Page 2 of Generally Hospitable (Good To The Last Demon #7)

“Look,” I said, trying not to lose my shit. “We’re fine. We’re not dead. Neither of us lost a head on the way down. All we have to do is find the center of the castle.”

She rolled her eyes.

I rolled mine harder.

She one-upped me and bested me with an eye roll that turned her orbs pure white, beating me hands down. I knew when I couldn’t win a game. The eye roll contest was one of those games.

“The door will be overhead, somewhere in one of these halls,” I said, thinking out loud. “We need to aim our search higher on the walls.”

“And how are we supposed to reach a door that’s over our heads, dumbass?” Pandora inquired. “No stairs. Remember?”

I wasn’t having it with her shitty attitude. The hope I’d seen earlier in her expression had taken a vacation. “We firebomb it.” I gave her a duh look. “Remember?”

She scowled at me. “Still doesn’t solve how we get through it and into the throne room, Bitch.”

“Well…” I said in the most condescending voice I could muster. “That’s why it’s called an ass plan. We pull it out of our asses as we go, Stinky Whore. You cool with that, or should I just leave you here while I go it alone?”

“And let you have all the glory?” she said. “Hell to the no on that, Cecily. I will not let you beat me again.”

I’d had it. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re supposed to be in this together, asshole. It’s not a competition.”

“Everything is a competition in the Darkness,” she said coldly. “Learn that now, or else it will come back to haunt you.”

“This is not a game, Pandora,” I ground out through clenched teeth.

“It’s not a one-upmanship contest between you and me.

The fate of our entire realm...hell, the entire world as we know it, everything ,” I emphasized, “is on the line. Quit being such a scared, selfish piece of shit. It’s not about you. It’s not about me.”

“Screw you, Bitch Goddess Cecily,” she said with a vile laugh that chilled me to the bone.

Unfortunately, she sounded like the Pandora of old. The one I remembered killing my mother. I didn’t like her one bit.

“Tell me what you want,” I shouted.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she yelled back.

My instinct was to electrocute the living daylights out of her.

Right now, my instincts were not my friend.

Pandora wasn’t my friend either, but I needed her.

I needed her just as much as she needed me.

Why couldn’t she get that through her head?

Running my hands through my hair and coming out with green gooey guts all over my fingers, I sighed. “I don’t understand you.”

“How could you?” she asked, sounding bone tired.

“I’ve been alive for millions of years. You’ve been alive for forty.

When you live forever, nothing, and I mean nothing, has meaning—not love, not sex, not interaction with others.

It all blurs together. It’s an unending stream of days that turn into weeks, then years…

then centuries.” She stared at her hands before closing her eyes.

“So, the answer to your insipid question is I don’t know.

Sometimes, I want everything. Sometimes nothing.

I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that existing is the best I can hope for. ”

“That’s sad.”

She laughed. The sound was hollow. “Talk to me in a million years.”

“Won’t be able to,” I told her.

She raised a brow in question. “Why. Are you going to be dead?”

I rolled my neck to release some tension then looked her straight in the eye. “We’re all going to be dead if we don’t end Chub Chub Wang.”

Pandora looked startled.

I didn’t care. “You done with the tantrum?” I extended my hand to help her up from the ground.

She smiled. It was real this time, reminding me of the newer, less horrid Pandora I was coming to know and care about. “How are you wiser than me?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe because I haven’t lived forever yet.”

“Maybe,” she said, taking my hand. “Let’s go kill that fucker.”

A surge of optimism renewed my determination. “Sounds good to me.”

Hand in hand, we walked through the tunnels. The two Goddesses of the Darkness with the same goal… this time. It wouldn’t always be that way, and I wasn’t fool enough to believe we could truly be friends. But we could be allies—allies when it counted.

Today was one of those times.

“There!” Pandora shouted. She pointed up at a gold, ornately carved hatch that was no bigger than a breadbox. “That has to be it.”

No wonder we’d struggled to find it. The damn thing had been hiding in plain sight.

“I won’t be able to get a foot inside that thing, let alone the rest of my body.

” I was having seriously nightmarish flashbacks to when skinny jeans were trending.

“We don’t need a staircase,” I huffed. “We need Alice’s drink-me potion of psychedelics to shrink ourselves small enough to fit inside. ”

Pandora chewed her lower lip for a moment. “If this was my castle, I’d know what to do, but this was Lilith’s, and she had her own rules.”

