But, yes, I still live with my parents.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s on my list to find a cooler HQ while I’m in Purgatory. And I’ll get around to it one of these days. Pinky promise. However, at this point? My limo is dropping Lincoln and me off at the front door of my parents’ mansion. True, we should rush off to Antrum and get the codex back in the court’s official vault, but I’m hungry, and I smell like dead demon and old lady.
I need to take a break. And since my dad is nothing less than the General of the archangels, there aren’t many places in the after-realms that are safer than Mom and Dad’s house.
Let the snacking commence.
I step out of the limo and pause. My parents’ house never fails to stun me. The place is a leftover from when the ghouls ruled Purgatory, so it’s a cross between a Gothic nightmare and high-tech superstore. Did I mention that ghouls love gadgets? They do.
Getting into the house is quite the process. We’re forced to enter in about a million codes and undergo a few magical scans. At last, Lincoln and I walk through the front door. “Mom? Dad?”
No response.
That’s not a big surprise. My parents are busy running Purgatory most of the time. Mom is the visionary, trying to create new programs. Dad is a genius at organizing troops to do, well, anything. Lately, Dad’s been all about cleaning up straggler demons and removing rubble that’s leftover from Armageddon’s invasion. He’ll be thrilled when I tell him we found and killed a pair of dyads. I’ll leave out the part about Aldred and Armageddon being in league with each other. That’s nothing new to my parents in general, and my father in particular. Plus, any news about the King of Hell upsets Dad. He was imprisoned there for twenty years. That’s not something any of us like to chat about.
I make a beeline for the kitchen. It’s a modern space with lots of gizmos and stainless steel. I scan the counters. Nothing yummy there.
Time to start rummaging through everything.
I tear through every drawer and cabinet I can find. All of them are empty of anything delicious. Bummer. My favorite snack is demon bars. They’re basically chocolate-caramel goodness with a little granola thrown in. That way, it seems like health food. I live on these things, and since I’m part demon, my so-called bad eating habits don’t affect my figure. Go me.
I search through a few more cabinets, finding nothing but real granola, which is a total waste of my time. I check the back corner of some of the larger drawers, which are my favorite hiding places for extra bars. Still nothing.
Lincoln stands in the doorway. “I thought your mother threw out all your demon bars.” Mom’s on a kick to try to make me eat healthier.
I crouch down and look under the sink. “She thinks she did.” My fingers brush across the familiar smooth wrapper. “Bingo.” I pull out a mashed-up demon bar. The wrapper isn’t too torn up.
I deem thee totally edible.
A smile quirks the corner of Lincoln’s mouth. “You’re actually going to eat that?”
“Sure.” I pull off the wrapper. “Watch me. Yum, yum.”
Lincoln shakes his head slightly. “You’d have more energy if you ate actual food, you know.”
And with that comment, it’s official. Lincoln’s judginess is ruining my snack break. I glare at him. “Why don’t you go find a carrot, babe?” I stuff another bite of bar in my mouth. “I’m busy.”
“Not hungry. I ate a healthy and balanced breakfast.”
I’d stick out my tongue, but it’s covered in food right now. Even I have standards. Instead, I wave my hand over the general vicinity of my mouth. “Still eating here.”
Lincoln leans against the doorjamb and hitches his right foot over his left. “Once you’re done with your gourmet dining experience, we need to get ready for Antrum.” He raises the Rixa Codex in his hands. “This thing must into the vault.” That codex is filled with hundreds of hours of interviews, including our Mrs. Pomplemousse coup.
Those bastards at Acca are so going down.
“Sure thing.” To travel to Lincoln’s land, we have to use an enchanted platform called a Pulpitum. For the record, traveling this way is super fun. Seeing Lincoln’s people? Not so much. They’re totally twitchy around me.
To be fair, Lincoln’s people have reason to fear me. Lady Adair had a goodly amount of the thrax nobility following her, and she hated my fucking guts. Later on, when she turned into Armageddon, I summoned my igni in front of all the thrax nobility…Aaaaaaaand I might have gone a little overboard. And when I say “gone a little overboard,” I mean that I separated the souls of all the thrax nobles from their respective bodies. It only lasted for a short while, and it made sense at the time, I swear. But after that, they’re terrified of me. Oops.