Chapter 6

"Hey, kitty," I murmured. "How are you doing?"

I knelt beside a large dog crate, holding a cat treat through the bars. Inside was a fluffy cat bed, scattered mouse toys, a litter box, a water dish, and a food bowl full of drying chicken paté. The vampire's victim crouched on the small bed, huge green eyes fixed on my face and tail fluffed to twice its size.

"It's okay, little girl," I cooed. "Want a nibble? It's a yummy treat. You need to eat to get strong again."

The frightened, half-grown kitten let out a low warning growl. Sighing, I dropped the treat through the bars, then crawled backward before rising to my feet. The vet had said the kitten should recover with food and rest, but she'd gone almost twenty hours without eating a bite.

I hadn't specifically intended to adopt the cat, merely get her to a vet before she died, but someone had to take care of her. The vet had assured me—after I'd invented a story about finding the injured animal in an alley—that the kitten's chances of survival would be much better with me than at a shelter, but if she wouldn't eat, what good was my care?

I turned toward my bedroom door and started in surprise. Zylas was leaning against the threshold, arms crossed and light gleaming across his left armguard.

"Why are you wasting time?" he asked in a low, biting tone.

Ignoring his question, I squeezed past him into the apartment's main living area. It wasn't much—at one end, a tiny kitchen with a short breakfast bar that fit two stools, and at the other, a living room overflowing with a single couch, a coffee table, and a small TV on a cheap stand.

The TV was secondhand. Amalia had purchased a brand new one to start, and after setting it up, she'd made me give Zylas a stern lecture about treating it with care. He'd put his barbed tail through the screen ten minutes later.

Keeping a demon entertained wasn't easy. He could survive a few days without anything to do, but then the restlessness set in. And a restless demon was destructive.

He could speak English but couldn't read it, so books weren't an option, and he hated screens. After questioning him, I discovered framerates that appeared smooth to the human eye were aggravatingly choppy to him. So all TV, movies, and video games were out. How did you keep a battle-hardened demon entertained in an 800-square-foot apartment?

A few days into the pinnacle of my flu, I'd sent Amalia to the department store with my credit card and begged her to bring back every game she could find. Zylas wouldn't touch most of them, but when Amalia dumped a 500-piece puzzle onto the floor, he'd wandered over to watch.

Amalia spent four hours on the puzzle, then broke it apart, shook up the pieces, and dumped it out for Zylas, daring him to beat her time. He laid all the pieces out face-up as she had, then, for a full ten minutes, he simply stared at the disassembled puzzle.

Just as Amalia and I wondered if he understood the game, he picked up two pieces and fit them together. Then picked another out of the 498 scattered bits and fit it in. Then the next. Then the next. One by one, he fit each piece together, only occasionally needing to test two or three to find the right one. If he got it wrong, he set the piece back in its original spot.

We watched speechlessly as he assembled the puzzle in minutes.

The next day, Amalia returned with a 1000-piece puzzle. He did the exact same thing, staring at the pieces—not even sorting them first—before assembling the puzzle as though following invisible instructions. We watched him complete four puzzles before I figured out what he was doing.

He was memorizing the pieces. Every one—its color, shape, and location. Then, as he started assembling, he would recall which pieces might match and where they were among the hundreds of others.

I'd known his memory was sharp, but his ability to memorize tiny details in a matter of minutes was beyond comprehension. If I dared to arm him with any new skills, I could teach him to read in a matter of hours. He could memorize letters and words faster than any human. His steel-trap memory also explained how he'd adapted so quickly to a foreign world.

I wondered if he ever forgot anything.

In the main room, Amalia sat on a kitchen stool, her blond hair twisted into a messy bun as she sifted through the documents we'd found in Uncle Jack's safe. I slid into the spot beside her, still ignoring Zylas, who was literally breathing down the back of my neck.

"What did you find?" I asked.

"Nothing about safe houses or sanctuaries." She slapped her hands down on her thighs. "The documents are all legal contracts and business agreements for everyone my dad deals with. Guilds, contractors, summoners, rogues, criminals, forgers…"

I tugged at the infernus chain resting against my neck. "Unless this was all your dad kept in his safe, whoever broke into it took everything else. What do you think they were looking for?"

