Chapter 32

These bitches. Hannibal was done with me, either because Benji had somehow given everyone here diarrhea or whatever Benji had started with the food that we were all lying about got him to back off. It was something.

I didn’t really know what was going on upstairs, but downstairs, everyone was being fed better and no one was being dragged from their cells to be experimented on. I desperately wanted to look my mates in the eyes and thank them for that because these nasty people had finally left that demon girl across the way alone. I couldn’t see her but I could feel her now that my magic was coming back. She was young in terms of supernaturals, but not a child. She could have been snatched from a college campus from a drinking incident gone wrong.

Her parents have given her the moniker Calamity, and it seemed like Jezebel was the only one who could soothe her, even if they were in two totally different cells. Our guard always tried to shut her up when Jezebel sang, but Jezebel didn’t start singing until Calamity showed up.

Jezebel wasn’t saying anything during our girl talk, but I was getting mate vibes. Sirens were everywhere in Greece back in my time. I was friends with a few. Their voices were deadly, but they could also be used to soothe and heal. You only got the non-deadly songs if you were important to the siren.

Jezebel could be singing to the entire basement to keep us calm so no one fucked up whatever plan was going on upstairs, but I highly doubted it. She only started doing it when her Siren magic started coming back and Calamity got upset.

Jezebel could have used her voice to kill everyone who’d hurt us. I wouldn’t blame her. She knew something was being planned upstairs and if she failed, she wouldn’t be punished long. But I think any member of the Coalition who had been down in the basement resented that they hadn’t gotten their hands on Jezebel or me.

If they thought Calamity was important to Jezebel, they would hurt the young demon as part of Jezebel’s treatment because that was just how they worked.

Jezebel had just finished singing. I was pretty sure Calamity and everyone else was asleep. She came to join me at our shared vent since we were both awake and now we could sense that.

“Any more updates? My song can heal a lot of mental trauma, but if you’re still in the middle of all the nasty shit, it’s like plugging the hole in the boat with chewing gum.”

“Thinking of cashing in on your Siren side instead of your succubus side when you get out of here and changing careers or are you keeping secrets so they don’t use her against you?”

“Man, fuck you. I hate that you don’t even know what I look like and you still know my secrets. Love you, bitch. But both? I had it easy using my succubus gifts the most. I was loved and spoiled and yeah, maybe I abused that a bit.

“It was both sides of my magic malfunctioning that kept me safe down here and these people hated me just for being born. I know it could have been much worse for me. Instead of going back to sex work, I want to combine my magic to help people who ended up here. And seriously, how perfect is her name?”

I knew it.

“Girl, I’m happy for you.”

“There’s another one here. Upstairs. She just got here, and she’s got some insanely strong mental wards. She’s been blocking me, which sucks, but she hasn’t rejected me. The whole fucking point of being supernatural is that you don’t have to choose, but I’m basically having to pick between killing everyone down here to get to one of them and staying and soothing another in case something goes wrong.

“If she’d drop her stupid mental wards, she’d know we’re having our first fight in my head. I’m half Siren, so I like attention and don’t do well with being ignored, but I’m also half succubus, so I’m super forgiving because the makeup sex gives me a power boost and gets me kind of high.”

“You know I love you, right? If I can get my glasses when we get out of here, I’m taking you up on your offer of going drinking and doing mean things to stupid drunk boys.”

“You’re my heart, Medusa. Platonically speaking. I know you haven’t done the big reveal to your mates yet because you’ve got some hangups, but when they come down here, I’ll use my lure to try to convince them it’s not safe to look at you. You should get your happy ending, too.

“You can all get out of here safely and you can find your magic glasses. Then we’re going drinking. My mates can come because they are women and will probably want to do mean things to stupid, drunk boys, but yours have to stay home because they are men and will probably kill the stupid, drunk boys. That’s just messy and would ruin the whole night.”

Whatever they were planning was going to happen soon. My magic was almost back. I could tell them to leave me here all day. The mate pull wouldn’t allow it. I could tell myself that if I had the strength, I’d run from them, but that wouldn’t happen either.

I could only hope Jezebel’s lure was enough to convince them not to look at me. I could tell them, but finding out your mate was a monster was kind of like ripping off a BAND-AID or asking for forgiveness instead of permission.

Easing someone into it was generally far worse than just doing it and I was kind of fatal.