Chapter 14

CHAPTER14

The next day, I was snacking on a carrot cake—my favorite—in my old sitting room, when Azazel came back from wherever he’d gone earlier that day doing whatever important stuff demons in charge of a territory had to do.

I paused with the fork halfway to my mouth, my chest drawing tight at the sight of him. It wasn’t that he’d avoided me since my blunder the other day, but even though he’d come to my bed that night, every touch, every word, every glance had been underlaid with a current that felt off, somehow. Like he’d pulled a part of himself back, and I was left grasping at the void.

My heart ached at the thought, my mind screaming at me to fix this. I breathed through the discomfort, pushing the urge to break my vow of silence down into the depths of my soul.

“Hi,” I said instead, lowering my fork. And then I added softly, “I’ve missed you.”

He came over, tipped up my chin and gave me a kiss.

And there went that current of wrongness, whispering underneath his display of affection.

He glanced at my plate. “Early birthday cake?”

Seeing as my b-day was tomorrow, it wasn’t a far-off guess.

“A gift,” I said, and picked up the card that had come with the cake.

Azazel took it and frowned at the message, which read Apologies for almost getting you killed xoxo Mammon.

“The nerve,” he ground out and then crumpled the note in his hand.

“I know,” I said chewing. “The label on the box said it’s from a bakery in L.A., but everyone knows it’s only real carrot cake if it’s made in the Carroté region of France, otherwise it’s just a sweet salad.”

The tiny twitch of his lips gave me life. If only I could fully joke myself back into his good graces.

He settled on the couch next to me and fixed me with a stare. “I’ve been thinking.”

Oh, God. Oh, no. What now? There were only seconds between that ominous statement and his next sentence, but it was more than enough time for my brain to flip through a catalogue of horrifying possibilities of what he’d been thinking on. I mean, to be fair, that statement was right up there with the infamous “We need to talk,” so, honestly, who could blame my anxiety-ridden mind for going full-throttle into the world is ending territory?

“About that séance you did when you were thirteen,” he continued, making my brain effectively stop with screeching tires in the middle of imagining Terrible Theory #132.

“Uh…” was all I got out while my mind scrambled to readjust. “We’ve been over this,” I said after a moment.

And we really, really had been. Months ago, after I’d come to stay here, Azazel and I had talked about that séance where I somehow managed to bind him in a contract without even knowing what I was doing, and to his great frustration, I hadn’t been able to shed any light on it. There was little I remembered from that summoning, my mind having blanked out a lot because it had all scared the bejeezus out of me. At some point, Azazel had given up asking me more about it, his consternation at the lack of information evident.

“I don’t have any new insights,” I said. “I wish I did, but I’m afraid I still don’t know any more than the last time we talked about it.”

“The thing with Taylor and Belial got me wondering.” His fingers drummed on the backrest of the couch while his eyes mapped my face. “It would make a whole lot of sense if you summoned me with my true name.”

My mouth fell open. “Whoa. If I did, I wasn’t aware of it.”

He regarded me from underneath his lashes. “There was little you were aware of during that séance.”

“Ouch,” I murmured, but he was right, of course. I’d been reading from a book where only half the text was in any way intelligible. Tay and I hadn’t taken it seriously, thinking we were just joking around and having a bit of fun on a Friday night, making up shit about getting hitched to a demon should we still be single at twenty-five, which at the time was the biggest concern my hormone-driven teenage brain could fathom.

I’d had no idea that the text I was reading from gave our made-up contract a very real framework.

“Do you remember anything from the text that could have sounded like a name?” Azazel asked me.

I frowned. “Well, no, but half the text was gibberish anyway, or what I thought was gibberish. I mean, it could have been an obscure language, for all I know.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “It would help me remember if I knew what the name is.”

He held my gaze for a moment, tense seconds ticking by in silence, then he grabbed the plate and fork from me and took a bite of the cake.

Something in me deflated with a keen sense of disappointment…and a strange feeling of rejection. I swallowed and tried to push down the hurt. So he wouldn’t tell me his true name, so what? No big deal. It wasn’t the kind of information demons liked to hand out, and that was fine. It was fine.

And maybe if I told myself that a couple of times, it’d stop smarting.

“Given your lack of powers,” Azazel said, having cleared my plate, “it stands to reason that it must have been the use of my true name that enabled you to bind me.”

“Okay, but how did that information end up in the book?”

