“Raise the young one well. They will hold our favor. We’ll speak soon, mage and his demon. And for this, you will earn a soul. And you will be weighed in my temple and your afterlife will follow our mage.” Bastet picked at her teeth with a sharp nail.
“But…” Esmeray trembled, and Diana rose from her seat to scoot around and embrace him. She patted his back.
My mind reeled with the prospect.
“What do you think, mage?” Diana turned her head to me with an encouraging smile.
“I think it is time we look for larger accommodations and ensure that we have plenty of help. I need more consistent work.” The air around me seemed to whistle as I was unable to focus. I blinked the fog from my mind, tried to come to terms with what I’d heard.
“Oh, that will take care of itself. And it’s not nepotism unless you refuse to put in the work. It is divine justice.” Bastet slapped the table and, with a jarring flash of color, we were gone from the deic realm and sat before one another on stools behind my counter.
Lune and Lionel were gone.
The scent of fish hovered about.
We stared at one another in long silence.
“Dinner is ready, my mage!” Vincenzo’s ghostly voice sang out, and Esmeray glanced over. Vincenzo stalled in the doorway, hovering with a curious expression. “Who died?”
Esmeray whispered two words. “My career.”
Chapter Twelve
Esmeray
Pregnant? I couldn’t be… I ate my dinner, my appetite ravenous and climbing, refusing to say a word to Gre. Not that he offered to speak, either. We were two lonely people forced together and locked in with little else than life. I was a demon! I was meant to bear witness to death, to scourge the afterlife, to wreak havoc on sinners. I wasn’t meant to bow to fertility goddesses and fuck a mage with the mostlovelycock I’d ever taken.
I rose from the table and tossed my napkin down with a thanks to a confused Vincenzo. He watched me leave, and Gre couldn’t meet my gaze. “Where are you going?”
“Out!” I stomped out the front door, toward my new car, and hopped in, fighting tears as I did so.
I drove across town to the demons’ district, the roads rougher in places as I scoured the evening lights for a sign that declared an apothecary lay nearby. I stopped by, stormed in, and purchased two different varieties of demon pregnancy tests and glared at a judgmental cashier who quaked as I said nothing.
In a little time, I returned home, marching past Gre who sat behind his counter, watching the door with a grave expression mottled over his giraffid face. As I stomped by, droplets like rain splattered the floor by his feet, tears from his ungulate face. Relief abated his torn expression when I returned. He didn’t speak, though, didn’t chase me. I checked my phone and sighed in relief when I realized he hadn’t even called me. He gave me that space.
As I burst into our bathroom and sat about urinating into a plastic petri dish of a cup, I finished emptying my bladder, lowered the lid, and dipped the stick of one test into the slightlysulfuric liquid. It hissed only the slightest as I capped it and sat the test down. Dark ichor slid down a line as a white space in the shape of an x, not a cross, highlighted. I checked the package to verify, and unfortunately; the result was clear.
I was pregnant.
But, to be safe, I opened the other brand. Inside was a stick with a bulb on the end, like a cotton swab. The instructions told me to put the narrow end into the cup and watch. If a flower bloomed, it meant there would be a demon born! The sterile white thing didn’t hit me as anything arcane or flowerlike, but I watched it all the same, urine saturating and climbing the paper stick, tainting it black like oxidized silver. And, as I suspected, the smooth surface of the bulb peeled back with a dark curl and twisted papers within bloomed open, the petals a mottled red and black. And, judging by the spread of the blossom, I’d be around seven weeks pregnant, aligning with our first union.
As I stared at it, I sobbed silently, only once.
Ausmius peeked up from my shadow, his face blank, no eyes to mock me, no mouth to grin, only horns to show me he was there. He pantomimed a heart gesture with his hands, and I glared at it. “You’re just happy you’ll have a new host to be rid of me!”
Ausmius gave a thumb’s down.
“Jerk.” I folded my legs atop the toilet seat and stared at the demonic pregnancy tests. Life was what it was. We’d made something together, whether we wanted to or not. And the worst part about it? We had no choice. I had no birth control as demons had only one season every eight months, and it was easy to abstain. A day or two of being horny was worth not having to carry a child forthirteenmonths. I had almost eleven months left, eleven months where I could complete any goals I had.
The sobs returned, and I tugged at my hair, bunching up.
Footsteps clattered from across the bedroom, a person attempting to make their presence known. The practiced and familiar ease of which the footsteps climbed let me know it was Gre. I hadn’t even asked him if he had children—though he’d made it known he would happily not. I didn’t know if he truly wanted them. I didn’t know a thousand things. Who his parents were, if they were alive, baby pictures or childhood stories. I knew Gre as the mage that had tethered himself to me, who was meticulously organized, fair, and generous to a fault. A servant of Bastet and Diana. And a fantastic snuggler.
“Knock knock,” he said as he approached the doorway.
“Occupied.” I took deep breaths to ease my tears.
“I know that much, but are you in any state that would ruin my opinion of you?” He sounded fairly neutral.
