Page 33 of Demon with Benefits
“Yeah...” Shit. She hadn’t expected to have to come up with an excuse for that, and she couldn’t think of anything to say now. “Guess I’m just tired lately. Faust is taking up a lot of my time.”
Suyin frowned at the grinning beast in her arms. “Why’d you get a dog anyway?”
“I didn’t. Well, not voluntarily. Some arse just dumped him outside my door. He was practically hypothermic when I found him. Who does that?”
“Yeah, but why’d you keep him?”
Iris blinked. “Because he had no one else.”
“There are lots of shelters that could take him.”
“Yeah, but... look at him. He’s so cute.”
Suyin glanced at the puppy and shrugged. Damn, she was cold. Her eyes met Iris’s again. “You wanna go out tonight? Heard there’s a good show at Katacombes. We haven’t hit the mosh pit in a while.”
Another thing she and Iris had in common: an undying love of metal music.
“I dunno,” Iris said. “I’ll see if I can find someone to watch Faust, but it’s hard right now because he needs so much training.”
Suyin’s lip curled. “You sound like you just had a kid.”
Iris recoiled. “Don’t even say that.”
“Well, it’s true. Only it’s a dog, so it’s even lamer.”
She snorted. “Good luck with your demonic-presence barometers.”
Suyin’s eyes lit up with inspiration. “If we can nail this sigil down, we’ll be able to tell if a demon even walks by on the street. We can draw the sigil at each of our houses and even our workplaces. Between the lot of us, we’ll have covered a pretty decent amount of territory.”
“Great,” Iris said weakly, her gut churning.
She should have known something like this would happen eventually. Really, it was stupid of her to think she could continue to lead this double life. She thought back to her birthday party and winced. It had been an incredibly risky, stupid idea, and she was glad nothing had gone wrong. If it had, it would have gonereallywrong.
Suyin knew what had happened to Iris and Lily’s parents—she had moved to Montreal originally to help them get the cloaking spell up—and she knew what demon Iris had dedicated her life to defeating. Not only that, but she’d long ago sworn she would help Iris win that fight.
And now Iris was betraying her by keeping secrets.
But what choice did she have? Telling Suyin the truth would be betraying Lily because it could endanger Mist, and Lily was the only person Iris was more loyal to than Suyin. It sucked, but it had to be done.
Which meant, Iris might have to consider leaving the coven.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a smile at her goth-queen, biker-ballerina best friend. “I gotta go.”
Suyin cocked a brow at Faust. “Have fun with your child.”
Back on the street, Iris and Lily walked in a heavy silence in the direction of their homes. It went without saying that the entire bank thing was a lie, and Lily didn’t bother asking about it. When they reached the point where their routes diverged, they stopped.
“Are you going to be okay with this?” Lily asked, searching her face. They stared at each other through the fur-lined hoods of their parkas.
Iris wasn’t surprised Lily knew exactly what she’d been thinking about. That was just how they worked.
She shrugged fake-casually. “Yeah.”
“I hate putting you in this position. The coven is your whole life.”
Lily’s green eyes were full of regret, and Iris couldn’t have that. She stretched out a hand and grabbed her sister’s shoulder.
Besides their matching eye color, they really looked nothing alike. Lily had wavy blond curls and a curvy body with a superabundance of boobs and ass. Iris was slender, barely needed a bra, and she’d been dying her hair every color under the sun for years.
