The way he paced while reciting such “rules”—like he was some sort of preternatural office drone—forced a smile from her. And a genuine smile at that, not an expression meant to mask fear or make her appear bolder than she felt. It was funny, really, hearing a demon rattle off points of protocol.
She stiffened a little, though, at the mention of “Master.” It’s not like she’d had a proper one, anyway…and after a particularly…harsh…decade that’d pushed her to the breaking point, she’d not had one at all.
Watching the way he moved, she paused. Why did she feel both disarmed and alarmed? She wasn’t afraid…she was almost never afraid. She’d gone through too much, faced the certainty of death too many times (and had technically died, to be fair), had suffered for too long to be afraid of anything, really. But as his voice wound its way through her ears and around her brain like so much silky smoke, she knew that this—he—might be something worth feeling fear for.
Raking a hand through her hair and chewing momentarily on her bottom lip (with such unconscious ferocity she’d probably need another pair of rings), she furrowed her brow and drew a deep breath.
“That ‘plump bag of blood and flesh’ has a name. Not yours to speak. You forget about him, now. Him and everyone else in this neighborhood. You’ve got a city to hunt. These people are mine.”
She was angry, suddenly. Not amused. No one spoke about Alan in such inconsequential terms. When he drew close, though, her breath hitched in her throat. His eyes were blazing and…Jesus, she wanted to slap herself…she found herself unable to look away.
“No soul to trade?” She hissed, resisting the urge to grab his arm, “what’s a soul worth, anyway? Billions of people on this planet do things terrible enough to prove they’ve no soul to begin with. Maybe you need to adopt another currency, Mister…?”