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“Then I planned to remove the key, but I quickly realized that was as foolhardy a plan as killing you would be,” he continued.
His calm was both enticing and eerie. It was staring at a hot monster and knowing he could kill me without much effort. It was a taste of danger without actually jumping in knowing he couldn’t do anything to me even if he wanted to.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because only you know the location of the box.”
I thought about the weird box that appeared in my dreams. The one I had already opened and looked inside. “The box is real?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s in it is also—”
“Real.” Asmodeus’ eyes glowed with intensity. “Surely you can understand my dilemma. The box’s contents are quite important to me, which makes you important to me in turn.”
This was all so surreal.
“Where is the box?” I asked.
He merely lifted his shoulders like we weren’t talking about a supernatural box that contained the heart of the demon who sat across from me. “Wherever you put it.”
“What?” I didn’t put it anywhere. It was just… there. It appeared in my nightmares and was gone when I woke up. At no time did I put it anywhere. “I didn’t—”
“You did.” It wasn’t an argument.
“How would you know?”
“I just do.”
Great. Not only did I have a supernatural box but I didn’t even know where it was. Having him sit there and assure me in that pompous tone that I put it somewhere because he just knew I did didn’t help me.
Where was it? Hell if I knew despite what he said.
Somehow, I felt like that would become a problem. How could I get rid of a demon if I didn’t know where it was?
My cheeks puffed and I sighed again. “Okay. You can’t kill me or get rid of the key. What happens if someone else takes it?” That thing that felt like it was hunting me looked like the kind of thing that could. I still felt the sharp slice of its nail in my chest.
“It can’t be so easily taken.”
I wasn’t so sure that was true. “But what would happen if it was?”
He shrugged again. “Aside from your death? My guess would be nothing. What is a key without a lock? It’s nothing without the box and you have that.”
Right. I have the imaginary box. Great.
My nerves were a mess. I missed the days when all I had to bitch about was an impossible client who wanted a fully functional bathroom on the roof of their weird artsy mansion that shouldn’t exist anywhere but on the canvas of someone painting strokes with different colours of their insanity. Ones I had to make real because they’d seen it in a dream. All for a price that wasn’t always worth the work.
What I would give for a rich asshole barking orders at me right now.
“Okay.” I shoved at my hair. “Okay,” I repeated as I turned the cogs in my mind. “So what now? What’s the plan now?”
“My plan is to keep you safe.”
I waited for more, but it never came. “That’s it?”
“Does there need to be more?”
“Yes!” I was on my feet as I paced. I made my way to the windows, walking the length of them. “Of course, there needs to be more. This plan has nothing to do with undoing the spell or whatever the hell it was. It has nothing to do with removing the key and separating us.”
