Текст книги "Every Last Breath"

Автор книги: Jennifer L. Armentrout

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

I stared at him.

His grin spread. “I got up to get something to drink,” he admitted. “And I glanced back at you. I don’t even know why. I just did and then I stopped.” His smile faded a bit. “Maybe I can’t believe that you’re really here. That we’re here.” He raised a shoulder and smooth skin stretched over taut muscles. “And then I sat down and I started thinking about...about everything with the Lilin, and now I’ve been entertaining the idea of gathering you up while you slept and basically kidnapping you.

Hawaii still seems like a good place. Screw whatever happens with the Lilin and all of that. We could survive. I’d make sure of that.”

Reaching down, my fingers curled around the edge of the comforter. “Roth...”

He sighed as he raised a hand, scrubbing his fingers through his messy dark hair. “I know. You can’t walk away from any of this. None of us can.” He dropped his arm. “So that was what I was thinking about while I was staring at you.” Those amber eyes flashed with mischief, and I relaxed. I wasn’t ready for the world outside to intrude. “Did I tell you that you’re beautiful?”

“Yes.” Lifting my hand to the poof that was currently my hair, I laughed as I pressed my cheek against the pillow. “But I don’t know how you could think so. I’m a mess.”

He tipped his head to the side and pivoted around, heading toward the bathroom. After a few seconds, he returned with a hairbrush in hand. With his jeans unbuttoned, they hung indecently low. I could definitely see where Thumper ’s tail was heading.

Not that I hadn’t really seen that earlier.

Cheeks flaming, I pressed my entire face into the pillow, hiding what had to be the goofiest smile known to man. Despite all the craziness we were facing and the uncertainty of what the next hour or tomorrow could drop on us, my little piece of the world felt bright and warm.

What Roth and I had shared, what we had done, was beyond beautiful and wasn’t something I could simplify with words. For it to have been that way between us, we had to be in love with each other—

madly, deeply in love.

I was the corniest cornball in a cornfield full of popcorn.

Roth touched my shoulder. “Sit up.”

“Meh,” I murmured into the pillow.

He chuckled. “Sit up. Please.”

Demons rarely said please. I was beginning to think it was a word not in their core vocabulary, so I sat up, tugging the comforter to my chest. Roth slipped in behind me. One leg was bent against my side, the other dangled off the edge of the bed.

I looked back at him, but before I could speak, he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me. The touch of cool metal against my tongue was all too brief. He pulled away and gently turned my chin so I was facing away from him.

“Let me see what I can do with this,” he said, gathering up my hair. “You’re right. This is a mess.

You look like you could’ve been in an ’80s music video. What did you do to it?”

“I didn’t do anything. That—” I pointed at my head “—is all your doing.”

He started to ease the brush through my hair. “Blame the demon. I see how you are.”

As Roth worked his way through the tangles, it really hit me that the Crown Prince of Hell was actually brushing my hair. That was beyond bizarre but also incredibly sweet. My warm and fuzzy glow from earlier was turning into emotional weepiness. Tears pricked at my eyes.

I needed a mood stabilizer.

Roth was extraordinarily patient when it came to working out the knots, more so than me. At this point, I was usually cussing and yanking the brush through my hair. He hummed under his breath as he worked, and I immediately recognized the tune.

“Is ‘Paradise City’ your favorite song?” I asked.

“The song just kind of got stuck in my head,” he said. “For a couple of years, all we could get down below was the classic rock station, and the ‘grass is green’ line always stuck out to me.”

I grinned as I pictured Hell getting Sirius radio. “Why?”

There was a beat of silence. “The grass is never green down below, Shortie.”

My lips slipped down at the corners. “It’s not? What color is it?”

“Gray,” he answered. “Everything is pretty much gray. Except for the blood. And there’s a lot of blood.”

A shudder worked its way down my spine. “Sounds lovely.”

“It’s a weird place. Like I said before, it mimics topside but does a shitty job at it. Everything is shiny at first, almost...pretty. Every single time I go down there, it’s like that—it’s like that for everyone, but it doesn’t take long for things to start to go downhill. It fades. Buildings crumble, the sky looks like it’s polluted with dirt, and the grass...yeah, it’s gray.” He eased the brush through my hair, stopping at another tangle. “Everything is twisted and tarnished down there. Things are real up here. Down below they are sad replicas that fall apart.”

I remembered when Roth had admitted before that this was one of the reasons he enjoyed coming topside. My heart turned over heavily. “Will...will you have to go back?”

