Page 31 of Tortured Soul
“I’m asking you this as a favor,” he continued, leaning back in his chair. “From one free demon to another. Stick around, okay? Your mere presence here is picking at the cage’s locks. And we need him to be whole.”
I didn’t like that plan.
In fact, from the moment they entered the Archives and the magnetic pull vanished, I decided that Arc and I should not be together and alone in a room again.
But I nodded anyway.
Because Kai just said that they were humans around. Humans that were hunting and hurting our kind.
Bad humans that I could feed from.
And if I could get my pheromones under control, I could control myself around Arc and he wouldn’t react that strongly to me.
Chapter 10
Lola
Kai let me go after our talk, satisfied by my confirmation that I wasn’t leaving the camp anytime soon and that I would try to hang out with Arc sometime this week.
In my free afternoon, I spent my time walking around the town and visiting the shops. Aymeric’s bakery was also serving coffee—not made by him but by his barista, a ridiculously short witch with a black bob and thick glasses. The coffee was delicious. The pastries weredamning.
He told me that he was closing the shop at 4:00 p.m. and to meet him and our beloved roommates at 7:00 p.m. for an official welcome dinner. Was he going to cook a meal for our vampire twins too or did they have to sort themselves out? Was there a…take-out blood bank that I haven’t seen yet? Wouldn’t it be fun if they had some sort of menu? Like, “Good evening, night children! Our special for today is Virgin O Neg. Choose quickly, we only have two pints left! Could I interest you with a Bloody Karen while you wait?”
I cackled as I turned the key into the apartment door and froze on the spot when my eyes met a frowning Marcus, leaving his room in front of the entrance at this exact moment.
“What has you chuckling like an idiot on the doorstep?”
I closed the door behind me with a roll of my eyes. “Don’t ruin my brain fun.”
I looked around, fumbling with my keys. Was I supposed to take my shoes off? I looked down to see he was only wearing socks. Did he put his shoes in a special closet? In his room?
He stepped to the side slowly, showing a console behind him against the wall next to his room door.
“Key bowl right here. Shoes inside. Unused coat rack over there.”
“Thanks.” I nodded, clearing my throat.
Marcus grunted, walking away toward the kitchen where I could hear Aymeric humming and cooking.
I dropped my keys with the other sets and removed my shoes to put them away.
“Good evening, Lola! I hope you had a nice time visiting after you left the shop.”
I smiled, stopping next to the chair I’d been sitting in the night before and that morning.
“I did. This place is big, I was expecting some kind of camp with tents and stuff.”
He laughed. “The Guardians created this sanctuary during the middle of the war, when the state had already been mostly deserted. They used the already existing buildings and built up progressively.”
So I was right. “Really?”
“Yes. The Hall and most of the stone buildings and fortifications were already there. They believe it was some sort of temple in the middle of some secluded town created by humans before their religion system crumbled with the war and they abandoned the place.”
“How many people live here?” I asked. There were a lot of boxes on the resident files shelves.
“There’s about seven or eight thousand of us, I believe?”
“That much?” My eyes widened in surprise.
