Page 39 of Speak No Evil

Only must.

Mate is limp in the mirror. Blood everywhere. Don’t like this.

DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL!

But must wait.

For what?

DON’T KNOW!

ONLY WAIT!

Mate.

I touch her head. It falls backward. All her wounds show in the mirror.

Wounds I made.

Why?

Don’t know.

DON’T KNOW!

“MATE!”

Please come back to me.

I roar and pull her body close.

She smells strange. Like herself but not.

I scent her again. I’ve never smelled something like this.

It’s new.

And so is she.

JADE

The first breathafter you die is a real bitch. Trust me on that.

My lungs burn and ache as they fill. But they do fill, so that’s something.

A loud humming—no, the purr of an engine rattles behind me, and I open my eyes to see why the hell there’s a Mack truck in Vrahs’s office.

But what greets my gaze makes absolutely no sense.

There’s no truck. Just Vrahs’s velvety red chest vibrating with resonance so deep, I mistook it for a diesel engine.

Purring.

And that makes me wonder.

Are cats actually demons?

Next to him, where Thorne and Ryker sat on the floor, are two demons I haven’t met. One with shimmering golden skin and horns like longhorn cattle.

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