He put down the plate and met my eyes. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

I threw my hands up. “I told you, I don’t know where that book came from. I found it in the attic. It was handwritten, so it must have been someone’s personal journal or something.”

And because I’d burned it after that botched séance in a fit of fear, we couldn’t go hunting for it to find out more. I’d told Azazel as much when he’d first asked me.

“If it was lying around your house, did it belong to your parents or some other family member?”

I considered that for a moment. “I’m not sure. I’d have to ask my mom, but—” I made a helpless gesture indicating the whole can’t-talk-to-my-mom predicament.

“What about your father?”

“Huh. Right.” I sucked at my teeth. “He is hanging around all ghostly and available to answer questions. Maybe we could ask him on my visit tomorrow.”

Azazel nodded, his expression thoughtful.

I leaned back and regarded him for a moment. “But no matter who might have put the name in the book, the information would first have to come from a demon, right? Someone who found out your true name?”

He inclined his head, his eyes still with a faraway look to them. “I know of only one demon who learned my true name.”

“Well…then why don’t you ask them if they passed that info on to some unsuspecting human who then put it in a book that a hormonally challenged teenager found and used for desperate measures?”

“Because he died about a hundred years ago,” he said quietly.

“Oh.” Go, Zoe, keep stepping in it! That’ll endear you to him. “Were you guys…close?”

He tilted his head in thought. “We weren’t friends, more of the opposite, actually. We were always in competition, trying to one-up each other. That’s why this would fit his character. He was just the type to use something like that against me, and he was sneaky enough at playing the long game that I can see him passing my true name on to a human with the intention of it resulting in a summoning at some point.”

“That’s a really convoluted way of getting back at someone.”

He shrugged. “Demons have nothing but time and endless ways to plot against each other. Over the centuries, it becomes almost trite to outright fight one another. Much more interesting to weave an intricate web of traps for your enemy to get caught in.” A small smile softened his features. “We’d do this for hundreds of years. Back and forth, like a game of sorts. I’d always have to watch my step, because I never knew what new intrigue Moloch had designed for me.”

The way he said his name, the way he looked when he talked about him… “You liked him, didn’t you?”

His intense gaze met mine. “He was a great adversary. Shrewd. Competent. Always thinking a dozen steps ahead. He challenged me and kept me on my toes. So, yes, in a way, I liked him.”

I chewed my lip. “So…you never had a thing?”

A sly smile quirked his lips. “I didn’t say that.”

Oh. My face heated. Well, then. I cleared my throat and rubbed my nose. At least, this was one former lover of his I wouldn’t run into. “What happened in the end?”

“He perished in a skirmish with angels.”

“I thought Heaven and Hell had a truce?”

“The truce is for the big war that was halted millennia ago. Doesn’t mean there aren’t smaller fights here and there. If they don’t cause too many casualties, they are considered negligible exceptions to the rule. No one wants to elevate small conflicts to something that could endanger the truce, so the ones in charge turn a blind eye to minor brawls.”

“Right.” I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your frenemy.”

“Frenemy,” he echoed, a note of warmth in his voice. “That’s a good way to put it.”

I tentatively reached out and grasped his hand, intertwining my fingers with his. “We’ll ask my dad about the book tomorrow, okay? Maybe he knows something about where it came from.”

“We’ll see,” he said and squeezed my hand.

* * *

Birthdays were tricky for me.

And it wasn’t just the last one that had made me apprehensive about celebrating another turn of the year for me, although having a real-life demon show up in my apartment and eventually dragging me to Hell did top all of the negative b-day experiences I’d had before. Even if that whole getting-dragged-to-Hell thing ended up not being that bad, given that I found the love of my life that way—on the day of, it had literally seemed like my life was ending.

But I’d also had some really shitty birthdays in the past, among them the one where my new bike got stolen, the one where I failed my driver’s test—I still hold, to this day, that the stop sign wasn’t that noticeable—the one where I tripped and fell down a flight of stairs and broke my arm, and the memorable one where, during stretching exercises at P.E. in tenth grade, I loudly farted in front of the whole class.

Of course, I rationally knew that birthdays were just like any other day in the year, meaning that shitty things could totally happen on that day and I didn’t enjoy some sort of magical birthday glow that would protect me from harm.

But still…I didn’t know of anyone else who had so much bad luck on their birthdays. Out of the 25 that I’d been through, more than half of them featured something crappy or upsetting happening to me, and if I didn’t count the ones I was too young to be conscious of, the ratio was even worse.

