Page 90 of Psycho Gods

Orion hadn’t told me where Malum and Scorpius were, but I pictured them walking hand in hand on a date while they gave each other kisses and talked shit about me.

Was I being rational? No. Did that matter at the moment because I was spiraling? Also no.

I lay in the tub under the shower spray like a frigid corpse who was not sexually attracted to her enemies.

Arms crossed over my chest.

Legs straight.

Mouth sewn shut.

The Necklace of Death hot against my chest.

Ice coated my fingers, then receded in the hot water.

For a second, I hallucinated there was snow in the shower. White flakes flurried down, then dissipated in the scalding steam.

A layer of thick cobalt ice coated my feet where they stuck out of the water.

What in the sun god is wrong with me?

When I’d discovered I was an angel, I’d pictured soaring over mountains and brandishing ice swords. I’d imagined poise and frosty control.

I had never pictured this.

The ice coating my feet traveled across the porcelain tub and welded us together.

“Are you all right in there?” Orion shouted through the door. His lyrical voice cracked, and he said softly, “Please tell me you’re doing okay.”

“Do you think I’m part angel, part Abominable Snowman?” I asked, slightly hysterical.

This was my final straw.

“What?” he asked with confusion through the door.

“I read about it in a book,” I said. “It’s this big beastly creature that lives in the ice and snow with thunder thighs and sharp teeth and claws and—uh, a freak,” I finished lamely.

There was a long pause.

“I know what it’s like to be a freak,” he said softly through the door.

My heart twisted at the pain in his voice.

“You aren’t one—don’t say that,” I said fiercely.

I yawned loudly. It seemed impossible that I could be so tired when I’d slept for so long. Panicking over becoming a snowman did that to a woman.

My eyes drifted closed.

“It’s okay,” Orion replied. “The first time I enchanted someone with my voice, I was four years old…” His voice was mellow as he told me stories about his childhood.

I listened with my eyes closed, imagining a cherub little boy with golden skin and white-blond hair crying himself to sleep because he was forbidden from talking to anyone.

My heart hurt as he revealed his parents had given him away to an all-boys home because they’d thought he was defective. Strength and power were the ultimate tenets of devil life, and those viewed as different were discarded.

He talked about living with the other foster boys on an expansive farm. How he’d loved visiting the village’s farmers market.

I struggled to make sense of the world he described.

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