He didn’t answer immediately, causing knots to form in my belly. “I don’t know, Shortie. If the Boss calls me back, I can only disobey for so long.”

Closing my eyes against the ache in my chest, I knew this was something we were going to eventually have to face. “Has the Boss called you back yet?”

“No.” He paused, pressing a kiss against my bare shoulder. “The Boss kind of lets most of us come and go as we please, unless we are needed for something. As long as I stay on the Boss’s good side, I should be good.”

That wasn’t reassuring. “But I thought the Boss was displeased with you.”

“The Boss is always displeased,” he replied. “There’s a big difference between him being displeased and me being on the Boss’s bad side.”

I took that statement to heart, but I couldn’t imagine Roth staying on the Boss’s good side forever.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, returning to my hair. I could feel him separate the now-untangled strands into three sections. “Right now, that’s not the biggest of our problems.”

I snorted. “True. But I can’t help but worry that one day, you’re going to...that you’re going to just disappear.”

“I want you to listen when I say this.” He rested his chin on my shoulder, and when I turned my head toward his, he was peering up at me through thick lashes. “Nothing in this world or down below is going to keep me from you. Nothing, Layla. That’s a promise I will never break.”

A deep, powerful emotion stirred inside me. “I will make you the same promise.”

Those thick lashes swept down, shielding his eyes. “You will?”

“Yes.” And I meant my next words. “I’m not going to let anything keep you from me and that includes your Boss.”

Roth chuckled as he lifted his head, pausing to press a kiss against the side of my neck. “I like it when you get all feisty.” He returned to my hair, moving it back into the three sections. Several moments passed. “When I was in the pits, I really didn’t think I was going to get out of there. I figured the Boss would either not care enough to pull my happy ass out of it or would forget.”

I bit down on my lip as he spoke. Roth had never talked about his time in the pits without being sarcastic about it.

“I honestly have no idea how long I was in there. Time moves differently down below,” he continued, twisting the sections of hair around each other. “It wasn’t pleasant.” A dry laugh cracked out of him. “Actually, it freaking sucked, but you got me through it.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. “How?”

“Easy. I thought about you. You were all I thought about.” His voice was quiet as my heart squeezed painfully. “I focused on the time we spent together, and as crazy as it sounds, I thought about you being topside with Zayne.”

I winced. How was that helpful?

Seconds later he answered my unspoken question. “Knowing that you’d be safe and would eventually be happy made it somewhat more bearable. And I know—I know—that Zayne would’ve laid down his life to protect you. Probably still would. You’d be okay. So knowing that helped when it got...well, when it got hard.”

A lump formed in the back of my throat. “I wish I could take away the time you’ve spent in the pits.”

His knuckles brushed along the center of my back as he continued with the braid he was making.

“You already have.”

The lump tripled. “And I wish you never had to sacrifice yourself.”

“I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I know,” I whispered, closing my eyes again. It took me a moment to find the right words. “You know that I care about Zayne deeply. That’s never going to change. Even though right now he’d probably rather punt-kick me into traffic than talk to me, I’m always going to love him.”

Pausing, I drew in a deep breath. “I told you this before. I love Zayne, but I’m not in love with him, and I don’t know if that would’ve ever changed. Could I have been with him?” I raised a shoulder.

“Yeah, I could’ve been, but it would never be like this—like it is between you and me. I don’t know how long I would’ve stayed happy with Zayne if he and I got together and you never came back. Or if he would’ve remained happy with it himself, but at some point, what I felt for him wouldn’t have been enough. That’s unfair to him. So I’m glad that knowing I had someone helped you get through that, and to be honest, that blows my mind, but I want you to know that it would’ve...it would’ve never been enough for me.”

Roth reached around me, placing his hand above my heart. He flattened his palm, and I lifted my arm, folding my hand over his. His breath was warm against my shoulder when he spoke. “I know.”

Drawing back, he flipped the braid over my shoulder. “All done.”

I reached up and smoothed my fingers over the thick braid. “You’re really good at this. Better than me. Did you practice on your demon friends?”

“Only on all my dolls.”

I laughed as Roth tossed the brush aside. It bounced off the foot of the bed and hit the floor. A second later, Fury dashed out from under the bed and pounced on the brush. Its black-and-white hair was raised and its ears were pinned back. The kitten grabbed hold of the handle of the brush, and then dragged it under the bed. I had no idea what it planned to do with it under there.

