We were no longer in my house. We were no longer in a room.
“This isn’t ideal,” Bathin said. He breathed hard like he’d just lifted a car one-handed. A big car. A bus. “And it isn’t going to last long. I don’t know what I can say to make this right, because you refuse to listen to me.”
“You’re a demon!”
“That’s racial profiling, Myra. Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I’m evil. I’ve been trying to tell you that since the first day I came to Ordinary.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In a place.”
“No. Where are we?”
Panic rolled under my skin. There was only blurry turquoise-silver where the sky should be, and other than Bathin, everything around me was a shade of tropical-ocean-blue and white—blurry and indistinct.
“Where are we? What are we inside?” There was no wind or air or growing things. Where was the air?
“There is air. Or what you need to survive in this state. You’re not going to suffocate.” He reached toward my shoulder.
I slapped his hand away and punched him in the solar plexus.
He “oofed” out air and bent, holding his hand over his gut.
“Keep your hands off me.”
He nodded, spit, then slowly straightened.
“Take me home.”
“No, you need to—”
I roundhouse-kicked him in the knee.
“Fuck,” he grunted as he buckled to the ground. “You need to listen—”
I aimed another kick at his head. His hand snapped out, and he caught my ankle, holding my foot up high enough I had to balance on one foot.
“Let go!”
“Listen to me!”
I pulled on my foot, ready to use the leverage to hop and kick him in the head with my other foot, but he saw the move coming, shoved my foot away, and gained his feet so fast, he was a blur.
Both hands shot out, grabbed my wrists, and then his leg was around mine, our bodies locked together as he pressed my back against something smooth and hard and warm. It felt like sun-warmed marble.
“Just.” He slapped my hands above my head, his incredible weight pinning the rest of me. His hands squeezed my wrists and the walls heated just at those points becoming liquid enough to flow up and over my skin, wrapping my wrists.
“Let me go.”
“Not until you listen.” He pressed my legs back and the wall heated there, flowed out and caught both of my ankles no matter how much I struggled.
“There,” he said, breathless, still pressed against my body, his hands over the stone covering my wrists. “There.” He swallowed, stared at my eyes, then let his gaze wander over my face.
I didn’t know what he was looking for. I hoped it was anger because I had plenty of that to offer.
“Just, hold still long enough for me to get this out. Right?” He pressed down on my wrists one more time as if making sure the bindings were going to stay. “Right,” he answered himself.
He paced away, limping heavily. “Balls, woman, you can kick.”
“Come here, and I’ll show you how I can break bones.”
He paused with his back to me, and dragged his fingers through his hair, resting his hands on top of his head, fingers laced together, elbows out.
“It’s not going to take your sisters long to find us. I’m sure they’ll have some way to break this. If Delaney can do it once, I’m sure she can do it again.”
I frowned, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Something Delaney had done before. Some place he’d been with her.
“We’re inside a stone, aren’t we?”
He turned, his hands still on top of his head, and there was a look of desperation in his eyes. “Yes. It’s one of the things I control. Stone. One of the other things I control is moving a person from one place to another. You used to know that about me.”
“I still know that about you.”
“But for the last year the only thing you’ve seen about me, the only thing, is that I hold your sister’s soul.”
“Because you do.”
He nodded. “That is true. She gave it to me. That’s within the laws and rules of human-demon contract. But ever since I’ve had it…no, even before that…ever since I started listening to your father talk about humanity, about the laws of the universes, the worlds, about gods and monsters and blood and family—family, Myra—things changed.”
He dropped his hands, but didn’t move any closer.
“I changed.” Here he shook he head and laughed softly. “You have no idea. I am not the creature I once was. Possessing a Reed soul for so long, your father’s soul, was like being a candle in the sunlight.
“Wax melts, given enough time in the flame. Light reshapes it. I’ve been reshaped by light. At first by your father’s words, then his soul, but then Delaney’s…” He inhaled, exhaled, and it was as close to awe as I’d ever seen on him.
