Released (The Eternal Balance #3)(30)

“My sister wasn’t a human.”

“Witch,” Sam corrected with another sigh. She was losing her patience, reverting back to tapping the side of the cup. “Whatever. My point is—”

Van slammed her hand against the table, and Sam jumped. The girl eyed her with defiance. “She wasn’t a witch, either.”

“Well, if she wasn’t a witch, then what the hell was she?” Red seeped into the air around Sam’s shoulders. She’d stopped tapping her pinkie, and was now pressing the nail into the tip of her thumb. Much harder and she’d break the skin. It was something she’d started doing since Azi had taken over, a nervous tick to combat the frustration she felt. “A Smurf?”

No answer.

“Well?” Sam snapped.

“My sister was a goddamned demon,” she fired back, gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles went white.

You’ve gotta be shitting me…

Azi made a sound, so strange that it was almost hard to believe it’d come from my body, and a rush of images assaulted me, all of the same voluptuous, raven-haired woman.

“Sadie,” it said, keeping my voice low. I hated that despite being the reason—unregretfully—that the demoness was dead, I felt a profound sense of loss, a grief so overwhelming that it nearly suffocated me. It just proved that my ties to the demon went deeper than I could have ever imagined. “Your sibling was Sadie Gray.”





Chapter Fourteen


Sam


Van watched Jax’s face for a long moment, then narrowed her eyes. She tried to be subtle, but I caught her reaching into her pocket for something. I couldn’t see what it was, but odds were it wasn’t a pack of gum. “You know my sister?”

“Knew,” I said. Was it my fault that the word came out a little cheerier than it should? The bitch had caused me nothing but trouble—and that was all before I found out she thought she had some freaky demoniac claim on the guy I loved. “Sadie is dead. A few weeks ago.”

Some of the tension on Van’s shoulders eased, and she set her hand back on the table. “You’ll have to excuse my lack of tears. She and I weren’t BFFs. How’d it happen?”

“My human killed her,” Azi said. I wasn’t sure if she could hear it, but there was poison in Jax’s voice. Apparently Malphi’s death was still a sore spot.

“Your human killed her,” she repeated. “Is that…” She glanced back to me, brows drawn, and cocked her head. “Is that code for something?”

A lump formed and caught in my throat, and I had to swallow it back before I could push the words past my lips. I’d been living with this reality, but talking about it, saying the whole thing out loud, was an entirely different thing. “It’s a long, complicated story. My boyfriend, Jax, killed your sister to save my life. The demon Azirak locked him away as punishment.”

Van turned and leaned a little closer to Jax, squinting like she was trying to see inside his head. “Locked him away? Like, in a cage?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Azi replied. It tapped Jax’s head. “I have taken control of our body.”

“As in you’re a demon?” Azi nodded and Van looked dizzy. She leaned back in her chair. “And as a demon, you don’t want to cause her pain, right?”

“Of course not,” it said, annoyed. “I am fond of her.”

“Fond of her…”

“She makes this body feel good.”

Van’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open. She jabbed a finger at me. “Are you—do you screw the demon?” She threw herself forward on the table, and her expression went from horrified to wickedly curious. “What is it like?”

White-hot embarrassment washed over me, and I couldn’t help glancing around the room to see if anyone had heard her. The café was mostly empty though, thank God, except for two women seated at the counter, talking quietly.

“I do not screw the demon,” I whispered and slapped the table for emphasis. “That’s—”

“We consummated once,” Azi interjected. The deadpan expression on Jax’s face, along with the word consummated, was almost enough to make my head implode. My face had to be a striking shade of red by this point.

My life had veered from deadly to surreal all in the span of an hour. I sighed. What the hell was the point? “Not like it sounds, but I guess, technically, yes. I did. But so we’re clear, the demon wasn’t invited. It just happened to be there, and there were no locks on the doors if you get what I’m saying.”

Van seemed to be enjoying this far too much. There was curiosity in her eyes and wonder in her expression. “So the demon lived inside your boyfriend, then took over when he pissed it off?”

I leaned back. “About sums it up. But really, we’re getting way off topic here. The Brim Stone…?”

Van was thoughtful. She sat back in her chair again, folded her arms, and watched Azi for a moment before shrugging slightly. “Let’s assume I had this Brim Stone. Why do you want it?”

“Because it belongs to me,” the demon said. There was menace in its tone, and if I had to guess, I’d say that what little patience Azi had when we started out was nearly gone. “And I want it back.”