Twisting at the waist, I faced Roth. Our eyes met. He grinned. The next breath I took was shaky. “I love you. Just wanted to throw that out there.”

“I desire you.” Lowering his head, his lips skated up the side of my neck, to the sensitive spot below my ear. “I want you. I need you.” He nipped the fleshy part of my lobe, causing me to gasp. “And I love you.”

The next thing I knew I was on my back and Roth was settling over me, and those little nips were traveling down my neck and lower, and it wasn’t too long before all the work he’d done on my hair went to complete waste in the most glorious of ways.

* * *

I was staring at my reflection again.

My eyes still seemed too big and my face was flushed, but this time I wasn’t half-naked. Which, honest to God, seemed like a major feat considering—well, once we crossed into that new level of our relationship, Roth really was...

My face burned even brighter and I lowered my gaze as I tugged on the collar of my sweater. Okay.

I needed to focus. Last night and in the middle of the night and this morning were amazing, but today was going to be insane. I would be going into Hell. Nervousness didn’t even touch what I was feeling, and I still had no idea how I was going to distract Roth so he wouldn’t know what I was planning. He thought we were heading out to look for the Lilin. He’d mentioned swinging by another demon-run club in the city. While I was kind of excited to see that, it was not going to happen today.

And I also didn’t know what I was going to do when I got back—if I got back—because Roth was going be so mad.

Bambi shifted on my back, flicking her tail along the left side of my ribs, coming close to nudging Robin. As soon as I’d gotten up this morning, she’d plastered herself onto me, which hadn’t been a part of the plan, but it wasn’t like I could pitch a fit about her being on me. Roth would know something was up, which sucked, because the last thing I wanted to do was put Bambi in a precarious position.

She was practically our kid.

Twisting my hair up, I shoved a million bobby pins in, and then left the bathroom. Roth was lounging against the wall, his long legs crossed at the ankles, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. I saw him and I might’ve forgotten what I was doing.

Roth was striking.

With his black hair falling into amber eyes and the shirt clinging to all the right areas, he was breathtaking, but it was that smile, the one that showed off his dimples and transformed his entire being when he looked at me that—that owned me. And he was smiling at me like that now.

“I like your pants,” he said.

I glanced down. They were black. Leather. I sighed. “I’m never allowing Cayman to go shopping for me again.”

He chuckled as he pushed off the wall. “I hope he shops for you from now on.” Walking past me, toward the door, he slid his hand over my leather-clad legs. “Or at least keep these.”

I rolled my eyes as I turned around.

“Mmm.” His gaze traveled over me. “Please keep them.”

Laughing, I planted my hands on his back and shoved him toward the door. “Only because you asked nicely.”

“And because your ass looks sumptuous in them?”

“Geez,” I choked out, shaking my head as he closed the door behind us.

Out in the hallway, he draped his arm over my shoulders and hauled me close to his side. We started down the hall. “I think that’s a valid reason.”

“I’m sure you do.”

His hand moved up and down my upper arm as we hit the stairwell and began the long, long journey down to the lobby. “How your ass looks is a very important thing when shopping for pants, Shortie.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. “I’m sure there are things that are even more important.”

He scoffed. “Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about comfort?”

“Boring.”

“What about usefulness?”

He sent me a look. “There is nothing more useful than leather pants. They’ll protect your ass while making it look fine.”

We were nearing the first floor. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s annoying,” I muttered, glancing at the gray, cement door, and my pulse kicked up.

“You still love me,” he replied.

“True.” I squared my shoulders as Roth opened the door.

We stepped out into the grandiose lobby with his arm still hanging over my shoulders. Like the first time I’d seen the lobby, it was awe-inspiring. I didn’t get to see it a lot, because we always came in through the parking garage or the basement club entrance and then we stuck to the stairwell.

An enormous chandelier hung in the center of the lobby, casting bright light into every corner, but it was the mural painted on the ceiling that really drew the eye. Angels. Lots of angels hovering above, engaged in a hard-core battle, fighting one another with fiery swords. Some were falling through sudsy white clouds. Others were raising their blades. The detail was extraordinary, down to the red-orange flames and the grimaces of pain. Even the virtuous glint in their eyes was there.

I quickly looked away from the painting, unsettled by it when before I’d just been amused.

Vintage leather couches were everywhere, and they weren’t empty. People of all ages were scattered about, sitting alone or in groups, talking and laughing. Some were chatting on phones. The scent of coffee was thick in the air. To a human, they’d all look normal, but their eyes gave off weird glints.