“Holding her soul—that light—has changed me. Taught me. Some days I don’t even know what I am supposed to—” He shook his head again. “No, that doesn’t matter. We’re here for you and for Delaney. Here, where my mother won’t hear me. Here, where my father can’t hear me. But I don’t have very much time. Because your sisters…”
“…will find us and break this cage.”
He nodded. “I need you to hear me, Myra. I am giving you the truth as I know it. And if you hear me, you might find a way to save Delaney’s soul. Because gods know, I don’t know how to do it.”
I waited. I had time on my side. Either he’d get close enough I’d be able to kick him again somehow, or Delaney and Jean would find us and break this stone.
He could talk all he wanted.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been using her soul as a way to stay in Ordinary. I have never made a secret of that. But what I haven’t told you was why I wanted to stay in Ordinary. Why I was in that stone to begin with. Why I caught your father’s drifting soul like a feather in the wind and drew it into the safety of the stone with me.
“I am the demon king’s son.”
I just gave him a steely stare. I knew that already.
“He wants me dead, has wanted me dead for years. I am not his only son, but I am the only one of his offspring to defy him.” He scrubbed at his face, then wrapped his hand at the nape of his neck.
“I’ve been running for a long time. Eons. He always finds me. Tortures…and lets me go. He likes the chase, my father. And the pain. And the blood. And the agony. Demons.” He nodded once, his eyes locked with mine, as cold as a surgeon’s knife. “There is no evil like them.”
“So, what?” I wanted any excuse to look away from the raw honesty behind his gaze. I could almost feel his pain, his desperation, his hopelessness as if it were my own, scratching at the walls of my heart. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Did you just feel that?” he asked.
“What?”
“My…my feelings?”
“No.”
He nodded. “That’s a lie. We can both tell when the other is lying here. This is an Amazonite. The stone of truth. Here, there is only truth and clarity. Try it out.”
I pulled at my wrists and feet, but the Amazonite still held me strong. “Try what?”
“Ask me something and I’ll lie. You’ll be able to feel it.”
“Just because of the stone?”
“Yes. You’ll feel if I’m lying just because of the stone.”
His expression was calm, his gaze steady. There was absolutely nothing about his body language showing any indication that he was lying. But I knew. I knew it as if I had uttered the words. As if his answer was a part of me that didn’t fit.
“You’re lying?”
“That was a partial lie, yes. I’ve been telling the truth since we’ve been here.”
I waited for that wrong puzzle piece feeling to hit me again, but it didn’t.
“Well, hell,” I muttered.
He nodded. “I couldn’t think of any other way for you to believe what I’m going to tell you. So here I am, putting it all out there and on the line in a way that you will know if I am telling any kind of untruth at all.”
“So I can ask you anything, and you’ll have to answer me?”
“No. I don’t have to answer you.”
That felt like a truth.
“But I will.”
That felt like a truth too.
“Is Xtelle your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Is your father as horrible as she says?”
“I don’t know what she told you about him, but whatever she said, triple it, and you might be in the ballpark for his level of darkness and evil.”
“Do you know where I can find the one book with the one page that will tell me how to use the scissors to cut Delaney’s soul from you?”
“No.”
And that didn’t feel like a lie either, dammit.
“But I don’t think there is a book,” he said.
“Why?”
“Well, you got your information from a crossroad demon, and they are all about having backup plans. The small print always works in their favor.”
“Explain that. And tell me the truth.”
“The crossroad demon, Zjoon, is an old hand at getting what she wants and keeping it. She’s had a crossroad so close to Ordinary that it might as well be inside of it.”
“She can’t run a crossroad in Ordinary.”
“I know that. She knows that too. And yet…”
“…she found a way around it. Small print?”
“Small print,” he agreed.
Truth.
“So,” he went on, “Zjoon knows I wouldn’t want her to tell anyone, much less someone who has an ax to grind, about the scissors. And before you ask, yes, they were made by my mother, and yes, they were fashioned to force me to release a soul.”
“Zjoon knew you’d be angry.”
“Furious,” he agreed. “She padded her bet by giving you false information on how to use them. And, well, I wasn’t happy about it. Her giving you the scissors. But not for the reason you think.”
“Because it will force you to release Delaney’s soul and leave Ordinary?”
