“Oh, shit, he followed me here, didn’t he?” Nia could barely get the words out, her throat like sandpaper. Her gaze fixed on the window, the night concealing any threats.
“That is all he can do. Otherworldly beings cannot enter here. The entire building is warded.” Saia clasped Nia’s icy hands in her warm ones. “Trust me, Riley won’t let him escape. Those asses know the rules they must follow if they want to live in our world, and still, they break them.”
“I’m so stupid?—”
“You’re not. Demons are experts at fooling people, using glamour to be more attractive, approachable, etc. A human doesn’t stand a chance. You can be sure the fiend won’t be breathing for long?—”
Nia’s cell vibrated against her thigh in her lab coat pocket. She fished it out, and her belly sank at the name there.Nan Cora.
God, she couldn’t deal with her grandmother right now. But with no choice, she responded. Better to get the apology out of the way. “Nan, I’m so sor?—”
“I don’t care for your apologies. Leaving in the middle of dinner was the height of rudeness,” Nan snapped.
“Why didn’t you come to my defense?” The words were out before she could stop them.
“Because it’s still the truth, isn’t it?”
Freak.
Her stomach twisted at her grandmother’s deprecation.
A few months after her parents’ death, she’d been barely eight and living with her grandmother. During a black-tie dinner, Nia had blurted that one of the guests was a demon.
Nan had turned beet-red, staking Nia with a glacial stare, missing the brief flicker of red in the man’s narrowed eyes. He hadn’tfeltnice like some of the demons she’d encountered, and she wanted Nan safe. But her grandmother had been furious. Soon after, he’d vanished, and Nan’s friends had blamed Nia for his disappearance.
Now that she was older, Nia knew he was doubtless killed by the hunters, and his body pulled back to Purgatory.
“I tried to train you to be normal,” Nan bit out, voice icy. “I thought that if you mingled with my friends, all upstanding members of our society, you could change. Now, I see I was mistaken. You are only capable of embarrassing me. I will see you next weekend at dinner.”
Nia shut her eyes, trying to push the pain of rejection deep into a place where it didn’t hurt so much. “Nan, you don’t want me there. Why?—”
“Because I say so.” The call dropped.
Blowing out an unsteady breath, Nia lowered her cell. Her parents had her in their later years, and though she often sensed they hadn’t known what to do with her, they had loved her.After their untimely death in a car crash, Nan Cora became her guardian. Life had never been the same again.
With her father’s estate tied to Nan’s philanthropic organization, she controlled the purse strings—controlled everything, even Nia—with an iron fist.
Working as a waitress or any menial job was off-limits, not when it tarnished the Deveraux name. Just remembering being dismissed from her first and only job when she started living on her own, because her employer wanted no trouble from her influential grandmother, humiliation gripped her by the throat.
No matter, once she graduated, she would never have to rely on Nan—on anyone—ever again.
“So the battle-axe is upset you left halfway through dinner?” Saia asked softly.
Nia fixed her burning stare on the twinkling Christmas tree near the fireplace. “Yes. My life in a nutshell. Trapped by one and hunted by another.”
“Don’t worry.” Saia stroked her arm. “You won’t be hunted for long, not if we have anything to do with it. Are you hungry?”
“I had an amusedbouche,” Nia murmured dryly. Saia blinked, and she burst out laughing, causing Nia’s lips to twist in a wry smile. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
“Okay then, c’mon, let me show you to your room. If you change your mind, go raid the kitchen.”
An hour later, after her shower, wearing a borrowed pair of PJs and feeling a little more like herself, Nia slid under the covers in the pale green guest room.
“Here, your fave drink.” Saia walked in and handed her a steaming cup of cocoa.
“Thank you.” Nia wrapped her palms around the warm mug. “Do you think they caught him?”
“I hope so.” Saia sat on the bed.
