Page 12 of Devil Bound
“Fuck.Off.”
I was salivating.“Say please.”
He turned the corner to the elevators and stopped to hit the button.
“Fine.Fuck off,please.”
“Lucy.”
He tilted his head up at me.It made him look younger.“What?”
“‘Fuck off, please, Lucy.’Say it.”
His mouth fell open.Despite the cold he might or might not have, his lips were a very faint rose color; paler than rose, if I was being honest, but something I could work with.
He lifted his large coffee and drank what little was left in there in one go.
“Please fuck off, Lucy.”
“That’s it.You remembered my name.”
“And you’re still here.”
“That’s because I’m taking the elevator down to the parking garage.How about you?”
He narrowed his eyes at me.The elevator arrived, but Nelly didn’t get on.Instead, he headed for the escalator without another word.
I sighed, looking at the empty elevator.There was nothing for it.I’d have to take it now, so I did.
During the ride and as I walked to the car, something akin to guilt snuck up on me when I thought about Nelly’s sensitive heels and the way those shoes would hurt them.I hadn’t planned for that.I should have been in the process of listening to his feverish confessions of love by now, not feeling guilty for things that weren’t my fault at all.
Annoyed with myself, I tossed my new shoes onto the passenger seat next to the novels and drove off.
Things were not going my way, and I didn’t know why.
6
Lionel
Some time after the bridge incident.
Thementalhealthawarenessseminar was mandatory, especially for me as a consultant, and I hated it.I would have called in sick, except I’d done that once, and the result had been a fun one-on-one session with the department psychologist, Dr.Call-Me-Frank Albert.
I was not going through that again.
At the station, in our murder unit, I usually grabbed whatever desk was available.I was pretty low-maintenance that way, seeing as how I didn’t need talismans or really much of anything to work my magic.
Christine—Detective Rice—had apologized for the lack of office space when I started here, but all I needed for this part of the job was a relatively quiet work environment that allowed me to get all my reports in order to make sure there were no hiccups at the trial stage.
I looked at the wall clock.Half an hour to the seminar, and I had no more reports to write.All my necromancy for the construction site murders had been documented, same as my findings, and I had double-checked everything.I’d even gone over all the stomach-turning crime scene photos again.Those were somehow worse than the scene had been, perhaps because they were so well lit.
Either way, revisiting the night of the raisings and imagining what the bodies would have smelled like without the rain to wash at least some of it away gave me an idea.
Jazani had taken the desk next to mine, and she was typing away, whistling quietly.
I leaned over to get her attention, and she stopped, turning to look at me.“Sorry, was I being too loud?”
I shook my head.“Nah.Just, you know we have that mental health seminar in a bit?”
