Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Oh,no. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?

Pushing off the pillar, he closed the distance to the ladder with the quiet charge of a brewing storm. His hands grasped the black metal frame, his gaze intently fixed on me.

I swallowed, my heart thudding faster.

“I didn’t know you were a Queen fan,” he murmured as he took the first step up.

Dammit. I repaired the breach in my wall and stuffed Under Pressure playing on repeat back behind the rampart.

By now Azazel had taken more steps up the ladder. His face level with my crotch, he met my gaze with searing intensity.

My heart did its best to break through my rib cage, and I curled my fingers around the ladder’s rung.

No man—not even a demon—had the right to project that much raw sex with just a look. It just wasn’t fair.

Responding like dry kindling to a struck match, my body flared with heat. A well-known throb of desire settled at the apex of my thighs.

He inhaled deeply, his pupils dilating. “I love your scent,” he said, his voice an erotic growl that hummed over my skin.

Without so much as a warning, he pressed his face against my crotch, his nose pushing right on the spot that craved pressure. I uttered a choked moan and gripped the ladder harder so I wouldn’t just flow down, what with my knees having melted.

“I could bathe in it,” he spoke against my mound, and it didn’t matter that technically, there were two layers of fabric separating his mouth from my skin—the heat of his breath, the vibration of his deep voice, the sheer power of him so close to my pulsing core, it might as well have burned away my clothes.

Wait, he wouldn’t just—

“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, snapping my head down to peer at him.

“Dare what?” His expression was just short of on the wrong side of naughty, the fingers of his one hand stroking idly up my thigh, toward the aching center of my lust.

“Burn a hole in my—”

My sentence ended in a strangled groan of helpless pleasure as his mouth closed over my mound—and touched skin, the fabric seared off in between. I gasped for breath, my chest heaving as my head fell back against the ladder. Pleasure spiked where his tongue laved my folds, danced around my clit, teased my entrance.

I squirmed, panting, overwhelmed by the exquisite eroticism of being fully clothed except for that one spot in my crotch area where he sensually attacked my intimate flesh.

Oh, God.

He drew back, and chill air touched my wet folds.

I whipped my head down to stare at him.

“You need to stop thinking about God when I’m eating you out.”

Crap, my wall had crumbled again. Grinding my teeth, I rebuilt that sucker.

His eyes glittered. “You’ll have to keep it up if you want to come.”

I glowered down at him. “That’s unfair.”

“No, it’s an incentive.” He leaned forward and licked over my still heated flesh, making me shudder. “Anytime your wall fails, I’ll stop.”

I contemplated going for that dagger still strapped to my hips. My fingers flexed.

“If you keep the wall intact while my mouth is on you,” he said with a chuckle as he kissed my clit, “I’ll make you come so hard that I’ll have to carry you down this ladder in a boneless heap.”

I whimpered, my bones doing some pre-melting already.

His tongue flicked through my folds again, and my arousal skyrocketed. Closing his lips over my clit, he sucked. My hand shot out and tangled in his hair. He snarled his approval as he went to town, letting me feel his teeth in between generous licking and suckling.

I’d never understood the appeal of riding a guy’s face before, but I could learn to channel my inner cowgirl with how he worked me over.

He stopped.

With a whine, I glanced down at him.

He was resting his head on my still jeans-clad inner thigh, his expression hidden, his shoulders shaking. Was he—

“Cowgirl?” he asked in a strangled voice.

Dammit! I fixed up the holes in my mental wall.

He was still laughing quietly when he put his mouth on me again.

And so it went, on and off, on and off, in excruciating sensual torture until I was so high-strung with desperate, unfulfilled desire, it was a miracle I didn’t simply snap like an overdrawn rope.

“Pleeeeeeeease,” I wheezed, sweat slicking my skin.

“It’s up to you, love,” was his pragmatic, unyielding answer. “You know you can do it.”

“I hate you,” I murmured as I clenched my hand in his hair and pulled him closer.

A husky laugh against my intimate flesh. “No, you don’t.”

Ugh.

Checking the wall in frustration, a cursory, instinctive pat-down of my defenses, I let myself fall into that place of mounting arousal, with the single-minded focus of getting the fuck off.

