The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,195

other night hadn't been a "one-time thing."

And, since no one summoned me or yelled that there was a problem, I decided this meant this whole thing was a success. The simple fact that they were letting me shower for this long meant it was actually over, with no new crisis blowing up. Then, when I stepped out of the shower, I found a pair of fuzzy pants and one of those new T-shirts Sam had bought folded on the counter where I couldn't miss it.

I hadn't heard anyone come in, though. There wasn't a guy - or a group of them - waiting in the bedroom for me. There wasn't another task waiting for me to hurry up and get to it. There was just this, the one little sign that Luke had come in to take care of me, and then he'd given me my space. It was sweet - in a Luke sort of way.

I got dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to find everyone in the living room. The moment I walked in, Sam caught me around the waist and pulled me onto the couch with him. Bel threw the blanket over the both of us, and someone had already put a pillow in just the right place so we could spoon together but still watch the TV. Because that seemed to be the focus of everyone's attention. Glancing at it, I saw why.

Across the bottom was a scrolling banner proclaiming breaking news. In the corner, it said this was on CNN. National news, not just the local stuff. And smack in the middle of the screen was my ex-boyfriend. He looked horrible, like he hadn't bathed in a week, and his clothes didn't fit him anymore. Granted, so did everybody behind him.

"Can you turn it up?" I asked.

Bel grabbed the remote and did. Aaron's voice spilled from the speakers. "The entire fraternity was just a front for a human trafficking organization. Their goal was to claim as many people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five as they could. I heard a guy named Gabriel say that they were shipping us across the country after we were trained."

"What do you mean, 'trained?'" The reporter asked.

Aaron swallowed nervously. "They wanted us to do whatever they said. If we talked back, asked any questions, or did pretty much anything, they'd lock us in a room or chain us up, or even beat us. It was like they had their system all figured out. First, they picked us up and threw us in a warehouse, and just when we were sure we were going to die, they'd move us to the next stage."

The reporter pulled her microphone back to ask, "And what about the church?"

Aaron didn't falter. "That was how they found the most vulnerable ones," he explained. "It wasn't a church. It was a cult! The entire thing was founded on convincing people that if they believed strongly enough, and followed all the rules, they would be shown real angels. Not statues, but real-life angels. And they were so convincing that I started to doubt myself. I started to think that maybe it was possible."

Turning to face the camera, the reporter made some comment about the atrocities of this entire situation and how it appeared to have spread further than anyone could've imagined. Then, the image shifted to share a screen with a group of news anchors sitting behind a desk. They asked a few more questions about the survivors who'd been found and if they'd all been identified, but it sounded like they hadn't. The police were still trying to put names to missing person reports, and that was going to take a few more days. Unfortunately, there were more survivors in that building than there had been official reports filed for people missing.

Grabbing the remote again, Bel muted it. "That's all they’ve been saying since we got back," he told me.

"Looks like Aaron's playing his part pretty well," I pointed out.

At my back, Sam chuckled. "I'm pretty sure Uriel put a little compulsion on him."

Nick just shook his head. "When he dropped him off at the warehouse, Uriel said he didn't have to. He said Aaron was so ready to get his revenge on the angels that all Uriel did was build the image of his supposed capture strong enough that Aaron would be able to answer repeated questions about it without contradicting himself." Slowly, Nick turned to look at me. "But most importantly, he told me