Page 41

Chapter 40

Walking, Talking Red Flag

Jemma

“W hat do you think’s happening down there?”

I vaguely noted that the T-shirt I was twisting in my fingers was the vintage Spice Girls one that I’d been wearing that first fateful night when I’d had too many wines and had ended up in his chambers in Hell.

And now, the only place I wanted to be was down there with him. Someone needed to protect him from Yellin’ Hellen … was her name really Hellen? What sort of parent named their daughter … a child of Hell … Hellen?

The type that was a drunken, sleazy wastrel who had tried to hit on me in the creepiest possible way until SJ had swooped in to save the day. I shuddered, remembering his mentions of pain and how much fun we would have together.

How SJ had turned out so … good … with a family like his, I had zero idea.

“I honestly have no clue, Jem.” Ezra snapped me out of my reverie, handing me a cup of tea. I sniffed it. Chamomile.

“Am I really that worked up?” I asked, but I took a sip anyway. The sweet, appley flavour did take the tiniest edge off my agitation. Which Ezra of course had known it would.

“He’s a big boy … a very big boy.” Ezra sighed appreciatively. I smacked him on the bicep.

“Ow! Anyway, what I mean is, he’s more than capable of dealing with whatever it is that needed his urgent attention. I’m sure he’ll be back in no time, all ready for round … I’m gonna say fifteen?”

I snorted. “Let’s just say there were at least fifteen of something … but it was all in the one round.”

Ezra’s mouth fell open. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

I nodded, a tiny smile tickling my lips. “I am.”

“Oh my God, you had the full monster porn experience, didn’t you? Share, please!”

I shrugged. The details were … precious. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share them. Not even with Ezra, who until now had heard every single sordid detail of my love life.

His eyes widened. “You’re properly in love with him, aren’t you?”

I shrugged again, tugging my bottom lip into my mouth.

“You totally are! Not just falling for him—you’re in deep!” Ezra squealed. “You have to tell him! As soon as he gets back, you have to tell him you love him!”

“I know I do … I had totally planned to, until his emergency exit.” My eyes strayed to the spot where the portal had been. “It’s been what … an hour? How long does an emergency in Hell take?”

I started to take another sip, then spluttered, dribbling tea down my front. “Shit! Ezra, what if something really bad happened? What if … what if his dad died, or … or the orgy last night got out of control, and they burned down the castle? Can a castle in Hell even burn down? It’s made of stone, that’s not flammable, is it?”

I set down my tea, pacing to the spot he’d disappeared from as if I could somehow will the portal to reappear and him to step through, all ready to head back to bed and let me pick up where I’d left off.

“Wait. Back up a step.” Ezra’s eyes were bugging out of his head. “There was an orgy ?”

“Well … it was verging on one when I arrived. You could just feel it in the air. There were small groups starting to … pleasure each other.”

“You didn’t …with SJ … in the ballroom …?” Ezra winced.

“Eww, no! We had complete privacy for what we got up to. Even the Hounds stayed away. And PS, that totally sounded like someone’s guess in a Cluedo game. ‘Was it Prince Satan Junior, in the Ballroom, with the?—’”

My breath caught in my throat as swirling lights flashed, like a disco strobe, spreading until they framed a person-sized hole, which SJ stepped through.

He smirked in a way that all at once had my lady bits tingling and my heart trying to slam its way out of my chest. Because while that curl of his lips was sinfully sexy, there was something … off about his eyes. Something cold and determined … and infinitely sad.

The Hounds’ snouts poked out of the portal, distracting me for a moment. As if she sensed them, Luci dashed from the laundry, dooking madly. She took a flying leap, landing on Bub’s shoulders. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, his tail wagging frantically.

Why couldn’t I get that sort of greeting? If SJ was in his devil form, would he wag his red tail with excitement to see me?