If this wall fell down again, I would commit a bloodbath.

“There now,” Azazel purred against my mound as I writhed underneath his skillful tongue. “You’re doing great.”

God, I needed relief as bad as a junkie did their next fix.

He kept nipping and lapping at me, and I gasped—he hadn’t caught that thought!

Yessss. The wall held. It held, it held, it held—

He grazed my clit with his teeth and sucked.

I came with a scream. The orgasm razed me down to my foundations, a violent force of long-awaited pleasure. So sweet, so torturous, so charged that it veered into pain—which only hurled me further into bliss. Convulsions rattled my body, and I would have crumpled down the ladder had he not held my hips in place.

Spots of light danced in my vision, and I barely noticed as he turned me around, one arm slung around my waist and cushioning me against the ladder. His lips on my neck, his chest pressing into my back. He’d climbed up, was now right behind me, caging me in against the ladder.

“You’re not quite boneless yet,” he murmured into my ear. “Let me remedy that.”

“I think I’m boneless enough.” My voice was hoarse. “I’m practically a chicken nugget.”

“If you can still speak, I haven’t done my job.”

His free hand slid down to my jeans, popped open the button. The zipper followed suit. I shivered under the caress of his mouth on my neck as he grabbed the waistband and pulled both jeans and panties down to my knees in one skilled move. The raw carnality of that act only rekindled my lust, and despite my semi-boneless state, I managed to push my hips back—right up to the hard length of his own arousal, still trapped behind his pants.

Biting my lip, I rubbed against it. The hiss it elicited from him was the sweetest reward.

He drew back a little, and I felt his hand between us. A few quick, efficient moves, and then he pressed against me again, this time skin to skin at our hips. I gasped at the feel of his cock against my butt, fresh desire pooling in my core.

The fingers of his free hand slid between my thighs—slick with my arousal—right up to my entrance, dipped inside me. I moaned and let my head fall back against his shoulder. He pumped in and out for a few heartbeats, his breath hot on my jaw, before he withdrew his hand. Grasping his cock, he positioned it between my thighs, right where my legs met my butt, and spread me as much as possible with the jeans still tangled around my knees.

Our position and the angle made it an especially tight fit...and all the more damnably erotic as he pushed forward. I tilted my hips to guide him a little, groaned as he slid home.

Sweet mercy. I was a second away from coming already. If he touched my clit now...I’d explode.

The arm cushioning my front moved up, his hand shoving down my tank top and bra to expose my breast. He pulled his hips back and thrust forward again at the same time as he squeezed my breast, thumb flicking my nipple.

I held on to the rungs for dear life, my entire body aflame. Breath coming in short pants, I melted into his hold as he fucked me against the ladder. Harder, faster, his mouth at my neck, heat and teeth and hunger, a storm of lust and feral need.

The touch of his fingers on my mound, pressing down on my clit—and I unraveled.

With a keening moan, I came with a ferocity that shattered me. He snarled and bit my neck, pumping ever faster into me until he followed me over the edge with a deep groan that curled my toes.

For the span of several heartbeats, he leaned against me, pressing me into the ladder—with his arm still serving as cushion—his face buried in my neck. The quiet of that moment was a hundred times more intimate than the sexual connection we still had, with his cock still buried inside me, my inner muscles clenching in aftershocks.

Clothes rustled as he drew back, pulled out and fixed his pants. Still holding me upright with one arm, he quickly dabbed between my legs with a tissue he must have summoned. Always so considerate and thorough, I mused.

I startled at the sound of susurration, but the next second he’d lifted me, one arm under my knees, the other at my back, and I realized he was using his wings to balance on the ladder as he held me.

One mighty flap, and we were down on the floor. His wings vanished with a whoosh, and I made a soft sound of disappointment.

He peered at me, a brow raised in question.

They’re pretty.I had to mentally push the words to him, because he’d actually done his job well and rendered me temporarily incapable of using my mouth to form words.

“Pretty.” His narrow-eyed stare spoke volumes, but even so, he brought the wings back out, flaring them for extra effect as he walked over to one of the couches and sank down with me still in his arms.

