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A beautiful creature.

It unnerved the heck out of me.

She peeked my way, and our eyes met—for once, not in hate—before she let her hair fall between us and went back to cleaning her boots, her scrubbing extra vigorous.

My jaw tightened.

Keep it together, Asher. She’s a demon.

Kneading my forehead, I swiped a flyer off the bedside table and ordered in some pizza and buffalo wings from a nearby place.

I’d encountered attractive female demons before, sure. Admittedly, none quite as distracting as Lana, but demons had a certain feline allure going for them. I wasn’t above noticing that. I’m human. But I never minded killing females before because they all stank of evil. Every last one of them.

It was Lana’s innocence that got to me.

It was her innocence I feared.

She’s a healer.Yeah, that’s what Brad would have said. Healers rarely killed, so they never got that crazed glint in their eyes, they never lost their humanity.

Theirhumanity.

Bad word choice. It was slip-ups like that that were going to cost me.

A demon has no humanity, it has no conscience, it has no soul. It is death and ash wrapped up in flesh. It isn’t trulyalivein any real sense.

Lana. I didn’t like what she was doing to me. I needed to focus.

While I unfolded the map I’d bought from the convenience store to check our progress, she shut the door and—after some frantic clicking—managed to lock it. Then I heard her strip down, and it sounded for all the world like she was washing her jumpsuit in the sink.

I didn’t bother telling her about the laundromat next door.

But I was curious what she intended to change into while her stuff dried. She had no change of clothes and no underwear—at least, none that I had seen—just boots and one skintight leather jumpsuit. I should probably get her something else so she blended in better.

Nah.

A moment later, the hairdryer came on, answering my question. She continued to hum, just audible above the sound of her wet suit flopping on the counter as she fanned it with the hairdryer.

Poor girl. She really thought she had human living mastered.

“Where do I sleep?” she asked, emerging an hour later in a dry jumpsuit. Impressive.

I lounged on the bed with a piece of pizza and the map. Not looking up, I held out the cardboard pizza box. “Eat.”

She took a piece and sat crosslegged on the floor like a kid. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“There’s another bed.” I got up and wrestled open the pullout, unfolding it into a double bed.

Her mouth fell open, and her pizza slice dropped onto the carpet, cheese side down. “How did... how did you do that?”

“Does it matter?” I said.

She stared at it, rapt. “Do all couches do that?”

“Just the special ones,” I said. “This is where you’ll be sleeping. You happy?”

She swallowed. “What if it folds back into a couch while I’m on it?”

Huh.