And then it happened.
From the forest of strong-backed Brothers, their sadness a stain upon the still air around them, her cousin Sahvage’s head slowly turned unto her.
His eyes burned with emotion as he looked down the long bare corridor toward her.
Whate’er is he asking of me, she thought with heartbreak.
And yet… she knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The solitude of the collector was almost never a burden.
Sometimes, you just wanted to be alone with your shit, you needed that special time.
Tonight was not it.
As Devina walked up and down the aisles created by her hanging racks, she was way too alone, and nothing, not her newest bouclé jacket from Chanel, not even her oldest acquisition, either, was filling the void. Which, of course, was not the way hoarding normally worked for her.
Worse? She didn’t want to buy anything else. So her shopping addiction was failing her, too.
It was a while before she realized what was bothering her—or maybe it was more like it took a while before she could stand to acknowledge the problem: She was here again, dumped by a male. Dumped by a male who so completely couldn’t stand her, he’d slit his own throat to get away from her—
No, wait, it was even worse. That Bastard Balthazar had killed himself to save the female he really wanted, and Devina had been part of the measure of how much he cared about his little chippie. He hated Devina, but he’d been willing to get stuck with her in Hell for an eternity just to protect Little Miss Homicide Detective.
It was downright insulting, really.
Devina couldn’t believe the whole damned thing. Okay, yeah, sure, she could be a thundercunt, but she wasn’t all bad.
Okay, fine. Maybe she was all bad.
She was sex on a stick, though, and she could be good to a lover. If she felt like it. If it worked for her. So come on.
Stopping in front of her full-length gowns, she pulled out the white one she had put on to be inside Balthazar’s mind when he’d been having his post-bleed-out nap. The satin was so virginal and smooth and cool over her hands and she loved how the red of her glossy fingernails looked against the sheen. Like blood on a wisping cloud.
Lifting her head, she stared across all her hangers, all her babies.
The Book was up against the far wall, suspended as if in an invisible sling. The damn thing was snoring, the front cover bubbling in a soft, rhythmic purr, the pages beneath shuffling quietly.
Exhaling, she felt her shoulders droop. She couldn’t keep doing this, getting pushed aside for so-called “better options” by males. The rejections were giving her a complex. Fuck being someone’s priority. She wasn’t even an alternative.
“Please,” she said with defeat. “Please help me find true love.”
Fuck knew, if she were left to her own devices, it was never going to happen—
The Book’s cover popped open and slapped down, as if it woke up. Then it sat itself up, so that it was facing her instead of lying flat on the thin air.
She wasn’t getting her hopes up, though. For all she knew, it was going to Uber Eats some Thai food to the lair. Or maybe an office chair. Fuck if she could tell what was going through its head.
There was a series of coughs and then the pages seemed to lick themselves. After a final shake, as a bird might rearrange its feathers, that ugly, mottled cover blew wide open and stayed that way.
Those pages started flipping.
Devina blinked a couple of times. Then she dropped the dress’s skirting and walked forward, called by the movement of the parchment, at first furiously fast, and now slowing. It was the strangest thing. More pages turned than were bound, but she had always believed there were an infinite number of folios confined within the tome—
The flipping stopped.
Just dead-on halted.
“Don’t be cruel,” she said before she took a look. And she meant it as a warning, but the words came out as a plaintive appeal to the thing’s better nature. If the Book even had one.
When the tome didn’t move at all, when it just stayed inanimate, she hitched her breath and leaned down.
The first thing she saw, in a graceful, handwritten script, was “Love Spell for a Beautiful Demon.”
Her eyes flooded with tears. “I’m sorry I’m such a bitch.”
One of the pages lifted up and brushed her cheek, catching her tear. Then the Book resettled as if it was done both with fighting with her, and any soppy emotion.
“Right.” She sniffled and rubbed her nose. “What do we have here.”
Like she was whipping up a pot roast and had to see whether all the ingredients were in her cupboard.