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Oh, what the fuck?

This whole situation would’ve been almost touching. Maybe. If the man in the photo didn’t look like every other bland, dough-soft mortal in existence. The squishy flesh-bag has no horns, ears like dinner plates, hair the color of piss, and a jawline with the structural integrity of a damp scone.

“You fucked that?” I ask, voice dripping with incredulous sarcasm. I hold the ID up, flicking the plastic with a nail. “Really, Eden? This was the pinnacle of your desire? I’ve seen more attractive features on a potato.”

A violent weight crashes onto the curved, obsidian protrusions on my skull.

“Get. Off.” she snarls, the words vibrating through my marrow where my horns meet bone.

She fists a hand around the sensitive, ridged base of the left one and yanks, hard, sending a white-hot spike of pain down my spine.

“Ow! Mother of—Eden!”

I’m a demon, a creature of shadow and silver, but physics is a cruel mistress. With a leverage I didn’t know her little mortal arms possessed, she hauls me backward. My heels lose their grip on the mattress, and I go sliding off the edge of her bed like a disobedient hound, hitting the floorboards with a heavy, ungraceful thud.

I scramble to my elbows, hissing, my hair a mess and my pride in tatters. “You could have snapped a cervical vertebra! Do you have any idea how sensitive the root of a horn is?”

The bed groans underneath her as she climbs on top of it, turning her back to me, hovering over that pile of junk like a mother bird over a broken nest.

“Don’t you ever, ever talk about him. Or touch his things,” she hisses.

I sit there on her rug, rubbing the base of the horn that’s still tingling from her assault as the House-Beast looks down at me from the pillows.

A feral string of mumbled curses flows from between her lips as she packs the dead man’s useless treasures back into the plastic bag, the air practically on fire with the amount of grief that’s radiating from her.

She’s really this worked up over a pile of forensics?

I don’t get it. How does a man with such mundane belongings leave a girl in this state? If this pile of trash is all he boiled down to, surely his life wasn’t worth a summoning?

“So, how did he break them?” I ask, pure curiosity lacing through my words. “The glass on that phone suggests a very... sudden stop. Did he sprint headfirst into an industrial blender? Trip into oncoming traffic? Or did he simply miss a step and meet the pavement at terminal velocity?”

A harsh, broken laugh barks out of her, and she jams the bag back into the drawer, slamming it hard enough to rattle the whole nightstand and send the cat leaping for the floor.

“You’re unbelievable,” she chokes out, spinning to face me. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot with a brand of exhaustion I usually only see in the terminally damned.

I shrug from my place on the rug. “And you’re a girl who keeps a bag of trash to remember a man who couldn’t even be bothered to carry your picture in his wallet. We both have our flaws.”

Her hands curl into fists at her sides.

For a moment, all she does is stare at me—eyes narrowed, jaw trembling with fury.

I genuinely think she might hit me. Shit. I almost hope she does.

My left horn is still throbbing, but I find myself leaning into the threat. She’s magnificent when she’s angry—far more vibrant than the panicky thing I’ve known so far.

Go on, little summoner. Do it. Hit me. I dare you.

But she doesn’t strike. She… fizzles. It’s like watching a candle get snuffed out by a cold wind. Her lower lip trembles ever so slightly with a pathetic little tremor that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

Then, her face crumples in what can only be described as a total structural failure.

I recoil, sliding back an inch. “What—what are you doing? Why are you doing that?”

A ragged sob breaks out of her throat and she drops to her knees, her hands covering her face as saltwater dribbles down her wrists.

“Eden?” I demand, my voice rising in alarm. “Stop that. You’re... you’re leaking. Stop it.”

I’ve seen souls shredded in the gears of the Pit—Hell, I’ve inflicted that shredding. But usually there’s more screaming and less... this. I wonder if this is a part of the post-traumatic stress disorder research from last night. Did I rattle her brain too hard when I came here? Or is this just what happens when a living mortal’s processor overloads?