Page 94 of Demons and Debts
I take a deep breath. It’s bad, but if she’s alive, then this could have been much worse.
‘Did she say she wanted you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. She knew what she was getting into. She signed the contract. That means she consent—’
‘Fuck, Alex! I know what it means,’ he hisses at me and I flinch at his use of my actual name.
He buries his face in his palms and I take pity on him, putting my hand on his shoulder.
‘How was she when you left her?’
‘Unconscious.’
‘Did you hurt her?’
‘I don’t know. I was in my demon form. I wasn’t gentle. Nowhere near. And she wasn’t lulled. I guess I was too far gone to use it ....’
I take stock of my second-in-command. He seems more himself than I’ve seen him in probably months. Whatever he did seems to have helped. Thatwasthe original reason for contracting her before I knew who she was, I remind myself as I leave the study and head up to Theo’s old room. My heart is in my throat, not knowing what I’ll find there.
I go in and she's laying on the bed. Still. My brow furrows as I step into the room, but she's just breathing slowly, stretched out like a cat in the sun.
‘Jane,’ I murmur.
Her eyes flutter open and her smile is slow and languid. I find myself being drawn closer.
I hear Sie behind me and I'm still not sure what the problem is. She doesn't seem like she's in any distress.
I give Sie a look and he seems as confused as I am.
‘Are you sure you made her do something she didn’t want to?’
‘I don't know. I thought at first … but then she…’ He touches his chest but doesn’t say anything more.
Jane seems fine, but Sie is pacing the room.
‘I’ll take care of this,’ I say. ‘Let her sleep. Maybe it’s best if you go up to Metro with Paris tonight. Set up some meetings and we’ll join you tomorrow. That’ll give you time to take stock and Jane can recover her strength before you feed from her again.’
‘Again?’ Sie asks, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘Yes, ‘again’,’ I say with an edge to my voice. ‘Whatever you did with her has sated you. You’re yourself again in ways you haven’t been in months. You’ll take from her whenever you need to and that’s an order.’
Sie doesn’t look happy with my edict, but he nods his head and backs out of the room.
I look down at Jane. She’s asleep now, a small smile playing on her lips.
She looks so pure, but soon she’ll be ours in every way. I can't wait to show her father how we've despoiled his daughter. His fault for sending her to us in the first place.
I text the group and let them know that Sie has won the game as I leave the room. I doubt Sie will tell anyone anything about it and the thought of having to watch any more of Paris and Theo’s saccharine sweet behavior around her makes me want to dig out my eyes with my own claws. I couldn't have done even an hour longer let alone the whole five days.
Now for the next part of my plan.
I go down to my study and open my top drawer. Inside is a mass of papers detailing a shipment coming into the port at Metro in two nights full of magickal weapons and fae artifacts. It's bullshit, of course, there's no such delivery, and even if there was, there’d be no physical documentation like this, but I'm going to have an ambush waiting for whomever is stealing our merchandise. And our little human is going to give whoever she's working for all the information they need to be exactly where we want them to be. If we're lucky, we can take them all down in one fell swoop.
I take out the dummy paperwork for this irresistible shipment that’s meant to take place in a couple of nights and place it haphazardly on the table, leaving the drawer open with the key in the lock as if I was in a hurry and forgot to put it away.
Closing the door behind me, I head to the games room to shoot a little pool, thinking about how Jane is going to play right into my hands.
