and amazed. There are tables, displays, some full-on professional booths. Demons are hanging out on bar stools, in meeting spaces, laughing and talking and trading cards. It’s a sea of horns, tails, and even a few sets of wings. Every color of skin imaginable is represented. Doug isn’t even that cool in here. If I thought it was actually a makeup special effects conference, I’d barely bat an eye at him compared to the woman with her blue hair piled on top of her head to reveal three distinct faces. She turns in front of us, the face on the side of her head raising an eyebrow at me, and the face on the other side of her head winking.
“Let’s walk. I’ll look for anyone I know.” Doug strides confidently forward, and I stay close, though it’s hard with how much I’m staring. Rhys would kill to be here. We should have brought him. All this in-person research! I’m giving myself whiplash trying to take it all in.
“Can I read your palm, love?” A woman at a booth holds out both hands. She looks normal, except for the third eye in the center of her forehead. Other than that, she’s wearing a nice pin-striped suit with a jewel-green blouse on. I lift my hand.
Doug takes it and pushes it firmly back down. “Don’t want to do that. She’ll suck five years from your life.” The woman scowls, flipping him off. But as she puts her hands back down, I notice they’re covered in octopus-like suction cups. Which reminds me of someone else who seriously sucked.
“Any incubus or succubus demons here?” Not that it would matter if there were. I couldn’t exactly ask them for details on how Leo came back long enough to return my powers without admitting that I killed his mom—a succubus—and prevented his incubus father from coming back to earth. I doubt any relatives would be fans of mine.
“They’re quite rare, yeah? Heavily hunted in the last few centuries. Endangered species.”
“Well, that makes me feel great.”
Doug sniffles. “I can tell.”
There’s a booth ahead of us covered by a thick velvet curtain. A man—human—stumbles out with a dazed expression. He blinks several times, then catches us staring and blushes deep red, hurrying in the other direction.
“What’s in there?” I reach for the curtain.
“I wouldn’t.” Doug gestures for me to follow. We duck behind the booth and see a grublike creature getting plumper as we watch. It’s as big as my thigh, and the impulse to step on it is almost overwhelming. Except then I’d have it all over my boots, and I really like these boots. Also, I’m trying really hard not to have violent impulses in here, just in case the door guardians can come inside.
It’s … harder than I want it to be. None of these demons are hurting me—or at least actively hurting me, because sucker-hands definitely didn’t have my best interests at heart—but I can feel something building in me the longer I’m in here. My hands crave a weapon. It’s not that I’m nervous or worried. I’m ready. Eager, even. And that is enough to make me nervous and worried.
“Feeds on lust,” Doug says about the maggoty thing. “Go in that booth and it’ll project whatever will trigger the most lust in you. I mean, if you want to find out …”
“No. Nope. Super nope. All the nope in the whole world.” I don’t even want to imagine what I would see in that curtain. And I definitely don’t want to imagine whatever I see and feel making this horrid, bristle-covered grub fat and happy.
I know the only person I’ve ever truly lusted after. The idea that I might see Leo makes me feel sick inside for any number of reasons. I want to see Leo again, but not like this.
“Most of them work in the high-end gentlemen’s clubs. This one is probably young, using the convention as an audition.” Doug leads me back out to the floor. Then he brightens and shouts. “Jason! Jason!” He waves to a demon with the same coloring. They cross the floor and grab each other’s necks, pressing their foreheads together so their horns touch.
“Doug! We thought you were dead!”
“May as well have been. How are you? How’s Janet?”
“Fantastic! We had a litter!”
“No! How many?”
“Twelve! Eleven boys and one girl. Here, I have photos.” The other demon pulls out his phone and swipes through twelve identical photos of neon-yellow babies carefully swaddled and staring solemnly at the