Page 62
I tapped my speedometer. Could have sworn it was broken and we were really crawling around fifteen miles per hour rather than the seventy it read out.
“I feel sick,” Lana moaned from next to me, clutching her stomach in the passenger seat.
I glanced over at her, at the pigsty that was her side of the car—food wrappers everywhere, half-eaten Hostess cupcakes discarded in the cupholders, crumbs mashed into the seats. My nose wrinkled.
“How old are you?” I asked, beginning to doubt my earlier assessment of early twenties.Please tell me she’s not a teenager.
“Twenty-three. Did you poison me? I think I’m going to puke.”
“Swallow it. What is that in human years? Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Twenty-three,” she corrected, sitting up. “Humans and Infernari age at the same rate. Do I look like a twelve-year-old?”
“No, but you’re acting like one.”
“How old areyou, Asher?”
“Clean up your mess, and I’ll talk to you.”
She opened the glove compartment to get to the napkins, and her gaze froze on the Glock. I didn’t have to be worried. She wouldn’t know how to operate a firearm. Even if she did, she wouldn’t try to kill with it.
She reached around the weapon, careful not to touch it.
“Pick it up,” I said.
Her eyes flicked to mine, fearful.
“The gun. Pick it up,” I ordered.
Because that’s the smart thing to do, eh, Asher?Make the moody demon girl handle your gun.
“I’m not going to touch that vile thing,” she said.
I took my focus off the road long enough to look her straight in the eye. “And that’s why humans will always kill demons. You fear what you don’t understand. Pick it up.”
With a defiant look, she lifted the gun out, holding it like a dirty sock.
But just to be sure, I swiped the weapon out of her hands, ejected the magazine, and racked the slide to empty the bullet out of the chamber, swerving a little. The metallic click made her flinch. “There. No bullets.” I plopped the one that had been in the chamber in the ashtray. “You know how a gun works? Every time you pull the trigger, there’s an explosion that propels the bullet—”
She took the gun back from me and, closing one eye, peered down the barrel.
“Jesus...” I yanked her hand away from her face, swerving again. “Neverlook down the barrel of a gun.”
“But you took out the bullets. Is that bad luck?” Those big doe eyes again.
I sighed and rubbed my jaw. So many things wrong with this girl’s survival instincts. “First of all, I’m ahuman. You’re a demon. I want to kill you. That means you should never trust anything I say. Second of all, I could have made a mistake. If there was still a bullet in the chamber and the weapon fired...” I trailed off, seeing her blank look. “Never mind.”
“You’re Jame Asher. I thought you never made mistakes.”
“Yeah, well, I do. I’ve made about a hundred mistakes since I captured you.”
“Like showing me your gun?” She climbed onto her knees and pressed the barrel to my temple. “It must be so soulless to kill with the press of a button.”
I grabbed the gun and wrenched it away from her. “Arlright, you’re done. Sit back down and clean up your goddamned mess... and put your seatbelt on.” When she didn’t budge, I grabbed a wad of napkins and dumped them on her lap. “Here. Clean.”
She didn’t clean.
Instead, she pulled a crumpled packet out of the glove compartment—my application for a concealed weapons permit in West Virginia, which I still hadn’t submitted.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62 (Reading here)
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156