I hoped Ezme would have the sense to stay out of it. Daisy needed her mom. It would be hard for my sister to stand there and do nothing as I died, but I knew she could be ruthlessly practical.
Suddenly, Jinx was standing between me and the demon, facing the duke, a whole tirade of words flowing from him. I couldn’t understand a word, but it was clear Jinx was telling the other demon off. A much higher ranking demon than himself. Even as I choked, emotion overcame me that he would do that for me. Especially after all the wrong I had done to him.
The magic vanished, and I fell to the floor, gasping in delicious oxygen.
“He says, you were ordered to collar him?”
I nodded keenly whilst trying to suck in enough breath to answer him. Free from the array, the full extent of his power tingling along my senses. This was no duke, this was a Prince of Hell. Terror flipped my guts over, I was so out of my league. I wondered if Ezme could get to her phone and call our dad. He’d know what to do. In the meantime, I needed to try to appease the prince.
“I was ordered to either banish him or collar him. Jinx chose the collar.”
“Ordered by whom?” sneered the prince.
“The Grand Master of the Council,” I replied, tentatively climbing to my feet.
The prince’s expression shifted. “Silas Darkstar?”
I nodded and coughed.
The demon regarded me intently with dazzling green eyes. “Fair enough,” he sighed as he crossed his arms.
I blinked at him in surprise. But he ignored me again and talked to Jinx. The prince’s magic dissipated and without his fury, he looked very human. Well, like a seventeenth century rich human, anyway.
“Why aren’t you feeding my little brother?” demanded the prince, turning the full force of his terrifying attention back to me.
“Little brother?” I squeaked in fright.
I was sure this demon was a Prince of Hell, which meant he was married to Lucifer, which meant Jinx was Lucifer’s brother-in-law. My head spun. I was going to faint, full on drop on the floor, out cold like a Victorian maiden. I’d been railing Lucifer’s brother-in-law.
“Answer me!”
I flinched, “I’m worried about how old he is. He can’t talk to me to explain his age. It’s why I did the Array. To find someone to translate.”
The prince gave me a bemused look. I wondered if Jinx was going to tell him about me attacking him for saving my niece. He had clearly spilled the beans on his recent frustrations.
I leaned back against the wall. Maybe I could manage a grateful slide into unconsciousness rather than dropping like a sack of bricks.
The demon turned back to Jinx with an appraising, thoughtful look. After a while, he shrugged.
“He is the equivalent of early twenties, I guess. Why? How old are you?”
Relief had never felt so good. I wasn’t a monster. I hadn’t taken advantage of Jinx. Everything was going to be okay.
“Same,” I managed to croak, my throat was still sore from nearly being throttled to death.
The prince shook his head. “Humans are so weird.”
Jinx spewed out a whole new barrage of words. The demon’s brows lifted in surprise and he laughed.
“What did he say?” I blurted out.
“There is a word you keep saying that he wants to understand, from the context he has given me and what he has picked up, I think he wants to know what kinky means.”
I wasn’t going to faint anymore. I was going to burst into flames. From the heat of my blush. I’d never been so mortified in all my life.
The demon answered Jinx, and I watched helplessly as the incubus’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, then he gave me a mischievous, anticipatory grin. Despite my blush, I managed to smirk back. Jinx was on board with kinky, it was great news.
But it wasn’t what I really needed to know.