“I have a surprise for you.” SJ’s voice snapped me from my silly thoughts. He sounded like an exhausted parent trying their hardest to be playful for their exuberant toddler. My chest tightened another notch.

Something was wrong. Whatever had happened down in Hell, he’d come back … different. Dread crept along my spine like a piece of ice dropped down the back of my T-shirt, but I forced a grin onto my face.

“You do?” I tentatively stepped closer, hoping that he was just acting weird because he’d had to deal with ‘Yellin’ Hellen’. She sounded like an absolute piece of work; no wonder he’d returned a bit off.

Yes, that must be it , I told myself as I reached for his hand. He just needs me to give him a bit of Bliss, and he’ll be back to his usual self again.

He stepped back, just out of my reach. His smirk tightened, but his eyes stopped me in my tracks. They roved me like a caress, darkness swirling beneath that silvery grey. I shivered under the intensity of the longing in that look.

And then his gaze slid away, breaking the crackling tension in the air, leaving me breathless and confused. His smile slipped for just a split second, and the expression I caught a glimpse of was so wretched that my throat closed over, and I tore my gaze away, finding Luci nuzzling Bub’s neck. Bub tilted his head to the side to give her better access, his doggy grin looking far more genuine than the never-reached-his-eyes smile SJ had pasted on for me.

Why did my bloody ferret have more luck in love than me? I mean, she was handling her interspecies romantic affair with Bub better than SJ, and I seemed to be managing ours … at least since he’d returned from his little emergency.

Maybe I should just jump into his arms and start nuzzling his neck, too. That might snap him out of this weird fug. But since he’d backed away when all I’d done was reach for his hand, I’d probably end up sprawled across the floor with a giant lump on my forehead if I tried.

“Can I have my surprise?” I demanded instead. The words were sharp as I forced them past the lump in my throat.

He glanced in my direction, his leer pulling his mouth taut as he reached into his pocket, producing a small disc, glowing pink, dwarfed by his big palm.

My Soul Token.

We both watched as it pulsed bright white, then pink, over and over. Was that my anxiety making it do that? This worry that had been simmering while he was away, that should have been alleviated when he returned … except he’d come back all wrong.

“Did you take a trip to the Pet Sematary while you were away?” I blurted, eyeing my Soul Token dubiously.

“I … no, there is no cemetery for pets in Hell.” He sounded so genuinely confused that a tiny giggle started to force its way out of my chest. Until it hit the boulder in my throat, and instead, I gagged.

“Sorry … it’s a movie … where her pet dies, and she tries to bring it back to life, but it … anyway, you don’t want to hear about this. I … are you really returning my soul?”

Why had that not been the first thing that I focused on in this bizarre moment? Oh, that’s right, because in the last twenty-four hours, my soul had become less important to me than the devil who had stolen it.

SJ cleared his throat, closing his fist around the glowing disc. “Yes. Consider it a … a thank you gift.”

With his other hand, he reached out, gripped me by the wrist and dropped the thing into my upturned palm. His thumb curled my fingers over it, stroking my knuckles before releasing me. My eyes started to prickle. But that was stupid, because wasn’t this what I’d wanted from the start?

“A thank you for what?” I asked roughly.

SJ chuckled; the sound so strained it grated in my ears. “With my gratitude for a very … entertaining night. I must admit, I hadn’t expected you to be so … enthusiastic. Although in hindsight, I should have known.” He made a blasé gesture towards my bookshelves.

My heart stopped clamouring to get out and dropped into the pit of my stomach instead. “What are you doing, SJ?”

He shrugged, a nonchalant, one-shouldered gesture, his face a smarmy mask that the pain in his eyes made a lie out of. “I am not completely without morality. It felt … improper … to continue to reap your soul after everything we did last night … so consider yourself off the hook. Unfortunately, I cannot return the portion to your body, but?—”

“Hold on!” I interrupted, that prickling in my eyes becoming pressure. I blinked, but it wouldn’t go away. “Are you … trading me my soul for … for last night?”

