Page 100 of Demon Demands

“Wait.” Dolyn held his hand out to stop our banter. “Back up for just a minute. Nathaniel King is in the fae realm?”

Sloane sighed, and I felt her frustration. “Yes.”

“And you’re friends with a dragon?” He continued.

“Sort of.” She shrugged.

“Do you know the fallen angel that’s been staying with Lucy?”

“Uhm, yeah. That’s Levi.”

Dolyn shook his head. “Have you met the mer yet?”

“No,” she drawled, unsure of where he was going with his questions. “I’ve never met any mer.”

He frowned, his brows creasing as his mind spun in a hundred different directions. “You need to keep that armor with you, Lo.”

She scoffed at him. “I don’t just walk around with armor in my purse, D.”

“Let me rephrase that. You’re going to use that armor,” Dolyn commanded, giving Sloane no room to debate him. “I made it as thin as you wanted, and I was still able to add extra protections to it. The pieces that go on the top edges of your wings might be a bit heavy at first, so you need to try them on and practice flying.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And the chest plate?”

“Covers the right side of your chest while leaving the left open and vulnerable. It’s cut like a tank top, and it’ll hit right above your hip bones. I was even able to finagle some spiky elbow pads.” He wiggled his brows and Hyde rolled her eyes at him.

“That doesn’t sound appealing at all,” Trouble muttered.

“Just bring your duffel bag to us,” Dolyn grumbled, rubbing his forehead in exasperation.

She snapped her fingers, and her pink bag dropped onto the table in front of her. Shoving it to the nightmare, she picked her drink back up and watched him as he pulled all kinds of gear out of her bag.

“That kind of magic is cheating. Has to be,” he mumbled to himself, stacking tools and weapons across the table. “The bag isn’t that big, and it’s not even heavy.”

“Mmm, maybe, but it makes my life easier. It’s not like I’m stealing things or abducting people with it,” Sloane responded, tapping her chin. “But now I’m wondering if I can abduct people. Maybe I could put them in my duffel bag.”

“We could try later,” Hyde whispered, leaning over to peek into Trouble’s cup and then her own. “Actually, let’s do it when I’m sober, in case we need to persuade them to forget it happened. I don’t think I can do that right now.”

Dolyn finally managed to find what he was looking for, and he slid the spiky elbow pads across the table to Sloane.

The piece was thin sheets of black metal, held together with near invisible pins. Joints gave her the same freedom of motion that she would have without the weapons.

When she placed her elbow in it, magical straps wrapped snugly around the bottom of her bicep and the top of her forearm. She moved her arm around, bending and flexing as she studied the way the joints folded into each other. The two-inch spikes disappeared and reappeared with every movement she made, seamless and deadly.

“Okay, I like these,” she admitted to Dolyn with a grin. “But you’ve got to work on your sales pitch.”

24

Sloane

Saturday Late Night

My druid joined us after we’d been drinking for about two hours. I’d slowed down when I realized I’d almost finished off a whole bottle by myself. I didn’t want to get drunk, I’d just wanted to drown some of the leftover stress out.

York sat beside Stone, pouring himself a shot of vodka as my demon mate mindlessly rolled an apple between his hands.

The banter between the few of us in the kitchen hadn’t stopped, but Stone had been quiet as his thoughts swirled through his mind a-mile-a-minute.

He suddenly shot out of his chair, sending it careening backward and tipping his glass of bourbon over. “Holy shit. Did you guys see that?”