Page 16 of Interior Design for Demons
My throat is tightening with terror, and I swallow against it. “Okay. Thank you for answering my question.”
“Oh, did I frighten you?” She places a red-taloned hand on my arm. “I didn’t mean to. You’re just so fun to tease. But I actually like you, Grace Labelle, better than the others here. You’re so young and bright and delicious. The other souls have the ache of age in them, but yours is—fresh.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“Come on. I promised to show you something special.”
I really don’t know if I should follow this purple-haired pixie demon into the bowels of Hell, but I do it anyway. She takes me down a long corridor, where we leap onto a perpetually moving serpentine track, not unlike a moving sidewalk in an airport—except this one is exceptionally fast. Naamah balances easily, her knees bent and her arms spread, but I cling to one of the twisty iron poles as we streak along, down, then up, left and right.
I should not have eaten so much food.
Before my stomach has time to revolt, Naamah grabs my elbow. “Jump!”
I don’t have time to be afraid before she yanks me off the track. We plummet into empty blackness, and I scream until my throat is raw. I’m going to be smashed. This is the end. Naamah killed me, she—
My momentum slows, as if the air itself is pushing against me, cushioning my progress. I land gently on my feet—but my knees give out immediately. I cradle my head, breathing hard, trying to keep down my meal.
I can’t see anything. Nothing exists except the rough surface under my feet.
Naamah wouldn’t destroy me, right? I’m part of the contest, one of the competitors. This is fine. If I were in real danger, Rath would show up.
“Come on, slowpoke.” Naamah’s voice makes me jump. Her hand finds my arm. “We’re almost there.”
I stumble after her through the dark, until there’s a cracking sound and a triangle of grayish illumination appears in the blackness. We pass through it—no—we have toclimbthrough it, scrambling onto stony earth like rabbits scuttling out of a burrow.
“But we fell down,” I say. “Way, way down. How are we outside again?”
“The rules of your plane don’t always apply here,” Naamah replies. “They bend often, and sometimes they break. Now look around. Isn’t it magnificent?”
There’s a forest around us—beautiful white trees with lacy branches and delicate fluttering leaves of pale gold, and peach, and deep brown. The air has a thick, cloying sweetness, a kind of innate humidity.
“It’s beautiful.” I move closer to one of the trees, reaching out to touch it. Its trunk is oddly, deeply grooved, almost as if it’s made up of a myriad smaller branches or—
Bones.
The tree is made of long white bones, cut and cemented together. Ribs and spines arch above my head. Bony branches end in twigs of finger bones and foot bones. And the leaves—they’ve been carefully cut from human skin.
Bile rises in my throat. I don’t think I can hold it back this time.
“I crafted this grove myself, over hundreds of years,” says Naamah proudly. “It’s my magnum opus.”
I smother my gag as best I can. She’s truly proud of this, and for some reason she chose to show it to me—thought that I would appreciate it. She chose me out of all the other contestants. Why does this keep happening to me? This is the third demon who has seemed to prefer me above the others.
Apollyon clearly just wants to get laid, and as Rath explained, humans are alluring to demons.
Rath doesn’t actually like me—but I think I’m interesting to him. Annoying, time-consuming, and possibly tempting in an unwelcome way. I’m his responsibility.
Naamah likes me because I’m young andfresh, whatever that means. And apparently she thought I would enjoy her art.
Herart? Wait a second.
“Rath told me demons can’t be creative,” I tell her. “But it looks like you’re the exception to the rule.”
“Yes. Yes!” She clutches my hands eagerly, leaving scratches from her sharp nails. “I can’t tell the others about this place. They would think there’s something wrong with me.”
“Do you know why you’re different?” I ask gently.
She shakes her head, her purple hair bouncing around the four tiny white horns. “No idea. I just enjoy making things.”
