Page 55

“Out,” he barked, like I was disobeying him by lingering in this dreadful prison.

I slunk out of the vehicle, nervous about pretending I wanted him dead. Infernari didn’t pretend well. As I passed Asher, I caught a whiff of his scent. He smelled like smoke and ash.

Above us, the streetlamps flickered in the night, and I could hear them buzzing with the effort of staying on.

Tentatively, I looked around us, poorly disguising my curiosity. We had pulled into a lone gas station, which sat on an otherwise empty road. Flat fields spread out from us in all directions, as far as the eye could see. Rows and rows of tall stalks swished gently in the moonlight.

Could I still run?

Would that violate my oath?

If I ran, Asher wouldn’t have a hope of tracking me through that—

He grabbed my wrist roughly. “Lana, the shitter’s this way.”

“Shitter?” I asked.

He sighed. “Bathroom.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh.”

We headed toward the building, Asher’s grip on me ironclad. Through the convenience store’s bright windows, I made out an overweight man with a stained T-shirt standing behind the counter. So far as I could see, we were the only customers at this hour.

Instead of entering the store, we walked around back, where two weary-looking his and her restrooms sat.

I flared my nostrils before we even entered. It smelled about as foul as some of the war zones I’d been in.

I hesitated.

“This is all you’re going to get for the next several hours, so you better make use of it, demon.”

I sighed. Back to demon.

“I might as well go out in the bushes,” I muttered. “It would lessen my chances of death by asphyxiation.”

“Stop stalling,” Asher said. “You have sixty seconds.”

I glared at him. He knew full well that it was hard for Infernari to judge the passage of time. Yanking open the door, I stepped into the bathroom, wincing at the smell of the place.

I could still hear Asher outside, his boots crunching against the gravel. And then I heard it.

Intervention.

Another car rumbled as it pulled into the gas station.

If I ever hoped to escape Asher’s clutches, now would be the time.

I might be sworn to protect him, but that didn’t mean I had to stay and babysit him, did it? And should some other Infernari come along later and slaughter him, well, that wasn’t my problem... could I really be held accountable for violating my oath?

Infernari honor codes were fuzzy on this point.

I still had a tiny bit of magic coursing through my veins from Brad’s blood, which I’d been saving. Just enough to change my appearance, my outfit shrinking with me.

I closed my eyes and shrank smaller and smaller, until I was half my normal size and my skin was many shades darker. A toddler, as the natives called their young. One that looked nothing like Asher.

Asher began to bang on the door. “Lana, time’s up.”

I chose then to open the door.