Page 100 of Interior Design for Demons
Dagon’s eyes light up, and I know I’ve got him on the hook, so I keep talking. “But I won’t do it without Apollyon. My one goal in this would be staying with him, forever.”
Now it’s Michael’s turn to move restlessly. “I’m not sure I can condone a human willingly transitioning to demonic status.”
“Grace,” whispers Apollyon. “You can’t do that for me.”
I press my hand over his lips and look deep into his eyes. “My choice.”
He parts his mouth and kisses my palm softly.
Michael clears his throat. “I think you’ve spoken well for yourselfandthe demon, Miss Labelle. We have much to discuss. Please wait outside until you are recalled.”
Rath, Apollyon, Karaziel and I rise and return to the lobby to wait. The room has several ugly chairs, shiny metal and rough fabric like you might see at the DMV. I hate them so much. I try not to look at them but I can’t help it. And the wall color is gross, too—an odd pinkish-red that’s just a touch off the hue it should be.
Fretting, I pace a few steps forward and back, while Rath sits stiffly in a chair, Apollyon lounges across two chairs, and Karaziel stands calmly in a corner, watching me with a half-amused curiosity in those lavender eyes.
“Why aren’t there guards here?” I say. “We could just—leave.”
“No, dove,” says Apollyon. “The moment we entered, Michael and Dagon put bands around this place. It has been sealed by Heaven and Hell, and none may come or go until they both assent.”
“Damn.” I stare at the light fixture overhead—a bland, boring circle of frosted glass. “This is such an ugly room. I can’t stand it. How long do you think they’ll be?”
The door opens at that instant, and Melek nods to all four of us. “They’re ready for you.”
“Okay,” I breathe. My palms and underarms are sweating, and my whole body is ringing with sick tension. “Okay.” As Apollyon rises I step into his space, into the gardenia-and-scarlet swirl of him, and I kiss him deeply, inhaling like a woman who’s been underwater too long.
His arms fold around me, a brief tender squeeze.
Then we walk into the board room, hand in hand, and take our seats again.
This is it.
Oh god.
Oh God, please.
“Karaziel.” The archangel Michael’s voice is heavy with rebuke and sorrow. “For your defiance of Heaven’s laws, and your repeated defiling of yourself with demons, you are condemned to fall. Tomorrow you will be stripped of your wings and your memories. From that moment on, no one from the celestial plane will be allowed to interact with you.”
I pinch my lips together to refrain from protesting. I can’t help Karaziel; I can’t even help myself. We are totally at the mercy of these powerful beings who sit in judgment over us. Besides, Karaziel claimed to feel more at home in Hell. This decree is no great surprise.
“You have a choice,” Michael continues. “You may choose to be sent to Earth, to live as an adult human male with memory loss and no family. In that case you would have a typical human lifespan of eighty-odd years. Or you may choose to enter Hell as a candidate for the next round of demon trials.”
“I choose the trials,” Karaziel says immediately. Michael nods, disappointed but apparently not surprised.
Then Dagon speaks up, his great rolling voice like thunder in the small room. “Apollyon will be spared from annihilation. He will suffer ninety days of torture, after which he will be stripped of his rank and be demoted to the lowest order. He may keep his name and aspect, but his status as a lust demon will be removed, and he will work without a sin specialization, processing paperwork for other demons.”
Okay. Not great, but definitely better than eternal torment, or annihilation.
“Grace Labelle will be returned to earth, where she will spend five years apart from Apollyon. If after that time she and Apollyon wish to be together, she can undergo the demon trials to become a demon herself. Since Apollyon will no longer be a lust demon, there will be no obstacle to their union.”
Five years? That seems like a horrendously long time. I don’t want to spend five years apart from the love of my life. And I kind of don’t want to be a demon either—it goes against everything I believe. But I guess, if I can be involved in the justice side of things and not the torture side, it could work. I’d be with Apollyon, forever.
Wait a second—oh god. If we’re apart for five years, he’ll be a mindless, warped dragon-monster by the time I return to him.
I look at Rath desperately, intently, willing him to understand the stakes here. Demanding that he do right by me this time, and tell everyone what he knows of Apollyon’s decline.
Slowly, stiffly, Rath rises. “My eminent lords, if I may. I have some information pertinent to this judgment.”
Rath explains what he has witnessed of Apollyon’s deterioration, his involuntary shape-shifting, and the loss of speech on the last night the dragon was with me. He pulls up the video clips on his phone, throwing them onto a screen on the board room wall so everyone can see them.
