Skye pursed her lips.“No, I don’t want to involve him in this.You know how he likes to stir up trouble.Besides, are we really calling his quest to fuck an angel”—Skye used air quotes around the next word—“‘research’?”
Zara laughed.“True, but as far as I can recall, you’ve liked all the trouble he’s cooked up in the past.”
“This is different,” Skye said.
She didn’t want to tell Zara that she was avoiding Laurie, though she couldn’t really explain why, even to herself.So what that he lied to her?She didn’t care.
Whatever.It didn’t matter.Nothing changed the fact that the whole situation would become ten times worse if he was around.
“My wings are on the line here.”
Zara opened her mouth to reply, but to Skye’s relief, a waitress came over to refill their drinks.With blonde hair and blue eyes, the woman wore a tiny crop-top and flouncy skirt, her outfit showing off her toned arms and calves that Skye clocked as a former competitive cheerleader’s musculature.So, basically, Zara’s catnip.
“What can I get you ladies?”the waitress asked.Her eyes lingered on both Zara and Skye.
Zara leaned forward, reading the waitress’s name tag.“Heather, darling, she’ll have another whiskey neat, and I’ll have a dirty martini.The dirtier the better.”
“Can do,” Heather said with a razor-sharp smile.“I always keep my ladies satisfied.”
Zara smirked.“Is that so?”
Heather winked and walked away.Zara and Skye watched her go.She made it to a table full of raucous men and effortlessly dodged their grabby hands, never losing her cool as she took their drink orders.
“Did you see her soul?”Zara asked, fanning her face.“Delicious.I don’t know if I want it or her first.”
Skye let Zara’s lust distract her from their conversation and used that chance to let her eyes wander back over to the stage.
Her soul lust and her desire to fuck.That was what Remi inspired in her.He was justhercatnip.She liked to play with her food as much as the next demon, but she wouldn’t let herself lose her head again like she had in Remi’s bedroom.His black nail polish, thick eyeliner, and the slant of his bold brows made him into vicious angles and rough edges, but they didn’t mask his soft lips and a hidden delicacy in his blue eyes.It was that contrast that Skye salivated over.
The band shifted into a slower-paced song.Haunting notes filled the air as Remi’s voice darkened into a beautiful ache.The bittersweet music made the room vibrate with yearning.
We never made it to the day
Of no hate between us.
If I did it over, there’d be things I’d want to say
Our relationship’s rust
Almost no love lost.
Lost entirely.Tossed.
Lost you before we made it.
A love song then, Skye thought.But there was something piercing about the quality of Remi’s voice.He embedded an infinite sadness into the words.It was romantic, but not in the modern sense of the word, more like the gothic romance of centuries past.The minor key reverberated, and Skye tore her gaze from Remi to West.An echo of Remi’s pain glistened in West’s downcast eyes.
As a demon who couldn’t experience grief or sadness, she was fascinated by the way it manifested within humans.She lingered over Remi’s dreams of his twin brother, bewildered by how a human could love and hate someone in equal and impossible depths.
She could imagine the waves of emotion in the body.Could see it like a reflection in the mirror, but she was separate from it and couldn’t make the embodied connection to it.
That was why Skye loved music.Not only was it the industry her mother raised her in, but it was also the closest thing to a visceral human emotion she could get.Music was a magical elixir.Truly talented musicians and performers gave the sounds and words an invisible movement that vibrated the ether and penetrated Skye’s soulless being, giving her the facsimile of an experience she would never have otherwise.
When she was a child, Skye would watch the human children on the playground, cataloging the way they interacted with each other.She’d mimic their facial expressions and try to figure out what inside them made them behave the way they did.
It probably wasn’t the healthiest way to spend a childhood, but her mother was off making deals with rock stars and she got bored.
Sometimes that boredom would shift as she watched the human children.It’d balloon into a pressure, a frustrating need to do…something.The pressure would become unbearable, a thudding inside her head that felt like an imminent explosion.That energy induced her to push one of the kids into the wood chips, and the second she did so, it was like releasing a valve.The child landed hard and started crying.That was when she learned that humans cried when they were in physical pain.Later, she’d learn that humans also cried for other reasons.Like when Skye would steal their toys or say something mean, even though none of that physically hurt them.