So, to say I was a bit nervous about today would be an understatement. I was watching this day like a teacher might a routinely misbehaving student during a school performance—with a healthy dose of suspicion and the sobering realization that getting rid of the troublemaker was not an option.

The day started out well enough, though.

I’d gone to sleep cuddling the hellkittens—one in each arm—only to be awoken sans kittens, but with Azazel’s skilled mouth between my legs.

My mind shook off the last misty impressions of my dream—not surprisingly, it had been a fantasy of getting hot’n’heavy with my demon darling—and I was writhing and arching into his touch before I knew it. I’d never considered morning sex to be especially great, but that was before I’d met Azazel, who knew all the right moves to get my body ready to go in no time.

Also, he made sure I didn’t have to work one bit during those morning sessions, so it was totally a win-win. Waking up and receiving fantastic orgasms without having to move much? Yes, please.

His hands held my thighs spread apart for his pleasure as he lapped at me with almost religious devotion. Hitting point after point, his tongue, lips and fingers wound me tighter and tighter, and I moaned and gripped his hair. He growled as I pulled hard, letting me feel his teeth on my most sensitive flesh.

It only made me shudder with more lust.

His tongue speared inside me, teasing me, then flicked upward and around my clit, with enough pressure to make my hips shoot off the mattress. He calmly pressed me down again and held me in place as he dialed up his oral assault, leaving me trembling and gasping, hovering right there on the edge.

His energy rolled out and over me in a wave of hot sparks, circling around my nipples and then pinching hard enough that pleasure exploded in my core. My orgasm razed me from top to bottom, and I cried out, still gripping Azazel’s hair.

He didn’t let up, instead he kept on thrusting his fingers in and out of me while sucking on my clit—and I came apart again, even harder.

The last waves of my climax hadn’t ebbed yet when he flipped me over. My face was pressed into the mattress, and I didn’t care to move. The corner of my pillow was right there, perfect for biting into it. And bite it I did as he kicked my legs apart and entered me with one smooth thrust.

My husky moan got swallowed by the pillow, my fingers curling into the sheets at the delicious sensation of his cock stretching me just so. Hovering over me with his weight balanced on one arm, he grabbed my neck with his free hand to keep me in place for his thrusts.

Slow and deep and thorough at first, each rolling shove letting me know exactly how much I was his, until every cell in my body surrendered to his claim. Yes, my breath said, yours. Yielding, soft, living for his touch, every part of me attuned to him, willing to give until there was no more, I craved his demand. All yours.

With a growl-turned groan, he changed the pace, changed the dynamic. Pulling my hips up, he rode me harder, faster, making me grab on to the sheets at the exquisite friction and force of his thrusts. All the while, his power twined around me, a hundred little taps of arousing electricity, heat licking over my breasts, down to my clit. Where before, I’d been the one to give, now it was him.

All yours, his touch said. Yours alone.

The combination of his rough thrusts and the caress of his energy sent me over once more, and I bit the pillow with enough force that I might have pulled a muscle in my jaw. My muffled scream turned into a drawn-out moan as he emptied himself in me and half-collapsed on my back.

If I’d been a cat, I’d have purred at how sinfully good his weight felt on top of me.

“Happy birthday,” he murmured in my ear.

I shivered the happiest little shiver.

That amazing start to the day was followed by equally bone-melting shower sex, after which I had to be carried back to bed, due to my legs surprisingly not working.

Azazel was attentive, thoughtfully taking care of me, bringing me breakfast in bed, and even dragging both hellkittens back for me to play and cuddle with.

But that underlying current was still off. His affection just a touch short. And the memory of how he’d looked at me right after he thought I’d forgotten his mom’s death…ugh, it was burned into the backs of my eyes and overlaid his image every time I glanced at him.

I took a deep breath, determined not to let this thing between us ruin my birthday. It was going well so far, wasn’t it? Okay, granted, I’d only been awake for like two hours, but maybe this time around nothing untoward would happen that either resulted in eternal embarrassment, physical harm, or enough stress to power an entire city if turned into electricity.

Having finished my late breakfast, I played with the hellkittens a little. I’d found out that they loved it when I hurled them into the air toward the other side of the room, where they’d unfurl their small wings and do a turn in mid-air, flying back into my arms to be tossed again.

They finally had enough and bolted away to harass their father, who took his offspring’s playful attention with the growly patience of a saint.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I said to Azazel, who’d been cleaning and sharpening his weapons assortment in the other room.

