Page 58 of Interior Design for Demons
Naamah is still staring at my bloodied arms. Her tongue glides across her lips. Deftly she plucks a shard of glass from my forearm—and then she licks the blood off it. Her eyes roll back. “Sweet Lucifer,” she murmurs. “You’re delicious.”
The way she says it reminds me of Apollyon tasting a drop of my blood, teasing me about how dragons like to eat girls. Except Naamah’s eyes are turning purple from corner to corner, striated with wiggly white lines, and her teeth are growing longer and sharper. She grips my arm, digging a thumb-claw into the cut where she extracted the glass, prying the flesh apart. Then, with her other hand, she wedges a small chunk of flesh from my arm and pops it into her mouth.
I scream, a high-pitched note of pure terror.
And Apollyon appears, smashing into a wall in his haste. “Hell’s fire, Grace, what is happening?”
He takes in the scene in a split-second. Then his blue talons are out, wrapped around Naamah’s throat, a delicate threat. “Naamah, love, why are you eating the pretty contestant?”
“She tastes so good,” growls Naamah, struggling against his hold.
“I know, precious. She really does. But Ishtar will be very displeased if you start munching on contestants. Remember how hard Rath had to work to get you that tour guide gig? You promised you could control yourself, darling. Go and find prey elsewhere, there’s a sweetheart.”
He lets Naamah go, and she quivers, battling her urges before racing away along the corridor.
“What is she?” I gasp.
“A glutton demon,” he says. “She is devolving, and consuming a little human flesh from time to time helps her remain stable. But with her tendency toward gluttony, her new affinity for human meat can be difficult to control.”
“Oh my god,” I say, and Apollyon flinches at the word. “Sorry—but you said you were experimenting with a cure you got from Naamah. Are you—are you a cannibal?”
“It’s only cannibalism if you’re eating those of the same species as you,” he says primly. “And no, dove, I don’t consume human flesh. The Apollyon before me did, in his dragon form. And I don’t mind savoring a little sweet human blood if it presents itself. But I don’t devour your kind inthatway.” He smirks. “No, Naamah suggested a different remedy, one better suited to my proclivities. But we won’t discuss that now. I need to heal this before you pass out.”
He plucks all the glass from my arms with inhuman speed and presses his palms to the wounds. Moments later, my skin is smooth and unmarred—except for a tiny dent where Naamah took my flesh—and I feel not a flicker of pain.
“You have to stop taking my pain into yourself,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“Because it hurts me to know that you’re hurting.”
His mouth opens, surprise and anguished tenderness flowing across his features. Then he lays his hand along my bruised face, and the ache eases there as well. I’m pretty sure I feel a cracked tooth repairing itself, too.
“Rath did this to you,” he says, and for a second his eyes flick from blue to red.
I pinch my lips together and nod. “I told him the truth, that I’m not his. That I lied to him.”
Apollyon pulls my head to his chest, and for one beautiful second his heart thumps against my ear. Then he steps back quickly, whispering. “I’m sorry—there could be cameras.”
“It’s okay.” But it’s not, because I want so desperately to close the gap, the channel of electric air thrumming between us.
“I saw what you did in the atrium, with Rath,” Apollyon says, and I tense, scanning his face for anger, jealousy, and violence. But he only looks a little sad. “I wondered if you wanted both of us. I even envisioned joining you and Rath in bed—” he chuckles. “A disastrous scenario. But now I know you were only teasing, toying with us. Rath took it too seriously, so you had to let him go. I won’t make the same mistake he did, never fear. Romantic loyalty is not in my nature.”
I’m about to protest when I notice the intensity of his stare, the slight nod of his head. This whole speech of his is a ruse, part of our cover story. The judges apparently don’t mind me and the other contestants messing around between design rounds, as long as we don’t develop genuine, mutual feelings with a demon. At least that’s what I’m guessing. Around here, the rules seem to change with Ishtar’s every whim.
“I once told Rath it would be impossible for me to love a demon,” I say. “I don’t suppose that will ever change.” But I smile at Apollyon, ever so slightly, and his eyes flare wide.
“I have to go,” he says. “Tonight—party—I’ll be there—I mean, I will see you—I—goodbye.”
He vanishes in a rush of scarlet and blue.
I actually made him all hot and flustered. And despite my grief over Linnea, it was fun.
When Slate and Rusala pierce me, the pain feels like penance. It’s satisfying, soothing, like I’m paying for my survival. I can’t stop thinking about Linnea, about the careful grace of her, about the controlled and beautiful style of her rooms. What right do these demons have to take my world’s best designers and use them and kill them, just for the amusement and benefit of Hell? What right do I have to be alive when Linnea, one of my first friends in the competition, is dead?
“What is ‘drawn and quartered’?” I ask Slate as she pierces my left eyebrow—not because I really want to know, but because somehow I owe it to Linnea. She took a death that could have been mine.
“It’s quite fun,” she says eagerly. “Usually the person is dragged by a horse to the place of execution, but of course they couldn’t do that bit onstage. We hang the victim until they’re almost dead, then chain them to something and disembowel them while they’re still alive. We usually cut off the privates too. And then they’re beheaded, and their body torn into four chunks, or quarters.”
