Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
“Ahhh!” Shrieking my agony, I clutched my cheek and ran—escaping through my bedroom door.
“Charlotte!”
I burst inside, startling Dora, then slammed and locked the door shut before darkness took me, and I collapsed on the carpet.
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up in my bed. Even though Dora was snoozing away in the bed next to me, I knew she picked me up and put me to bed because I had three times as many blankets piled on top of me, and a cup of cold cocoa waiting for me on my nightstand.
Usually, the sight of both would’ve cheered me, but I felt nothing... and that was all I needed to make up my mind.
Kicking out from under the blankets, I found my phone on the coffee table where I left it. I picked it up and dialed the number without hesitation.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hi, honey! Is it my deathday? Why else would you gift me your beautiful voice first thing in the morn—?”
“Most of the vampire covens have a deal with Lucifer to be his personal spies and assassins,” I sliced in—my voice as emotive as a rock. “Yours is one of them, isn’t it. That’s why you know so much about Lucifer, and what he’d do if he became a god.”
There was a deep silence on his end of the phone.
“Yes,” Santino said flatly. “To both your statements.”
“Are you spying on me for him?”
“No.” That reply came with no pause or hesitation.
“How do I know that’s true?” I probed.
“You don’t. But I hope you will believe that it’s the head of my coven that made a deal with him, not me personally. I have no contract with him. He has none with me. I am not beholden to his bidding.”
I inclined my head, accepting this. What else could I do? “Beholden to him or not, are you allowed to enter House Lucifer, or Pomaris, or whatever it’s called?”
“Yes. Why?”
Turning around, I glanced at Dora... and then to the door leading to Ronin’s room. “Because Mommy’s moving in with Daddy.”
Chapter Eleven
The minute Intro to Torture let out, I grabbed Dora’s hand and rushed out—making for the place we agreed to meet while everyone else stampeded to the mess hall.
“Where are you going?”
I jerked, twisting around in the hallway and finding Ronin right behind me. I left him softly snoring in the seat next to me only moments ago.
“Dorm room,” I told him, willing my racing heart to slow. I showed him the rip in my dress.
The tear I sneakily made with the pear of anguish when I was supposed to be practicing its use on my partner. The pear of anguish was indeed a pear-shaped device made to be inserted into someone’s orifice and then expanded until you mutilated whatever orifice that was.
Funnily enough, even though everyone thought I was a weird mortal freak, everyone wanted to be my partner in torture class because I refused to torture anybody.
“I have to change,” I said to Ronin.
Things had been weird with Ronin, considering those were the first words we spoke to each other all day. Maybe he sensed that this wasn’t the time to mess with me, because he wasn’t in his room when we left for breakfast that morning, and he wasn’t in the mess hall. And because he wasn’t in the mess hall, Ursula made it clear the two of us couldn’t sit with them by way of exploding our chairs into splinters and ash.
He was in our morning classes, but all he did was snooze by my side, and as I stared at his beautiful, sleeping face—
—my resolve hardened into sharp determination.
I had to get far away from this man, before I did something that would keep me out of heaven.
I turned my back on him.
“I’m sorry.”
I stopped.
Dora stopped.
Half a dozen students in the middle of heading to lunch stopped.
“I’m sorry,” Ronin repeated, striking me through the heart a second time—saying the words a demon would never say. “I didn’t mean what I said last night,” he told me as I slowly turned, the breath barely leaving my chest. “I only said all that stupid shit because I was pissed about how you were acting and wanted to snap you out of it. All that meek and compliant stuff was grossing me out. It’s how everyone obsessed with seeing my true face treats me, but not you. Never you.”
I swallowed hard, shaking as he closed the distance between us. This can’t be real. He’s not really saying this. He doesn’t mean it.
“It’s true,” Ronin said softly. “My face can give me anything and everyone I want... and how fucking boring is that.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking more and more uncomfortable and annoyed by the second. But he kept going. “I know I’m supposed to be sloth. I’m supposed to want everything handed to me on a golden platter, but a life like that is a life where nothing ever happens.