“No.”
That feeling hit me, the unfamiliar, unfitting piece. “You’re lying.”
He hummed. “Maybe to both of us a little, to you and to myself. I’d like to think the reason I’m keeping her soul isn’t so selfish—staying here in Ordinary, hiding from my world, my father. But I can accept that’s a part of it. It’s not the main reason I don’t want you to use the scissors.”
I waited for that wrong feeling.
It didn’t hit.
I sighed. “Just spit it out, Bathin. You’ve made your point. I can tell when you’re lying, and you can tell when I’m lying. Let’s get this over with. I’m not done kicking your ass.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Not a lie. Good to know. Okay, here’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. If you use the scissors, it will damage Delaney’s soul. Possibly to a point beyond repair.”
The feeling of wrongness never hit. He was not lying.
He was not lying.
Holy shit. He was not lying.
“Okay,” I said, ready to listen for the first time since he’d dropped us in the middle of an Amazonite. “If I use the scissors, I’m going to hurt Delaney.”
“Yes.”
Truth and truth.
“Badly.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who can use the scissors to cut her soul from you?”
“Probably. Yes, well, probably. It hasn’t been tested, but I have a good guess.”
There was a vague feeling of wrongness, but it passed as soon as he clarified his own doubt.
“Who?” I asked.
“Do I have to tell you?”
“Yes.”
He looked pained. “All right. I said I’d be honest. You have no idea how difficult this is. It is completely against my nature. If your father hadn’t…no never mind. I’m deflecting. All right. Because of how the scissors were forged, I think the only person who can use them to free a soul from my keeping is another demon.”
No lie.
“Well, we’re screwed,” I said.
He laughed, and it was a deep round sound that came from his gut and lit up his face, softening all the hardest, darkest edges of him into something lighter, brighter. Something good and real.
Wax melts, given enough time with the flame. Light reshapes it.
“We live complicated lives, you and I, Myra. And our courtship and love affair is going to be just as complicated.”
“We’re not in a courtship,” I said. I shouldn’t have. Because I knew it was a lie, and so did he.
“You did that on purpose,” I whispered.
“Yes, I did. Habit. But that isn’t what we need to address right now. We need to come to an understanding that you cannot use the scissors on me without hurting Delaney. Also, full disclosure, my mother bound us together, you and I.”
Time ticked: one Mississippi, two Mississippi…
“She did what?” I almost yelled. “She bound us together?” I pushed against the stone cuffs.
“That’s the other reason you can tell I’m lying.”
“When? When did she bind us?”
“At the second vortex. With the yarn.”
“You knew.”
“Not until it was too late to stop her.”
And that was the truth, dammit.
“Let me go.”
“Not yet. You’ll fight me again, and while I enjoy it…” he paused so I could feel the truth of that, “…we don’t have time.”
“It hurts you, doesn’t it?” I asked. “When I hit you here?”
“Yes. I feel the physical hit as if we were equal—human and demon—and the power of your emotions lands with each contact like a second blow. I’d like to remain conscious until we make some decisions.”
“What decisions?” My nose itched and I wanted to scratch it. I waved my fingers and turned my head, trying to get my tiptoes under me so my fingers and nose lined up.
“What are you doing?”
“My nose itches.”
“Here, let me.”
“No, I can…”
But he had already crossed the space and pressed his fingers gently beneath my jaw. He turned my face and held it still, peering down his nose at me like a nearsighted school teacher judging my handwriting.
“It’s really…” I said, my mouth dry, “you don’t have to…”
“Hush. I like doing things for you.” He lifted his other hand and rubbed his pointer finger on the tip of my nose. “Here?”
I wasn’t paying attention. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he liked doing things for me.
He liked doing things for me.
“Myra?”
“A little to the left.” He moved his finger, rubbed. “My left,” I said.
He nodded, moved his finger to the other side of my nose and gave it three little rubs. “How’s that?”
“It’s, uh…good enough.”
“Good.” He looked away from my nose and right into my eyes.
For a moment, for the longest moment in my life, he just stood there, breathing softly, holding my face, watching me.