What was left of my jeans and panties went up in flames and fell to ash under his hand, the dagger plopping down on the couch. I jerked upright.

“Shh.”

A blanket appeared in his hand, and he wrapped it around me, pulling me back against his chest. His wings slightly curled around us, the glossy black feathers shimmering with iridescent flames.

“Are you cuddling with me?” I muttered.

“I’m making sure you won’t flow into a puddle on the floor.” His chest vibrated against my cheek as he spoke. “The merihem would have a hard time cleaning that up.”

The merihem.I frowned. “Is that what the gremlins are called?”

“Gremlins?”

“The little guys running around cleaning stuff and bringing me food.”

He chuckled. “Yes. They’re not gremlins. Gremlins wreak havoc on Earth. Merihem are lesser demons, a hellborn species that came into being after the Fall.”

“Wait—gremlins are real?”

“Rare, but real, yes. They like to cause engine failures in big machines. Not exactly fans of new technology.”

I craned my neck to look up at him. “You’re shitting me.”

A wicked smile stole onto his face. “Got you for a second, though.”

“Ugh.”

I went to mock-slap his shoulder, but he caught my wrist, brought it up to his mouth and kissed my palm, his quicksilver eyes intently focused on mine. I shivered despite the warmth of the blanket.

“So violent,” he muttered, leaned down and captured my mouth in a kiss that melted my brain.

It took me a good minute after he broke the kiss to regain my faculties. I blinked, sorted through my jumbled thoughts and found the question I’d wanted to ask before.

“So are the merihem slaves?”

“No.” He played with my hair. “They are compensated for their work, and they are free to leave and offer their services to another demon.”

My brows drew together. “But half-bloods don’t have that choice?”

“Ah, yes. That’s a bit more complicated.”

“Why?” From all that I’d seen, half-bloods should have more standing than merihem.

“Because they have familial ties to a certain demon and their bloodline. With that comes a claim to their loyalty and obedience. Family is…a complex issue among demons.” His features darkened. “You owe allegiance to your line, and that allegiance comes with constraints on your freedom and choices.”

“You mean your family owns you?”

“In a way.”

“So they what? They say jump, and you have to jump?”

Something hard glittered in his eyes. “The more so when you’re younger.”

“That’s messed up.”

I thought of my father, and all the drama and pain when he’d decided to leave us for his second family, and I was infinitely grateful I had the choice to live with my mom and cut him out of my life. Did it hurt to turn down his repeated attempts at contact years later? Of course. But it was my choice, my only bit of control in a scenario that pulled the rug out from under my feet and ended my childhood years too soon.

The thought of someone—him, or the rest of my family—ordering me to keep in touch with him, essentially taking my right to determine at least this part of the debacle…the idea alone chafed. I couldn’t imagine having relatives practically dictate other parts of my life as well.

“Who’s your family?” I asked into the ponderous silence. Who held such rights over him?

His gaze flicked to mine, something hard and implacable glimmering within. “My line goes back to Daevi. She’s an original Fallen, and she’s the archdemon of this territory.”

Okay…I waited, because the weight of his words indicated there was more to this. Much more.

When he didn’t elaborate, I raised a brow and carefully asked, “And did Daevi found an entire family like Zeus birthed Athena from his head?”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I mean,” I went on, “unless you guys can reproduce by fragmentation like sponges—”

Lightning flashed in his gaze.

“—then it takes more than one demon to have offspring. So your line goes back to Daevi and…” Waving my hand in an encouraging manner, I let the rest of the sentence hang there.

He stared at me. A world of reticent defiance lay in that stare. His power seemed to replace the air in the room, and every breath made me inhale the raw force of Azazel in full-blown brooding mood.

It was quite impressive, as far as masculine sulking went.

“Fine,” I sighed. “You don’t want to talk about it—we won’t talk about it. Just to let you know, though, I get it. Family stuff can be shitty, and I know what it’s like to pretend one side of your family doesn’t exist.” I fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “The closer they are to you, the more it hurts when they betray you, so it makes sense that family has the potential to wreck us the most.”

The silence that followed was charged with the hum of his power and the quiet snoring of Vengeance on the couch to our left. I felt his every breath where my head lay on his chest, the thump of his heart a steady beat sinking into my skin.

