Raum chuckled some more and then caught his look and shrugged. “It’s kinda funny.”
“How is this funny,” Bel growled.
“He kinda had it coming. Meph excels at pissing you off. It’s his second favorite pastime after making freaky art. And you make it so easy for him. He can get under your skin like no one else.”
Bel ground his teeth. “I should know better than to let him get to me.”
Raum shrugged again, and that was all they said on the matter.
So much for his garlic-and-onion cream sauce. Now it was bloody severed-finger sauce.
He grabbed a mixing bowl from the cupboards and then dumped the whole mess into it.
“You haven’t lost it like that in a while,” Raum said.
Bel grunted in response, using a rag to swipe the last remnants of blood-soaked cheese into the bowl.
“I still think you should consider my theory.”
Another grunt. This one slightly more on edge than the last.
“You know, I think that crazy succubus was right.”
Bel stiffened at the mention of Naiamah. “What the fuck does she have to do with anything?”
The succubus Queen of Hell was his most well-connected contact in the underworld, and she’d long ago sworn to owe him a thousand favors—though he was down to less than a hundred now. But he despised her and would have released her from their arrangement centuries ago if she wasn’t so useful.
The hate was mutual. Yeah, he wasn’t proud of what he’d done to manipulate her into swearing those favors in the first place, but she’d done everything in her power to make his life hell for it ever since.
Every time he summoned her, she offered sex as payment so he could keep one of his precious few remaining favors. And he agreed because he told himself it was smart not to waste them, when, in reality, it was mostly because he’d always been stupidly attracted to her and unable to resist the temptation.
The problem was, when they had sex, she used her succubus powers to drain him of as much of his life force as she could, leaving him feeling like shit for days afterward. She’d enjoyed his misery and her power over him until recently, when he’d vowed to himself that he wouldn’t touch her for at least six months.
He’d gone way over that time limit now, but he still wasn’t sure if it had been a good idea or not. He felt more volatile than ever, and he’d underestimated how much sex had helped stabilize him. He fucking hated knowing that she had inadvertently been helping him control his rage.
“She said, ‘repression never works,’” Raum replied, “and I think she’s right.”
“She’s a bitch,” Bel snapped. Of course she would say that. When he’d sworn off sex with her, she’d lost her favorite energy source and way of tormenting him.
“And you’re an asshole,” Raum said with a shrug.
Bel pinned him with a warning glare.
“I’m just saying, now that we’re not in hiding anymore, I think you should consider paying a visit to Hell to … let off some steam.”
“I’m not going to Hell,” Bel growled, setting the bowl down and soaping up the rag to clean the blood off the countertop. “The rage is even worse there. It wouldn’t help.”
“Hm.”
“What?” Bel snapped.
“I just think you should give it a try.”
“And I think you should shut up. Are we done talking about this? I have to go dump our brother’s fucking finger stumps in the compost bin along with fifty dollars worth of expensive fucking cheese, so forgive me if I’m not in the mood to introspect.”
Raum held up his hands. Bel tossed the bloody rag in the sink, scooped up the bowl, and stormed out of the kitchen. Ash and Eva were suspiciously quiet as he passed them, and he pretended not to notice them.
He was so goddamn sick of everyone trying to fix him. Sunshine was coming in with her counseling, trying to convince him to open a restaurant like he wouldn’t chop off the hand of the first human to piss him off—and they couldn’t regrow that in a week. And everyone was dropping comments about how lonely he must be in his new house.
