Page 102 of Dancing With Demons

Brows blowing high, the tray slipped out of his hand.

My hair was gone.

Every single strand he fondled and shampooed was hacked off, and then shaved away with a lady’s razor.

I wanted to say I followed my act of defiance by glaring and cursing him out—telling him where to shove that spicy tofu—but I had long since flopped back on the sheets, quietly crying into the pillows.

How could it all end like this? I’d done the impossible and bargained my way into hell. I disguised as a man, scaled cliffs, tangled with imps, survived being burned at the stake, and when I finally had Dora back—when there finally looked to be a way out for both of us, it was all taken away.

It was true. Lucifer’s calls after Dora was gone, did nothing to prop up his cool, always-in-control act. How he knew what happened only an hour after, I didn’t bother to ask, but there wasn’t a single word of consolation, grief, or sorrow.

He shouted through the speakers at a wailing me that nothing had changed. That if I wanted out of hell, I’d better get him the power of the All Hallows, or I’d regret it. On and on he went as the splinter that lodged in my heart buried deeper.

Lucifer put paid to the idea that wisdom came with age. He was thousands of years old, but was too stupid to realize that his threats had no effect on me. I stopped caring about what happened to me when the dagger pierced my sister’s chest.

Or maybe wisdom had reached him by now. That’s why he stopped calling. Lucifer had finally realized that if I wasn’t getting out of hell, neither was he.

I slid down under the covers, hiding my face and blocking out Ronin and his shocked expression.

Through the covers I heard him snap his fingers, and then the clinking of the tray. The bed dipped when he set it down on the dresser beside me.

“It’s alright,” he said. “I understand why you did it.”

A weight settled on my thigh and I burned, itching to peel off the skin where he touched me, even though it was only through the sheet.

“But when’s all this going to end, Hunter? I mean, look at you. Your hair is in a pile on the bathroom floor, and you can barely get out of bed,” he said. “What’s the point of a sister—”

I went deathly still.

“—if they cause you this much pain when they’re gone.” He patted the frozen lump that was me. “If anything, you should be happy. I told you that the pure soul spell assures you’ll go to heaven when you die, so right now, she’s in a much better place. Adora is—”

“Don’t you dare!” I roared up, tossing the blanket and him off. “Don’t you dare say her name, you evil bastard!”

If I thought that would startle him, I was disappointed. “Good, you’re up,” he said mildly. “Have something to eat now.”

Ronin picked up the tray and fork and turned to me.

I snatched the plate from him and smashed it against the headboard, showering the bed in shards and tofu. “What is wrong with you? I know you’re not like this because you’re a demon. I know you feel all the same emotions mortals do,” I flung. “You’re an empty, dead-inside shitstain because you choose to be!”

Ronin was expressionless. “I’m just looking out for you, Charlotte. I’m protecting you like you asked me to.”

“I never asked for this!” I was trying to scream, but my throat was wrecked from weeks of crying and my voice was half gone from the same weeks of disuse. All I could manage was a raspy croak, but even so, everything that had been pushed down by my grief and depression was finally bubbling to the surface. “You know that I did all of this for Dora. I risked everything to protect her! And you took her away from me because you were jealous!”

I scoffed, shaking my head. “All your bullshit about love being poison and getting in the way is just that.” My lips burned with every word I spat at him. “You saw my love for Dora was real, and you hated it... because you wanted me to love you and only you. You wanted to be the person I put first above everyone else.”

Ronin stared at me, teeth clenching as a tsunami of emotions warred in his eyes. “I did you a favor—”

“Stop saying that! You did what you wanted, and nothing else!”

“She’s in heaven now—”

“But she should’ve been in Johns Hopkins!” A river ran down my face. “She’s supposed to be at college with her friends! She’s supposed to be drinking all night, and then rolling into class with bed head and a hangover the next morning.

“She’s supposed to be doing her residency in a hospital in New York so that we could meet up on her lunch break. She’s supposed to live in an apartment with too many roommates with too little closet space. She should’ve been saying she’s too busy to date while flirting and dropping hints to the hot doc in her hospital! Dora had her whole life ahead of her, and you took it away!”

“I didn’t take it away, she was already dead!” Ronin exploded, his calm mask in tatters.

“Lucifer was going to give her her soul back—”