I lower my gaze, not wanting to look at him for another second. “Yes. Or at least, I think it was the staff.”
His jaw tightens.
“Can you hear it now?”
I part my lips to reply. To tell him no, but that’s not quite true. Distantly, I realize, I can still hear them. Though they are so faint, it’s almost as though they aren’t there at all.
“I think so. It’s…distant.”
His lips press into a firm line.
“Wait, can you not hear them?”
“No, Na’vazēm. I cannot.”
An anvil drops in my gut.
“What does that mean?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Kincaid, what does that—”
He holds up a hand to silence me, and my stomach turns.
Tori loops a small bit of thin silvery rope around the base of the staff, coiling it upward and then tying it off at the top. When she steps back from the thing, it somehow still stands.
I don’t like it.
“Do we have to take that thing back to the house?” I grouse, my voice small and barely above a whisper.
When Kincaid doesn’t respond, Tori gives me a tight smile and puts her hands on her hips, changing the direction of the conversation. “So,” she says cheerfully, looking between mine and Kincaid’s grim faces. “Will I be seeing you lot at the Court of Nightmares on the next moon?”
“I’ll be there,” Kincaid grunts.
Tori turns her bright violet eyes toward me. “Hope you’ll bring your new friend.”
“No.”
“A shame,” Tori says with a pout. “They’d eat up a pretty thing like her.”
Kincaid visibly stiffens then moves forward in a blur of speed to snatch up the staff, snagging my hand as he storms back the way he came, jostling me.
The mug falls to the floor, shattering against the threadbare carpet. The sweet liquid steams lightly when it makes contact.
“I—I’m sorry,” I call back to Tori as Kincaid drags me back through the maze of oddities to the front door.
“No worries, love!” she hollers back. “You can pay for the mug and the map next time.”
Tori winks at me, and my mouth snaps shut as Kincaid pulls me out of sight.
Tori’s voice calls to us as Kincaid kicks open the front door and yanks me outside, “Come again soon!”
17
Here lies Paige Marie St. Clare.
The biggest idiot of all time.
That’s what my headstone will say. After this demon kills me.
I eye Kincaid sitting across from me at the table. Neither of us spoke after he chucked the staff into the front seat next to his chauffeur and herded me into the backseat.
We didn’t speak when we arrived back at the house.
Not when I gathered up all my shopping bags and rushed upstairs to the room he assigned me.
He didn’t come up when I had my second shower-bath of the day. Or when I stayed up there for over an hour numbly getting dressed, uncovering ornate furniture, and putting away the clothes he bought for me.
I only left the room at all because I was hungry.
Now here we are.
Me, with a plate of buttered and salted noodles I scavenged from the grand galley kitchen. The demon slouches in a high-backed chair at the other end of the table, a silver goblet dangling from his fingers. He swirls the liquid inside, watching me with a predator’s gaze.
The pasta sits heavily in my stomach, and I find I’m nearly full after only a couple of bites.
“I suppose you have questions,” he says, finishing off the last dregs of his drink and refilling the goblet from a carafe atop the table. His yellow eyes burn into me. His head tilts to one side.
I clear my throat, shoving the plate away.
“Are you really—”
“One of the seven lords of Hell?” he interrupts. “Yes. Anything else?”
My body goes cold at the stark, humorless admission. My mouth is sandpaper dry.
“Okay,” I manage, folding my fingers together in my lap.
“Okay?” he presses, a curious lilt to the word.
I nod, pressing my lips together.
I mean, it makes sense now. Why all the whispering at the demon market. Why everyone seemed to let him do whatever the hell he wanted. Why no one wanted to get in his way.
Except Tori.
“Tori, what was she?” I ask, more out of curiosity than anything. I wonder if she is also a being of great power. She didn’t back down from Kincaid. She didn’t cower like the rest.
I envy her that.
Kincaid seems taken by surprise at the direction of my questions. “A gargoyle,” he replies without elaborating.
“A gargoyle? Like the creepy statue things on churches?”
“They have a more ancient name, but they adopted the moniker a couple hundred years ago. It was fitting.”
“Fitting how?”
He narrows his eyes. I can tell he’s more than a little annoyed to have to be answering my questions, but I can’t seem to help myself. I want to know.
I want to know everything.
All of it.
“Have you never heard of her kind? I assumed all mortals on the other side of The Hinge would be well versed in all things Diablim by now.”
I swallow. “Not me.”
Though I may have heard the name before, I likely dismissed it. After all, a gargoyle was a made-up thing. A monstrous beast thought to scare away evil spirits from places of worship. They aren’t real.
Tori definitely didn’t have fangs or wings or claws.
Kincaid sighs. “They’re hard as stone. Their skin is all but impenetrable by mortal or demon-forged weapons,” he tells me then grimaces. “And they can’t be swayed by powers of the mind.”
Sounds pretty freaking great. Why couldn’t I have been a gargoyle?
Or maybe I am. Who freaking knows at this point.
“Sounds pretty amazing.”
He nods.
“They are. And rare. Even more rare for one to live in Elisium. They’re Nephilim.”
My eyes go wide at that.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I know lots of Nephilim live in Elisium. But unlike what I assumed—that the Nephilim were here to help control and contain the Diablim—Tori lives among them.
She runs a shop filled with demonic oddities. She buys from Diablim and sells to demons.
I’m not sure what to make of it. What little I thought I knew about the world outside Ford’s door is being tested. The contents of my mind shaken and shredded.
“It’s my turn,” Kincaid says after a moment, rising to procure a second goblet from a buffet and hutch pressed against the wall next to the long table. He fills it from the carafe and lifts his own, coming to set the newly filled goblet down in front of me.
A peace offering?
I don’t take it.
He sits on the table’s ledge like he did this morning at breakfast, his stare penetrating. Calculated.
“How is it that you were able to live on the mortal side of The Hinge without being discovered for so long?”
A vivid image of Ford flashes beneath my eyelids when I drop my head and squeeze them tight. I don’t want to talk about that.
I don’t ever want to think about it again.
The nightmares are enough of a reminder. I don’t need to relive it in the light of day, too.