“Thank you for installing a sprinkler system in my rooms,” I said after a while. “Mephistopheles wasn’t amused, but I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” His voice a deep rumble, he started playing with my hair again. After a moment he added quietly, “Lucifer.”

“What?”

“My line goes back to Daevi and Lucifer.”

I sat up so fast, my head spun. Gaping at him, I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. “You’re related to Lucifer? The Lucifer? Ruler of Hell?”

He nodded, his expression sour.

“Wha—what kind of relation? Like, how close?”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Two generations.”

“He—” I cleared my throat. “He’s your grandfather?”

“My mother’s father, yes.”

Holy shit. Ho-ly shit.

I was related to Lucifer by marriage. The Devil was one of my in-laws.

The motherfucking Devil.

My mind just blanked. I couldn’t…process.

“Zoe?”

I stared past him.

He waved his hand in front of my face. “Hell to Zoe. You there?”

I didn’t respond.

Sighing, he shifted on the couch, reaching into his pocket. The next second he wiggled a small object in front of my face and said with surgical precision, “I carried this around all day with your delicious fragrance on it, and more than one demon sniffed the air around me like a hound who’s scented blood.”

My gaze focused on the vibrator in his hand, and heat shot into my face. “Ugh! Give me that.”

I tried to snatch it away from him, but he raised his arm out of my reach, tutting. “What are you going to do to earn it back?”

“Earn it back?” If looks could incinerate, he’d be a pile of ash. “It’s mine, you stole it. Now give it back.”

“Mine, yours…” He peered at the vibe and pursed his lips. “…ours.”

I crossed my arms. “I didn’t know you had a thing for vibrators, but if you want it for your own use so badly, go ahead, have at it. I’ll let you borrow it for a while.” I waved at it with one hand. “I can recommend setting number two, it has the best vibe rhythm.”

He smiled. “Good to know. And you don’t need to freak out about being related to Lucifer by marriage because it’s of no consequence.”

I blinked. “No consequence? Excuse me if I find that hard to believe. He’s your grandfather.”

“Who doesn’t give a shit about me, and vice versa. I barely ever see him, not since Daevi claimed me as her own. Chances are low you’ll ever meet him. I make it a point to avoid his attention.”

I studied his face—features drawn tight, eyes hard—and asked quietly, “What did he do to you?”

The air around him shimmered. His smile twisted something in my stomach. “When Lucifer is angry, he physically rips someone apart. Limbs, we grow back without a trace of injury. When he’s coldly furious, however, he finds other, more permanent ways to hurt someone. Something that will leave invisible scars.” He tapped his temple. “When he brought me to his court, his fury was such that it chilled the air. The object of his wrath was out of his reach, but I…I was a mirror image of the one who’d inspired the kind of cold hate in Lucifer that made the walls frost over.”

“So he hurt you?”

“He never laid a hand on me. He didn’t have to. No need to strike me when he could instead publicly eviscerate the only demon to have shown me kindness at his court, as a punishment and a warning for others. After that, everyone else made sure to treat me with the sort of contempt that wouldn’t arouse Lucifer’s ire.”

I shook my head, trying hard to piece things together and wrapping my mind around the kind of abuse he hinted at. “Wait, so who was Lucifer really mad at? Your mother, or your father?”

“Father. Azmodea is the one who takes after our mother, and it saved her from Lucifer’s fury.”

I hesitated, my throat raw. “What happened to her? Your mom?”

His gaze rested on an errant lock of my hair. Twining it around his finger, he said, “We should get going.”

“Where?” I didn’t comment on his obvious evasion of my previous question. He’d tell me when he was ready.

“Earth,” he said simply. “For your visit.”

Drawing back, I blinked at him. “Now?”

“I have time. I have taken care of my duties for today and am not currently needed here. I can take you to see your friend and your mother.” His silver gaze met mine. “Unless you don’t want to?”

I sat up straighter, my heart pounding. “No, I mean, yes, of course I do.”

Throwing back the blanket, I stood up and froze, cool air tickling my skin from the hips down. When I turned to him, he was already holding a new set of panties and jeans.

