Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

“A substitute—”

“Give it a rest, Dala,” I snap. “He’s not going to accept a substitute. Not now. He’s seen me call lightning . . . speaking of which, has anyone in the family been able to Earth-walk?”

The three ghosts look at each other and shake their heads.

“Your great-grand-uncle Yak could fly,” Rupa says slowly.

I frown at her. “I’ve never heard of Uncle Yak before.”

Rupa grimaces and Dala rubs her forehead. “We don’t speak of him.”

“You don’t speak of him,” the Billigoat snorts.

I toss my cargo pants into the hamper after my socks. “Do I want to know?”

“He got his nick-name because of his affection for livestock—” Rupa begins.

“Please!” I hold up my hands. “This is the last thing I want to hear right now. I have a demon in my dining room who is eating the warlock he just killed. A demon who is going to demand that I lick him clean after he’s done. And you’re telling me about a family propensity for farm animals—”

“Yaks are only semi-domesticated,” the Billigoat says.

“I don’t care!” I shout at him. “I don’t want to know about my great-grand-uncle having sex with yaks!”

The Billigoat takes a drag on his cigarette. “Thought it might make you feel better.”

“To know that a member of my family sexually assaulted yaks?!”

“To know that there are worse things than lying with demons.” With another long drag on his cigarette, the Billigoat rolls up like a window shade.

I ball up my shirt and throw it at the space where he was sitting. “I hate it when you do that! Why can’t you just disappear like normal ghosts?!”

“Beti—”

I put my hands over my face. “Dala, please go. I just – I can’t – I’m going to take a shower.” My mind shies away from what I’m going to do afterwards. “Please, don’t come back tonight. And don’t watch.”

“No, beti.”

I feel the ice-cold brush of her fingers on my bare shoulder. Then my bedroom’s empty.

Wearily, I make my way into the bathroom, turn on the shower and stand under the hottest water I can endure, wishing it could burn tonight out of my mind.

Chapter 20

I’m still awake when the demon comes upstairs. It’s after midnight. My eyes are burning with fatigue. But I can’t seem to close them. Images of the demon tearing off pieces of Justinian and gulping them down the way he gulped down the beer play behind my eyelids every time I try.

I lie and stare at the ceiling and listen to the demon moving around in the bathroom. I hear him brushing his teeth and try very hard not to think about what he’s brushing off. With my toothbrush. Ick. When the shower goes on, relief floods through me. He wasn’t serious about having me lick him clean.

I roll to my side, pull the covers up to my chin and have just managed to close my eyes without the internal horrorshow when I hear him pad into the room.

“You’d better not be asleep,” he says.

“I said I’d wait up,” I respond, hearing the thickness of exhaustion in my own voice.

“You got an interesting definition of waitin’ up.” The bed creaks as he sits down on the edge. I hear a crinkle of foil as he picks up the strip of condoms I’ve left out on the bedside table. He snorts. “So what was all this? Payback?”

I roll over and blink at him curiously. “What?”

“For last night.” He tilts his head at the wall separating my bedroom from the guest bedroom. “You checkin’ on when I was coming back so you could time me walkin’ in on the three of you?”

I gape at him, then begin to giggle. The idea of a ménage a trois with Wen and Justinian is ludicrous, and so very, very far from the truth. I giggle, laugh, and finally howl so hard I have to wipe my eyes.

The demon leans on one arm, his huge shoulder muscles knotted and gleaming in the light filtering in through the curtains. His bare chest is dotted with water, striped with dark gashes. One of my guest towels is knotted around his hips. A small smile tilts one corner of his mouth as he watches me.

When my laughter finally subsides, he says, “So what were they doin’ here?”

I can’t think of anything but the truth. “Trying to help me figure out how to send you back. What do you think?”

He lifts one dark eyebrow. “That’s bold, witchy-poo.”

“You killed a man just for sitting in my dining room and then you ate him. What do I possibly have to lose?”

“Way I remember it, you asked me to eat him.” The demon’s voice drops, darkens. “An’ he had it comin’.”

“Because he was sitting in my dining room,” I say caustically.

The demon slides down onto his elbows. “What exactly was he helpin’ you with? You ask him how to destroy me?”

I shake my head. “I just want you to go. I don’t want to . . . ” I wave a hand vaguely. “Hurt you.”

“That’s real considerate.” The demon props his chin on his thumbs. “Your buddy wasn’t so considerate.”

“He wasn’t my buddy. And I know he did . . . bad things,” I trail off lamely. I don’t know exactly what Justinian did. He boasted on his website of ‘taming’ demonic energies. His partner Denys LeConie claimed to be able to speak Dan-enochian, the language of demons, which is about as Left Path as it gets. And probably isn’t a skill any demon taught him willingly. But I don’t know anything more specific than that. Certainly nothing that should have gotten Justinian killed on sight.

The demon rubs his chin over his thumbs. “Lemme ask you somethin’. You think that just because something don’t have a soul it’s okay to torture it? Stick it in a circle and kill it by slow degrees? You think that’s okay?”

I shake my head wordlessly.

“Demons live on energy. Did you know that? Yeah, I eat, but only because I like how food tastes. I don’t need it. Not like I need the energy of