Page 4 of Not Today, Satan
Until today. The day he killed his foster dad.
Police found him standing over the body, clutching the murder weapon. When he didn’t respond to their pleas to drop the gun, they shot him. He died before he made it to the hospital.
I study Nathan Reynolds from behind the folder. It’s hard to believe that those eyes that crinkle when he smiles conceal the mind of a murderer. But I know better.
My home is proof that humans are capable of awful things. Especially those you least suspect. It’s why the line in front of me never ends. Humans don’t know how to be good.
“Well?” he asks, hope blooming across his features like a fire rose bursting through the dirt in Father’s garden.
“Yup, you definitely belong here,” I say, sliding an icy tone beneath my words. “You’re a murderer.”
“That’s not what happened.” He leans forward and I force myself to maintain his gaze, despite every instinct to look away. “I was framed.”
“Look,” I say. “I have nothing to do with this. Pleading with me won’t help. I check you in, and off you go. You’ve already been judged, and it seems you were judged correctly.” I toss a jumpsuit onto the desk. “Here are your new clothes. You’ll be in Lot Thirteen, with the othermurderers.”
His fingers curl around my wrist, and I gasp at the contact. I took his arm earlier, but shadelings aren’t ever supposed to touchme. Not that it’s usually a problem. Most of them are too scared to try.
“Let go of me,” I growl.
“Sorry.” He drops my wrist and wrings his fingers. “I didn’t mean to do that. I hope I didn’t hurt you. I… Please, you need to help me. I don’t belong here.”
“Is there a problem?” Neither of us noticed Nefas approach, and we both jump at his appearance at my desk.
All color drains from Nathan Reynolds’s face, and I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
“No problem, Nefas. Mr. Reynolds here was about to get on your boat to Lot Thirteen. You should help him find his way.”
I watch as Nefas escorts Nathan Reynolds toward the river that leads out of Dominus, the capital, and into the cities of sin, and the human gives me one last pleading glance over his shoulder.
An ache blooms in my chest.
Lot Thirteen is a horrid place. One of the worst. Joke Boy’s not going to do well there.
Not that I care. He deserves what he gets.
They all do.
II.
I clear my throat and swallow the lump building within it.
“You okay, Princess?” The deep voice makes me start, and I shove Nathan Reynolds’s photo into the pocket of my black dress, both so that my shaking hand is hidden from view and so that I no longer have to look at those treacherous ocean eyes pleading with me.
Ferus smirks at me from his desk two down from mine, and my stomach lurches. Unlike most of the other demons running the check-in line, he chooses not to camouflage himself as human. He enjoys the fear his true form ignites in the sinners.
His sharp teeth are so white that I expect they’d glow if we blew out all the torches. Their brightness is matched only by neon-orange hair that appears as though it could spark any second. His skin is crimson as blood, and he’s muscular to the point that his veins press out of his flesh in jagged lines.
It’s not his looks that unsettle me, though. It’s what lies beneath.
Ferus only works here to earn Father’s favor—one more stepping stone in his career—but he thrives on this job. There’s a darkness to him that makes my insides cartwheel. Like all of the elder demons down here, Ferus lived in Paradise before joining Father in the war that led to the Fall. Everyone from my father’s side of the battle was exiled here for eternity as retribution.
Except that Ferus doesn’t see this place as his punishment.
It’s his playground.
“I’m fine,” I say as I close Nathan Reynolds’s file and shove it onto the pile with the others. “Just another shadeling insisting he’s innocent.”
