He frowned. “When?”
“When you were gone.”
His frown intensified, and he stood up from the bed. I sat up, hands knotting nervously in the blankets as he picked up a black long-sleeved shirt from the floor and pulled it on. “You should get dressed,” he said. “There’s some clothes in the bags near the door. I need to do some scouting today, make sure no one’s on our trail. And I need you occupied while I’m gone so you don’t go wandering off.”
I was about to remind him that I wasn’t a puppy who would go running off without a leash, but stopped myself before I lied. I was a wanderer, and he was absolutely right to worry what I’d do if I got bored. I worried what I’d do if I was bored. The plastic bags near the door had an assortment of clothing in them, mostly in black, brown, and dark blue.
“How do you know my size?” I said, holding up a long blue plaid skirt to my waist in front of the mirror. “And my style…this is cute…”
“I’ve been observing you for months,” he said, lacing up his boots. “How could I not know those things?”
He’d even gotten the right size in a pair of chunky boots. With a black turtleneck and gray denim jacket atop the skirt, I turned away from the mirror and found him watching me, hands stuffed into the pockets of his joggers.
My ex had once said that my style was like, “if Janis Joplin had a lovechild with Sisters of Mercy.” It was more weird than sexy, which wasn’t something I thought about most of the time — except when a supernaturally sexy demon was staring me down like he was considering eating me again.
“Why are you blushing?” He took my face in his hands, which made my blush far worse, considering I couldn’t look away from him. “I thought I’d fucked all the shame out of you already?” He kissed my forehead, and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Apparently I need to corrupt you a bit more, baby girl.”
I didn’t know what to expect when Leon said he was going to keep me “occupied” — but leaving me at the hotel’s spa for several hours hadn’t even been on my radar as a possibility. Getting my nails done and my back massaged after soaking in a mud bath was a bizarre contrast to the past few weeks; it felt too normal, too safe.
Not that it had ever been exactly normal for me to have a spa day. That wasn’t something that typically fit in my college-student broke-vlogger budget.
I couldn’t fathom where Leon had gotten the money for this, either. Did demons have money? Did they have credit cards?
“You’re carrying a lot of tension in your shoulders.” The woman massaging my back was blonde, pretty, a few years older than me, with a voice so soft she probably could make a fortune off recording ASMR videos. “Slow, deep breath…I’m going to work out the knots here.”
They’d given me wine, and after a glass I found it pretty funny that she probably thought all that tension was from stress at work or school, rather than being hunted by monsters and a death cult.
Funny. Just hilarious.
She did her job though. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in months. As I walked back up to the room that evening with my body feeling like jelly, I realized that I couldn’t wait to move out of Abelaum. I couldn’t wait to leave that goddamn town behind.
Fuck reconnecting with the magic of my childhood. Once I’d graduated and gotten to see Inaya’s wedding, I was moving as far away from this place as I was able to. Money was an issue, but I’d rent out an unfinished basement on the East Coast if I had to.
And Leon…
It had become too easy to imagine him going with me. Living with me. Staying with me. But as I got back up to the room, and ordered room service again for dinner, I knew that was a dangerous train of thought to go down. Dangerous because that wasn’t something I should get my hopes up about.
Leon was a demon. An immortal. A monster. He wanted my soul. He wasn’t about to be domesticated — and I didn’t want him to be. I didn’t want a demonic variation on the white-picket-fence nuclear family ideal. I just didn’t want him to leave.
His absence would be a void I couldn’t fill, which seemed so silly considering the lifetime I’d been through since moving here had really only been a few months. But it was like the first time I’d seen a ghost; it had been so brief but so stark, and the moment I’d realized what had happened I’d known I could never let that go. It’s weird that one brief moment can change the course of your whole life.