They weren’t exactly people, not in the technical sense.

A few gave me a weird look. Others downright ignored me. One, a young woman dressed in some kind of bustier I could easily see Cayman purchasing, stood from a recliner, her wide eyes glittering as she hurried across the lobby, disappearing down a hallway.

I had no idea if that had to do with me or with Roth’s presence. I really didn’t get the demon dynamics when it came to Roth, but none of the demons milling about in the lobby came near us.

As I started to turn to Roth, Cayman appeared in the middle of the lobby, under the chandelier.

Stiffening, I watched him swagger toward us, his floral pink and teal Hawaiian shirt possibly the gaudiest thing I’d ever seen.

“Okay. I officially change my opinion on Cayman shopping for you,” Roth said.

I snickered.

Cayman ignored the comments. “It’s a great morning, isn’t it?” he said brightly, stepping to the side of Roth. “The sun is out, but they’re calling for snow tonight. Lots of snow. So much snow—”

The crack jolted me.

He had moved so fast, I didn’t realize what he’d done until Roth’s legs folded and collapsed. Heart leaping into my throat, I tried to grab Roth, but he was too heavy and I ended up going down on my knees.

Cayman had snapped Roth’s neck.

fifteen

HORROR FILLED ME as Roth’s head fell to the side at an awkward angle. “Oh my God!” I shouted, looking up at Cayman. “What did you do? What did you—?”

“We needed to distract him.” He gestured at the floor. “He’s distracted. And you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that. Let me have my moment.”

My mouth dropped open.

A demon walking across the lobby carrying coffee in white to-go cups pivoted on her pointy black heel. “I don’t want any part of this,” she said, hurrying away.

My hands shook as I glanced down at a still Roth. I couldn’t breathe, and as I stood, my skin started to harden, the skin on either side of my spine tingled.

“Whoa.” Cayman threw up his hands. “Simmer down, crouching demon, hidden Warden. He’s fine.

Look, if he was seriously in danger, Bambi would be off you in two seconds. He’s going to wake up in a couple of minutes, beat the crap out of me, realize you’re gone, and when I snap his neck again to stop him from going after you, we’re going to rinse and repeat, so please—please don’t take forever.”

My heart hadn’t slowed down. “If he’s hurt—”

“He’s not,” a demon from the couch said, his face ashen as he stared at Roth. “You can’t kill the Prince that way and when he wakes up—”

“Yeah, he’s going to be pissed.” Cayman sighed.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him, Cayman.” I sucked in a shallow breath. “What if I—?”

“Don’t finish that sentence. You will be back. Layla, you need to get a move on it. Don’t let the butt-whupping I’m going to receive be all in vain. You need to go.” He pointed behind me, and I looked back toward the gold-painted elevators.

I needed to go.

Heart pounding, I knelt and brushed my lips along Roth’s cheek as I smoothed my hand over his head, brushing his hair back from his face. I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to sit there until his eyes opened, but I couldn’t.

“I love you,” I whispered, voice choked as I curled my right hand into a fist.

Standing, I turned to Cayman and cocked back my arm, punching him right in the stomach as hard as I could. Several demons gasped.

“Omph,” he grunted, doubling over and clasping his stomach. “Sweet Moses in molasses.”

Feeling a wee bit better about the situation, I forced myself to pivot around and walk toward the elevator. I didn’t look back, because if I did, I wasn’t sure I would keep walking. I liked to think that I would’ve, that I would’ve recognized that this situation was bigger than me and Roth, but I wasn’t sure if I was that good a person, that selfless.

The gold elevators waited for me and I smacked the one round button on the panel a little harder than necessary. With a soft, almost-human-sounding groan, the doors slid open. I stepped inside, turning around to face the hall.

Cayman appeared in front of the elevators, rubbing his stomach. “Be careful, Layla. Remember, nothing in Hell is what it seems.”

Before I could respond, the doors sealed shut and the elevator jerked into movement. I stepped back, swallowing hard as it started a slow descent down. There was no music, no inside panels on the elevator, and the door seemed to be made of some kind of weird material. I brushed my fingers along the inside of the door and then jerked my hand back with a startled gasp.

It felt like...like skin.

My stomach cramped, and I thought I might hurl as it rippled.

A strange orangey glow reflected off the walls of the elevator. Lifting my gaze to the ceiling, I smacked my hand over my mouth.

