Page 66 of Wicked Deeds

Well double crap. How much had she seen? I hadn’t yet talked to Cassandra about letting Gwen see the program. “Yes. But how about you forget you saw it?”

“What was that thing you were fighting? A lesser Fae?”

“No, an imp.”

“An imp?” she said. “Ademon?” Her eyes went wide. Under the bright light of the monitor, they were almost silvery blue.

I hit the button on the arm of the game chair to turn the monitor off. “Not a demon. Demonkindbut not a demon.”

She shuddered. “Whatever it was, it was creepy.”

True. Imps were disturbing. At least she couldn’t smell the damn thing. The smell of demonkind was unmistakable. And unmistakably vile. And Damon had done far too good a job of replicating that in the simulation. “I’m sure you saw some creepy things in the realm.”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but nothing quite like that. Lady Morgain’s territory is mostly peaceful and she doesn’t let Nichtkin come there. That thing would fit right in with the Nichtkin.”

Usuriel had Fae that resembled imps in his court? Great. Or was Gwen projecting and his subjects were just creatures—or people, I guessed—whose forms weren’t human. Frightening didn’t necessarily equal evil. And Gwen had never faced an imp in real life. I’d fought Nichtkin. None of them had that same terrifying feeling as demonkind.

“Lord Usuriel is firmly in the anti-demon camp,” I said. “I doubt there are any imps in his court. There are no demonkind in the realm.” If there were, well, there wouldn’t be a realm and humans would all be demon fodder. But if Gwen didn’t knowthat already, I wasn’t going to tell her. “Hopefully you’ll never have to meet an imp or anything out here.” And maybe if she was creeped out by one measly fake imp, she might not be ask to see any more of the training program.

“No,” she said. She pulled her gaze away from the monitor, yawning again.

“Coffee?” I said brightly. “I need more coffee. How about you? You should eat.”

“Sounds good.”

Right. Plan A. Feed her up and get her blood sugar stabilized before I hit her with ‘so, hey, we might be related’.

We headed to the kitchen and I grabbed a canister of Amy’s homemade granola along with yogurt and fruit from the fridge. “Cereal might be easier to eat. Unless you’re queasy from the meds? I can do toast? You only need one hand for cereal, so you can rest your arm. How’s it feel?”

“Still numb. I don’t think the nerve block has worn off yet. And I’m hungry. My stomach is fine. I’ll try the granola.”

“Meredith said to start on the painkillers by midday at the latest,” I reminded her, nodding at the packet of pain patches still sitting on the counter with the other bits and pieces the hospital had sent her home with. “Start those before the block wears off. It’s nearly eleven now, so you’ll need to put one on after you’ve eaten.”

She pulled a face. “Yeah, okay.”

I poured granola into a bowl for her and pushed the yogurt and a spoon across the table so she could help herself, before filling another bowl for me. Fighting virtual imps was hard work. I deserved second breakfast.

Lianith came bounding into the room, joining us on the table with an inquiring merping trill.

“No bacon this morning. I don’t think you’d like cereal.” I said to her.

I didn’t need her mental“bah”to understand her disappointment.

“She might like yogurt,” Gwen said.

“I’m not sure dairy is good for her.”

Lianith blinked at me slowly, her golden eyes gleaming. I sighed and got up to spoon yogurt into a bowl, putting it down on the floor near her fancy water bowl. “Don’t blame me if you get a stomachache.”

Gwen crunched through her bowl of granola at high speed. I went more slowly with mine, hungry but nervous about what was to come. Lianith wandered back to join us, and perched on the chair next to Gwen’s, cleaning her whiskers with a paw as delicately as any normal cat. She seemed fond of Gwen.

I tried to work up the nerve to tell Gwen the news, trying to figure out what to say as she ate. Finally I decided to just get it over with. “I need to ask you about something.”

She tensed, pushing her bowl away. “What?”

“You’re not in any trouble,” I said. “It’s...look, there’s no easy way to say this. I got a notification this morning from the database.”

“The database?” Her brows drew down and she tilted her head, making loose hair fall across her face. She pushed it back without taking her eyes off me.

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