me, she was actually pretty cool to talk to.
All in all, demons? Ten out of ten, would recommend as friends and karaoke partners.
“Kastros!” Adam tugs on the giant’s arm as soon as we enter the foyer of my house. I tug my coat off just as Kastros kneels down and takes off Adam’s. “Kastros!” he whines again. “I want to show you my new Lego set.”
“Go,” I tell Kastros with an encouraging smile. “It’ll make his day.”
Never in a billion, gazillion years did I believe that a badass, scary demon would develop a bond with my little brother. Correction, five badass, scary demons. But there’s no denying that all five of them have chiseled their way into Adam’s heart, and he into theirs. It makes my own heart swell until it’s practically bursting.
All of my guys, getting along—
Not my guys.
Frowning at the whirlwind my thoughts have become, I gesture towards the staircase and Adam’s playroom.
“Go,” I say again, giving Kastros’s broad back a tiny shove. The vengeance demon smirks at me, his dark eyes ensnaring my own, before he plants a tender, almost reverent kiss on my forehead. The heat from his lips seeps into my skin, lighting my veins on fire. I shudder before I can contain the entirely instinctive reaction.
Because a hot demon kissing you, even if it’s a chaste one to the noggin? You tremble and get goosebumps. And butterflies. And—
“Kastros!” Adam gives the demon’s hand an encouraging tug, and with another backwards glance at me, Kastros follows my little brother upstairs.
I watch them go with a pang in my chest. It’s not a painful one by any means; it’s more of a…confused pang. In a matter of minutes, there are dozens of emotions accumulating in me like a twenty-car pile-up. But this is one accident I’m not sure I’ll escape from unscathed. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I want to, and that, more than anything, confuses the shit out of me.
I’m gonna have to analyze my feelings for these demons in extensive detail later today. At first, I would’ve easily been able to say I felt nothing but resentment towards them and a healthy dose of fear. But as time went on, that resentment transitioned into lust, still tangled with the terror from before. And now? I don’t even know what to think; my brain is a toxic cocktail of feelings and emotions, each one more damning than the last. Ha. Damning. That was a totally unintentional pun.
Lost in thought, I don’t even notice that there’s someone already in the kitchen—or two someones—until I start a pot of coffee. Apparently, demons don’t drink coffee. Who knew? No wonder they’re from Hell. That’s completely and utterly unnatural.
“Katrina!” My dad’s strident voice causes me to jump five feet in the air, the mug I’d grabbed from the cupboard shattering on the tiled floor.
“Shit,” I murmur before I can rein in the curse word.
“Watch your language,” Mom reprimands as she strides forward.
Despite it only being around six, maybe seven, on a Saturday morning, both of my parents are dressed to the nines in matching, sleek suits. My mother’s is black—like her soul—while my father’s is a dusky gray. And then there’s me…in a pair of boxers I borrowed from Akor (who’s the smallest demon) and one of Raz’s baggy T-shirts. I didn’t even bother to brush my hair when I woke up this morning, desperate to beat my parents home from their “overnight” business trip. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m putting overnight in quotation marks. They no doubt did spend the night at some fancy-ass resort. I’m just not sure if they needed to.
“What do you want?” I’m suddenly tired. The type of bone-deep weariness that comes from carrying around a leaden heart.
“What do we want?” My dad releases a half-deranged, half-manic laugh, throwing his head back and smacking his knee. “What we want is to know where the fuck you were this morning.”
“At a friend’s,” I respond, just as the coffee machine beeps to indicate it has finished brewing. Stepping over the shattered remains of the first mug I dropped, I step onto my tiptoes and pull down a new one. Ignoring the eyes I can feel on my spine, peeling away layers of skin until the sinewy muscles and blood are revealed, I pour myself a generous amount of coffee.
“At a friend’s,” my mother repeats at last, disbelief evident in her tone. “You can lie better than that, Katrina.”
“But I’m not lying.” I spin around