Page 34 of Demons and Debts
My talking skills aren’t the best and, after obligatory subjects like the weather, conversations easily fizzle out if the other person isn’t making the effort. Plus, I get bored.
‘Well, thanks,’ I say, ‘I better … mosey on.’
Mosey on? Ugh.
I turn and head up the stairs, thankful to escape what’s quickly turning the kind of awkward I don’t know how to deal with. I peek out into the kitchen and find it nice and empty. I don't know what I’d do if I had to go back down there.
I find the foyer and the pretty chandelier and start snooping around the front of the house. The first door I find leads into a study with shelves of old, leatherbound books that look like they’re purely decorative behind an imposing and messy desk that clearly isn’t. The haphazard papers on said desk are written in a language that isn’t English and it doesn’t take me long to designate the room as relatively uninteresting.
I find a black pool table in the next room with a black leather couch, massive flat screen TV on the wall, and a shit ton of different gaming consoles.
I used to love video games as a kid and I decide I like it in here, but as I look at them more closely, I realize it's been a long time since I played. I don’t recognize any of them. I doubt I'm any good these days anyway.
I am good at pool though. Very good. You wouldn’t know it and that’s my secret weapon. When times are hard, I’ve been known to hustle a game or two. No one ever expects the girl who just tripped over her own feet to kick their ass, but, at the end of the day, it’s just geometry.
I like this room better, but I don’t stay. I’m on a quest to get out of this place, after all, not to make myself comfy.
Walking across the other side of the foyer, a long hallway leads to the other end of the house. More steps take me to—
Holy shit! It's a gigantic, motherfucking pool!
Like, there's just a pool in the middle of the house and set into the bottom are the skylights I could see from the basement.
I look around me. Same as in the kitchen, one whole side of the room seems able to open completely onto another manicured lawn with yet more forest beyond.
‘Are we literally in the middle of a State Park?’ I mutter.
There’s no one here, so I dip my bare toe in the water. It’s heated, of course, and feels stupidly, fucking divine.
‘Pretty much.’
I stifle a shriek and whip around, finding one of the other incubi, luckily not Korban or Sie.
I recognize him instantly. ‘You’re the bartender from the other day.’
‘Paris.’ He smirks.
‘Paris,’ I say quietly, and he stares at me for a minute in absolute silence.
I’m not sure what his problem is so I stare right backat the plant behind him.
He doesn’t move and I give him a noncommittal, half smile as I walk around the pool away from him.
Is he broken? Supes are so weird and it’s me saying that so …
I hear him chuckle low as I make my escape.
‘You're welcome by the way,’ he calls.
I turn back.
‘For what?’ I say a little too aggressively, my voice echoing around the pool, making me flinch.
‘For saving your ass last night.’
I’m taken aback, but I'm obligated. ‘Thanks for bringing me here … I guess.’
‘Well, if we hadn’t stopped those guys, you'd probably be dead right now.’
