In the literal sense, she is correct. Hell demons are immortal. Few creatures are capable of destroying us, but even those cannot reach me here, inside the Oracle’s protective boundary. But that is not the answer my employee—my friend, in this moment—needs to hear.
I follow her toward the front entrance, using the brief pause as she reaches for the door to speak. “Your assessment about my nerves was not inaccurate.”
Eyebrows nearly as fair as her skin rise above pale-blue eyes. “Are you trying to make me feel better, or are you serious?”
“I am always serious, and to your first question, the answer is yes.”
One of the tallest females in town, Dauphine doesn’t have to look upward to meet my eyeline, which, unlike many other creatures, she does without hesitation. “Your claim that demons have no or minimal emotions just got flimsier.”
“I responded to your questions truthfully. Honesty is not an emotion.”
“No, but caring about my feelings is.”
I have no rebuttal, so I remain silent.
“Thanks, Maz. Back in a few minutes.”
The chime above the door rings as she exits, leaving me alone with my thoughts. With my…emotions. Something I should not possess, but cannot deny. They drove me to escape the hell realm and my duties there.
Each day I have spent in Fate’s Falls has brought peace the likes of which I did not know existed, could not have imagined. And with that peace, seeds which have sprouted a variety of immeasurable internal sensations. Emotions.
Those sensations have grown recently. I might attribute the uptick in my emotions to the lack of attention and perpetual questions about anything not related to his bakery duties from my new kitchen helper. Frustration, orgetting on my nerves, as Dauphine described it, if I had not specifically noticed a significant change yesterday while walking home after closing the bakery.
Like several hell demons who reside within the protective boundary, when I arrived in Fate’s Falls, I chose to dwell in a less populated area beyond the edge of town. Other nonhumans, aside from demons, also live past the town limits. Some for privacy or solitude. And some, such as the small pack of foxshifters whose cluster of cabins is not far from my abode, because they need space to run.
That is where I experienced the heightened sense of…something. Awareness, though of what, I could not discern. Despite the truth of my statement about being unaffected by heat, an undeniable warmth spread through me as I passed the fox shifter enclave. Not a response to external stimuli. An internal sensation. Unexpected and inexplicable, as I do not possess the physiology to support such a thing.
The phenomenon has lingered in my mind since. Even the constant chatter from my kitchen helper has not been an adequate distraction.
“Oh no…oh shit…” His distressed tone and unfortunate words pull my focus from the intangible.
I turn toward the kitchen, taking only two steps in that direction before the warmth I experienced yesterday flows through me again. Stronger than before. Inconceivable, unclassifiable, yet entirely undeniable.
The door chime sounds behind me. Attending to customers is not my primary task, but I have grown accustomed to it in my time as proprietor, and it is as important as crafting quality baked goods. But that is not why I turn sharply to greet the incoming patron.
It is an automatic response to the warmth building inside me. The same awareness from last evening. This time, however, I know thesomethingcausing the sensations, and as the door closes behind the beautiful creature who just entered my shop, I experience another strange yet automatic reaction—the urge to draw a breath.
A slight inhalation and her scent races through me, like a spark connecting with tinder, igniting the warmth, setting me ablaze from the inside out.
I do not need to breathe and have never been affected by scent. Until now.
This mesmerizing human woman who now stands still, staring wide-eyed at me from several paces away, smells like everything I hoped to find in this realm, even before I understood what it was to hope for anything.
She smells like…mine.
Three
LILAH
Barely inside the small bakery, I come face-to-face with a towering, dark-red, fiery-eyed, rough-horned monster, and freeze on the spot. Then stare, wide-eyed and speechless.
Unlike my gaping mouth, his is tightly closed. Like me, he’s staring. Unflinchingly.
Holly wouldn’t have let me wander on my own if it wasn’t safe. Which, of course it is. Everything and everyone in this town is safe.
I’m still wrapping my head around the concept of a fully inclusive community with zero violence or crime.
My hosts overloaded me with information last night, enough to make my head feel as if it might explode. Stuff I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t watched foxes turn into people yesterday afternoon, and vice versa when I watched them through the window of my borrowed cabin, as several of them shifted before taking a moonlight run.
