Page 14 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

“A feather fell from his wing and became a quill, and I raced to chase it, but it flew on a gust of wind beyond my reach. Everywhere the quill blew, it left behind lines of ink in an illegible script. My head was down as I followed, chasing the feather through the city blocks, trying to decipher the writing, until I stopped suddenly. When I looked up, it was into a pair of bloodshot eyes in a pale, dead face. Then, a scorpion suddenly appeared and stung me with its tail, and I woke up.”

Someone else gasped. Lily fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, her lips pressed firmly together.

“What does it mean?” one of the practitioners asked. They all looked to Suyin like she was some dark goddess they worshipped, and frankly, Iris didn’t blame them. Suyin was intensely charismatic and a little bit frightening.

“I believe it to be a sign that some kind of supernatural event is looming over our city. I believe there is darkness approaching, and we need to be prepared to face it.”

Lily looked up and said, “Um, sorry, but how does a dream about a bird mean that?”

Iris inwardly groaned. Just keep your mouth shut, Lil. Everyone was turning disapproving looks on her sister now.

“It’s not the actual images of the dream that are important,” Suyin replied, “but the feelings I got from them. Surely you’ve had similar intuitive understandings before?”

Lily fell silent because, yeah, she had.

Except then she spoke again. “It’s just, I don’t see what good it does telling a doom-and-gloom story like this just to make people scared.”

A few tongues clucked, and someone grumbled something about Lily “lacking perception,” but Suyin didn’t seem bothered.

In fact, her eyes brightened like she enjoyed having the pot stirred a little.

“I didn’t bring it up just to scare everyone.

I brought it up because this month, I want to focus on sigils for detecting demonic presences. ”

Iris swallowed and choked on it.

“W-what do you mean?” Lily asked, her voice tiny all of a sudden.

“I gathered a list of sigils I think might be within our coven’s scope of ability, each of them with the purpose of detecting traces of demonic energy, whether on people, animals, or inanimate objects.

The dream told me there were dark forces present in our city, and I want to get a sense of the magnitude.

I’d like to start today by putting up trace wards around the coven’s perimeter. ”

Lily and Iris exchanged glances. Oh, Iris could just imagine how much demonic energy they had clinging to them. She was, in fact, holding a hellhound in her arms at that moment.

How the hell were they going to get out of this? Because there was no way they could stand here and participate in the creation of these sigils, only to watch them light up like a beacon when they were activated.

Worse, what would happen if the sigils were activated and proved effective? Was the coven going to end up knocking on Belial’s door? Iris did not want to imagine how that would go down. Witches could trap, bind, and banish weaker demonic forces, but not a goddamn King of Hell.

Suyin was passing out printed photocopies of the sigil she wanted to try, and Iris knew she had to do something.

As quickly as she could, she whipped her phone out of her pocket and opened her texts.

Without stopping to question her motives, she fired off a text message to Meph saying, It’s Iris. Call me right now.

Lily had insisted on saving all the demons’ numbers in Iris’s phone months ago in case of emergency. At the time, Iris had not been pleased, and her thumb had hovered over the delete button on Meph’s name more times than she could count, but she was glad she hadn’t erased it now.

Why text Meph? Why not anyone else in the entire world? She told herself it was because he would be the least likely to ignore her message. She would have texted Lily, but she knew her twin well enough to know her phone would be on silent. And Iris wasn’t going to risk whispering it at her either.

She refused to consider her motives beyond that. All she needed was her ringtone to go off, that was it.

A few minutes later, as Suyin was walking through the first sigil they’d be attempting, it did. Iris acted all surprised and said to the group, “Sorry, I thought I turned it off.”

Suyin glared at her, and Iris felt like the bad student. First she’d shown up with a dog, and now she was getting calls in class. She was definitely getting shit for this later.

She pretended to check the call display. “Damn it, I have to take this.” She answered the phone as she stood up, hoisting Faust under her arm.

“Miss me, sweet cheeks?” that sexy-as-sin voice said through the phone connection.

Right there, in front of the entire coven, a wave of arousal washed over her. She cursed him to Hell and back.

“Hi, yes, this is Iris Donovan,” she replied in her ultra-polite phone voice.

“Uh, what?”

She walked toward the far corner of the room to the base of the staircase, speaking in a low voice that was still loud enough to be overheard. “What do you mean the payment didn’t go through? The charge was sent through my card last month.”