“That’s a concise way to put it.”

“And what about …” I swallowed, or tried to, but the meteor in my throat was having none of it. “What about us?”

“There is no us.” The coldness in his voice iced my blood. “Whatever gave you that impression, Mouse?”

I scoffed as the first tears rolled down my cheeks. “Uh, your cute little pet name for me, for one! The fact that you told me last night that you had feelings for me!” I stepped closer, craving him in a way that I knew he felt. Needing to make him acknowledge it. But he was stiff, and even as I moved into arm’s reach, he kept his arms locked by his sides. His fingers flexed, but he didn’t reach for me.

“Was I the only one who thought we were becoming ‘us’ when you looked after me all night when I had a panic attack about the dark?” I strode up to him, poking him in the chest. “What about when you reaped the soul of my ex-boyfriend because you were furious about how he’d hurt me? Were we not actually becoming something then?”

SJ’s jaw slackened. “How did you?—”

“Chad came here looking for you! He said he’d felt wrong ever since you made a ‘deal’ with him to buy his art. He said you shook his hand, and … I guessed what you’d done.”

SJ looked like he was about to throw up. I felt it too, in the churning ache in my belly that had nothing to do with period pain.

“Do you want to know how I felt at that moment?” I asked, poking him again for good measure. “It felt like … for the first time in a very long time, I had a man who wanted to have something meaningful with me! A man who cared about me … about my needs … about my feelings!”

“Hey!” Ezra piped up from somewhere behind me.

“Sorry, Ez! Present company excepted. But … maybe can SJ and I have a moment to sort out … whatever brain snap he’s having right now?”

I swiftly turned and gave Ezra a pointed look. His eyes widened, and he backed out of the living room. When I heard his bedroom door close, I turned back to SJ, who stared mutinously out the window behind me.

On the floor beside us, the Hounds had shifted into their ferret forms and were cavorting merrily with Luci as if I wasn’t desperately trying to wrap my head around his change of heart.

“What happened down there to make you come back like this?”

“Clarity,” he muttered. “That’s what happened. We are not compatible, and?—”

I snorted. “We seemed pretty darned ‘compatible’ last night.” I peered up at him. His strong jaw was hard with tension. He didn’t respond, but his eyes looked … miserable.

“You know what I think?” I asked, wincing at the wobble in my words. I swiped at another traitorous tear. “I think you’ve fallen in?—”

“Don’t!” His voice was an agonised warning. “Do not make ridic?—”

I stomped my foot and growled like a mad beast. He snapped his mouth shut.

“You’ve fallen in love with me, and you’re scared,” I snapped, poking him again. “You’re so afraid … because this isn’t what you expected to happen between us.”

“That’s not?—”

“I’m not finished!” Another poke, and he flinched. “You’re scared of how strong your feelings are because there are so many barriers to this working between us.”

Another tear swipe. Another poke at his chest. “You’re not human—so what? We kind of worked out that’s not a barrier for me pretty early on, didn’t we? Everything else we can work through …” I wiped again, but I was fighting a losing battle against a burst dam of tears. “If you do have feelings for me, you’d want to try. I know I want to.”

He inhaled deeply. I didn’t dare to breathe.

“I do not.”

A strangled laugh tore out of me. “Liar.”

“I’m not lying!” he snarled, with the tone of someone who knows they’ve been caught and is doubling down in their duplicity. “I do not want you! I might feel … enough guilt that I seduced you last night?—”

“Seduced me ?” I scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself! I came to Hell hoping the night would end up with us in bed together!”

His jaw ticked, and he turned away, staring out the window. “Well, if that is the case, you have my fondest thanks for … entertaining me, last night. Hence the return of your Soul Token. It’s only fair that you get something out of it all.”

I scoffed, storming up to him, grabbing his arm and wrenching him towards me. It didn’t work. He was as immovable as stone, which only made me angrier.

