Page 9 of Witch's Rite
I didn't know why I started spilling all these private details to her, they just came pouring out. I figured I could talk to her about my love life but just leave the supernatural details out.
"Holy shit, Deja you've hit the holy grail of jackpots! Ride this out for as long as you can. Or should I say, ride allthreeof them."
"Geez, Nona! Why not say it loud enough for the whole shop to hear," I hissed, looking over both of my shoulders.
At some point, Ash put on a pair of thick-rimmed reading glasses and I had to bite my lip to stifle a moan.
"Oh chill out, Deja. Nobody in San Francisco cares how many people you sleep with. Hell, you could even throw another girl into the mix and no one will bat an eye."
"Yeah, that is definitely not happening," I muttered, stealing yet another glance at Ash.
He seemed deeply absorbed into his book, his brows pinching together slightly as his pale blue eyes moved over the words. A couple of girls at a nearby table whispered to each other as they kept looking at him. A different kind of fire heated my blood. I hoped they weren't planning on talking to him.
"Don't worry, your three devilishly hot men will corrupt your brainwashed upbringing in no time," Nona teased.
"You have no idea how much I can't wait for that," I replied.
5
DEJA
Closing time finally came and I didn't have to murder any of my female customers.
Ash said a polite goodbye to Nona before I finally shooed her away and locked up the shop. She barely rode her bike down the street before I received a text saying, "You better tell me everything!"
I rolled my eyes but held back a goofy grin as I stuck my phone in my purse and began walking along Ash's side.
"So what was with the readers?" I asked as we came to our first stoplight, and couldn't help but tease him. "Getting a bit old, are we?"
He cast a cheeky sideways glance at me. "My eyesight is actually improving the longer I stay on earth. But yes, I used to be extremely farsighted and couldn't see anything in front of my face for the first hundred or so years after falling. I imagine it has to do with angels having to see across long distances from the clouds."
"Sort of like birds of prey," I mused aloud.
"Yes, exactly," he confirmed. "Binocular vision, they call it."
It was hard for my brain to wrap around the fact that this devastatingly handsome, but otherwise normal looking man walking next to me, was a not a human but a completely different creature.
And so was I, in a way.
"Do other demons have that problem?" I asked.
"Only the fallen angels, which are by far a minority. For the others, it depends on how they were created. Though eyesight problems aren't usually part of the package."
"Oh," I said. "I guess I assumed all demons were fallen angels."
"A common myth purported by Christ's followers," he said slyly. "No, Sal was created in Hell, for example. He is a manifestation of basic human and animal instincts like the need to conquer, dominate and protect."
"That makes sense." I remembered Sal's temper, which was never directed at me, but he always seemed eager to annihilate someone for even sending a dirty look my way. In his thousands of years of existence, he must've annihilated scores of enemies. I was beyond glad to be on his good side.
"And Raum was originally a raven. One of the first birds we observed that demonstrated incredible intelligence and almost human-like thought processes. When we saw him steal treasure from greedy kings, we knew we had to make him our own. He has excellent near and farsightedness, the bastard."
"Seriously?" I nearly stopped in my tracks. "Raum is actually a bird?"
"He was," Ash corrected. "He's a demon now. He actually prefers to spend most of his time in human form."
“Easiest for him to talk shit that way,” I joked.
“Precisely,” Ash chuckled. “There are also the lesser demons such as the incubi and the succubi. Each of us has a few legions of those under our command at any given time. Aside from immortality, their only real power is sexual seduction.”
