Page 92 of Hellbound

The conversation faded into white noise as Marian stared at her full plate.

“I was told you’re not allowed to have dessert unless you eat all of your vegetables.”

Marian looked up to find Paul and Tori staring at her. How was it that she’d gone from wanting to strangle the traveler to being so concerned for her well-being in a matter of hours?

“Says who?” Tori asked.

Marian, meanwhile, realized she hadn’t spoken in thirty minutes. Her head was a mess.

“Guess,” Paul replied.

Tori frowned. “The god thing? Why would he care what she eats?”

Paul shrugged. He skewered a chicken tender with his fork, “Marian can’t die until her oath is fulfilled, but I guess she can still be vitamin deficient, so eat your fucking green beans. Or don’t. I don’t care, but you’ll never find the secret ice cream fridge without my help.”

Marian hadn’t even begun to wrap her mind around the enormity of the fact that she was supposedly invincible. It should have thrilled her. But it only felt like yet another part of her she didn’t recognize anymore.

Tori slumped in her seat as she pushed the food around her plate. “Why does he need a secret ice cream fridge?”

“It’s my fridge,” Paul answered. “I live here, too.”

Tori arched a brow. “By choice or force?”

“A bit of both. This place isn’t so bad, though. It’s old, but Vale spent a ton of money renovating it.” Paul scooted his chair toward Tori with a sudden shift in tone, turning from grim to casual on a dime. “Hey, so I really can’t lie to you?”

“Nope,” Tori said as she shoved food into her mouth. “And if you do, your dick will turn into a corncob.”

Paul blinked. “That’s really weird.”

Marian might have found the house interesting in another life. One where she wasn’t temporarily immortal, being held against her will by a god from another world and tasked with mass murder. She looked at her hands in her lap, glaring at the mark on her wrist.

“I can’t do this,” Marian announced.

The conversation dropped off a cliff as Paul and Tori looked at her in silent surprise.

Marian met their gazes. “It doesn’t matter if the Argent deserve it. I can’t kill.”

Tori looked at Paul. Then Paul looked at Marian with a mixture of pity and exasperation.

A dreadfully deep and frosty voice from the doorway cut through the silence.

“You can, and you will.”

Marian’s whole body broke out in goosebumps as Vale appeared from the hallway. He walked toward them, his eyes burning blue on endless black. His human disguise was as cracked and flawed as it had been when Marian lost consciousness. Wisps of smoke and shadow danced along the outline of white shirtsleeves and a black waistcoat.

Paul and Tori didn’t appear nearly as discomfited by the sight of him as Marian.

Tori popped up from her seat like she’d been spring loaded into it.

“Where’s my phone?” She demanded.

Phone? Marian suddenly palmed her pants pockets, her breath catching when she realized they were empty.

The tremendous weight of the god’s otherworldly gaze shifted to Tori.

“Confiscated.”

Marian watched Tori’s throat work to swallow, as if the traveler had finally recognized the enormity of the creature watching her. “I—I want to call my mom.”