“Don’t you dare thank me like I performed a service for you! Don’t you dare reduce what we did last night—what we had together last night—to a transaction!”

He rounded on me, his eyes no longer cold but lit with raw fury. He backed me into the wall, fists slamming on either side of my face. The movement rattled my bookshelf so violently that a couple of books clattered to the floor, and it sent Luci and the ferret-Hounds screeching for cover in the laundry.

“You got everything you wanted from me! Your night of monster passion and the piece of your soul back!” His breath was hot against my cheek. “You’re being very ungrateful for someone who has just been given their freedom!”

“Do you really think that’s all I wanted from you?” I demanded, scowling up at him through my tears, even as my stupid body revelled in the heat of him, the closeness of him.

He shook his head. “Maybe you’re silly enough to want more … why do you insist on demanding more and more that I do not wish to give to you?”

“Because everything you’re saying is a lie! You told me last night you had feelings for me! And I know you meant it. I know you, SJ.” I had to stop and breathe before the tremble in my voice made it impossible to speak. Because what if I didn’t know him? What if all those small moments we’d had together, that had me falling for him, had all been him playing me for a fool?

His fingers flexed beside my head, scraping against the wall. “What if I told you that the things I said in the heat of … of the moment last night were just words fuelled by lust?” He tried to lift that smirk back onto his face, but all he managed was a sort of lopsided grimace.

I shook my head furiously. “I’d call you twice the liar then! It wasn’t even ‘in the moment’ when you said those things to me! It wasn’t like you groaned, ‘I love you, Jemma!’ in the throes of your umpteenth orgasm! It was later, in the quiet moments, when you told me … you said I was an entirely necessary attachment, SJ! And nothing you say will convince me those words were just lust on your part.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and I knew I’d nailed everything. He was scared, and he was lying to get himself out of this.

“I was … not myself for most of the night. I haven’t enjoyed a female as … passionate as you for quite some time. It fogged my brain.” He snorted a chuckle through his nostrils. “Your monster fetish really got you going for me, didn’t it?”

I couldn’t think around the swell of conflicting emotions tightening my chest, swirling in my stomach. I was vaguely aware that tears dripped from my chin.

“Why are you being so unkind, SJ?” I whispered.

For a second, his face crumpled into what looked like agony, but it was gone before I could be sure.

“What am I, Jemma? Unkind, or a liar? You can’t have it both ways.”

“Oh yes I can!” I spat. “Because you’re feigning this unkindness! Why are you trying to hurt me?”

“Because that’s what I do! This is who I am!” He pushed off the wall and spun towards the window, staring out at the city. “I am torment, and I am misery, and I am pain! I don’t know what you expected from the Son of Satan. Have you conveniently forgotten all the awful things I’ve done to you? I admit I got a bit … caught up … in our little date-faking scheme?—”

“Fake dating,” I corrected in a watery mutter.

“Whatever you call it. I got carried away and said things that I now regret—in as much as a Prince of Hell can feel regret, that is.” He laughed, a cold, bitter sound that made my skin prickle. “The happy endings in your monster romance books are pure fantasy … and it seems that our attachment is not quite as necessary as I pretended last night. Just be thankful that I dredged up enough morality to not go through with reaping your soul.”

“So … you’re serious about this? You’re actually breaking up with me?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s a bloody third-act breakup!” A hysterical giggle bubbled up my throat. “The Devil is third-act breaking up with me.”

His brows drew together, but he turned from the window to face me properly. “We were never really dating, Jemma.” His expression held so tightly it looked like it was about to crack into a bajillion pieces. “Does your little romance book thingy even count in that scenario?”

I scoffed, swiping angrily at the tears trickling down my face. “I don’t sleep with men I’m not dating, SJ! So you tell yourself whatever you want about us, but I know what we have is real … and it’s a trope, not a thingy!”

