I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t plan to explore far today anyway. My body was getting better, and movement wasn’t too painful anymore, but I didn’t think I had a lot of stamina. Not yet. I needed that snake to work its magic for a little longer. The thing was currently slithering around my torso.
I retreated and waited for my clothes, and after the creepy demon placed them on the desk, removed the empty plates and tray, and scampered away, I changed into a new set of leather pants and a tank top. It felt strange not to have any weapons to strap to my person.
“Looks like I’m going to have to go commando. And braless. They didn’t bring underwear.” I palmed my boobs. “This is more comfortable now, but if I have to run, things might get dicey.”
“Yes, you’ll give yourself a black eye.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Cahal picked up his book and faced me. “I’m free-balling it, too. They didn’t bring back underwear after they took my clothes, and I didn’t feel like explaining. My dick and balls won’t affect my running.”
I scanned his dark pants and black shirt, loose over his muscular frame. I hadn’t noticed they were clean clothes. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been lucid when he found me in the elves’ cell.
Something occurred to me.
“Where have you been sleeping?”
He glanced back at the chair.
I lifted my eyebrows, checking his chiseled face for signs of fatigue. No dark shadows pooled under his glacial blue eyes. The planes and angles of his bone structure, almost severe with a slightly hooked nose, fit with his aura of lethal confidence. They did not, however, broadcast any wariness or exhaustion. He stood tall, well over my height, with his shoulders squared and back straight, his bearing loose and agile.
“You slept in the chair?”
“I’ve slept in many places all over the worlds. Some more comfortable than others. I’ve grown accustomed to getting the rest I need in any given place.”
“Huh. What a terrible life you lead.”
The corners of his lips pulled upward. Many would think it was the beginnings of a snarl, but I knew it was his self-deprecating humor, only expressed once he got to know someone. The guy was like a block of ice. It took a while to thaw him enough to get to his personality.
“Right. Let’s go pick a new place to stay.” I headed toward the door. “This room is some sort of joke, it seems.”
“I figured as much.”
“My old man has a sense of humor, then?”
“That’s what he could call it, yes.”
“And what would you call it?”
“Usually? Dangerous.”
Tits McGee led us slowly down the hallway, pausing halfway down as the walls around us shifted. A door disappeared, a wall appeared in front of us, and another hallway opened to our right. The demon turned that way, and I glanced back at a dead end that no longer reached as far as the room I’d just left.
“And that’s why you grabbed your book,” I murmured, watching a table appear beside me and feeling the magic thrumming from it. It wasn’t real, that wood. That flower in the vase on top of it. It was an illusion made of magic, like the majority of the Realm, like the scenarios I could create myself. Well, kinda. On my best day, I couldn’t create something so detailed. Not yet, anyway.
Cahal was right: I needed to hang around until I learned how to properly wield this magic. If the war did eventually come, and I was the one in charge of stopping Lucifer from destroying the Realm, I had better figure out how to make that possible.
The demon stopped again, and this time I reached out around me as the landscape shifted, feeling the various fibers of magic, picking them apart to see how they were constructed. Much of the hall was real—real wood, real paintings, real wallpaper or paint—but magic added the occasional door or glowing light fixture. Sometimes false walls masked whole rooms, blocking them from passersby. Or was it just blocking me?
As we turned toward the left, I unraveled it all. Plucking illusions apart was easy for me—putting them back together less so. Making them solid was a total no-go, but it was clearly possible. The illusion fell away, revealing a high-arched ceiling with chandeliers hanging down, much more fashionable than the setup in the elves’ castle. Stately furniture was arranged on a large deep crimson rug, and each wall was completely covered in row after high row of books.
“Wow,” I said, angling my head up to see the top row, where the bookcases met the edge of the ceiling. Not a single ladder to help people reach the volumes at the top, so I figured anyone working in this area had Glaciem magic. They’d need to levitate to reach.