“Oh, I get it. Okay, I’ll play along.” Meph put on a ridiculous fake voice. “Yes, well, ahem , it seems you’re flat broke and your credit card isn’t good for shit, Ms. Donovan.”

Iris only barely managed to stifle her laugh. When she glanced up, she saw Lily watching her with a frown. “Can’t you wait until tomorrow for me to come in?”

“Nope,” Meph replied, still playing along. “Has to be now, dollface. This is a one-time, time-sensitive offer, and if you don’t get your tight ass over here right now, I’m going to spank it. Did I say it right? How am I doing?”

“Brilliant,” she replied sarcastically. “But what about my sister? Her payment must have cleared.”

“Oh, no, the spanking’s only for you. I think Mist would kill me, though I have to say the twins thing is pretty hot.”

Want to punch him so badly. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Totally unfair.”

“Fine, I’ll come by and put the payment through again, but I’m telling you, the card works.”

“You do that, baby girl. And make it quick. You’ve been bad and need to be taught a lesson.”

The idiot was having way too much fun with this. Despite herself, she snorted.

“Hey now, don’t break character,” Meph scolded.

“I can’t believe you people.”

“Better. But now that you’ve used me to get out of whatever awkward situation you’re in, you owe me. And a demon always collects his debts.”

“Whatever. I’ll be there soon.”

“I look forward to it, sugar.” He hung up.

She really should have had someone else call. She could just imagine what kind of “debt” Meph intended to collect.

Iris made a big show of approaching Lily and whispering in her ear about some fake payment that they needed to sort out immediately, and thank god, Lily caught on and played along.

They excused themselves from the group, who had moved on to studying each of the individual symbols inside the sigil and practicing the auditory incantation, and Suyin came over as they were heading toward the exit.

“I’ll just wait outside,” Lily said, and she hurried up the creaky stairs.

“You okay?” Suyin asked Iris. She swept her hair behind one shoulder and eyed Faust suspiciously.

“Yeah, all good. Just stupid bank crap, you know.” Iris felt like the biggest piece of shit for lying to her best friend. But it was a lie that had to be told.

“I don’t mean that. I mean, lately, you’ve been pulling away from the coven. You used to spend every day here, to the point where I’d have to drag your ass home, and now you’re late for meetings? It’s not like you.”

“Yeah...” Shit. She hadn’t expected to have to come up with an excuse for that, and she couldn’t think of anything to say now. “Guess I’m just tired lately. Faust is taking up a lot of my time.”

Suyin frowned at the grinning beast in her arms. “Why’d you get a dog anyway?”

“I didn’t. Well, not voluntarily. Some arse just dumped him outside my door. He was practically hypothermic when I found him. Who does that?”

“Yeah, but why’d you keep him?”

Iris blinked. “Because he had no one else.”

“There are lots of shelters that could take him.”

“Yeah, but... look at him. He’s so cute.”

Suyin glanced at the puppy and shrugged. Damn, she was cold. Her eyes met Iris’s again. “You wanna go out tonight? Heard there’s a good show at Katacombes. We haven’t hit the mosh pit in a while.”

Another thing she and Iris had in common: an undying love of metal music.

“I dunno,” Iris said. “I’ll see if I can find someone to watch Faust, but it’s hard right now because he needs so much training.”

Suyin’s lip curled. “You sound like you just had a kid.”

Iris recoiled. “Don’t even say that.”

“Well, it’s true. Only it’s a dog, so it’s even lamer.”

She snorted. “Good luck with your demonic-presence barometers.”

Suyin’s eyes lit up with inspiration. “If we can nail this sigil down, we’ll be able to tell if a demon even walks by on the street. We can draw the sigil at each of our houses and even our workplaces. Between the lot of us, we’ll have covered a pretty decent amount of territory.”

“Great,” Iris said weakly, her gut churning.

She should have known something like this would happen eventually.

Really, it was stupid of her to think she could continue to lead this double life.

She thought back to her birthday party and winced.

It had been an incredibly risky, stupid idea, and she was glad nothing had gone wrong.

If it had, it would have gone really wrong.

Suyin knew what had happened to Iris and Lily’s parents—she had moved to Montreal originally to help them get the cloaking spell up—and she knew what demon Iris had dedicated her life to defeating. Not only that, but she’d long ago sworn she would help Iris win that fight.

And now Iris was betraying her by keeping secrets.