I was upset.
Offended.
Hurt.
Or some combination of the three.
It was hard to tell after so long without having to deal with most pesky human emotions, save for maybe the ones that came more naturally to my kind—frustration and anger.
But there they were, unmistakable, undeniable.
"If I am, that is something new for me too," I admitted to her, feeling oddly laid bare. This was what vulnerability felt like. I'd never truly wrapped my head around the concept before. "Come on," I said, dropping her chin, taking a few steps back. "Come out of here. Go back to normal. I'll leave you alone if you want. Or, if you would rather, I can educate you. But come out. Sleep on the couch instead of the floor—"
"Bathtub," she corrected, waving, making me turn and find a collection of towels and washcloths piled in the small space.
"That's even worse," I told her, shaking my head. "Sleep on the couch. Eat your food. Think about what you want. Then let me know, okay?" I asked, making my way out of the bathroom, giving her space.
She gave me a tight nod.
"Okay."
"Okay," I agreed. "I'll get Minos to make you something fresh," I said, waving at the food.
"Alright. Thanks," she added, not taking any steps further.
Until I was out of the bedroom, in the hall.
I had a feeling I knew what she was going to want.
Me as far away from her as possible.
It shouldn't have mattered.
But, I found as I sat up all night going over it, it mattered.
It mattered more than anything I could remember anything mattering.
Chapter Thirteen
Jo
It felt like a lifetime ago that I was worried about my new co-workers, about cutting my hair, about maybe getting a new pet.
I had been so much more naive then.
I felt so much older now.
Now that I knew how the world really worked, that demons walked among us, that they didn't look like twisted creatures out of nightmares or horror movies.
Oh, no.
They looked like very attractive human beings.
I'd noticed some things in the couple of days after I emerged from the bathroom to try to find some semblance of normal again. Like the fact that Minos and Ly and Daemon all had the same flecks of red in their eyes that Ace did, just in different patterns. They were all warm. You could feel it from several inches away. And there was a chilliness to the way they engaged with me that must have been because of their soullessness.
I guess I had been able to overlook all these things because I had nothing to compare them to.
Now, though, it was all glaringly obvious.
I kept finding myself looking for other things about them that was different from me, from us, from the human race.
Since they weren't freaking human.
Unfortunately, they all seemed to be under strict instructions not to come too close to me, to linger long. They came in, brought me food, removed old dishes, helped me with Red, and—in the case of Daemon—came in to clean.
"Do you enjoy cleaning?" I found myself asking on the fourth day after I was out of the bathroom, watching Daemon scrub the sink wearing a pair of ridiculous pink cleaning gloves. I knew they came in yellow and even blue, but he was always wearing pink for some reason.
"I can't say that I do, pretty lady," he said, giving me his signature playboy smile.
"Then why are you the one always doing it?"
"I think that answer is two-fold. On one side, I think they all believe I am the least threatening of our kind to come in here for any length of time. On the other, they like making me do all the chores around here."
"You're all evil," I said, shrugging.
"True," he agreed. "But before you knew that, did you hate us all?"
"You kidnapped me."
"You talked to me like a friend in the kitchen while you cooked. Even though we'd kidnapped you."
"Clearly, I have not been thinking straight," I said, tone clipped, a large part of me determined to despise them all, even if they weren't currently giving me a reason to.
"Do you want to try it again?" he asked. "An experiment of sorts?" he added.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, now you know what we are. Let's go down to the kitchen. You can make yourself something to eat. I will talk to you like I did last time. And then you can decide if you despise me for no good reason—aside from the kidnapping thing which was a factor even then—or maybe see if you're being judgmental over something we can't control."
"You might not be able to control being demons, but you can control walking around Earth, pretending to be men."
"We actually don't. We're stuck here," Daemon told me, pulling off the pink gloves, slipping them into the cleaning bucket under the sink cabinet. "We have been for a while. Well, Red and the others much longer than Bael and me. We didn't choose to be here—though now that I am here, I would pick it over and over—and we can't just go back. We have to be here. So we make the best of it that we can. Including flirting with pretty women," he said, giving me a boyish smile.