Calladia’s eyes had widened over the course of his diatribe. They were a lovely shade of chestnut brown, he noticed for no reason whatsoever. Nice eyes for a very not-nice woman. “That was quite a speech,” she said.
Astaroth bared his teeth at her.
Her eyes flicked to his mouth. “Point taken. But I can’t just leave you here to die.”
“Why not?” Astaroth asked. “Surely it would be a relief, considering how much you hate me. Why did you even help me to begin with?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was a stranger in trouble.” She tightened her ponytail aggressively, and Astaroth briefly imagined yanking on her hair instead. Maybe wrapping it around his fist so he could force her to stay still and listen to him. “And once I realized it was you . . .” She sighed. “Look, I’m not a bad person. Fair to middling, maybe, but not bad. I wouldn’t feel right leaving you alone and hurt with Moloch nearby.”
“But you do feel right belittling an injured amnesiac? Your morality seems to have a sliding scale.”
She shrugged. “I said fair to middling, not good.”
Well, at least she was honest. “My head hurts and I just want to sleep,” Astaroth said. “Can you direct me to a hotel?”
“Do you have money for a room?”
Right. Demons bartered, bargained, and traded favors, but money was the main currency of the human plane. Astaroth patted his pockets and pulled out a smartphone but nothing else. When he pressed a button, a passcode entry screen popped up, but he had no idea what that code might be. “Apparently not.”
“Right.” Calladia looked up at the moon, then checked a band around her wrist that held a digital display. Astaroth racked his useless brain. It wasn’t just a watch, but a . . . curses, what were those things called? The ones that tracked heart rate and whatnot, because humans loved to take any activity and suck the joy out of it.
Calladia made a face. “It’s really late.” She bit her lip, looking between the wrist thing, him, and the now-deserted street. “This is a dumb idea,” she muttered before squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath. “You can stay in my spare room. For one night only.”
Astaroth perked up. She was taking him home? That was an improvement on You’re an evil, despicable monster with no heart. “Oh, lovely, thank—”
Calladia talked over him. “But there will be no funny business or mischief or acts of evil while under my roof. I’m going to weave so many wards, your testicles will be obliterated if you so much as sneeze wrong.”
So much for an improvement. “That seems excessive.”
“Yeah, well, sue me for being paranoid when letting a demon who just tried to steal my friend’s soul crash at my place.” Calladia started walking away. “Hurry up.”
Hostile or not, she hadn’t tried to murder him yet, and maybe she’d have more answers to help fill in the missing pieces of his identity. “I would never pass up the opportunity to bask in more of your radiant company,” he said, following her.
She raised a hand, showing the string that dangled from her fingertips. “Testicles. Exploded.”
He winced. “I shall be on my least abominable behavior.”
FOUR
This was dumb.
No, not just dumb. This was the single worst idea anyone had ever had.
Calladia lingered at the door to her spare bedroom, watching Astaroth poke around. He investigated the bookshelf, picked up a few trinkets, then fingered the lacy curtains. He was an odd sight in the cheery room: gorgeously disheveled above the neck, alarmingly blood-spattered below. His hand kept twitching at his side, and Calladia wondered if he was instinctively reaching for his cane.
A cane topped with a crystal skull, which she’d learned contained a sword, of all things. It was outrageously unnecessary, but the more time she spent with the demon, the more it seemed to suit him.
He tugged open a drawer and started digging through her scarves, and Calladia had had enough. “Stop snooping,” she ordered.
He adopted an innocent expression that didn’t fool her for a moment. “You can’t expect me to spend the night in a strange place without assessing the territory.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you want to assess my front lawn? Because I’m tempted to make you sleep outside.”
He shivered. “No, this will do.” He was holding a lumpy knitted blue-and-purple scarf—a gift from Themmie during the pixie’s intense but short-lived obsession with knitting. As he let it trail through his fingers, a tingle raced down Calladia’s spine. Those hands had leveled a sword at Oz’s throat earlier that day. They’d probably dealt more death over the centuries than she could imagine. And now they were touching her things.