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“Yes, you absolute fraud,” I snarl, though there’s no heat in it. “I was counting them. Wisdoms included. You let me believe you were a pauper. You walked around claiming poverty while carrying a small fortune in calcium in your skull.”

Her face flushes a spectacular shade of pink, and she tries to pull the sheet up over her mouth.

“Well, I didn’t want you to pull them out in the middle of some dusty old Hell corridor,” she grumbles, her voice muffled by the linen. “You were talking about ripping them out for bribery. Can you blame me for wanting to keep them where they belong?”

I huff, crossing my arms over my chest, genuinely offended.

“The lack of trust is wounding, little summoner. Truly,” I say, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t have pulled them in a corridor. I have standards. I would have at least waited until we found a chair with proper lumbar support.”

She rolls her eyes, opening her mouth to retort, but I don’t give her the chance.

I launch a tactical strike and collapse onto her, pinning her to the mattress, and pepper her face with kisses—quick, aggressive, possessive things that land on her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids. She squeals, trying to shove my shoulders, but she’s laughing, and the sound is better than the crunch of bone, better than the screams of the damned.

“Get off me, you oversized leech!” she gasps.

“Never,” I mumble against her neck. “I’m liquidating your assets. Starting with this jugular.”

She leverages my own weight against me, and we roll across the mattress in a tangle of limbs and domestic warfare. For a few seconds, the universe isn’t a cold, void-filled horror show; it’s just warm skin and the smell of sun-warmed peaches. She pins my wrists to the pillow, looking victorious and delightfully disheveled, her dark hair a chaotic halo of static.

“Yield,” she demands, breathless.

“I recognize no authority but⁠—”

The sound of my phone cuts through the air and I groan, letting my head thud back against the headboard.

Eden’s smile falters as she looks over at it.

“Again?” she asks quietly. “Malachi, it’s nine a.m. on a Saturday.”

“The wicked don’t sleep, apparently,” I mutter, grabbing the device. “And neither do I.”

It’s usually only one case a week, but for the past fourteen days, it’s been non-stop. Satan’s had me running down leads on a caffeine drip. I’ve spent every night prowling the rain-slicked underbelly of the city, hunting down wayward assets, collecting debts, and reminding demons why they shouldn’t skim off the top.

I am the First Division’s premier Headhunter, and I am exhausted.

Eden stretches out lazily, her limbs unspooling across the sheets as she kicks the duvet off one foot, looking entirely too comfortable for a woman who just kneed a demon in the solar plexus.

“You’ll be back for dinner, right?” she asks, stifling a yawn.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I lie, sliding my arms into my jacket.

Internally, I fucking hope the apocalypse starts around five p.m.

I adore the bones of my little summoner—I would burn cities to ash just to keep her toes warm—but my word, dinners with her progenitors a drab affair. They are the human equivalents of unbuttered toast, and spending an evening with them is like being slowly suffocated by a sentient cardigan.

Her father does enjoy fire, though. We have found a common ground standing over the backyard grill, staring into the charcoal abyss with a shared, silent appreciation for searing flesh. He tends the flames with a pyromaniac’s focus that I find deeply relatable.

And her mother bakes a lemon drizzle cake that is so violent, so acidic, so moist, it almost justifies the three hours of conversation about her neighbor’s hedge height.

Almost.

"Since I’m already descending into the fluorescent purgatory of the twenty-four-hour mart," I say, checking myself in the reflection of the mirror. "Would you like me to acquire more of those... gelatin worms?"

"Ooh," she sighs, wriggling deeper into her nest of blankets until only her eyes are visible. "Yes, please. The blue ones. They make my tongue numb."

"Disgusting," I say affectionately. "Consider it done."

I look down. The House-Beast is ignoring my existence, which is standard operating procedure, but Chain-Chewer is awake. He’s sitting at attention, staring up at me, his tail thumping a traitorous, hopeful rhythm against the floorboards.