track down the flamed key copy, properly dispose of it, and finally put to rest all this fucking stress.

After lots of failed attempts to locate the flame key copy and research that led to more and more dead ends, I decided to take a break. While working out wasn’t my go-to way to alleviate stress, I did find myself constantly wound up.

I made my way to the back of the store where Bez trained in the sparring room. He’d come in today. Not that he told me. Not that he planned on working. Not that we really did much of any work around the shop these days. We all sort of just existed on autopilot, doing stuff and doing nothing simultaneously.

It wasn’t that I missed the constant training, but I missed Bez. I missed us being on the same page about things. His impulsive move had left a vacuum that turned into a huge, unsolvable obstacle. But right now, the biggest obstacle seemed to be conversation.

“Training?”

“I suppose.” Bez used his tails to set up some fitness equipment.

He’d gone back to fully dressed suits even if he hadn’t gone back to a human host. A lumbering demon body that always looked about one good stretch away from tearing apart his entire outfit. But the glimmer of his cufflinks told me the suit would be fine. I’d made those with an incantation meant to stitch his clothing when his wings or tails or even his claws shredded his wardrobe.

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