thrown me from Hell. The greatest risk I faced at the moment was the humans turning on me, or not being able to feed before I turned on them.
I slunk over to the small couch at the end of the room, testing its give cautiously. Afraid of a couch now, are we? I laughed at myself and bounced onto its cushions, purring as I slid down on my back. Company would’ve been nice, but being clean, free, and having my first taste of flavors not colored by the agony of Hell since the Rising? It was enough.
For now.
And they couldn’t leave me in here indefinitely… right?
Sometime in the night, it occurred to me that I should’ve lied and said I needed human food too. I watched the color of the sky change through the high window, and no one came. So I took to reading to pass the time, trying to ignore the infernal ticking of the clock on the wall as it told me that minute by minute, hour by hour, I was abandoned.
In a priest’s dowdy little office.
By morning, I’d pulled the batteries out of the clock and taken a pen to the good book.
Click.
I stiffened in the chair behind the desk, my legs stretched across the wood. My eyes darted to the door, wondering if I’d imagined the sound. And then the knob turned, the door parted, and I found mismatched eyes studying me, before taking in the minor chaos I’d caused in the room.
I’d discarded the bra Kais had gifted me—they were obviously Hell’s design—and thrown it to catch on the corner of the frame of White Jesus, my sole companion of the hours. The clock was dismantled into pieces on the floor—I was fairly certain I could put it back together—and I’d knocked a cup of pencils and pens to the floor when I’d taken my position at the desk.
One of the pens was clamped between my teeth as I gazed widely back at Zach, whose cheeks were red with anger or embarrassment. I couldn’t quite taste from here.
“Are you...are you writing in the Bible?” Zach asked.
Ah. Anger.
“Just annotating a little. There’s an awful lot of errors. By the way, have you realized that you have your Lord and Savior’s birthday wrong?” I asked, tsk’ing at Zach. “Think of how He must feel.”
Zach didn’t quite rise to the bait, but he stepped into the room, leaning back against the door. “Liberties might’ve been taken with specifics, but the teachings of Christ remain essential,” he said, which sounded a little rehearsed. I opened my mouth to parry and Zach snapped, “Don’t bring up Leviticus. Everyone always thinks they’re gonna crack Christianity wide open with that one.”
I laughed and bit my lip, grinning at Zach. He had something wrapped in white paper tucked under his arm and it smelled...savory from here.
“Is that for me?” I asked, nodding at the package and drawing his eyes up from their accidental fixation with my legs.
“Are those scars?” he asked, frowning at my ankles.
I twisted and tucked my legs under the desk, sitting up and remaining silent.
“Kais said not all of your injuries looked recent enough to be from...how do you get here from Hell?” he asked, looking a little horrified by the question.
“It’s not up or down,” I said, shrugging. “Just…” I reached out to my left, tentatively brushing at the fabric of here and there and then shook my fingers out. I didn’t want to put so much as a hair back in that place. “Gimme.”
Zach glanced down at his offering and frowned. “I know you said you don’t need to eat like us, but I couldn’t really wrap my brain around that so…”
He trailed off, and finally abandoned his post at the door, moving to the desk. I jumped up, climbing onto the top and letting my legs dangle off in front of me. Zach only came as close as he had to, stretching his arm out in front of him until I could steal the paper wrapped food from him. I tore it open eagerly, sucking down a deep breath of something fatty and salty, as well as Zach’s delicious threads of curiosity.
“You are hungry?” he asked, frowning at the way I unwrapped the gift impatiently.
“Not for this,” I said, grinning at Zach, catching a drop of grease from the paper and sucking it off my thumb as I held his eyes, wondering if we were both thinking of the time I’d edged him in his dream,