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The sound of his nail tracking along the edge of a pizza box sends a shiver down my spine.

“You haven’t been a naughty little mortal, have you?” he purrs, the question vibrating right in the space between my ear and my shoulder.

“No,” I murmur. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Mmh.” He hums softly. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? It’s a pointless exercise.”

“I haven’t done anything,” I repeat.

He extends a single finger, tapping it gently against my temple. “Are you sitting on some pretty little secrets, Eden? Some dark stains you’ve been trying to scrub out with tears and bad poetry?”

I pull back, my nerves frayed to the point of snapping. I’m waiting for the judgment, for him to see the rot I know is there, but he just lets out a short, dismissive huff of air and leans back.

“Relax,” he drawls as he grabs one of the boxes and dumps it unceremoniously on my lap. “Whatever you did—whatever petty little mortal ‘sins’ you’re hoarding—it’s not enough to pay the toll. Trust me. I’ve seen what a real bad mortal looks like, and you aren’t one. Your saintly little gerbil ass is not Hell-bound.”

My head’s thumping, and my skin feels like it’s being crawled on by a thousand invisible ants. It’s just another week. Seven days of this. Seven days of keeping my heart from leaping out of my chest every time he breathes too loud.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to navigate a life where I’m eating pizza with a creature from Hell while my dead almost-forever sits in a jar at the other side of the room. I can’t cope with this fuckery.

I look at Vesper, who’s purring against his side like he’s just a particularly warm radiator, and a sob catches in the back of my throat. I just want to sleep. I want to wash him away. I want to scrub the smell of spice out of my pores until there’s nothing left of these last few nights but a bad memory and a stain of tea on the rug.

But for now, I just pick up a cold crust and chew, because I’m too tired to argue and apparently, I can’t run either.

Chapter 9

Malachi

Ilean in, my nose hovering inches from the junction of her neck. My mouth waters at the scent of her—that intoxicating, head-spinning cocktail of sun-warmed peaches and the sharp, metallic tang of grief that wafts from her skin with every micro-movement she makes.

The morning light slices through the shitty, thin curtains in yellow lines, striping her skin in golden bars, illuminating the soft dip of her chest where the collar of her t-shirt has slipped. I track the light as it follows the curve of her hip and the tangled mess of her legs, documenting every soft, mammalian detail.

Oh, what is that?

There—on the sleeve of the flimsy cardigan she clings to like armour, right over the inner forearm. A small, dark, crimson blemish is blooming through the grey fabric. It’s barely there—a pinprick of a stain—but it’s expanding quickly, the wool drinking it up.

A flicker of genuine irritation sparks in my chest.

My hand closes around her shoulder, and I shake her with fervour until she gasps, her eyes fluttering open, wide and glazed with confusion.

“Did you try to perform a ritual again during the night?” I ask, frustration lacing my words. “Did you think you could bypass me while I was in another room?”

“What?” she croaks, her voice thick and clumsy with sleep. She blinks up at me, squinting against the morning light. “Why are you in my room? Why are you... on my bed?”

I don’t even acknowledge her questions, I just tilt my head toward her arm.

Her eyes dart down, tracking my gaze, and then they widen. A small, shaky breath hitches in her throat—a sound that tells me this in fact wasn’t intentional. She pushes herself up in the sheets shakily and peels the sleeve back with a pained wince, the fabric making a sickening, tacky sound as it separates from the skin.

Oh, it’s angry.

It isn’t deep enough to be fatal, but it looks disgusting. The skin’s puckered and flushed, and trailing away from the center of the wound are faint, hair-thin crimson lines trapped under the skin, spiderwebbing out toward her wrist.

I lean in, my nose catching the scent. Biological failure—that’s what it smells like. Rot, and off blood. A mundane, mortal infection.

The pieces click into place with an embarrassing, audible thud in my brain. The nausea. The feverish heat radiating off her in waves. The way she’s been trembling like a leaf in a gale for the last forty-eight hours. I dismissed it. I assumed the clammy skin and the scent of distress were just her baseline settings. I thought ‘sallow and sweaty’ was her natural aesthetic—a feature of her general state of disarray. But she isn’t just stressed; she’s turning into a walking petri dish right under my nose. And I missed it. I, who can smell her fear, missed the fact that her flesh is actively fermenting.

“It’s fine.” Her voice is defensive, brittle as dry parchment, but her fingers are trembling as she tries to tug the sleeve back down. “It’ll heal. I just need to put a fresh dressing on it.”

Absolutely not.