Page 25 of Devil Bound
I would not, ever, fuck him.Sex with him was the basement with the failing lights in any horror movie, and for once in my life, I needed to be a final girl.
Lucifer looked around.“I can’t move in with you, Nelly.”He pulled out his phone.“I’ll let my house-angel know to pick up organic produce.And a juicer.”He pulled out his phone and started texting.
“Lucy, I’m not fucking moving in with you,” I said.The nerve of him.Gods, how I hated immortals.
Lucifer stopped texting.“I cannot explain to Tiamat how you wouldn’t, not when I already told her you live with me.”
“You did what?”
He shrugged.“I had to tell her something, Nelly.And since you were going to move in with me anyway…”
I took a calming breath.My hands were shaking.I needed coffee.Coffee would make this entire situation better.
“Listen to me.I’m not moving in with you.”I walked up to him, grabbed the lapel of his snug-fitting denim jacket, and dragged him to the door.He was bigger and stronger than me, and if he’d dug in his heels, I’d have only had my magic to draw upon, but thankfully, he allowed me to kick his ass out.“Go,” I said, opening the door and shoving him across the threshold.
Lucifer turned around.“You’ll feel better about ten days into the cleanse.That’s when the mood swings are supposed to stop.”
I rolled my eyes and shut the door in the Devil’s face.With my luck, he’d be back before dinner, but at least by then I’d be caffeinated.An ominous growl echoed through the apartment.
“Fuck,” I said.I’d forgotten to make him take Soul.
13
Lionel
Asitturnedout,the Devil at my door helped me get an early start on getting the coffee I needed to brave the rest of the day ready.Detective Rice called about ten minutes after I’d kicked Lucifer out.
My phone, which had been on the bed next to me, had been swallowed by the sheets, and my search for it was neither coordinated nor elegant, but in my defense, I’d been woken before noon.It took me about two minutes to find my phone and answer it.
“Christine,” I said, slumping down on the bed, slightly breathless.
“Please tell me I didn’t interrupt you jerking off or raising some dead rat out of compassion or something,” she said.She was a good detective and a loyal friend, but after raising that one crow, she always suspected me of secretly keeping a reanimated menagerie.
I rubbed my eyes.“No, Christine, I just had to find my phone.What’s up?”
A growl from my right made me look back over at my table.The cursed poodle had somehow climbed up there and was now sitting in the center like some creepy sentinel.I so needed to get Soul back to Lucifer before her curse could contaminate anyone.
“You remember the corpse from last night?The one that was found in the salt marshes?”
“Yes.Vividly.”
“Remember what you said about that strappado thing?”
I sat back up.“Yes, because the ME said her arms had been bound behind her back and then pulled upward until they broke, like the Inquisition used to do to magic users once before it collapsed.But it’s not like I know for sure that’s what happened to her.It’s not like she was able to tell us.”
I’d learned more than I wanted to know about how magic users had been tortured centuries ago for all manner of crimes real and imagined.The Collegium made that part of our history mandatory.
“Yes, the missing tongue, I know.”Christine sighed.“We found more bodies in the salt marshes, and I need you here.Hawkes, I hope you’re wrong about the strappado.If you’re not, if these are hate crimes against magic users, and if they’re being tortured before they’re killed, this case might get ugly.”
In my necromantic opinion, bodies in the salt marshes were already ugly, and I was glad, so glad, I hadn’t had anything to eat yet.I was good at raising people, but it was the smells and the fluids that no amount of training could prepare you or your stomach for.No one at the Collegium had ever warned me about that.
“I’ll be there in twenty,” I told Christine.
The detective snorted.“That’s optimistic at this time of day.I’ll give you a half hour unless you can magic traffic to flow faster.”With that, she hung up.
“Fucking psycho killers,” I said.
Soul, still sitting primly in the center of the table, growled in what I could only assume was agreement.Her curse should have slowly killed her, but it just made her creepy, like some magical patient zero.If my landlord saw her, it would be bad.If she bit him…