"My dad's location, just like us. He—"

With an effortless jump, Zylas landed on the counter and sat on the edge, watching us with unreadable crimson eyes. He kept one heel on the counter, arm propped on his raised knee, his other leg hanging off the edge beside me.

Scowling at the demon, Amalia continued, "My dad isn't stupid—usually—but he has a weakness for money. He never should've revealed to a rogue guild like Red Rum that he had a new demon name. I'm sure rumors have leaked out by now, especially since your bloodthirsty pal there killed so many Red Rum rogues."

I shuddered at the reminder.

"I'd guess a lot of people are looking for Dad, hoping to get their hands on that demon name before he sells it too many times and the value drops."

No wonder Uncle Jack was in hiding. People like that would kill for a lot less than ten million dollars.

"It cannot be sold." Zylas's husky tones made Amalia and me start. His mouth had thinned angrily. "No more hh'ainun can know it."

"We're trying," I replied quietly. "If we can find the grimoire in time, then no other summoners will get your House name."

"What do you care if other demons of your House are summoned?" Amalia snapped irritably. "If you make it back to your world, you'll never be summoned again."

I blinked in surprise. If Zylas returned, he couldn't be re-summoned?

He gazed at her, then leaned forward and scooped me off my seat. The moment my butt was clear, he jammed his foot into my stool, which hit hers and sent it toppling. Amalia managed to jump away and landed unsteadily as her stool crashed to the floor.

"Zylas!" I exclaimed angrily, squirming against his arm around my middle. He'd swept me onto his lap, his thigh under my rear, my back against his chest. Heat radiated off him, his body several degrees warmer than a human's.

I wrenched at his wrist but couldn't budge his arm. His strength was impossible. "Let me go."

Tightening his arm, he pushed his face into my hair.

"Zylas!" I jerked my head away. "Quit that! Let me go!"

His low laugh slid under my skin. He blew on my hair, making it flutter. My jaw clenched. A couple of days ago, there would have been nothing I could do to stop him; I'd have been entirely at his mercy.

Daimon, hesychaze, I thought clearly.

With the silent "rest" command, crimson light erupted across Zylas. His body vanished from under me—the weirdest feeling ever—and my butt landed on the counter with a painful thump.

Zylas's power hit the infernus and bounced right back out again. He rematerialized in front of me, teeth bared and crimson eyes blazing.

"Let me go when I tell you to!" I snapped before he could speak.

"You do not command me," he snarled, stepping aggressively closer. "You do not control me."

Panic jumped in my chest. Daimon—

He grabbed the front of my sweater and hauled me onto my tiptoes, the sudden movement interrupting my thought. Fear thrummed along my spine as we glared at each other, our faces inches apart, his fist clenched around my sweater and my hand gripping the infernus.

Which was faster? The agile demon or the two-word command that would send him back into the infernus?

"Don't make me use the command," I said quietly, "and I won't use it."

A tearing sound as his claws pierced my sweater. His fury singed the air and the faintest hint of crimson power flickered up his forearms. If our mysterious contract wasn't enough to prevent him from hurting me, I was about to find out the hard way.

His upper lip curled. He opened his hand and I dropped back onto my heels. Tail snapping, he strode into my room.

I let out a shaky breath, my pulse thundering in my ears, and climbed back onto my stool. Amalia stood for a moment longer, then righted hers and sat down.

"That was… intense," she muttered.

"Y-yeah. I've n-never…" I gulped back the tremble in my voice and tried again. "I've never challenged him quite like that before."

"It was good. You did good." She lowered her voice. "He might only be doing that shit—touching you and stuff—to get a rise out of you, but what if he decides to take it further to see how you'd react?"

Icy dread rolled down my spine. I wanted to say he couldn't do that, but I had no idea what he could or couldn't do. Our contract was dangerously simple: he protected me and I baked for him. I'd made the critical oversight of failing to define "protect," which meant Zylas was obeying his own definition. I didn't think he could arbitrarily decide what the word meant to him—he was bound by his genuine interpretation of it—but I had zero clue what his interpretation was.

Fear shone in Amalia's eyes as she observed my reaction. I dealt with Zylas the most, but the contract protected me. Amalia had nothing except Zylas's promise not to kill her as long as she was helping us. How brave was she to keep coming back to this apartment day after day, never knowing what the powerful, violent demon might do to her?