There wasn’t really a ceiling above me.

A roof of flames rolled, burning bright, licking along the edges of the walls. My eyes widened as I expected it to engulf the entire elevator, but the flames didn’t spread. The elevator jolted and that slow descent sped up.

I was knocked back against the wall. Throwing my hands out, I gripped the rail as the elevator suddenly dropped at a rapid clip. Heart thumping, my knuckles ached from how tightly I was gripping the piece of metal. The elevator felt like it was going to split apart.

Without warning, it jerked to a stop, throwing me off balance. My knees cracked off the floor, the pain dull compared to the sudden dizziness seizing me. It took several moments for the wooziness to subside, and I realized then, the elevator had stopped moving.

Pushing myself up, I’d just straightened when the elevator doors parted softly. My mouth dropped open as I got my first glimpse of...Hell?

Not at all.

What lay beyond the open elevator doors was white walls—a white floor, a white ceiling. Shiny white. Pristine. My feet carried me out of the elevator, into a wide and vast circular lobby with hundreds if not thousands of hallways. There was music playing. Horrible, jaunty lobby music; the kind that would drive you crazy if you had to listen to it for longer than five minutes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hell had a lobby.

Nothing was guarding the lobby. No demons waited to pounce on me, and that surprised me. Then again, Cayman had warned me that nothing in Hell was what it seemed. Maybe I just couldn’t see the demons. As I wheeled around, searching for hidden dangers, I realized there were gold placards on the walls near each hallway, displaying the names of...

“Holy crap,” I whispered.

Names of all the demons were clearly etched into the gold placards. Some I didn’t recognize.

Others made my stomach twist and then drop. ABADDON. VINE. MOLOCH. BAEL. The names went on and on. Straight across from the elevator was the hallway labeled THE BOSS and beside it was one that caught my breath.

ASTAROTH.

I almost started toward it, because something inside of me wanted to see how Roth really lived when he was down here, but I stopped myself. I didn’t have time for this.

Across from those names was THE PITS. And there, three down from that, was the name I’d been looking for: GRIM.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I walked briskly toward the hall bearing Grim’s name and then down the long, brightly lit, relatively cool tunnel. There were no windows. No scents to speak of. The air was stagnant but clean, and still, the hairs all over my body began to rise.

I reached a double set of windowless doors and before I could do anything, they opened silently, revealing a world I’d never seen before as a blast of oppressive heat smacked into me.

Stopping an inch from the exit, I bit down on my lip. This...this was what I’d expected. In a way. The sky beyond the hall was a burnt red. There were no clouds. No sun or moon. Just a deep, orangey red that seemed to have no source. The scent of sulfur and something I couldn’t quite make out turned my stomach.

A road made of some kind of stone separated tall, ash-colored buildings. They rose like skyscrapers, reaching into that strange sky, their windows dark with no sign of life inside them. My gaze tracked over the formidable, intimidating buildings to the massive structure at the end of the road, several city blocks away. It was the largest of all the buildings, but designed like something straight out of the Middle Ages. Twin steeples rose from either side of the pitch roof, and it gave the impression that it was more of a fortress than a home. Sort of like the compound I’d grown up in.

I swallowed hard, knowing that was where I was going to have to go, because of course, it wasn’t like Grim could live in a cute house with a picket fence or something. Oh no, it had to be the Lord of the Rings-type castle all the way down there.

Knowing I didn’t have a lot of time and that time in general worked vastly different down here, I pulled up my big-girl undies and stepped out of the hallway.

It happened immediately.

Without any warning, a shiver rippled across my skin and I felt Bambi and Robin leave my body.

Panicked, I tried to stop them, because I wasn’t sure if Robin was ready for that, but there was no calling them back.

Two shadows drifted out from underneath my shirt, forming two irregular shaped circles. They trembled, and then dropped to the stone roadway, spilling into a million tiny balls that shot together.

The inky black balls rose into the air, but they didn’t drop to the ground like they normally would.

The dots spun and spun until a thick shadow formed. Before me, as my mouth hung open, legs formed, along with torsos and arms and heads. For a second, they were two people-shaped pools of black oil, and then, within a heartbeat, the murkiness gave way to detail.

A boy and a girl stood in front of me.

My jaw was starting to ache from how long I was gaping, but I couldn’t snap my mouth shut. They weren’t little boys and girls. Actually, they looked slightly older than me, but they were definitely of the male and female humanoid variety.

