“This is my assistant,” Az said, turning toward me with a smile. It might have been convincing if he didn’t look ready to growl at me. “Sansa.”
“Sansa?” Her eyes bugged out of her head as she momentarily forgot herself. I winced. Serena was the reason I’d blurted out the name in the first place. Her obsession with those books had wormed its way into my head. Quickly, she recovered, pressing down on the front of her suit with nervous fingers. But when she spoke, she did so through gritted teeth. “Beautiful name. I wonder where I’ve heard it before. It sounds so familiar.”
“Nowhere,” I quipped. “It’s pretty rare.”
A low rumble sounded from Az’s throat. “Miss Mason, my assistant and I need to do some research into the demon contracts your firm has on file. The request comes from Lucifer himself.”
Lies.
Serena dropped her voice to a whisper. “You know, I’m really supposed to contact him and confirm that.”
“I am Asmodeus,” he said with a dangerous smile. “The First Prince of Hell. That’s all the confirmation you need.”
She glanced over her shoulder. The receptionist was engrossed in her phone call, and no one else was in the lobby. With a tsking noise, Serena turned back to us and nodded.
“If anyone asks, I contacted him,” she warned. “People have been fired here for way less.”
“Thanks, Serena,” I mouthed back. “Winter is coming.”
Shaking her head, she motioned for us to follow her through a pair of glass doors. Our shoes clicked against the marble floor, the echo like thunder in my ears. Or maybe that was my heart. It was throbbing against my ribs like a fist. I was way more nervous than the situation called for. We were here to look through the demon contracts. Totally fine. Totally legal. Totally not dangerous.
Mostly.
Serena led us into a small meeting room enclosed on all sides by more clear glass. As we settled around the table, she bustled from the room, returning moments later with a towering stack of paperwork. She plopped it onto the table before us and backed away. Her eyes were wild, like they sometimes got just before she shifted into a wolf.
“Don’t take too long, alright?” she hissed through her teeth. “I really don’t want to get fired.”
She had fought tooth and nail for this job. Even in middle school, she’d wanted to work at a law firm in New York City. At the time, I hadn’t known it wasthisone and what it meant. Parkins, Weller, and Smith specialized in supernatural legal issues. And Serena had worked her ass off to end up exactly here.
And now she was risking it all to help us find answers about my past. Hopefully, it would also give us a hint about Lucifer’s involvement in all of this. The more we knew, the better we could beat him at his own game.
Az had filled me in on his plan during the drive here. The law firm kept records of the contracts between demons and humans, particularly when the deal resulted in the loss of a soul. Or a win, depending on which way you looked at it. Az believed a demon was behind my apparent memory loss when it came to the fallen angel scent. If that were true, there might be a contract with my name on it.
“You take that stack.” Az shoved a pile of contracts toward my side of the table. “And I’ll take this one.”
I nodded and flipped open the first file. “Do you really think we’ll find answers here? If Lucifer is involved in this, would he have left behind a trail of evidence?”
“Lucifer loves paperwork. It helps him keep a running tally of souls.” Az scanned the first file and then tossed it onto the left side of the table. He opened the next file and did the same with it. “This is my ‘no’ pile. Are you going to start looking?”
I hadn’t even looked at the name on the first contract. My mind was too fried to focus. Az was acting like this was just a normal, everyday trip to a supernatural law firm when it was anything but. We were trying to find out if I wasa fallen angel whose memories had been wiped clean by the King of Hell.
I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it.
“I don’t understand why he needs contracts,” I continued, ignoring him. “Isn’t there, like, a magical tally somewhere?”
His lips quirked. “We’re demons, Mia. That doesn’t mean everything we do is magic.”
My name curled across his tongue. Shivers stormed down my spine. The heavy look in his eyes took me back to that night. His chest against mine. His lips between my thighs. Everything about it had felt so right, even though it had been so terribly wrong. Even if he’d been pretending.
“Relax.” He reached under the table and palmed my knee. Heat shot through my core. “You look tense and on edge. If any of the partners walk by, they’ll wonder why you look like a deer in headlights.”
I swallowed hard. “How? I’m not okay, Az.”
Although I was pretty okay with his hand on my knee.
Okay,morethan just okay.
“Pretend,” he murmured, leaning so close our foreheads touched. “You remember how to do that, don’t you?”
