“Well, of course they are, there’s not really any such thing as gender.”
He crumpled his face up likecome on, now, a fool would know this.
But truthfully that just made her even more gleeful about it. “Wow, okay. Oh, that is awesome to hear. Tell me other silly things humans invented,” she said, chin already in her hands before she’d even finished speaking.
He just shook his head at her, however, half laughing as he did.
“I think probably you should focus on theI’m terrible and damnedpart. Not even just damned. I was born of Hell. I am Hell. There are no demons who aren’t. We are all made of only evil, set to do our evil work.”
“Because you punish people who stole a penny candy when they were five.”
“Okay, just so we’re clear, I get that you’re being ridiculous on purpose now,” he said, one hand pointed at her for emphasis. He was wrong, though. Or at least, not entirely right.
“I’m really not. You just still haven’t told me what these evildoers did to deserve being pulverized. So I have to fill in the blanks. I have to make my own scale of whatever weird godly justice there might be.”
“Or you could just accept I’m bad.”
She gave him a look over the top of her glasses. And he tried to get out of it, he did. He put out a finger, and pushed them back up the bridge of her nose. Shook his head as if to say,You’re barking up the wrong tree here. Then when that didn’t work he sighed and got up. Went to the refrigerator, and snagged a carton of milk from the door. Then took a swig, just before he spoke in a way that made something else click in her head.
The way he’d drunk that same stuff at dinner.
How he’d told her it didn’t really agree with him.
In part she knew because he’d clearly popped into his demon form when he’d dashed to the bathroom. She was even starting to suspect that he’d popped into his demon form because of everything getting a little heated. But now she could see there was more to it. That he had seized on the dairy thing because the dairy did affect him. And she had a good theory as to why.Milk acts on him like alcohol. What you’re seeing here is him having a stiff drink before he confesses, her mind informed her.
And honestly, that was almost as cool as the words he came out with after he wiped his mouth. “The crime has to offend even the dark heart of a demon,” he told her, in a pained sort of way.
So she made sure to crack a joke.
“Then I guess we’re talking about double parking outside Mott’s.”
“I got mad about thatone time. And I didn’t drag anyone to Hell over it.”
“Who have you dragged, then? Serial killers?”
He got a glass then. Two glasses. Poured out what was probably the equivalent of shots, and handed one to her. Before he seemed to realize that was silly, and it didn’t work that way for her, and downed them both.
“Serial killers are really just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Oh god. I can’t even think what would be worse than them.”
“Good. And I want it to stay that way. I don’t want it to weigh on you.”
“Yeah, but are you sure that it’s the weighing on me that you’re worried about?” she asked, as he sat and poured another shot.How drunk does it get him, she found herself wondering, when he downed that, too. Though she didn’t think it could be that effective, considering how uncomfortable he now looked.
And how clearly and adamantly he then spoke.
“If you’re trying to suggest the evil of humankind started making it hard for me to do my duty, or even want to think about those duties, to the point where it got difficult for me to get out of bed in the morning, and had me hitting the bottle hard enough to make me pass out in a fountain, and caused deep disturbances in my emotional well-being, well, you’d be wrong. I’m fine, actually, better than fine. I totally don’t enjoy maintaining human form in part because ninety percent of my thousands of years of horrifying memories fall out of my head and now barely even return when I slip into my demon body,” he said. He even managed to get some withering attitude in there, and seemed satisfied once he was done. But then he clocked the heartbreak all over her face, and cursed himself. “I said too much then, didn’t I.”
“Just a little and very harrowing amount.”
“Honestly, honey, I’m not that emotionally devastated.”
“I’d probably believe that if you hadn’t just chugged half a carton of demon alcohol. Because that’s what that is, right? Like, you’re just getting sauced right in front of me because of the torment your life puts you through.”
He looked at the glass still in his hand. “This much just takes the edge off. For about five minutes.”
“My god, did you drain a herd before the fountain thing?”