“I hope you’ll be replacing the ones you keep incinerating,” I said as I pulled them on. “Or else I’ll run out of clothes to wear.”

His face took on a speculative look.

Oh, no. I kept walking into it, didn’t it?

Pointing a menacing finger at him, I snarled, “Don’t.”

He smiled. It was equal parts disarming and worrisome.

Pants in place, I moved toward the door. “All right, I’m ready. We can leave.”

I was halfway across the library floor when I realized he wasn’t following. I stopped and turned on my heel.

Azazel was still lounging on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped together. He jerked his head at me. “Come here.”

Gingerly, I walked back to him. “Are you going to give me a speech? Because you look like you’re going to give me a speech.” About what?

“Sit.”

I perched on the armchair opposite the couch.

“You won’t leave this room.”

I drew back. “The what now?”

“Not physically.” Fire licked over his wings. “Your body, the one you were born with on Earth, was bound to Hell the moment I brought you down here. It cannot leave this realm anymore, or it will disintegrate and you will die.”

“Then…how will I travel to Earth? You said I could.” My voice rose along with my adrenaline.

He held up a hand in a placating gesture. “And you will. Just not with your physical body. You’ll have to leave it here. Ever heard of astral projection?”

I nodded.

“It’s sort of like that. Humans differ from demons and angels among other things in terms of metaphysical makeup. You have a soul and an earthly, mortal body, and the two are entirely separate entities. When you are born, your soul is poured into this physical body, which will be its container, its vessel, for your mortal lifespan. Upon your death, your soul leaves this body and is either ferried to Heaven, dragged to Hell, or, in some cases when a demon fails to grab the soul, roams Earth as a ghost. No matter what, though, the mortal body dies and remains on Earth while the soul lives on.”

I stared at him, hanging on his every word. This stuff was fascinating. I’d never been much of a real believer in religion, but like everyone growing up in a Christian-dominated society like the United States, I’d learned my fair share about Judeo-Christian mythology. To hear certain aspects of it confirmed—and to be living them—was a bit of a mind-bending experience.

“Contrary to the souls here in Hell,” Azazel went on, “you didn’t die a natural death and leave your body on Earth. In fact, you didn’t die at all. You’re still very much alive, down here, in your mortal body, which you brought with you. As I mentioned, that body is now bound to Hell courtesy of your contract with me and the fact you entered this realm with it alive and intact. But since, as a human, your soul is separable from your body, you can temporarily leave your physical form and travel to Earth with the immortal, spiritual part of your being.”

“But there are limits, right?” I remembered him saying something along those lines when he first mentioned it.

He nodded, his expression grave. “The connection of your soul to your body is tenuous once you leave your physical form. If you stay separated too long, the link will sever, your body will die, and your soul will be trapped on Earth.” He paused, his gaze thoughtful. “And because of the way you entered this realm in the first place, it is not quite clear whether you’d be allowed back in even as a damned soul. You’d be barred from Heaven as well.”

I sucked in air through my teeth. “I’d be a ghost on Earth?”

“At first.” He grimaced. “Maybe. Again, your case is different from other humans and their regular deaths, but even with them…when they get left behind on Earth as ghosts, eventually they all turn into something…darker. There are ghosts, and then there are wraiths.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Lost souls on Earth start out as ghosts,” he elaborated. “And at first, they are more or less who they were in life, with all their memories and their personality intact. They often linger around the places they’ve lived, with the people they knew, and most of them are benign. They are not there to cause trouble, they’re simply lost.”

I was waiting for the But.

“But over time,” he continued, “they deteriorate. They lose their memories, they forget who they were, where they are, until all that is left of them is confusion that manifests as uncontrollable anger. And then they start destroying things and hurting people.”

“Sounds like poltergeists.”

He gave a solemn nod. “Yes, that is one of the terms humans have coined for them.”

“Okay.” I blew out a breath. “So no staying too long, or I’ll end up as a horror movie prop. Got it. Anything else?”

“You’ll be solid and visible to me, but unless you choose to show yourself, no one will be able to see you, and while you can affect the physical world with touch, you won’t feel it. You won’t smell or taste anything either.”