The guy was tall and slender, with auburn hair that fell into crimson-colored eyes. Shirtless, he was all wiry grace. A fine dusting of reddish hair covered his bare skin. Standing next to him was a woman with hair a deep red, nearly matching her eyes. Dressed in a black tank top and jeans, she almost looked normal. Almost. Patches of her skin weren’t exactly...skin. More like tiny scales breaking through, all so very...snake-like.

Oh my God.

The woman grinned brightly. “Hey, girl, hey.”

“Hey,” I said slowly, glancing between the two. “Um...”

Raising his chin in a greeting, the guy’s nose twitched and then...then his ears did the same. “Hi.”

Oh my God.

“I so knew you were up to shenanigans, and I was right!” Turning to the guy, the girl raised her hand, flipping him off. “Told you so. Told you that she was going to come here. So you should be glad I’m here, so you don’t get eaten by dragons. And yes, there are dragons here. And not as nice as Thumper, either.”

“You’re just so smart,” he replied drily.

“Damn tootin’.” She spun toward me. “He’s not very helpful right now, since he’s like new to all of this. I needed to come along.”

“You... You are...” I almost couldn’t bring myself to say it. “You’re Bambi.”

Hopping, she clapped her hands together. “And you’re Layla. And he’s Dumbass.”

Dumbass sighed. “I’m Robin. You know, your real familiar. Not the parasite who needs to go back to Daddy.”

Bambi snorted. “How about you go back to yourself. Huh? How about that?”

That didn’t even make sense, but the fact that I was staring at Bambi and Robin and they looked like humans didn’t make sense, either. “So you two... This is what you really look like?”

She nodded. “Yep. When we can, which tragically isn’t very often. But we can talk to one another even in our animal forms. Sort of telepathically.” She pouted. “Robin here is a bore. He’s really just slept this whole time.”

He scowled in her direction. “Because I needed to get charged up.”

“Whatever,” she quipped. “I miss my boys. Nitro and Fury and Thor. They’re fun. Thumper is like you. Another bore who just sleeps all the time, and when he doesn’t, he’s a grumpy tool.”

I blinked slowly as Bambi raised her arms above her head, stretching. Her top rose, flashing a taut stomach, and it suddenly hit me that Roth had a chick on him. Roth seriously had a chick all over him, all the time! On lots of parts of his body. And I had a dude on my stomach!

Roth and Cayman had failed to mention this little detail to me.

An ugly, insidious feeling crept into me and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You are on Roth.”

“Um, yeah. And sometimes I’m on you. Duh.” She frowned. “Did you hurt your head or something?”

Okay. I squeezed my eyes shut briefly. The jealousy was ridiculous. I couldn’t be jealous over Bambi, who might be a hot girl but also was a snake most of the time—a legit, giant snake that ate gross things.

Besides, I had a dude on me– “Oh my God,” I groaned, looking at Robin. “You were on me last night. You were on me—”

“The moment you all started losing clothes, I totally checked out.” He raised his hands, wrinkling his nose. “Did not want to see any of that. Didn’t feel any of that.”

“I...” There were no words.

“Look,” Bambi said, “for most of the time we’re on you, we aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing. Well, not true. When you were with Zayne, I was so paying attention.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “So the kittens? They...”

“They are hot. Oh my golly God, they’re triplets,” Bambi said, smacking my arm with enough force to stagger me. “Triplets, Layla. There are actually three of them.”

“I got that.” I rubbed my stinging arm. “Thanks.”

Robin folded his arms as he cast his gaze to the orangey sky. “I have a feeling we should not be here.”

“This is unspeakably weird,” I muttered, trying to grasp the fact that I was talking to the familiars.

Bambi flipped that crimson hair over her shoulder. “I think it’s fantastically delightful.” Prancing forward, she stuck out her tongue in Robin’s direction. Even in her human form, the tongue was still forked. “But you know what’s not delightful? Your taste in men. I was really hoping you’d hook up with Zayne. He looked yummy.”

“You’ve already eaten one Warden—”

“Honey, that’s not the kind of eating I’m thinking of when I clap eyes on that big, blond ball of sweet, sweet loving.”

My eyes widened as Robin rolled his. “I’m...uh, sorry to disappoint you?”

Bambi continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I liked it when he would pet me and I think you liked it, too,” she said, and my face went up in flames, because I knew exactly the moment she was referring to. “But I wonder how he’d feel if he knew what part of me he was actually feeling up. It wasn’t my neck.”