He laid the sword he was working on aside and frowned at my arms. “You’re all scratched up.”

I peered down at the red lines zig-zagging over my skin. “Eh.” I shrugged. “It’s totally worth it. Plus, I heal fast now, remember?”

“Not fast enough,” he murmured, took my wrists in his hands and sent a pulse of his energy up my arms. The small cuts stopped stinging, the surface wounds closing until what little blood had been there dried and fell off.

“Thank you.” I sent him a small smile.

He met my eyes with an answering smile, and for a brief moment, the connection between us was unmarred by any strife or lurking tension, a flicker of what we used to have. But then something shuttered in his gaze, subtle yet noticeable all the more for how my heart had just started to hope.

“Let’s go,” he said, and released my wrists.

I pressed my lips together, fighting down the keening sense of loss in my chest. I had to fix this. I didn’t know how yet, but I’d find a way. Normally I’d talk with him openly and explain, but in this instance, explaining why I’d acted as if I’d forgotten such an integral part of his life would break my vow to Lucifer, incurring his wrath.

But letting Azazel believe me to be so thoughtless pained me down to my soul.

I really was stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea with this dilemma, or rather, between the devil and almost equally torturous consequences.

Determined to look for a solution later, I laid down on one of the couches, closed my eyes, and began the mental descent into the core of my being, preparing to separate my spirit from my body in order to travel to Earth.

I’d gotten a lot better at it over the past few months, and what took minutes the first time I’d done this was now a matter of seconds. I didn’t even need Azazel’s help anymore to peel the last bit of my soul from my body. It was still tricky, like pulling dough off a surface without leaving parts of it stuck, but I managed it a lot smoother by now.

My mind now in a dream-like state, I opened my spirit eyes to see my body reclining on the sofa, my chest rising and falling slowly as my physical form lay there in a sort of coma. For all intents and purposes, I was in a deep sleep, with my mind going on a little trip outside my body. Kind of like astral projection.

“Good to go?” Azazel asked me.

I nodded, and we made our way outside to the balcony, where my ghostly form hopped into his arms as he unleashed his wings. Holding on to him, I relished the feel of his skin against my fingers, knowing that for the next couple of hours while we visited Earth, he’d be the only thing I’d be able to touch and feel.

For some arcane reasons, my senses in my spirit form were limited to sights and sounds on Earth, except for Azazel, whom I could still feel and smell and taste, apparently because he was hellborn. He’d tried to explain the reasoning to me, but my brain had decided it was useless information and hadn’t even attempted to retain the details. My lack of some senses in my spirit form was what it was, and I was dealing with it.

We flew to an allied demon’s territory with a hellgate to Portland, and soon enough, we were up in the air above Oregon’s largest city, hurtling toward the small suburban town outside the city limits where my mom lived. Since it was Saturday, my mom would be off work and chances were good we’d encounter her at her house.

After touching down in the yard, Azazel set me on my feet, and I turned to the humble single-level home where I’d spent my teenage years. It was always a bit incongruent, how much things here had stayed the same, when my life had changed so completely since I’d lived here. The rose bushes still hugged the fence, the old bench still stood there in the corner, the paint chipping off, and the assortment of metal and glass lawn decorations filled every nook and cranny of the tiny yard like they’d done for years and years.

For a moment, just a moment, the memory of my days spent here shimmered to life strong enough to drive away the here and now, and suddenly, I was a fifteen-year-old again, lying on a lounger and soaking up the sun on those seemingly endless summer days.

I blinked, and the vision vanished, plunging me back into my current reality—standing as a ghost in my mom’s backyard, on a visit from Hell, my demon husband next to me.

No amount of fantasy reading had prepared me for this life, honestly.

With a sigh that I didn’t really feel, seeing as my spirit form didn’t actually breathe, I walked forward and right through the backdoor into the kitchen. The living room opened up right behind it, and there was my mom, lying on the sofa and reading a book. Her dark brown hair, same color as mine, was pulled back into a messy pony tail, and her skin looked paler than the last time I’d seen her a few weeks ago. More lines marked her face, dark circles sitting underneath her eyes.

As always when I saw her, happiness and hurt mingled in equal measures in my heart. She was so, so familiar, a thousand precious childhood memories wrapped up in her face, and yet, she might as well have been lightyears away from me. I stood there, in the middle of the living room, watching her read, the quiet of the house enveloping us, and I felt like I was looking at her through an impenetrable glass wall, forever separated.