She cleared her throat and turned to the papers scattered over the counter. "Okay, so, this is all legal stuff and completely useless, but I did find one valuable tidbit."

She slid a document in front of me and pointed.

I squinted at the first lines. "‘This agreement is made and entered into by and between Jack Harper of 2936 Blackburn Road and Claude Mercier of 302 Theodore Way, hereafter collectively referred to as the Partners.'"

"Claude's address," she declared triumphantly.

"We aren't looking for Claude…" I straightened on my stool. "But Claude is looking for Uncle Jack."

Claude, my uncle's enigmatic—and treacherous—business partner, had straight up told me he'd been working for years to get his hands on a demon of the Twelfth House. He wanted the grimoire for himself, and he'd nearly killed his partner's children to get it. Clearly, their relationship wasn't as buddy-buddy as we'd all thought.

"How much do you want to bet Claude is the one who broke into the safe?" Amalia asked. "He knows it's there, and you said his demon is in an illegal contract. Maybe it used demon magic to break the safe open."

I nodded. "So we're going to investigate Claude?"

"We're going to turn the bastard's place upside down and find out everything he knows about my dad—and whatever else he's got his slimy hands in."

I grinned, fighting back nerves. "Sounds good. I'll talk to Zylas. If there's a chance we might have to go up against Claude and his demon again, he needs to decide our plan of attack."

"Go talk to him, then. Maybe a good demon-on-demon fight will settle him down and he'll leave us alone for a few days." She gazed dreamily at nothing, as though remembering what her life had been like before having to share her living space with a demon. "I'm going to run to the grocery store. Want anything?"

"I'm good."

I hopped off my stool, feeling fired up for the first time in weeks. Our progress had been painfully slow so far. First, I'd gotten sick and lost nearly two weeks to an on-and-off fever. Then Zylas had gotten me kicked out of the Arcana Historia library and I had yet to work up the nerve to return. But finally, we were making progress.

As I walked into my bedroom, the front door banged shut behind Amalia. Mind on the coming challenge of breaking into a dangerous summoner's home, I belatedly noticed the hissing.

I stopped dead.

His back to the rest of the room, Zylas was crouched on top of the dog crate, balanced on the balls of his feet as the steel bowed under his weight. The kitten inside was plastered into the farthest corner, hissing and spitting with terror.

"Zylas!" I shouted, sprinting toward him. I grabbed his arm. "Get away from her!"

As usual, my best efforts couldn't budge him. His tail lashed in annoyance, clanging against the bars. The kitten arched her back and spat more loudly. The poor thing was scared out of her mind. Zylas peered down through the bars, head tilted as he observed the small, terrified creature.

Protective fury singed my blood and I didn't even think to use the infernus command. Releasing his immovable arm, I grabbed his tail with both hands and hauled the demon backward with all my strength.

Next thing I knew, I was on my back on the floor and a hot, heavy weight was crushing me into the musty rug. Pain throbbed through my face.

The weight vanished off me and a weird dual sound filled my ears—high-pitched hissing and low-pitched snarling. Something wet ran down my face.

"Payilas zh'ūltis! Eshathē hh'ainun tādiyispela tūiredh'nā ūakan!"

Zylas's face appeared above me, his eyes blazing. I pressed my fingers under my aching nose. Blood coated my fingers. I was bleeding?

"You are bleeding," Zylas accused angrily.

I pushed up onto my elbows. When I'd pulled him backward off the crate, he'd fallen on me, his miserably hard head smacking into my squishy human face. I gingerly prodded the bridge of my nose, but it felt solid. Not broken, thank goodness.

"What is wrong with you?" His snarling voice competed with the noise from the spitting kitten a few feet away. "You pulled on my tail."

He sounded outright offended. My lips twitched and I might've giggled if my face weren't hurting so much.

Since my shirt was already ruined, I balled up the hem under my nose and pushed to my feet. Taking Zylas's arm, I dragged him out of the room. He followed me to the bathroom and stood in the doorway as I grabbed a wad of tissue. His nose was wrinkled in distaste; he hated the metallic scent of human blood.

"What is wrong with you?" he repeated in the same acid tone. "Why did you do that?"

I whirled on him, furious all over again. "You were tormenting the kitten! What's wrong with you?"

He bared his teeth. "I was looking at it."

