I blink, trying to formulate my thoughts into words because I have no idea how Hell operates. “You’re telling me there was no demon school or something like that before they sent you into the big world?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he bites back. “My circumstances are”—his blue eyes search the ground like he might be able to find the right word—“different.”
His cryptic bullshit won’t get us anywhere. “How?”
“It’s irrelevant to our issue.” Lynx turns away from me to drive home his dismissal.
“Humor me.” I throw his words back at him. “Unless you’d like to continue being stuck here.”
He takes a deep breath before speaking with the level of strain I’d expect from someone with a gun to their head. “I was turned.”
I stare at him, waiting for more information. Does he think I know demon lore? “Explain it to me like I’m five.”
Blue eyes narrow on me, and I tilt my chin up in silent challenge. I’m not backing down. We’ve established that I’m not—outwardly—scared of him anymore.
“The vast majority of demons are born in the pits of Hell and must crawl through hellfire. Only the strongest survive and make rank.”
“Like turtles.”
The look he gives me is concerningly close to confusion. Does he not know what turtles are?
He scoffs, scowling at me. Touchy subject, then. “Others were born human and turned into demons by humans playing with magic they have no understanding of. It’s how Tony became a demon—except he was intoxicated and did it to himself.”
Hewhat?A story for another time.
“Why were you turned? How does that work?”
For a second, I feel sick because one jarring thought crosses my mind:Wait until Ella hears about this.
She got such a big kick out of things like this. If I told her I met a real-life demon—two, in fact—she might get jealous. But Ella isn’t here anymore, and it’s looking more and more likely that I need to accept I’ll never speak to her again.
Lynx’s lips thin. When he doesn’t answer immediately, realization dawns on me.
“You don’t know.”
“A man told me to go to hell just before stabbing me with a special object. He got his wish. When I woke up, I was being—I woke up in Hell.” He glares at the ground.
“What… why did that…?”
“I stole from him.” His eyes snap up to me as if I were the one who delivered the killing blow.
I straighten, gearing up for a fight. “That’s a dramatic reaction,” I say, referring to the aggressor in his story.
My hackles rise when his lips curl into a sneer, and I shift to face him fully. Panic at the prospect of everything he could do tightens my chest. At the end of the day, he’s still a demon who’s made it very clear I’m no match for him in a fight.
“The rich do what they want because they think they’re above law, humans, and God because at the end of the day, we drop to our knees for them as they’re the hand that feeds.”
“Not always. Karma always comes around.” The words taste sour because it took too long for karma to come around for our family, and the greatest price wasn’t even paid by the ones who committed the wrong.
“Good.” Lynx looks down his nose at me. “I hope you and yours got what was coming, and you watched as all your riches were taken from you.”
I flinch like he’s just snapped my neck again. How fuckingdarehe? To think, for a moment, I thought he might have some humanity left in him. And to say my sister deserved to die?
“Don’t you worry.” I swear I can see red in my vision. “We lost all the money, and because of it, I lost the only thing I cared about. She’s in there with me because I couldn’t afford to keep getting her the medication she needed, and she’sin therewith me because karma decided we had to pay for our parents’ sins, you fucking asshole.”
And I’m paying for mine forever.
I don’t know when I started getting closer to him, but I don’t realize that I have until I’m shoving him backward.