It took a moment, but then it sank in. I pressed my lips together, his words clanging in my mind. Swallowing, I turned my head and blinked against the sudden, unbidden prickle of tears behind my eyes. “When you said I could visit,” I whispered, “you didn’t mention I’d be a ghost.”

Because I would be, for all intents and purposes. I’d have my body here in Hell, sure, but during the visit I’d be little more than a spiritual leftover from my old life, sneaking a peek at a world I’d never again be a part of.

“I said you could see them. And you will.”

“Yes, but not like—” My voice sounded awfully close to breaking. “I just thought—”

“What did you think?” Gentle, his tone was so gentle, despite the words being far too real, too raw, cutting too deep into parts I didn’t want to acknowledge. “How did you think this was going to go? You disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “How did you imagine you would come back from that for a short visit, without your family and friends asking questions you can’t answer?”

“I could have—I don’t know. I could have told them I’d gotten a job somewhere else, and I’m super busy and won’t be able to see them as often and…” I trailed off, my stomach cramping.

“And how would that have gone for you?” he asked softly. “Be honest. Run it through in your mind. You wouldn’t be able to keep up that lie, because you have no way to actually stay in touch with them. Hell is a different realm, communication with Earth isn’t possible—no phones, no email, no internet. We can only visit through the hellgates, and even if you were able to travel with your physical body, the pretense wouldn’t work. Because how would you explain to your mother that you’ll show up out of the blue every now and then, no record of you flying into the country, no calling ahead to let her know you’re coming, and you can’t even stay for a night, not to mention longer?”

My eyes prickled hot, and an uncomfortable ache built in my chest.

“In a world of instant communication and global connection, you would be completely unreachable for weeks and months, something you could not explain away even if you told them you joined a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. Even monks have cell phones and email now. No matter where you said you moved to, they’d expect you to have an address they could at least send a birthday present to. You could provide them with none of that. And when they ask about your new life, you’d have to lie to them, every time, straight to their face, for the rest of their natural lives, while you’ll outlive them, never aging, never changing. Your entire existence would have to be wrapped in one lie upon the other, and over time, it would break you.”

My throat was tight and scratchy, the burn of tears all the more threatening after he so succinctly laid out how naive I’d been.

“You didn’t think it through,” he said ever so softly, “and I understand why. But I think deep down you’ve known that you wouldn’t be able to simply stroll back into the life of those you had to leave behind as if you’re visiting from some exciting new job that took you into a faraway land out of reach of modern communication.”

I furiously swiped at the damning tears spilling from my eyes.

He was crouching in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him get up and come over, but now he was right there, his large frame taking up so much space and air even though he was at eye level with me, his power coiling about him on a tight leash. Slowly, he reached out and wiped at my cheek.

I brushed his hand away, anger like corrosive acid in my veins.

He clenched his jaw. “This is not something I have any say over. I can’t make you have a solid, physical body to visit your loved ones with. I can’t make up a new existence for you to explain your sudden absence and being incommunicado. I don’t—” He seemed to chew on something unpleasant. “I don’t have the kind of power to change human reality.”

“You could have told me,” I ground out. “You could have explained this to me before we even came down here.”

“What difference would it have made? It wouldn’t have changed your decision.”

Because the alternative would have been to burn in Hell as a damned soul. But this wasn’t about whether it would have influenced my choice at all.

“I wouldn’t have clung to false hope!” My voice rose and wobbled precariously. A fresh sheen of tears threatened to cloud my vision. “All this time, I thought I could actually, truly visit my mom, talk to her, hug her, let her know I’m okay. And yes, maybe that was fucking naive of me, but I didn’t know better and I clung to that belief, and now that it’s gone—” I broke off, swallowing the sob that wanted to choke me. “False hope is the worst,” I continued in a small voice. “Because it hurts all the more when you realize you never had a chance.”

He didn’t say anything, just regarded me with tense, quiet focus, and I turned my head, unable to hold the silent lightning of his gaze. Curling my hands to fists in my lap, I tried to blink the annoying tears away. Every breath was a shuddering ache in my chest.