“Whatever you’ve convinced yourself was going on between us … unconvince yourself …” he muttered. I wanted to punch him. Instead, I rubbed the back of my hand under my streaming nose.

That was it. I was done fighting with him … for him. I’d promised myself, after Chad, that I wouldn’t wallow over a man who didn’t deserve me. Sure, there hadn’t been anyone truly serious between him and SJ, but if ever there was a time to put myself first, this was it.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. “Fine. You want to take the coward’s way out? Consider us broken up. Or whatever you want to call it, since according to your revised version of events, this was never real to begin with.”

His lips parted, his eyes glistening. For a moment he said nothing, just watched me in a way that made me want to howl.

“This … is for the best, Mou … Jemma.” His voice cracked, and it took everything in me not to rush to him, to snuggle into his arms, to console him. To demand that whatever happened in Hell, he should talk to me, tell me how I could help him through it, not lie to us both and push me away.

But I held myself apart, steeling myself to finish this. If he was going to break my heart, I was bloody well getting the last word.

“You know, you’re right. This isn’t a romance novel. This is real life. And in real life, when a man runs like a coward at the first sign that things might be getting serious … when he freaks out the second he realises that he’s feeling all these big, scary feelings, that’s not cute. It’s a massive red flag. You are a walking, talking red flag, Satan Junior!”

He said nothing, but his eyes were so terribly sad that I almost couldn’t bring myself to make my final point. Almost.

“So, since this is real life , and not a romance novel, everything I said about third-act breakups to you before—all the grovelling to get her back stuff—that doesn’t apply. There is literally no amount of grovelling you could do that would convince me to take you back.”

“I … alright,” he muttered. My heart lurched painfully as his gaze slid away towards the window again. The world outside was sunny. Spring was really digging its claws into the city.

I would have loved to show him my favourite warm weather haunts. To take him to all my markets and let his fiendish ferret-Hounds cavort all over Luci while he watched me work. To share cinnamon donuts with him while snuggling on the couch. Perhaps I’d even let him read over my shoulder while I devoured a new release book. To have him tag along to my hospital visits—give the nurses more to swoon about and the girls more to gossip about.

We wouldn’t have any of those things. Not that he deserved them with me, the jerk.

But that didn’t stop me from mourning the loss of them.

“I’ll take my leave,” he murmured, breaking the pulsing silence.

“Yep.” I had no strength for more than that.

I didn’t turn from the view out the window, but my scalp tingled as if he’d given my hair one barely-there stroke as he passed. I didn’t turn to watch him as he called for Beezle and Bub. I didn’t blink in his direction as he conjured a portal into existence, or when he stepped into it. I kept my back turned as it slowly faded away until there was nothing left of it. Nothing left of him.

Then I sobbed. Great, gusting cries that wracked my body. Pain-like claws caging my heart.

“Jem. Come here.”

I turned and collapsed into Ezra’s waiting arms. He pulled me onto the lounge, cradling me against him.

“I really thought this was going to be your happy ending,” he murmured against my hair. “I’m so sorry that it wasn’t.”

“Me too!” I wailed, soaking his shirt with my tears. My hand hurt. I thought maybe it had been hurting for a while, but I’d been too distracted to notice.

Sitting back, ignoring the rivers of tears on my cheeks, I opened my fist. The Soul Token was red hot, blistering my palm. I felt like I was looking at it from a million miles away.

Ezra hissed. “Jesus, Jem! That’s a nasty burn! Let’s get you to the tap. Cold water, and then some first aid.”

“It’s my pain. My pain,” I mumbled, following Ezra into the kitchen.

“That’s your soul, Jemma,” Ezra reminded me. “That’s the piece of you that’s been missing.”

I set the searing Token down on the counter beside the sink and let Ezra rinse the sting from the wound. I wasn’t sure the Token mattered all that much to me. The thing that I would miss most had just taken a permanent portal ride back to Hell.