by Karen Mead
“Expected?” said Khalil. This was alright; he could ride the anger for a while. It was better than the depression that he knew was coming. “What do you mean it’s expected? Is Nyesha sleeping with him then? Is Dmitri?”
“No, of course not!” she exclaimed. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand better than you think. I know that guy; no way in hell would he ever ask that of you, no matter what other demons do. The only reason it would happen is if you pushed for it,” he said. “You were just going to keep lying to me, letting me think we had something here.”
“Don’t be like this,” she pleaded. “These ideas you have about relationships, they’re outdated, okay? Just because I’m willing to sleep with more than one person, that doesn’t affect who I…who I love,” she said. A couple walking by gave her a curious look, but she ignored them.
He shook his head. “This isn’t about me being a prude, this is about you being a liar.”
“You are a prude! You think less of me now because you think I’m a slut!” Her eyes filled with tears. Somehow during this conversation, Khalil had stopped feeling angry, and now he just felt sad. He was surprised at himself; he’d expected to be livid for hours. But the sight of Miri’s misery (and she was miserable) seemed to suck all of his energy away.
“I would never call you a slut, and you know what? Screw that word, I don’t even use that word. What you are is a selfish person who lies to make her life easier, and I can’t trust you.”
“No, don’t—”
“I’m going back to the room. Enjoy the cake,” he said, then he left her at the wishing well.
Chapter Forty-Two
Sam generally wasn’t very big on pampering himself, but since it was entirely possible that this would be his last night on Earth, he decided he may as well live it up. After meeting with Arrigio, he’d returned to the suite, ordered a giant steak from room service for dinner, and received an hour-long massage from one of The Laguna’s on-call masseurs. Now, he was finishing his evening of uncommon decadence by soaking in the hot tub. It was large enough that he could have swum in it, had he wanted to.
After a while, he realized he was staying in the hot tub more for the solitude than anything else. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to hear anyone say “Good luck tomorrow,” before they went to bed. He had a crazy urge to just take off alone without a word, but where would he even go?
I could go to Realm. That’s where most of the court wants to put me anyway, so why not skip the preliminaries and make it easier on everyone? I’ll bet I could find my own apple cart to pull….
When he heard the bathroom door open, at first he thought it was someone’s mistake. “Hey!” he called, but then Miri burst into the room and he realized she had been looking for him specifically. Angrily, she kicked off her chunky shoes and jumped into the hot tub with him, still wearing her short dress and stockings.
“Miri, what’s going on?” he asked as she nestled alongside him. She didn’t answer, instead leaning down to leave a trail of soft kisses on his collarbone. Before she could get too involved, he gently pushed her away.
“What’s gotten into you? There are kids here,” he said.
Also, we shouldn’t even be doing this anymore, since she’s already taught me what I needed to know. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy to stop….
She tried to adopt her usual flirty demeanor, but the fact that her eyes were red from crying ruined the effect somewhat. “Ohhh. Can’t you do some kind of soundproofing spell or something? That should be easy.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy. Tell me what happened.”
She dropped down so she was sitting in the tub, her small shoulders barely breaking the surface of the foaming water. “Khalil dumped me.”
“Oh,” he said flatly. He was bad at this; he’d avoided relationships for his whole life, and if Miri had come to him for comfort, she really should have known better. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She seemed to shrink even further. “It was because of us.”
At that, Sam was puzzled. “Us? There is no us.”
She looked like she was about to burst into tears again, and Sam reconsidered what he’d said. “It’s not romantic, you’ve said so yourself. Many times. I assumed when you and Khalil started dating, you told him that what we do is…mechanical,” he finished, feeling awkward.
Why would anyone come to me for emotional support? No one should ever be that desperate.
Miri just sat silently, staring off into nothing.
“I see,” he said finally. “You didn’t tell him, just hoped it would never come up. That was the wrong thing to do.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she said in a wavering voice. “I didn’t know how to tell him! I knew he wouldn’t understand.”
Sam got out of the hot tub and wrapped a towel around his waist; the infusion of hysterical vampire had killed the mood of his soak. “You can do one of two things: apologize profusely and ask him for another chance, or let him go.”
She gritted her teeth. “You say that like it’s so easy.”
“I said no such thing,” he said, sitting down on a bench. Naturally, because it was The Laguna, the bench had an image of a leaping dolphin carved into the side of it. “But that’s the choice before you.”
She seemed to calm down then, letting the tips of her red hair get wet as she sank further into the tub. Sam wanted to leave, but he felt awkward just putting on his clothes and leaving Miri alone. So he sat, practicing making small, wafer-thin magic barriers in his right hand. If you squinted, they looked almost exactly like soap bubbles. He blew gently on one, and it took off from his palm.
“There could be another choice,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Do you think you could ever love me?”
The bubble that wasn’t a bubble popped.
“I know what I said at the start,” she said. “I’m a liar.”
There was silence as he struggled with what to say.
“You can’t, because I’m not all pure and innocent like Cassie is,” said Miri, bitterly. “You guys really buy into the whole purity deal.”
