Page 30 of Dancing With Demons

Nik held his two torches with one hand, and then rapped on the library door with the other. “Master Erlik?” he called. “Sir?”

“What the fuck do you want!” blared Erlik’s dulcet voice. “If you’re dying, do it quietly, you idiot!”

“Uhh, we’re not dying,” I called. “We caught the shade.”

“What!” Eris bolted up, nearly fumbling her phone.

“We won,” I said.

“Like hell you did!” Eris was up and coming at me so fast, there wasn’t a chance to back away.

Over her shoulder, Ronin cracked an eyelid open.

“You’re lying!” Eris was well-chosen as the princess of envy, because there was hella jealousy burning in her eyes. “There’s no way some mortal bitch, an empty-headed freak, and that worthless limp caught the shade before my girls!” She fell on the box, trying to rip it from my grasp.

“Hey!” I strained against her. “What the hell are you doing!”

“Give it up!” Eris roared.

She took a swing at me, popping my eyes out of my skull as I lurched back.

She tried to punch me? She was really going to hit me just like that for no reason? I knew it shouldn’t have shocked me, but how could it not? I wasn’t used to living in a world where grievous bodily harm was option one, and reasonable communication was option never-gonna-happen.

“You heard her!” Raven barked, jumping up and coming at us as fast as her nine-inch high heels would carry her. “Let go of the fucking box, mortal bitch, or I’ll make you one of us right now!”

And by that, I knew she meant she was going to kill me. And I knew because the rage and hate etched in her beautiful face was screaming she was desperate to do just that.

“Get off!” Nik fell on the box, grasping it tight and fighting with me to hold on to it as Raven joined the fray, and then Ursula. “We caught it fair and square,” he bellowed. “Leave us alone!”

Raven scoffed. “What the fuck you talking about fair, Others Spawn.” She swung, and that hit connected.

She smashed her fist in his nose, dropping Nik like a stone. “There’s no such thing as fair.”

With three against one—and Dora standing there, blinking at the scene as if she couldn’t understand what was going on—the box yanked out of my grip.

My fingernails caught on the lid, and tore it free as we flew apart—unleashing the shade just as the door swung open.

A dark, wispy, there-and-not-there figure burst from the box and blew past Erlik, escaping into the paradise of darkness and shadows that was a hell’s dungeon.

A face like thunder turned on us. “Is this what you call winning?” Erlik seethed. “Setting a shade loose on the whole of the academy? Even for the carrion crows, it’ll take months to find that fucking thing!”

“It was her!” Five voices rang out, and turning around, I found five fingers pointing back at me.

Raven, Kama, and all the princesses of sin pointed at me with not a lick of shame on their faces.

“She did it,” Ursula, the gluttony princess, announced. “I caught the shade all by myself, but when I brought it out to show you, these freaks jumped me and set it loose.”

“It’s true,” Raven said.

“I saw it,” Sauda chimed in.

Kama smirked at me as she dropped kisses on Ronin’s horns. “It was those three, Sir Erlik. You’ll punish them for me...” Blowing Erlik a kiss, the lust princess licked her lips as she said, “Won’t you, sir?”

To his credit, Erlik was openly disgusted at her flirting. He flicked to Ursula. “Caught it all by yourself, did you?”

“Yep. No one helped me. No one could,” she boasted. “I’m just that good—”

“How?”