"And she was terrified of you, which you knew perfectly well! You were frightening her on purpose!"

"You are wasting time." His crimson eyes glinted with impatience. "All you have done is waste time. You promised to send me home. You promised to find the grimoire and remove my House's name. You have done none of that."

"I warned you it would take a long time."

"I thought it would be slow because it is difficult, not because you are hardly trying."

"I am trying!" I flung the bloody tissues into the garbage and wet a cloth to clean my face, my hands shaking. "You haven't been helping! Bullying Amalia, interrupting me all the time, and now you're torturing the kitten too."

"The kitten is worthless. It's a distraction."

"Saving a life isn't worthless!" I swallowed hard, tasting blood in the back of my throat. "Do you have no heart at all, Zylas? Are you that incapable of empathy?"

"I do not know that word."

"Of course you don't." As I wiped the blood off my face, I decided I would deliver the kitten to the animal shelter tomorrow. She'd be better off there than exposed to Zylas's whims. "Leave the kitten alone. I'll take her away in the morning so she won't be a ‘distraction.'"

He watched me from the doorway. "What is empathy?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"I can understand anything you can."

I shot him an icy look. "You're a demon, so no, you can't."

"Explain," he growled.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because when it doesn't make any sense, you'll say ‘zh'ūltis!' and decide I'm the dumb one, even though the problem is you." I rinsed out the cloth and turned to the door. "I'm leaving the bathroom now."

He didn't move, gazing at me with an unreadable expression. "Tell me what empathy is."

Stubborn demon. Jaw tight, I folded my arms over my bloody shirt. "Empathy is the ability to understand and share what others feel."

His eyebrows drew down in confusion. "Share what others feel?"

"Yes." I pushed on the armor plate over his heart and he stepped back, allowing me across the threshold, but he followed right on my heels as I returned to my bedroom.

The kitten, exhausted and huddled in her bed, watched us with wary green eyes.

I opened my closet and grabbed a shirt at random. "I'm changing. Turn around."

He turned his back on me and I slid my bloody shirt off. This, at least, was a civilized compromise we'd reached early on. Sharing my room with a demon was unpleasant enough without the complete lack of privacy. He might be able to hear my thoughts half the time, but he did not get to see me undress. I'd extracted that promise from him in exchange for teaching him how to use the shower.

He loved the shower. I was pretty sure he'd save the shower before he'd save me, contract or no contract.

I tugged on the new shirt and straightened the hem. "Okay."

"Explain more," he commanded, facing me again.

I wasn't sure whether his refusal to drop it annoyed me or gave me hope that he wasn't a total lost cause. "When you scared the kitten, I could imagine how the kitten felt—how terrifying it would be, being small and weak and trapped with a huge predator so close."

As I sat on the foot of my bed, I almost missed his darting glance toward the kitten's crate.

"And," I continued, "because I can empathize with the kitten, her fear was almost as upsetting to me as if you'd been scaring me instead."

He looked from me to the kitten and back, his forehead crinkled under a tangled lock of black hair. "That's zh'ul—"

"I knew it!" I burst out, my anger surging back. "I knew you'd call me stupid because you don't understand!"

"It is stupid!" he barked. "It's dilēran."

Yep, he was a lost cause. A total and absolute lost cause.

"It's ‘stupid' that I can care about another living thing besides myself?" My voice rose in volume and pitch. "If I was as selfish and heartless as you, you would've died in that summoning circle, because I would never have bothered to help you."

"You had reasons."

"What reasons?" I shook my head. "Helping you has only ever caused me trouble, and it almost got me killed. Now we're stuck together until I can send you home."

"I protect you."

"Yeah, but if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't need protection. No one would be trying to hurt me." I pulled a book off my nightstand. "Along with your protection, I get your bad temper, your constant insults, and your disrespect. Not a great deal."

His eyes narrowed.

"Just forget about the empathy thing," I told him tiredly. "You'll never understand. Why would you want to, anyway? Caring about others is a waste of time, right?"

I could feel his attention on me, but I ignored him as I opened my book to the bookmarked page. The intro to that demon psychology text was right on the mark. Zylas didn't care about anyone but himself, and he assumed everyone else was either selfish like him or a worthless animal like the kitten.

Unexpected tears welled in my eyes and I hastily wiped them away, afraid he'd notice—but when I looked up, he was already gone.