Page 59 of Sweet Violence
"But High Heel Pavement strikes the right balance between pretty and badass. And it's classy. I wear it a lot because I, too, am pretty, badass, and classy."
"You've stood in dog shit."
"Still classy, and you can't convince me otherwise," I said, narrowing my eyes and pointing a finger at him. But I did stop on a clear patch of grass to clean my boot. Damn dogs; I bet this was Taj's doing somehow.
"So, what's—"
"Please, devil, spare me from further questions," he said under his breath, his purple face dull with exasperation.
"Your name?" I finished pointedly. "Perfectly innocent question, Mr. Guard."
"If I tell you, will you swear to never call me Mr. Guard again?" he asked, batting aside a bloodthirsty mosquito.1
"That depends," I replied, tipping my face up as the sun came out from a cloud, the heat it bathed me in pleasant unlike the burning rays from my last adventure. And there wasn't a single grain of sand in sight. Bliss. "Does Mr. Guard annoy you to no end?"
"Yes," he growled.
"Then no, I do not swear. But I'll probably call you itless," I compromised.
He muttered, inaudible. He was a massive, hulking presence beside me, all brooding and pissed off.2
"Fine," Mr Guard huffed eventually, casting a look skyward for intervention. "My name is Gunn."
"Gun?" I asked, trying to smother a smile.
"With two N's," he growled.
"Ahhhhhh." I nodded sagely. "Gunn. Two Ns. I see. It alters the pronunciationso much."
"I'm sensing sarcasm," he said flatly.
I patted his bulging, purple arm, flashing a grin. "Good instinct!"
"Devil spare me," he sighed, his hand flexing like he wanted to draw his killer bat and use it as a shield between himself and my expert annoyance skills.
"We're going to be thebestof friends, Gunn With Two Ns."
"I would rather die," he replied emphatically.
"That's the spirit."
I began to skip, but stopped at the jangling that came from my backpack. Ah. Yeah.
"What's that sound?" Gunn asked suspiciously, maybe because of my abrupt halt.
"Just a mason jar," I replied honestly.
Just a mason jar with a piece of the devil's soul inside it, in case I ever plucked up the nerve to use it.3
He hadn't actually told me how to take it into myself, but I'd figure it out.
Wait, why was I actually considering this?
"You've gone quiet," Gunn said as trees began to speckle the field we stomped through, leading to a dark line at the bottom of the slight decline—the dark, scary forest I'd been so looking forward to.
The training house was on the other side of it, surrounded by high stone walls, but the forest went on for miles. It would be a long time before we glimpsed the walls.
"Yeah," I replied, jamming my hands in my pockets. "Just thinking about something unpleasant. I have an interesting decision to make. Let's just say it'll affect the rest of my life. And if Idon'tmake the hard choice, the rest of my life might be very, very short. Like, a few days short."