His energy hovered so close, his presence a tempting lure for the irrational, small part of me that, right now, craved connection and touch and some form of reassurance despite, or maybe because of, how rawly vulnerable I felt. This nauseous cocktail of emotions inside me, this yearning for…something from him, while at the same time my anger snapped at me like a snarling beast, demanding I snap and snarl at him in turn…it made me feel caught between implosion and explosion.

The touch of his hands on mine startled me. I still didn’t look at him, too furiously stubborn, with myself, with him, with all the new, messed-up information I couldn’t yet quite put in context.

With infinite patience and gentle strength, he unfolded first one clenched fist of mine, then the other. Rubbing his thumbs over my palms, he said in a halting tone of measured calm, as if trying out a sentence in a newly learned language, “I’m sorry for the hurt this caused you.”

I looked back at him, surprise arresting my breath for a heartbeat. His expression sincere, he held my gaze as he brought my left hand up to his mouth and placed a kiss in the center of my palm, then did the same with the other.

I drew in a shaky breath. Something flipped in my stomach, my throat growing thick.

“If I could do it over,” he added, his voice an intimate murmur, “I’d do it differently.” The quicksilver in his eyes heated. “I’d do a lot of things differently.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay,” was all I had the wherewithal to get out. That cocktail of emotions in me had just gotten more complicated.

He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Are you ready to go?”

“I guess.”

“Close your eyes and lean back. I will help you separate your soul from your body.”

Anxiety clenched me in its grip. Now that I was about to do it, this whole separating-soul-from-body thing suddenly seemed a lot more dangerous.

“Will it hurt?”

He tilted his head, his expression contemplative. “Define hurt.”

“What?” I’d begun to lean back, but now I snapped upright again like a loosened catapult.

His sly smile tipped me off.

“Don’t do that again,” I snarled.

He had no business looking so boyishly charming with that grin of his. “Deep breath in, deep breath out. Close your eyes.”

I did, though not without giving him a good glower first.

“That place where you just felt anger, tap into it. Feel it. Soul is emotion. It’s the force beyond our senses—”

“If you’re telling me to search my feelings and levitate an X-wing next, I’m going to call you on your bullshit.”

He nipped at my fingers. “Focus.”

“Okay, okay.”

I leaned back and followed his instructions on how to find the core of my soul. Much like meditation or deep relaxation, it involved getting to a place of ultimate introversion with the tricky part being not to fall asleep. Instead, I had to sort of slowly peel off the purely mentally feeling aspect of myself from the physical, as if pulling a sticker from a wall without damaging either the sticker or the wall.

As he’d promised, he helped me, which was at the point of last contact of the soul with the body. A weird, dream-like feeling had taken a hold of me, the world falling away for a moment.

“Open your eyes.”

I did. I was standing in front of the armchair, my hands—looking just slightly translucent—clasped in Azazel’s...and my body was slumped in the chair. Right there. In front of me. The surreality of it messed with my mind.

I could see my own chest rise and fall slightly. “I’m still breathing?” I asked. My voice sounded superimposed, like a voice-over for a movie, without any of the echo or other sound interactions that would normally occur if spoken in a room.

“Your physical body is in a sort of coma right now,” Azazel replied. “It will remain functioning until either your soul returns to it and you keep on living, or the link gets severed.” He snapped his fingers. “Vengeance.”

The hellhound was awake and on her paws in the next second, all three heads focused on Azazel.

“Guard her.” He pointed at my body.

With a wag of her tail, Vengeance trotted over to the armchair and lay down at my comatose body’s feet.

“It’s highly unlikely any harm would come to your physical form here,” he said, “but your hound is extra insurance.”

I nodded and crouched in front of Vengeance. “Good girl.” I ruffled the fur on one of her heads...and felt it. Turning back to Azazel, I raised my brows. “How do I—”

“It’s because she’s part of this realm, like me. As long as you’re in Hell, you’ll feel and sense everything. Once you’re on Earth, some of the normal physical impressions will be limited, as I mentioned.”

I was so not looking forward to that part.

“Come,” he held out his hand.

I took it, marveling at the fact I could see his skin through the translucency of my own spiritual hand. This was going to be very, very weird.

“Who do you want to see first?” he asked.

“Taylor.”

He heaved a sigh. “I was afraid you’d say that.”