Page 37 of Demon Apathy: Sunderverse
“Are you not?” He inclined his head to one side as if to better hear her answer, which happened to be a curt huff.
It seemed shewasnothing more than his assistant, and she didn’t like that. Did she want to be more? I sensed a loaded past between them, and I couldn’t help the spark of jealousy that flared again in my chest. No one in their right mind would pick me over Khargon, would they? I watched her from the corner of my eye, wondering if she was another human who played the sum-zero game of helping Drevan—a deal in which working for hell dwellers didn’t result in a sentence to an eternity of torture in the underworld. Was she a Skew or a Stale? Or was she something else?
Lunar got up from the couch, looking irritated. “Well, are you going to tell me what happened? Where is Solar?” She wrung her hands in front of her, worry clearly eating at her.
“Not sure,” Drevan said. “But he’s properly scared. He thinks some guy named Richie took you.”
Lunar’s blue eyes flashed. “Who’s that?”
“No idea,” he said, but I had a feeling he knew who this Richie character was.
Questions were starting to pop inside my mind about Lunar’s involvement in this when her next statement pretty much told me what I needed to know.
“Is he saved?” Her expression was beseeching.
Oh, so she knew what was at stake, and she was one of the people enlisted to help in the redemption of Solar Blue Hudson. Interesting.
Khargon sputtered a laugh. “It hasn’t even been a full day, darling. Don’t be ridiculous!”
Lunar’s lower lip quivered, and I was afraid she would start crying. Instead, she plopped back down on the sofa, hugging her elbows.
“You don’t have to be such a mean girl about it,” Lunar complained. “I don’t know how any of this works, and you two aren’t very forthcoming about the details.”
The poor girl!I knew well what she was going through. I could imagine Drevan appearing out of nowhere, explaining that her brother could potentially cause the destruction of the human race, and urging her to help. It had to be the mind job of the century, quite the load of crap to believe. I wondered how they’d convinced her? Drevan had possessed me and made me his little marionette for several days before I decided he was telling the truth. Had he shown her something only a prince of Hell could? Or maybe she was just gullible. She’d probably grown up with her head in the clouds, anyway.
“Trust me,” Khargon said, “the less you know, the better.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, making me suspect she was, indeed, used to having a host of fluffy clouds around her pretty blond head.
Drevan smiled approvingly. He liked the idea of not having to explain himself—not that he would if she were demanding answers instead. He could be insufferable.
“What next, then? Is there anything else I need to do?” she asked.
Drevan shook his head. “Not at the moment.”
Heaving a sigh, Lunar stood and grabbed her purse from the coffee table in front of her. “I’ll be heading home then.”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Khargon shook a stiff finger at her. “You’re not going anywhere. You're kidnapped, remember?”
Lunar’s mouth opened and closed several times before she said, “You can’t keep me here.”
She made it sound as if she was in a filthy dungeon and not sitting in the lap of luxury. They had brought her to a penthouse at the Plaza Hotel, for Pete’s sake.
And besides, what was her plan? Go shopping at Tiffany’s? By now, her kidnapping was likely all over the news. If anyone spotted her prancing around the city, Solar would decide there was nothing else to worry about, and whatever plan Drevan had concocted would fall apart.
“I got things to do,” she complained. “I’m in the middle of a busy semester.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you agreed to help, don’t you think?” Khargon observed, her voice a brand of sarcasm that had to be patented. Something told me this person was not someone you messed with.
Lunar sank down on the couch again. Pouting, she proceeded to pull out a cell phone from her purse. She started to unlock it, but before she managed, the device disappeared.
“What the…?!” she shrieked. “God, I hate it when you guys do stuff like that.”
You guys? So Khargon had powers too? That could mean she was a Skew, but what kind? A witch?
“If you’re going to lock me up here, I can’t be without my phone,” Lunar whined.
Honestly, she didn’t seem too bright.