“If I love anyone, it’s not for that reason,” Sam said finally. “Don’t project your own personal problems onto me and Cassie.”
But Miri was not so easily deterred. “Would you still love her, if she’d been with other guys? Or would she be all tainted and gross to you then?”
“I really don’t like being asked to guess how I would feel in an alternate universe where things were different,” Sam snapped. And it seems to be happening an awful lot lately. Why can’t people, especially women it seems, leave all these miserable hypotheticals alone?
“You know, I bet deep down, you like it…that she was disgusted when she saw you. Because you’re disgusted with yourself.”
He entertained a brief urge to pull Miri out of the bath by her hair and throw her against the nearest wall, but resisted. He had a strange feeling that was the effect the vampire was going for. “Miri, what do you want from me right now? Want me to beat you up, so you can stop beating yourself up? Would that make you feel better?”
She blinked, a single tear running down her cheek. “I know I’m being really selfish.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, standing up. If she didn’t pull herself together soon, he really was going to simply walk out. Enabling her wouldn’t do either of them any good.
She looked at the ceiling, as though seeking wisdom from the images of porpoises at play. “Hey, Sam. Is the hell that you can go, the one we were in today, the same one that we all go to when we die?”
God in Heaven, where did that come from?
“No. As far as I know, the only souls in the Demon Realm are those that have contracted with demons, or been tricked into going there in some other way. If there truly is a hell where people go after death, I’ve never seen it.”
“Do you think a hell like that exists?”
“No. I think what awaits us all is like sleep. No better and no worse.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, then stood up. “I think I feel a little better now. I’m going to go to bed. Thanks.” She got out of the hot tub, picked up her shoes and left, her wet stockings making odd squelching sounds as she moved.
Sam remained standing by the hot tub for a few moments.
What just happened?
Chapter Forty-Three
Everyone stared at Cassie when she walked into the central hub of the suite.
“You look like a skank,” said Hunter solemnly, then he blanched when half the room gave him dirty looks.
“Blame Miri. I asked for a different dress, she brought me this,” she said, gesturing to her all-too-exposed body. She looked around the living room; the redhead was nowhere to be found. “Where is she, anyway?”
Sam shrugged. He was very studiously not looking at her. “Around,” he said.
“Figures,” she said, sitting down on a couch and taking a kaiser roll off of a loaded bread tray on a side table. Food just seemed to appear in this suite, as though from nowhere.
Everyone was milling around, looking nervous. The humans were wearing their badges, bright yellow squares of plastic that identified them as human servants, while Ethan was wearing the purple badge that identified him as a familiar. The vampires were wearing dark red badges, which were not for vampires per se, but “security.” Cassie had thrown her own purple badge on, even though it was kind of pointless in her case; everyone already knew who she was.
In addition to Miri, Jay was also missing. Cassie figured that he was already downstairs, watching the early morning proceedings. For some reason, he found the particulars of demon court fascinating.
Hunter bounded into the chair next to her, wearing the suit he’d worn to her cousin’s wedding last year. Seeing him all dressed up, wearing his yellow badge on his thin chest, hurt a little bit somehow. “Is this going to be boring?”
Cassie finished the roll she was eating. “Have you ever been to a school board meeting?”
He frowned. “Once, with Mom.”
“It’s like that, only a million times worse,” she said.
Hunter looked puzzled, like he was trying to imagine how anything could possibly be worse than a school board meeting, let alone a million times worse.
“Why don’t I stay with the boys up here for a while?” said Eugene. “Ethan should be present for the hearing, but they won’t get to that for at least a few hours yet. And Hunter’s presence is purely optional.”
Cassie looked at Eugene and nodded gratefully. Ethan was used to sitting quietly at court for hours, but her brother wasn’t, and she was worried about what might happen if he got fidgety. If Hunter was with Eugene, she could feel confident that he was about as safe as he was ever going to get.
Ethan, who had been tapping his foot nervously, jumped out of his chair. “Great, we can play Sorcery!” he yelled and Cassie winced. Sometimes, he got loud when he was excited.
Hunter looked less than thrilled. “I have some cards, but I didn’t bring ‘em,” he muttered. Ethan was undeterred.
“Don’t worry, I brought lots of cards.”
As the two boys began discussing the particulars of their game, Cassie walked over to a table laden with large carafes, and filled a clear glass mug with black coffee. She bolted it down like she was doing a shot.
“Uh, you want to eat anything else before we go?” asked Khalil. “You can order waffles with caviar here.”
If I eat anything else, this dress might just pop off.
“No. Let’s just go,” she said.
As they filed out of the suite, Sam maneuvered so he was next to her. He looked especially handsome in the black suit, which showed off his long, lean build to good advantage, but Cassie had seen him in it before and the effect was somewhat dulled.
“Are you sure there’s no shawl or something that goes with that? Something to cover you?” he asked, daring a look down at Cassie’s barely-there dress. Normally, a look like that would have sent her pulse hammering, but she was too worried about what awaited them at court to feel much of anything at the moment.