I knew the second he made up his mind. I could feel it. Not like a tug in my chest. No, it was a relief, a lightness. Like my heart had been tied down, weighed down by rocks and now, that look of his, that moment, it was feathers and sunlight.
A slight frown creased between his eyes, as if he knew what he was doing wasn’t wise, but he had to do it anyway.
I didn’t struggle, I didn’t try to move away from him.
Because I didn’t want to.
There were no lies here.
He bent, he had to, he was so much taller than me. I lifted as much as I could, angling my face up, wanting this. To know. Here, where there were no lies.
My eyes fluttered shut and I had to catch my breath to keep from making any sound. He paused, his lips only the barest distance from mine, so close I could taste the cinnamon of his breath.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
“Yes.” It was the only answer I had, because it was the truth.
He hummed, and it was acceptance and need and hope.
If I had ever imagined kissing a demon, which yes, lately I had, it was always a hot branding, a claiming, a fire-meets-kindling-and-add-some-gasoline kind of kiss.
But this, this kiss was something more. Something better.
Bathin shifted his thumb to stroke gently along the side of my mouth, and the gesture was so sweet, so intimate, I smiled.
He shifted closer with my exhale, his lips pressing, warm and soft—much softer than I’d imagined. He held me there, held us both, suspended in that connection, that first moment of being more than two.
I wondered how long he could endure the sweet ache of this gentleness, wondered how long I would let him hold us both in this moment, before doing my own claiming.
Just when it was too much, when he was drawing away slowly as if even the retreat of our lips was something to savor, he dipped his head again.
And this time the kiss caught fire.
A shiver ran through me—how could I be cold when I was burning, engulfed in flame—my nerves stretched and crackling, little pop, pop, pops of pleasure snapping hard under my skin.
I whimpered and he moaned, dipping his mouth to lick my lower lip and then bite very gently there before licking again.
I wasn’t on fire, I was molten, a volcano.
I arched up into him, needing more, more touch, more. His fingers stroked along my throat, leaving mint-cool paths where his fingers had been, and he molded against me, one hand lowering so he could notch our hips together and move with me, a slow, circular motion.
My breath skipped like a stone over still water. And I still couldn’t stop trembling. His tongue slicked my mouth, already too wet, too hot. I was hungry, but the more he touched, squeezed, stroked, tugged, the more I needed.
“I want,” I gasped in between his onslaughts, the drugging nips and tastes, his tongue, teeth, mouth, the scratch of stubble on my tender skin that felt good, too good, but wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, his hard grinding body. “More,” I begged.
He groped blindly for the binds on my wrist, freed one, freed the other.
I threaded my fingers through his thick, soft hair and groped his back, the hard curve of his ass. I scrabbled to untuck his shirt from slacks that molded against his body like liquid sin.
This. Now. Here.
He twisted, skimmed his fingers under my shirt and then, gently, so damn gently, trailed the back of his fingertips across my lower belly.
“Myra,” he whispered, his head bent into my shoulder, as if he would fall apart, fly apart. He didn’t have to say anything more. I could hear the truth of his need, the truth of him, of us. Could feel it.
“Yes.”
The cuffs on my ankles melted away, and he leaned back and rucked up his shirt exposing miles and miles of deeply tanned skin I wanted to lick, bite. Then his shirt was gone. He rocked forward again, his breath catching as if he’d been holding it for hours, for days, for years and years. I spread my fingers over his chest, then down, riding fingertips over the ridges and dips of his muscles.
His skin tightened, and goosebumps rippled under my feather-light touch as he shuddered.
I wanted more of him. To know what this—what we—could be, no lies between us.
His thumb rubbed the hard round button of my jeans, pushing it through the hole until the cloth parted and he could plunge his huge hand down, inside, questing for warmth.
I moaned his name, lost to that delicious friction.
“Beautiful,” he breathed.
And then there was no time for slow, no time for thinking. There was only here and now and more, in our desperate quest to tear away clothing as quickly as possible.
And when, finally, he drew me down to where he lay, naked and stunning and hard, waiting for me, I followed him willingly, open and needing, until he filled my body, my mind, my world.