Page 34 of Interior Design for Demons
I wake in a pitch-black bedroom. In fact, it’s so dark I can’t be sure my eyes are open, so I check and accidentally poke myself in the eyeball. I know I left the lamp on. Why is it so damn dark?
Something rushes through the dark, not far away from me. I shrink against the headboard, drawing my knees up and clutching a pillow. My hand fumbles for the bedside table, searching for the lamp cord and its switch—but the lamp isn’t there. Someone moved it, or knocked it over. Maybe the sound of it falling is what jolted me awake.
During one of my meals, I stole a steak knife and slipped it under the edge of my mattress. I reach down for it now, clasping the cold polished handle in my fingers. The demons probably know I have it and don’t care. I doubt I could do them any lasting harm with it. But I’d settle for temporary harm. Andpain, lots of pain. I smile grimly at the mental echo ofA Knight’s Tale, one of my all-time favorite movies. More whirring and rustling from the shadows, like something big is crawling around in my room. It brushes against the wooden furniture with a scrape that’s definitely not skin.
More like—scales.
“I know you’re awake, s-s-sweetheart.” The voice is musical, breathy—familiar, except for that hissing sound, like air slithering between sharp teeth. “I can hear you breathing.”
“Apollyon?” My voice is a raw whisper. As my eyes adjust, I can make out a darker blackness, the immense shadow of something hunched and monstrous, filling up most of the floor space in my room. Something whirs through the air—there’s a smack and the sound of an object shattering. Probably one of the priceless Louis XIV vases that clutter the tables in this god-awful room. “S-shit,” hisses Apollyon.
I point the steak knife at the darker blackness. And then I see two glittering blue eyes, their luminescence shining dimly off a long, graceful, scalysnout.
“Holy Mother of mayhem,” I gasp. “You’re in dragon form. Why are you a dragon right now?”
Apollyon exhales blue smoke from his nostrils. “Why aren’tyoua dragon right now?”
“Because I’m not a shapeshifting demon, dummy. What’s going on? Why are you in my room?”
“I have this problem, occasionally,” he says. “I shift in my sleep.”
“Is that supposed to happen?”
He writhes and thrashes for a second, a low moan issuing from his jaws along with a faint mist of superheated blue particles. I can feel their heat from my spot on the bed.
“No,” he breathes at last. “It’s a sign of deterioration. I’m sinking, Grace, I’m slipping, I’m losing control. I’m going to become this, only this, always—andworse, because this form will warp and lose its beauty, and then—” He groans louder. “Then what will I do? Beauty is who I am, beauty and desire and passion and cleverness. If I lose all of that I amnothing, do you understand? Nothing.”
I lay down the knife and swing my feet out of the bed. After gingerly waving my hand around near the floor, I find the lamp, mercifully unbroken and still plugged into whatever demonic electrical system runs through these walls. I hate to think what kind of energy the demons use to power their electronics here. Probably souls or anguish or something.
After setting the lamp back in its place, I switch it on. Apollyon recoils, tucking his head behind his huge azure tree trunk of a tail. “You’re not supposed to look at me,” he seethes. “Not like this.”
But I’m too overwhelmed and delighted to respond, because I’m looking at an actual fucking dragon. And he’s gorgeous. Blue iridescent scales, a lithe body, translucent spikes like wedges of sharpened ice along his spine. He’s not terrifying at all, even though I know he could evaporate me with that super-heated breath of his.
“Why come here?” I ask, pacing toward him. “And how did you even get in? Rath locked me in here, and locked everyone else out.”
“Ioutrankhim,” snarls Apollyon, peering over his tail with malevolent blue eyes. He has a double set of curving blue horns, rooted among the flat azure scales that cover his sleek dragon’s head. “He can’t keep me out if I want to get in.”
“But why come to me?” I sidle nearer, fingers outstretched, inches from those beautiful scales.
“Because you’re human,” he mutters.
I withdraw my hand. “So what? You have your own pet humans, right? Why not hang out with one of them?”
His head lifts, snaking upward, borne higher and higher by the sinuous column of his scale-plated neck. “You reek of jealousy, darling.”
“Not at all.” Suddenly I wish I’d kept the knife in my hand. I have the strongest urge to stab him, not because I’m scared, but because I’minfuriated. “I don’t care if you’re bedding a hundred humans. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I do bed humans, and demons, whenever I like.” His long jaws move with the words, mesmerizing me. “But the human I keep is my employee, not my lover. He is a musician, a very gifted one. I discovered him, and when I found out he was slated for an early death, I petitioned to have him brought here, as Hell’s chief composer. His life was spared, and Hell gained an unparalleled talent. He lives in a suite next to mine.”
“So you’re his sponsor.”
“Yes.” Apollyon blinks reptilian lids.
“And Ishtar—what did she want with him?”
“What do you think?” Apollyon’s dragonesque mouth stretches into something like a smile. “He’s a good-looking human, with talents other than music.”
“Oh. Gross.” I hope to god it’s a consensual relationship between Ishtar and this human composer, but I’m too scared to ask.
