Page 6 of The Wolfing Hour

“Yeah, for not smiting your ass into dust. Why aren’t you in Hell?”

“This sucks.Yousuck.”

“Clock’s ticking.”

“Fine. I’m not in Hell because my uncle kicked me out again.” A series of emotions crossed his green little face.

The one I homed in on was deceit. He was going to give me my answers, but in his own, jerk-me-around sort of way.

Nobody had time for that, least of all me.

I reached into my pocket and extracted a pinch of soil. Not the one mixed with salt, either. This was pure Siete Saguaro earth. My element. The primary source of my magic.

Gnath watched me, fear flashing in his eyes. “What’s that for?”

“This.” I drizzled the soil onto the back of my hand, where it steamed into a heated vapor that sank into my skin. It used to hurt, and though it was still hot, it no longer provoked a pain response. I’d grown used to the sensation.

“Wow, that’s so super awesome cool.” He rolled his rheumy eyes and clicked his tongue against sharklike, triangular teeth. “Whatever.”

With a flick of my hand and the whispered word, “Fuego,” silver flames appeared inside the ring.

Cecil’s eyes went wide. He and Fennel were now positioned outside the circle behind the desk.

“Mercury’s poison? Again?” Gnath pulled his arms and legs onto the chair. “Why not some new torment?”

“Because you enjoyed this one so much last time, I guess,” I said. “Are you back in Limbo? I can’t imagine you’d be anywhere else. Heaven won’t have you and the mortal world is out of bounds unless—” One way for him to enter the human realm was with a soul. Any soul would do, even that of a child.

Godsdamn him.

“Hey, can you turn down the heat?” The creature wiped what looked like oily sludge from his forehead. “I’m cooperating. No need to get testy.”

“You were going to steal a child’s soul just so you could come here, weren’t you?”

“No. As you already know, I can’t steal a soul. She’d have to give it to me.”

“She’stwelve. A child can’t consent.”

“She’s twelve? Lucifer’s horns, I thought she was an adult. I have trouble with human ages.”

That was bullshit. He knew it; I knew it. What fully grown human adult even believed in Bloody Mary?

“Go home, Gnath. If I find you out here again, I’m going to put you down. This was the final straw. Kids are off-limits. Old people, too. And animals. Humans. Paranormals.”

“You’re really hamstringing me here.”

I rose from the bed and toed the edge of the soil-salt line. Looked him directly in his bleak, empty eyes. “Killing you wouldn’t bother me.”

The demon went a darker shade of green as the silver flames licked at the chair legs.

“You need to understand how little your destruction would affect me, because if I catch you in my realm again, for any reason, I’m going to incinerate your soul.” I strolled around the outside of the circle. “Once you’re gone, I’ll go home and climb into bed with my boyfriend. I’ll sleep like I don’t have a care in the world, and in a week’s time, I’ll barely remember what happened. In a month’s time, I won’t remember your name. In a year’s time, I won’t recall you at all. You’ll be dead and forgotten and no one will mourn you. No one will even notice.”

The sound of his ragged breathing echoed in the still room.

I snapped my fingers, and the silver flames banked like a gas burner set to low. The chair was unharmed, as was the floor. But then, that wasn’t what the flames were meant to burn.

“Go now.”

“There’s nowhereforme to go,” he whined. “My uncle had me kicked me out of Hell, and my girlfriend kicked me out of her part of Purgatory. Now you’re kicking me out of this realm—not that I was in it, since I can’t do that without a soul or summoning, but you get what I mean.”