Some of these visits were good, some were a little bit harder.

Sometimes I’d be content to watch her for long minutes, even an hour, just sitting with her, or following her through the house as she cleaned or straightened things. If I was lucky, it felt like I was just there with her, silently joining her in her day-to-day activities, and the part of me starved for this connection to my mom would sigh in relief.

Other times, seeing her was like cutting open a barely scabbed-over wound. On those days, standing there, shadowing her around the house was nothing but a stark reminder that she was forever lost to me, at least in the way she had been before. Watching her silently would cause me almost physical pain—or at least it felt that way in my spirit form—because a part of me expected her to turn around any second now, look at me, smile and tell me to go get the coffee started, and did I remember to get the brownies from the store?

But she’d never again turn to me, recognize me, see me. She’d never talk to me again, and I’d never see my mom’s eyes light up again when I walked through the door, feel her strong hug and her muttered, “It’s been ages.”

I balled my ghostly hands into fists, phantom tears burning in my eyes.

This one, right here, was one of the harder visits.

Maybe it had been a stupid idea to come here on my birthday. The pressure was high to make it a good visit, but it wasn’t something immediately in my control. I didn’t consciously decide when I’d miss her so fucking much that it broke my heart.

Taking a deep breath which I didn’t feel, I turned away from my mom. I had to cut this one short, or else I’d be a fucking mess all day. Maybe the next visit would be better, and I’d be happy to sit with her or follow her around like a silent puppy.

I walked back into the kitchen, and my gaze fell on Azazel, who stood over the table at the far wall, leafing through a stack of mail. I glanced back to check if my mom had noticed her letters basically moving through the air of their own accord, but she was completely focused on her book, facing the other direction on the sofa. Unless Azazel decided to make himself seen, he’d appear invisible the same as me, and while he could touch and move things around as easily as if he were fully corporeal, the objects would seem to be moving as if by a ghostly hand. Which kind of was the case.

He frowned at a particular letter, already opened, but put it down as I neared.

“Isn’t that sort of illegal,” I asked with a teasing note, “reading someone’s mail?”

“Human laws don’t apply to me,” was his deadpan answer, accompanied by a smirk.

“Anything of note in there?”

I tried to catch a glimpse of the letter he’d pondered, but he’d put the stack of mail and leaflets to rights again, my mom’s gardening magazine lying on top.

“Just some weird ads for pizza toppings that should be outlawed.”

“Oh?”

“Pineapple on pizza was already bad enough. These new abominations people have come up with…” He shook his head. “Straight ticket to Hell.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Hey. I like pineapple on pizza.”

He closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. “This is it, then. Our irreconcilable difference. My divorce lawyer will contact you.”

My lips twitched with the urge to grin. “I get the dog.”

“She snores too loud anyway.”

“Pfft. That’s what earplugs are for.”

His smile was brief and beautiful, his features sobering as he regarded me for a heartbeat. “Ready to leave?”

I swallowed and nodded, lowering my eyes. “Yeah. Today’s…”

“A hard one,” he finished for me, always so attuned to my moods, having seen enough of the not-so-good visits to know what was up.

I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak. All that turmoil inside me might spill out and make me vomit feels all over my ghostly shoes.

“Let’s go, then,” Azazel said.

Grateful for not needing to explain myself on this, I followed him out into the yard, and he took me to the skies once more.

When we landed in the yard of my dad’s house in Gresham, all the way on the other side of Portland, I slowly made my way to the backdoor of the two-story house after having checked if anyone was outside. I’d sent word to my father beforehand, letting him know I’d be coming for a visit on my birthday, and he said he’d make sure to be home. He mostly hung out around the house, but sometimes, he’d accompany his family on an outing. I had yet to ask him if he parked his ghostly butt in the car with them or maybe rode along on the roof. Or the trunk?

Going places in spirit form was weird, because the fact I was incorporeal and could walk through walls and objects meant that it was purely based on an unconscious decision to even “walk” or “stand” on the floor anywhere. If I concentrated, I could likely make myself sink into the earth or something. Azazel guessed that my not having to focus on standing or walking on the floor had to do with certain presets of the human mind, meaning that when you lived your whole life experiencing the floor as solid, your ghost form automatically presumed that as standard and acted accordingly. That’s why it took extra focus to walk through walls. I always had to turn off my acquired knowledge that walls were meant to be solid.

Inside the house of my dad’s second family, I found him in the living room…playing cards with a female demon.