Page 27 of How (Not) To Raise The Dead

Before she can get out of bed, I reach out, press a thumb directly onto the center of the wound, and twist. Her body jerks and she whimpers, pressing her back further into the mattress—but I don’t let go. I hold her wrist in a vice grip, forcing her to look at it.

“Is it really fine, little summoner?” I growl. “Does it feel fine when I do that? Or does it feel like something may be amiss here?”

A single bead of fresh, dark crimson wells up around my thumb, staining the grey wool of her sleeve further.

“Stop,” she whispers, her eyes fixed on my hand. “Malachi, stop. It hurts.”

“Good. That means you agree there’s an issue.” I snap, finally releasing her.

In my realm, if you get a hole in you, you either knit it back together with a bit of spit and spite. But mortals wither at the slightest of ailments, and I’ll be damned if I’m stuck to a bag of bones because her arm decides to rot and fall off.

“Do you have the supplies to fix this?” I demand, gesturing to the stained wool.

Her throat works as she swallows, eyes darting toward the hallway with a look of pure, unadulterated dread.

“I have... gauze,” she says, her voice sounding thin and unconvincing. “And some... uh…”

“Gauze and ‘uh’ aren’t going to fix this, little summoner,” I growl.

She pulls out her phone and taps away, brow furrowed.

“Shit,” she whispers, her fingers hovering over the screen. “The delivery app’s down. There’s some kind of server error for the whole zip code. It says there aren’t any couriers available.” She lets out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “Whatever. I’ll just... I’ll wait until later. Maybe if I just wash it again, it’ll be fine.”

“No,” I say simply. “You will not wait. Your flesh is already beginning to hum with the wrong kind of heat. You need to fix this now, little summoner, or the ‘after’ will come much sooner than you’ve planned for.”

The panic is a palpable thing, radiating off her in thick, hot waves as her fingers twist tightly in the sheets, her breath coming out in shallow puffs.

“Fine… I… I can go there. I’ll go now,” she says, her voice shakier than a leaf in a gale.

“We,” I correct her as I stretch lazily. “Unless you’ve somehow, very suddenly, forgotten the little issue of our leash? You’re going to have to take your demon for a walk.”

“Stay still.”

She pumps a dollop of beige cream onto the back of her hand with the grim dedication of a martyr stepping into a lion’s den, and approaches with a damp, egg-shaped sponge, pressing the nude-colored mud against my cheek. It smears across my jawline in a feeble attempt to drown the storm-cloud hue of my skin into something aggressively mundane.

You’d think she was about to perform surgery on a live bomb with the way her eyes are darting across my face, refusing to meet mine, focusing entirely on the logistics of my camouflage.

“You’re wasting your time, little summoner,” I huff, my gaze tracking the pink, blotchy heat rising in her neck. “You can paint me all you like. I will not pass for a mortal.”

“Shut up,” she snaps, leaning in closer.

The dabbing of the sponge picks up with such intensity my neck cricks. She isn’t applying makeup anymore; she’s attempting an exorcism by percussion. Each tap lands with enough conviction to echo through my skull, a steady, ridiculous thudding that suggests she sincerely believes she can bludgeon the demon out of me one beige molecule at a time.

“I’m a demon, not a piece of dough,” I growl, catching her wrist.

She doesn’t pull away—she’s too far gone. She just pries her hand loose and goes back to it, hitting a particularly sensitive spot near the top of my ear as she tries to cover those with the beige mud too. I wince, a hiss escaping my teeth, head jerking back.

“Watch the damned piercings,” I snarl.

Her nostrils flare, the sponge hovering mid-air. She finally looks at the silver rings pierced through the cartilage of my ears, then down at the small ring in my septum.

“Why do you even have piercings?” she asks.

I cut her a look, jaw ticking. “Why don’t you have them?”

Her mouth opens like she wants to spit out a rebuttal, but it promptly snaps shut. “Fair point,” she mumbles as she turns back to her makeup bag. “I guess vanity isn’t just a human sin.”

The soft bristles of a large, fluffy brush covered in translucent powder hit my face next—a cloud of fine, white mist that smells like artificial roses and dust filtering through the air, tickling my sinuses.