He paused again, hand on the door handle, but he didn’t turn back this time. He was pissed; she could tell by the tightening of his shoulders and the agitated swirling of his souls. But she soldiered on regardless.
“I need clothes. I can’t be expected to wear the same outfit every day. I need to wash my clothes, and I have nothing to wear while they’re drying.”
He turned his head enough for her to see his straight nose in profile. She swore she couldseehis jaw grinding.
“And I’m going to run out of food and water soon. I’ll need more.”
“You don’tneedeither of those things. Your ignorance has caused you to believe so strongly in human weaknesses that you manifested them.”
She stared at his back.What the hell does that mean?Was he telling her she wasn’t human? That was ridiculous. Absurd.
And yet … she was fifty years old and hadn’t aged intwenty-five years. She healed from wounds in hours instead of days. She was twice as strong as everyone else her size. She’d always assumed it was a highly unusual manifestation of a blood-born witch ability, but what if it was something else?
Could she really survive without food and water? And if she wasn’t human …
Then what the hell was she?
Before she could ask Murmur, however, he pulled open the door and disappeared through it with a slam.
Alone, she looked around the goldmine of a library to which she now had unfettered access, her mind racing a mile a minute. Maybe, just maybe, the answers she sought about herself could be found here. And if not in a book, then in the mind of her captor.
Once again, her plans shifted.
She still wanted to kill him, still would visualize doing horrifically violent things to him on an hourly basis, but … he couldn’t die. Not yet, at least. Not until he revealed everything he knew about her. Why she had these abilities. Who she was.
Whatshe was.
He had answers. And she was going to do whatever it took to get them.
HELL’SBEL
DON’T EAT THAT,” BELIAL SAID, FOCUSING ON THEknife in his hand as he chopped onions.
Meph ignored his warning, snagging another pinch of the parmesan Bel had just finished grating while continuing his endless chatter. Bel’s brothers and their girlfriends had all decided to come over and keep him company because they were worried about him being alone in his big house.
They hadn’t actually said that outright, because Bel would have killed them. But he knew what they were thinking, and it pissed him off.
Mist and Lily had gone to Ireland a few weeks ago, so at least they weren’t around to add to the chaos. Although Mist was one of a very short list of people Belial allowed to help in the kitchen—because he actuallyhelpedand didn’t just eat everything and make a mess—so maybe that wasn’t such a good thing after all.
The rest of their dysfunctional family was outside on the patio, laughing and talking and making a whole lot of obnoxious noise. But at least they knew when to take a hint andgive him some space—the whole reason he was in the kitchen right now.
“I’m just saying,” Meph continued, “Iris’s lease is up, and we need a place to live, and you’ve got like five spare rooms and a suite. It’s a big fucking house, and you could use the company. I know I’d be bored shitless living here all alone. The silence would feel like it’s pressing on my ears.”
You wouldn’t know silence if it bit you in the ass, Bel thought, grinding his teeth so hard his jaw cracked. His brother excelled at filling every possible silence with noise. If silence was golden, then Meph was a pauper. And there was no way in hell he was moving in here.
“Did you at least install some good speakers? If you had music playing, it’d probably make it feel less depressing in here.” Meph snagged another pinch of grated parmesan, tattooed fingers reaching into Bel’s workspace and disturbing his neat piles of precisely measured food prep. “At least in Hell, your lairs were never empty like this.”
“Stop eating that,” Bel growled.
Meph’s fingers left a dent in the cheese gratings as he dropped the mouthful of parmesan in his mouth. “Back then, you had me and Raum to fuck shit up and keep things exciting. And then Ash was always lurking around too, though he wasn’t much fun back then, always moping about his curse. But you had all your groveling legions trying to go to war for you, and all the demon ladies showing up to join your harem. Man, those were the days, huh?”
“Stop eating that,” Bel warned yet again as Meph reached for more cheese.
“I mean, damn, you went from biggest badass in Hell to grumpy old chef in his lonely mansion. Kind of a demotion if you ask me. We need to get you a—”
“I said STOP EATING THAT!” Belial roared, and just like that, he snapped.
His knife slammed down onto Meph’s hand, and then he burst into flames. Hellfire, to be precise.
