A shudder worked its way through the crowd. Impressive that creatures who’d lost most of their humanity would still recoil at this. That definitely wasn’t good.
Another vampire—Something Holloway—crept closer to the stage. He was the same man who interrogated me in Romania. “So, have you met him?” he asked, peering up at me.
There was absolute silence in the room as the coven waited for my answer.
I lifted my chin as I stared at them. “Yes.”
I’d assumed that amongst all the secrets that had been published in the news, this would be among them. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but the gasps in the crowd told me that either way, no one had believed it until this moment.
“Once?” Holloway gazed at me with curious eyes.
Andre’s hand tightened on my own, before he withdrew it.
I shook my head. “Too many times to count.”
The vampire steepled his fingers, and pressed the tips of them to his lips. An excited gleam had entered his eyes. “Tell us everything you know about the devil and these visits.”
Again, an eerie silence descended over the room as they waited with baited breath.
Of course these men and women wanted to know. Just like me, the coven had been cursed to hell since the night they were turned. They’d probably spent centuries wondering what the devil was like, what their afterlife would be like.
A glance over at Andre told me that he wouldn’t swoop in to save me from explaining myself.
I inhaled. “The devil has always been a presence in my life, as far back as my memory goes.” Albeit, my memory was spotty before the age of seven.
“Even when you were a child?” Holloway sounded incredulous.
I nodded.
“When you were young, what did you think he was?”
I shrugged. “All children have night terrors. He was mine. I didn’t realize until I was a little older that he wasn’t just a night terror.”
“And when you were older, what did you think of him then?”
Next to me, Andre rubbed a thumb over his lower lip, watching me with contemplative eyes. I’d never told him this, I realized.
My mouth opened, but I was at a loss for words. “I don’t know. I called him ‘The Man in the Suit’ because I had nothing else to go on. He would appear and disappear like a ghost, but he … wasn’t one.” I searched for words to explain what had always been inexplicable to me.
Holloway saved me from having to finish the thought. “How often did he show up?”
I had the room’s rapt attention. Maybe it was the crowd’s realization that my death—the very thing they’d been gunning for—might be what would lead to their own demise, or my unique insight into the lord of the Underworld, but they were staring at me with some strange mixture of wonder and awe.
“As a child, the devil used to visit me once every several months or so. When I got older, he showed up less. That all changed, however, once I arrived here.”
“You mean to the Isle of Man?” Holloway had become the unofficial interviewer for the evening.
“Yes.”
“In what way did it change?”
All those visits … “He became bolder. He visited more frequently, came closer to me than he previously had, and he began speaking to me.”
I didn’t make eye contact with anyone in the crowd as I spoke. My gaze fixed on some distant point above them.
“Speaking to you?” Holloway repeated. “What did he have to say?”
I pressed my lips tightly together, clenching one of my fists as I remembered the last time he’d spoken to me, right before he ordered Cecilia killed.
“My soulmate does not wish to answer the question—”
“The devil had lots of things to say.” My voice rose over Andre’s. “Sometimes he simply said things to scare me—he likes doing that. Other times he’d threaten or bribe me, and at least once he warned me of danger.” I didn’t mention the creepy way he’d been nice—if you could call it that—to me lately. As it was, I’d come too close to suggesting just that.
It was the furthest thing from the truth.
“All those times that he visited you, what did he want?” Vicca cut in. Unlike her earlier hostility, I could see I’d gained something like respect in her eyes. Maybe respect was too generous a term. More like tolerance.
I glanced at Andre, whose brow was furrowed.
“Before I came to the Isle of Man, I had no idea I was a supernatural. I thought I was going insane.” I got some snickers from that statement. Vampires and their screwed up senses of humor. “Now it seems as though he was keeping an eye on me. I think once I was Awoken, something changed. That’s when he increased his presence in my life.”
“So, since you came to the Isle of Man, the devil’s approached you to chat?” Holloway asked.
“He’s done a lot more than just chatted with me.” I regretted the words almost immediately. Andre’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and his hands tightened along the armrests. The crowd began to whisper, their voices rising.
“Are you telling us you’ve carried on a relationship with the devil while you’ve been with our king?”
Andre rubbed his face. “It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “It wasn’t … consensual.”
Some of the audience hissed, and I sincerely hoped that was on my behalf.
The Elder that was questioning me cleared his throat. “We will adjourn and discuss all that we’ve learned in private. This meeting is over.”
It only took them three hours to come to a decision.
I stood at a window in one of Andre’s side rooms, staring at the night outside. My thoughts were dark.
I heard Andre rise from the wingback chair behind me. My hair stirred as he pressed a kiss to the side of my neck. One of his arms wrapped around my waist and the other slinked over my breasts. They really liked that.
Yo boobs, behave.
His hand laid flat over my heart. “It beats slower, soulmate.”
“I know.” I turned in his arms so that I faced him. “If I di—”
Andre pressed a finger to my lips. “No talk of death tonight.”