Page 21 of Devil Bound
“Liza?”
“Mrs.Lee.He had a knife.”
“You mentioned the knife.”
“Oh.Okay.He came at me with it.”
“Yeah, I see that.What the fuck.”
“I really only raised her, and she confirmed her name, and then she pointed and said he killed her.”
I was pointing at him too, but the mailman’s breathing was getting shallower and shallower.Some curse on that poodle.
“I get that.”
“He was going to stab me with a kitchen knife!”Excellent job, Lionel Hawkes.Finding my screaming voice when the danger had passed was a wonderful survival strategy.Perhaps me not being interested in dating anyone with a uterus was a blessing for humanity as a whole.
“Calm down.I get it.”
Christine holstered her gun.I hadn’t even realized she’d come in here with it out.I didn’t normally miss things as glaring as that.
“He was going to stick that knife into me,” I said, sounding much calmer now, maybe even a little bit teary.
The poodle walked over and sat down next to me.I petted her little fluffy head.The drooling wasn’t so bad.
Despite having grown from a single murder to a double, the crime scene was closed relatively quickly after all that.Christine handled it, and all I was going to have to do was file reports—one on my raising, the other an incident report that was going to get me yet another mandatory shrink session.Just my luck.
I was sitting on a chair in Liza’s kitchen with the poodle at my feet when Christine walked in, crossing her arms.
“We’re pretty much done, but I don’t know what to do with that.”She pointed at the poodle.“You say the dog is cursed.That means I can’t call animal rescue, because what if they get bit?It’s alive, which means I can’t send it off to the evidence unit either.”
I jumped to my feet.“You can’t hurt her!She protected me.”
Christine frowned.“I wasn’t going to shoot her dead in this kitchen, but I need you to tell me what to do about an animal with a curse that can kill people attached to her little dagger teeth.Can you undo it?”
I dropped back into the kitchen chair with a sigh.I’d tried that, had tried sensing the curse.I wasn’t an expert in analytical spellwork, but I knew that whoever had made this curse and bound it to the poodle wasgood.If the mailman hadn’t come at me with the knife, I’d never have known the dog even had a curse.The only thing I was pretty sure about was that it was a death curse, so it wouldn’t affect me one bit thanks to my necromancy.Everyone else though…
I shook my head, my gaze drifting to the light green linoleum floor.There was an old stain there, looking like a misshapen pancake drenched in maple syrup.“No.And I don’t know anyone who could.”
Christine sighed.“Look, Hawkes—”
“No!Please.You can’t kill her.”The dog growled as if she understood what was going on here.
“Then what do I do?Are you going to take custody of her?”
I looked at the dog.She stared back with her weird little eyes.There were no pets allowed in my apartment, I knew that because a neighbor had once called the landlord about that dead cat I’d reanimated and allowed to roam around and meow.I understood the issue with living animals, but as I told the landlord, the cat had been dead and wasn’t going to make any messes or scratch a doorframe, nothing like that.He’d still made me get rid of her.
Unfortunately, I had a thought then.It was bad luck that Dr.Lily had gotten me to talk about my sex life.There was no other reasonhewas on my mind.None.
I swallowed.“I think I know someone who can take care of her.”An immortal, I was pretty sure, wouldn’t even flinch at a little death curse.
“Someone responsible?This is a death curse.You said so yourself.”
Responsible was not among any of the adjectives I would have used to describe the Devil.He was, however, the only person I could think of who could take her, and I’d been to his ridiculously big house with that obscenely large garden.It wasn’t like she was going to bother him at all.She’d be able to roam in the garden most days, and she’d be happy.Her death curse wouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t have to bite anyone.
So I lied.“Yeah.He’s very responsible.”
Responsible my ass.He was the Devil, and all he had going for him was the sex appeal.Maybe his height.He was probably also really wealthy too, thanks to being an immortal.
