Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(11)

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she stared down at the closed cover of the Book. Bound in human flesh—or maybe it was vampire skin or that of a demon, who the hell knew—the ancient tome of spells had body odor like roadkill, pages that could say something or nothing at all depending on its mood, and a checkered history of compliance.

“We had an agreement,” she reminded the thing. “You give me my one true love, a male who will love every single part of me, the whole me, for eternity—and I rescue you from the ashes of that house fire.” When there was no response, she pushed at her gorgeous hair and tried not to show how much this game was getting under her skin. “Might I remind you that without me, you’d be on your way to the dump right now, which is more than you deserve—”

A soft, rhythmic noise rose up from between its hump-ugly covers, the sound so quiet that Devina had to lean in to figure out what the part purr, part snuffle was.

Oh, hell no. “Do not pretend to be sleeping. Don’t even try that bullshit with me.” As the Book just continued to snooze, she stamped her stillie. “Goddamn it, self-care doesn’t apply to you—you’re an eternity old, not a millennial. And P.S., in an earlier life you were probably a Publishers Clearing House fucking mailer, so don’t get it twisted and pull this attitude.”

The top cover popped up a little and the pages ruffled like it was repositioning itself on a Tempur-Pedic mattress. Then the snoring got louder.

“Wake up!”

With a swipe of her hand, she cast the Book to the floor—then sent it for a big ol’ ping-pong ride off the walls of her lair, the pages flapping, the front and back covers flying, more of that horrible smell wafting around. She would have torn it apart, lit it on fire, drowned it in her claw-foot tub…

But she needed the thing. Especially after this Balthazar shit.

And it knew that.

Pinning the recalcitrant volume against one of the stout, graceless columns that held the ceiling up, she marched over to her perfume tray, grabbed a bottle of Coco Noir, and stiletto’d back. Holding the Chanel bottle over the rancid stench, the atomizer made little shcht, shcht, shcht’s as she pumped it with her forefinger—

The sneeze was loud and strong enough so the front cover almost opened wide. And then the Book’s pages let out a couple of coughs.

“You fucking stink. And I hope you’re allergic.”

The Book coughed one more time. Then it blew its cover wide, stood all of its folios straight out of its spine, and—

Phhhhhhhhhtttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhpppppppppppppp.

The raspberry was drawn out for so long, and at such volume, only someone who didn’t require an air supply to make such a noise could have pulled it off.

Something, rather.

“Fuck you,” she snarled. “You’re going to keep the bargain with me or you’re going to learn the real meaning of print-is-dead, you useless, motherfucking, ungrateful, piece of shit, ass-biting, no good…”

She kept up with the ranting, hitting her stride and throwing in some Urban Dictionary just to get the vernacular going, the vile syllables tearing out of her blood red lips, her anger resplendent, her body humming with rage. She was so pissed off, the air around her warped and racks of clothes and bureaus all around her rattled. As the perfume bottle shattered in her hand, the sting of the alcohol sizzled into the cuts, the resulting wetness part blood, part fragrance, not that she gave a crap—

Not that the Book gave a shit.

At some point, the pragmatic disinterest of the tome registered, and what do you know. All that advice about not giving drama more air to feed off of was right. The frustration eating Devina alive gradually drained out of her veins, and all that was left was the hollow realization that for all her glorious temper tantrum, she remained alone in a space crowded with things.

As her voice dried up and she stood there panting, the dripping from her hand was like a snare drum as it hit the concrete floor.

“You’re going to give me what I want,” she said weakly.

More snoring was the only response she got. Then again, the damn thing knew that everything she said was just a threat.

Gripping the cover with both her hands, she yanked at it and got nowhere: Even when she threw her caboose out and pulled with everything she was worth, the thing remained stuck to the concrete column. She gave up when sweat bloomed across her forehead and her décolleté.

She was not going to cry in front of the fucking Book.

That was not going to be part of this shit show.

Not tonight.

“Fine, I don’t have to sit around and be ignored by you,” she said in what was absolutely not a Fatal Attraction voice. “I can leave here. You, on the other hand, are going nowhere fast without any legs. Enjoy your night.”

Fluffing her hair, she pivoted and stalked over to the door. As she got to the reinforced steel panel, she passed right through the seam in the space/time continuum that insulated her private quarters from all kinds of things that went bump in the night and lame in the day.

As she re-formed on the sidewalks of downtown Caldwell, she sealed up the cuts in her palm and smoothed the contours of the bustier. The night was laid out before her, all twinkling lights and possibilities for distraction, the clubs open and full, humans everywhere, in their cars, in their homes, in their party places.

She’d find something to amuse herself with.