The tension rises, threatening to break.
It helps that they also have a wave of paranoia creeping into their consciousness.
Because sitting alone in the back of the room wearing a slim-fit suit with roses and skulls stitched down the arms and outseams is CJ—with Poppy’s face-changing charm around their neck.
Turns out, demons are just like humans in another aspect: If you act like you belong, they’ll believe you do. And that’s exactly what CJ’s been doing for the past few hours: acting like they belong.
The murmurs rise. A demon with sheep horns and a wide-eyed expression is the first to make a move. A dark mist swirls around its outstretched hand.
Hades flicks her wrist, and her bident materializes, already crackling. A stream of energy fires from its tip, striking the demon in an instant. It disappears in a puff of black smoke, leaving behind nothing but the acrid scent of sulfur.
The room immediately quiets.
“Might I remind you,” Hades snarls, voice amplified, “that no reward given by a weak Titan will ever be worth risking my wrath.”
No one dares move. For a tense moment, her snarl remains. Then she lets out a sound that’s almost a giggle and sits back down on her throne.
“Now, where were we?” she asks. “Ah, yes. It’s time for our little necromancer to prove herself.”
She points at me with her bident, and I flinch. I didn’t want to have to actually do a resurrection, but I might have to if Hades doesn’t put away her weapon.
“Well?” she says.
I swallow and step up to the podium. Seeing the grimoire is almost comforting. I would maybe even be excited about doing magic again if I weren’t surrounded by demons and a rotting corpse, held at bident-point by an undead god. My hand trembles as I trace the page, the paper brittle under my fingertip. I find the passage with the incantation.
Well. Here goes. I guess.
I take a deep breath, and just as I’m about to speak the first syllable, a side door slams open and a demon hauls in a very disheveled, very panicked Tolliver, who’s clutching a DoorDash bag like a lifeline. His eyes widen as he takes in the sea of demons now watching him. He fumbles for something in the bag and pulls out a sack of limes.
Hades scowls. “Fury’s sake, who keeps ordering entire bags of limes? Why would you need that many? Are you eating them whole?”
The demon holding Tolliver clears his throat. “He’s not actually with DoorDash, my lord.”
Tolliver’s eyes land on me and he blanches.
“Elle, what are you doing?” he breathes.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Damn it, Tolliver.”
“You promised you wouldn’t do this!”
I scoff. “I also promised I wouldn’t eat the last Eggo. Honestly, this is on you for believing me.”
“You should have just taken Waring’s offer,” he snaps.
The audience of demons tense as one.
“You’ll thank me when we get Dante back,” I say. “I’m not risking the grimoire, no matter what Waring offers.”
“I hate to interrupt this lover’s quarrel,” Hades says. Her voice is lazy, but there’s tension in her posture. “But we were in the middle of a resurrection here. I don’t care about whatever Waring had to offer, and none of my—”
Before she can finish whatever it is she’s about to say, a demon breaks free of the crowd, heading straight for the grimoire. Hades zaps it without hesitation.
But it was a decoy.
Another demon has approached from the side and there’s already a ball of hellfire in its open palm.
Time seems to slow. I don’t have enough time to get out of the way, and though the codex will be destroyed, it looks like I’ll be destroyed with it.