Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

His deep, wicked chuckle fills the room. “Humans. No stamina.”

He feeds me pancakes in the morning. A thick stack of them, drowning in real maple syrup. With a steaming cup of rich, slightly bitter Dark Roast on the side. He sits across the kitchen table from me, wearing only a pair of loose black pajama bottoms that make his skin glow gold. He radiates heat, which insulates me against the chilly breeze blowing in from the broken windows. Despite the lure of the food in front of me, I’m having trouble taking my eyes off him. He looks delicious, all that golden skin and heavy muscle. His dreadlocks are long and loose this morning, spilling down over his shoulders and back, brilliant crimson in the morning sunlight. He flicks them aside to steal forkfuls of pancake off my plate, despite the huge stack sitting in front of him.

“What’s wrong with your food?” I ask mildly, after his fourth or fifth foray.

“Yours tastes better,” he says, grinning around a stolen mouthful. “So, what’re we doing today?”

Repairing the damage to my house, making the mother of all memory charms, creating a doppelganger, sending him back to Hell. I shrug. “What do you want to do?”

“You’re askin’ me?” He smiles, a real smile, flashing white teeth that I’ve felt on my skin. I’m probably still wearing an imprint or two. I shiver and try to focus on my pancakes. No such luck. My eyes are glued to him. “How ‘bout you show me ‘round your town. Last time I was here, they were hangin’ witches in the Common.”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “You were here during the Witch Trials?” How long ago was that? Three hundred years? Four hundred? I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how old he is.

“Yeah. Got trapped here by that fucking ring for a couple of years.” His smile stretches into a chillingly wicked grin. “Started an orgy in a little town called Danvers. Can’t be all that far from here.”

I know where it is. And I can imagine the fall-out from an orgy in Puritan New England. “How many people were hung because of that?”

He shrugs. “Dunnow. But none of ‘em were waitin’ for me when I got home, so they weren’t innocents anyway.”

“Do they haunt you? The people you’ve killed?”

“Nope. You?”

I grimace. I haven’t killed anyone. Just crippled poor Freddy Weiss. But I have plenty of ghosts in my life. “Those are family ghosts.”

The demon arches a black eyebrow. “Really? The way they fuck with your head, I’da never guessed.”

“Mmm.” I take a sip of the coffee. Delicious. “Do you have family?”

“Father.” The demon steals another forkful off my plate. “Couple thousand siblings.”

“A couple thousand?”

“Yup. Old man’s got a basic inability to keep it in his pants.”

“Oh . . .” I pause because I’m not really sure I want to know. Then I ask anyway, curiosity getting the better of me. “Do you have any children?”

“Not yet.” The shark’s leer surfaces.

I ignore the leer. One thing I’m safe from is having is his little demons. Then it hits me. “That’s why you don’t come.”

The leer stretches into a grin. “You may be clueless, sweet meat, but you ain’t stupid.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“No, I told you, it gives me amnesia. Too dangerous topside. ‘Specially since I know what you’re plannin’ to do to me.”

I can’t keep the shock off my face. “H-how do you know?”

He steals my coffee-cup and turns it around until he can drink out of the same spot. My mouth tingles warmly, like he’s just kissed me. “Did a little bedtime reading while I was eatin’ last night.”

The books. Spread over my dining room table. And all over the floor after his battle with Wen and the nethancs.

“It wouldn’t have hurt you,” I say.

The demon scratches his chin with the handle of his fork. “You got a loose definition of hurt.”

“Sending you back with a double wouldn’t do you any harm—!”

I break off at his dark chuckle. He steals another mouthful of pancake and chews it with gusto.

“You didn’t know,” I grit. “You could see I was researching something but you couldn’t tell what it was so you baited me—”

“And it worked like a fuckin’ charm.”

“You shit,” I spit at him.

His eyes glitter with that hard neon light. “Don’t fuck with me, sweet meat. I’m here. I’m not going back. Not any time soon, and not without you. So accept the inevitable and stop trying to double-cross me.”

“Double-cross you! I’m just trying to get rid of you! How is that a double-cross?!”

He shrugs one huge, golden shoulder. “Whatever you want to call it. I’m here for the duration.”

I stab the pile of pancakes, wishing vehemently that I was stabbing something else. “I’m not giving you my soul.”

“Have I said anythin’ about that recently?” He holds his hands up innocently. His leer ruins the effect.

“No, you haven’t, as a matter of fact,” I say. “Why is that?”

“Maybe I got other things in mind.”

“Are you going to tell me what they are?” I stab the pancakes again.

“Nope. If you’re not gonna eat those, stop shreddin’ ‘em. They don’t taste as good when they’re mushy. So where are you takin’ me?”

I stop mutilating the pancakes. They’re too good to waste. “Do you really want to see Boston?”

“Do you really want to show it to me?” he counters.

I frown. There are places in Boston that I love, but haven’t been to in what feels like forever, because they’re magical places, and I haven’t been with anyone who could appreciate them. But showing them to a demon? “Have you ever been up the Pru?”

“Is that like going down on your pussy?”

I nearly spit pancake all over him. “No.”

He lets a few of his dreadlocks fall over his face and looks at me through them. It’s a calculated look, and it has exactly the intended effect, even though I know he’s manipulating me, damn it. “We haven’t done that yet,” he says.

I feel myself blush hotly.