She leaned out to look beyond us, glaring into the blue skies, the hot late-summer afternoon, and the utterly unimpressive suburban Monday before ushering us in.
She locked the door and cut me off before I could leave the mudroom for the living room. Nia slammed a hand against the wall and met me with dark, simmering eyes.
“What the fuck, Marlow.”
Kirby took a shaky breath before saying, “It’s real.”
Nia’s eyes flashed with violent intensity. “Demons?” she hissed.
Kirby’s face contorted as if sprayed with water.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes until I saw spots in the dark void that separated me from the horrible present. “Hi,” I mumbled from behind the protective wall of my conciliatory hands. I didn’t bother to drop them as I said, “There’s an angel in Kirby’s car. Kirby: He’s a defector from Heaven. Nia: You’ve got two demons in your house, but they’re my allies, even if we aren’t on great terms. Heaven hates us, and it’s my fault. And I can’t look at either of you right now, because I had enough trouble accepting it myself. I can’t expect you to listen to me. I’ve put your lives at risk, and…”
With an impressive ability to remain unfazed, Nia asked, “Kirby.Howdo you know this is real?”
I heard Kirby shuffle from beyond the darkness of my self-made cocoon as they said, “Marlow was raging like a madwoman, talking to herself, and then she asked someone called Silas—more likescreamedat them—to reveal themself. I was driving her to Trinity’s inpatient program over this psychotic break. Next thing I knew, a glittery man was in my back seat. He speaks. He’s there. And suddenly, Marlow doesn’t seem so insane.”
“Trinity’s a terrible hospital,” Nia replied.
The response was so out-of-pocket, it forced me to dropmy hands as I laughed. It was true. It was the worst possible place Kirby could have taken me, though it was the closest.
Nia wrapped her fingers around my wrist, trapping it firmly as she asked, “You said there are two demons in my house?”
Kirby tensed. “Like, horror-movie stuff?”
I nodded. “I haven’t seen them yet, but I suspect they’re here.”
If I hadn’t known Nia better than anyone, I would have missed the ever-so-slight flex of her brows, the tension behind her eyes, the nearly imperceptible way her fingers pulsed. “And when you say demons…”
“Oh.” I pushed out a puff of air. I immediately understood the fear that she was doing a spectacular job of concealing. “Whatever you’re picturing, those are parasites, not demons. All of those Hollywood movies, every gross, horrible, evil entity we’ve seen in books or heard about from the pews, it turns out every pantheon has them. When I saydemons, I mean deities from Hell’s pantheon. And they’re not scary. They’re actually…” I looked over Nia’s shoulder to see who was listening. I bit my lip, struggling to spit out what was left of my sentence. “They’re devastatingly hot. Like, throw-you-against-the-wall, leave-your-husband, overthrow-kingdoms-level hot. Maybe that’s a god thing, I don’t know. But…”
A rush of smoke wrapped around me. I was dizzy from the smell of incense before I saw him.
“You rang?” came a smiling voice from just beyond the hall as Azrames slouched into the corner that connected the mudroom to the living room. Black horns, tousled hair, and a crooked smile separated three mortals from the place we might watch TV, drink margaritas, or plot the downfall of the patriarchy. He’d been in variations of the same tight white T-shirt since I’d met him—all clinging to the delineated lines of his chest and firm ripple of his muscles that made him just as capable of killing a goddess as carrying Fauna into a hellish bedroom—though this one still had a smattering of goldthat contrasted with his otherwise monochromatic features. I now knew the chains looping around his neck were not an oversized accessory but the glittering evidence of the meteor hammer that must have been hidden somewhere beneath his dark jacket. He was beautiful, he was terrifying, and he was unmistakably sad.
“Az.” I choked out his name.
I pushed past Nia to fold myself into the demon who’d escorted us to the King of Hell, who’d willingly entered a god-catcher with me, who’d slaughtered angels for Betty, who’d been taken prisoner by the Phoenicians so I might escape.
“Is Caliban here?” I asked, hating the knife to my heart at the question. Loving him caused me more pain than I’d ever thought possible, yet I was completely and wholly desperate for him. I peeked over Azrames’s arm to scour the rest of the living room.
“He’s doing the hard work of securing the house. I’m sure he’ll be done any second.”
“And Betty’s safe?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
He nodded into my hair, neither of us releasing from the hug. “Fauna stayed with her until the ambulance arrived, then contacted her coven so they’d meet her in the hospital. She’s in the ICU, but she’s stable.”
Over my shoulder, Nia elbowed Kirby. “This is the ‘talking to herself’ crazy-person shit you were mentioning, I take it?”
I ignored them, my attention wholly on Azrames.
I was suddenly six years old again. Twenty-plus years of insecurity bled into my words as I allowed myself a single pitiful question into his chest. We had things to do. People to save. Kingdoms to conquer. Angels to escape. But at the core of it all, we were beings who loved each other, who cared about each other, and who’d faced painful betrayal at one another’s hands.
“Are you mad at me?”
His answering chuckle was low and edged with heartache as he touched my hair. “No, Marmar. No one worth theirsalt blames the victim caught in the crossfire.”
Tears stuck in my throat. I pulled away just enough to show him the water lining my eyes, and he relaxed his hold on me, reading what remained unspoken between us.