“That’s it.” I resisted the urge to kiss her. “This was Lilith’s castle.”

“Yeah, I just said that, Bitch. Are you having a psychotic break?”

I smiled. “Possibly...probably.” I stared up at the tiny door. “But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. This was Lilith’s castle...until you killed her?—”

“And I’m sorry for that,” she cut me off. “I’m never going to be able to express just how sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry right now, Stupid Whore.” I glared at her. “I want you to shut up long enough for me to finish a thought.”

“My bad.” She held up a hand. “Go on.”

“When you killed her, it became my castle.”

She looked at me as if I suddenly had become very interesting. “Yesssss,” she hissed. “This is your castle.”

“So, what would you do if this were your castle?” I asked her. Now was the time for some much-needed Goddess-to-Goddess advice.

“I’d command the door to make itself available to me.”

“That’s it?” I looked at her to see if she was kidding. Her expression implied she wasn’t. “Okaaay,” I sang out. “Let’s give it a try.” I stared at the out-of-reach mouse-hole of a door. “Present yourself to me.”

Nothing happened.

I gave Pandora a what-the-hell expression.

“You said the words like you were asking a question. You are the head-bitch-in-charge. Act like it.” She gestured to the door. “Now, command it to obey.”

“Fine,” I grunted. I put all the menace and authority that I could into my tone. “I command you to present yourself to me, door. Present yourself or be blown to smithereens.”

I expected nothing, but was shocked and surprised when the small door shuttered and grew big, stretching from the top of the tall wall all the way to the floor. I might’ve preened a little, judging from the judgy-mcjudgy-face Pandora gave me. Whatever. It was a win, and I was taking it.

“Shall we go inside and face Chub Chub Wang?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said. “No time like the present.” To either win or die. Winning was on the docket.

We each put a fresh toothpick in our mouths and went to slay the dragon… or the Chub Chub Wang.

The door opened, and hand in hand, we walked through. Two Goddesses facing down destiny. Inside, on my mother’s throne, was a robed figure in a mask. His presence in the space enraged me.

My sword conjured in my hand unbidden, hot with purple flames. Pandora had the twin in her other hand.

“Get the hell out of my chair,” I seethed. “Or I’m going to turn you into a shish kabob and feed you to all my people you starved.”

“And I’ll be the sous-chef,” Pandora added.

There was a menacing laugh from under the mask as the fake God stood up and spread his arms in our direction. I braced myself for whatever attack he planned to throw our way.

Instead, he reached up and slid back his cowl before slowly removing his mask.

Under was a plain, ordinary-looking demon, verging on handsome but with a weak chin. His red eyes were filled with such pure delight that it made me shudder.

Pandora squeezed my hand until I thought she’d break my fingers. I spared a glance at her and felt sick when I saw how pale she’d gone, the stricken expression on her face gutting me to the core,

“What is it?” I asked her. “Do you know him?”

She nodded numbly. “It’s Decatalian.”

“Who?” I’d never heard the name before.

“It’s him. The one who started all of this.” She shook her head, and this time she had tears of grief mixed with horror in her eyes. “He’s the one.”

“The one?” My stomach clenched as I realized who she was talking about. “The one who cheated on you with Lilith, broke your heart and started your reign of terror?”

She nodded slowly. “That would be him.”

I gripped her hand as tightly as she held mine. I needed her to be strong. “We can beat him,” I told her. “But only if we do it together.”

“You have already lost, little Goddesses,” the cheating bastard said. “You lost the minute you entered this room.”

I tried to step forward, but my feet were stuck to the ground and I couldn’t move my legs. We were flies in his trap. I reached out from my mind for my people. For help of any kind.

No one answered.

Pandora’s flaming sword flickered as the arrogant fake God suffocated all hope.

“No,” I said defiantly. I yanked Pandora to get her attention. “He can’t win. We can’t let him.”

She blinked at me. “We?”

“Yes,” I told her. “We.”

I saw a light spark in her eyes. It was dim, but it was there. Hope. I resisted the urge to cry out. It wasn’t gone. Not yet.

Chub Chub Wang aka Decatalian aka the old gaslighting cheating dickbag was about to go down. I had to believe it. I had a life now, and I wasn’t about to lose my happily ever after in the final act.

We would win.

We had to.