the room canted to the right. I floated, happy, giggling.
“Eyes on me,” Lucifer said, and turned my face toward him with a hand under my chin.
I frowned at him. “You look weird.” I waved in the general direction of his head.
“Is it the lack of horns?” The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “It tends to confuse people.”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s your hair. Why are you blond?”
He laughed, and I laughed with him. Giddy, I felt so giddy.
“How did you come to be here in Hell?” he asked.
“Well, I came through a hellgate, duh.”
“Right. But why?”
“’Cause Earth and Hell are different dimensions,” I said slowly, as if explaining it to a child. Leaning in, I added in a whisper, “I thought you knew that.”
Chuckles all around me, and I smiled and turned to see who was laughing, only to inexplicably lose my balance and keel over. I couldn’t feel my legs. Oh, God, where did my legs go? I patted down my body and rifled through the folds of my dress until my hands touched my legs. Oh, thank fuck, they’re still attached to me.
Lucifer grabbed my elbow, pulled me up and made me sit on his lap. The room spun, but I didn’t mind. The butterflies in my stomach said it was okay.
“Are you really Azazel’s pet?” Lucifer’s question drew my attention to him again.
“Pet peeve,” I corrected with a raised finger. I frowned at that finger. “Have you ever noticed how strange fingers are?”
I bent it, straightened it again, fascinated by the motion. Grinning, I used that finger to boop Lucifer on his masterpiece of a nose.
Someone made a strangled sound.
Oh, no. I tensed, half-turned and yelled, “Quick, someone’s choking! We need a Heimlich maneuver!”
I was about to get off Lucifer’s lap to help, but he held me fast with his hands on my waist.
“Why would Azazel be peeved by you?”
I turned back to him. “’Cause he didn’t want any of this to begin with.”
“Ah.” He stroked my cheek. His eyes were blue, I noticed. Turquoise blue, like the ocean in those places with white sand beaches. “And what is ‘this?’ Tell me, Zoe, what’s the deal you made with him?”
“Well,” I began, biting my lip, “it’s equal parts funny and embarrassing.”
“That’s all right.” His smile was reassuring. “We’re all friends here.”
“Okay.” I grinned and rubbed my nose. “So, when I was thirteen, my best friend and I were a bit romantically challenged, you know, and, like, totally scared of ending up alone. I mean, I’d never even had a boyfriend at that time, and the way my face was breaking out, I wasn’t sure that would ever change. There’s a reason there are no photos of me left over from that time.” I gave him a significant look.
He nodded, his eyes twinkling, like the sun sparkling on ocean waves. Chin on his hand, a faint smile on his face, he regarded me with such utter attention that warmth bubbled through my veins. “Do go on.”
“Anywho, so Taylor and I got this wild idea to make sure we would be spared the horrible fate of staying single—” I rolled my eyes “—and we decided to hold a séance-summoning thingy with this old book that was mostly gibberish that I found in our attic. We didn’t expect anything to happen, really, but it actually worked! Well, for me, at least. Tay chickened out and ran because the lights flickered, but I was in the middle of what turned out to be a demon summoning, and…it’s bit blurry from there, but the gist of it is that I ended up in this deal with Azazel where he’d have to marry me if I’m still single at twenty-five, which just happened recently, and so now I’m here.”
I waved my arm to indicate the whole of Hell, and almost toppled over. Lucifer caught me before I slid off his lap. He was really good at that! Demons around us chuckled. I giggled.
Something stung in my chest, and I gasped and rubbed a hand over my breastbone. An echo of a dark, hot feeling pinged inside me, and I frowned, poked at my chest. That wasn’t my feeling. I was feeling great! The world was far too sparkly to feel anything but happy. How weird.
“So Azazel is married?” Lucifer drawled.
“Yep.”
Snickers rose around us.
“To a human who tricked him? When she was a child?”
The snickers turned to outright laughter.
“Well, I wouldn’t say tricked.” I squinted. “I mean, I didn’t even know what