“Everybody’s going to be staring at me anyway, what does it matter?” she said. It annoyed her that she sounded whiney, but he had asked.
“Point taken,” Sam said quietly.
They rode the elevator down to the main floor in silence. The lobby was a maze of activity, filled with men and women in suits flipping through programs as they walked.
“The real dental convention, those poor bastards,” Khalil said quietly. Cassie couldn’t help but notice that some of the dentists had strange looks on their faces, like they’d just seen something that they couldn’t quite process, but it could have been her imagination.
She was expecting court to be held in a large ballroom, like last time, but was surprised when they reached Conference Room B and saw a completely different setup. The cavernous room sloped downward like a huge college lecture hall, with members of the court sitting at a long table where the lectern would normally be. The room looked chock-full and Cassie wasn’t sure where to go, until she saw Jay furiously waving at them from down near the front.
About two hundred people turned around to look at the new arrivals after Dmitri closed the heavy double doors with a soft thud. Cassie cast her eyes down and began making her way to the far left stairway, towards Jay; she didn’t want to look at them, didn’t want to wonder what they must be thinking about her.
Jay had only saved two seats by throwing his coat over them, but several of the people sitting in his row muttered and began moving away as Cassie’s group approached; apparently, they did not want to be sitting right next to the Son of Sammael’s party. Everyone ended up getting a seat except for Liam, who leaned against the wall, where several other men with red badges were gathered. Cassie had a feeling he probably felt more comfortable on his feet anyway.
Cassie could see Miri’s red hair out of the corner of her eye; somehow, when she wasn’t paying attention, the vampire had rejoined the group.
Arrigio had been in the middle of a long statement when they arrived, and hadn’t faltered for a moment.
“—and be certain the secretary receives the payment on time, or else there will be additional charges. Is there anything further?”
“No, Chairman,” said a small bald man in a grey suit who was standing in front of the table. Even though Cassie was sitting near the front, the main table was still pretty far away; fortunately, the room had excellent acoustics, so she could hear everything.
“Good. Case 11101-7 dismissed. Please take your seat.”
Once Cassie felt that enough time had passed for half the room to stop staring at her, she took a look around the hall herself. She recognized some faces vaguely from court last year, but didn’t see Nathaniel Lewis, or Andrea; she did, however, see Miranda, the dark-haired witch who had insulted her last night. Miranda was sitting right in the front row, which was curious.
She did catch the eye of Bennet Marcus, who rewarded her with a friendly grin. Next to her, Sam leaned forward to make eye contact with Bennet, mouthing the word “Why?” But the other demon had already turned his attention back towards the action up front.
“Why in the world did he cede me his territory?” Sam whispered in her ear. It was probably meant as a rhetorical question, but Cassie thought she might have an idea what the answer could be.
“The court was really mad at him three months ago. Maybe this is his way of showing that he’s not a threat anymore?”
“I know that,” he said, irritated. “But why did he have to give it to me? It would have been better to give it to the court directly.”
Cassie had no answer to that, so she gave a subtle shrug and directed her attention back to Arrigio up at the front.
While the slate of cases was relatively light for this session, in order to allow plenty of time for the hearing, there were still s
everal cases that required the court’s attention before they could begin the main event. One case concerned a familiar that had run away to another demon’s territory, since his original master had not been feeding him enough; the court ruled unanimously that if the demon had failed to maintain the familiar properly, he had forfeited his claim, and the new master was awarded custody. Another case concerned whether or not a violent battle for territory between two demons in Louisiana had been conducted in accordance with the Charter, but that quickly got too technical for Cassie to follow.
Finally, after Arrigio dismissed a case, he studied paperwork in front of him for some time before calling the next one, and Cassie had a feeling the lesser cases were done. “In accordance with section 108 of our Charter, the court calls Samuel Andrews, the Son of Sammael, to the front. Please take a seat in front of the dais. This body will now determine whether or not the subject may be treated as a full-blooded demon under our laws, or whether he should maintain his default status.”
Cassie gave Sam a hopeful smile, but she didn’t know if he even saw it; he seemed to have tunnel vision, only seeing the dais where Arrigio and the others sat. As she watched his back retreat down the stairs, a terrible feeling of regret welled up inside her.
If they rule that he’s full-blooded, will I ever see him again? I should have kissed him goodbye…why didn’t I think of this before now?
When Sam was seated, Arrigio continued. “For its first witness, the court calls Thaddeus O’Donnell. Mr. O’Donnell, please approach the dais.”
O’Donnell made his way down the stairs with a languid, relaxed gait that made Cassie want to strangle him, then he took a seat in front of the dais as well. Both Sam and O’Donnell were sitting in front of the dais, but on opposite sides of the table. It wasn’t unlike how the defense and prosecution were arranged in human court, though Cassie knew this was different; for one thing, there were no lawyers.
“Mr. O’Donnell, please state for the record the date and location of the last blood status hearing that you attended.”