Page 65 of Infernal Secrets

Zeke tugged on my hair. “Figured you’d need someone to talk to.”

I frowned as I took in his sincere expression. “How’d you get here?”

“Bus. Then Uber,” he said with a shrug. “Got here before the ceremony started.”

“Ceremony?”

“Service,” Ezra said, correcting Zeke. “He means the funeral service.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. “Wait. You’ve been here the whole time? Did you see—”

“The delemora?” Ash’s chest rumbled beneath my back as Ezra said the unfamiliar word. “We saw them.”

“What did they want? I’ve never had a demon… uh, infernal, interact with me like that.”

Zeke’s head cocked to the side. “Never? But I thought you…”

“Not like this. It said something, but I can’t remember how to pronounce it.”

Ezra studied me. “They’ve never made contact before?”

“Not one of those things,” I said. Fear crawled my skin as I recalled its broken, blood-stained mouth of serrated teeth. The reek of decay still lingered.

Ash tightened his hold on my shoulders as if sensing my fear rising again.

I pursed my lips. “But now that I think about it, there was this one guy in the shop the day we met who left me a message.”

“A message?” Ezra asked as Zeke said, “Your manager?”

I looked between the two of them. “Not my manager. Just a regular guy—at least, I think he was a human.”

Cyn’s natural scowl deepened. “You think?”

“Well, he didn’t have eyes,” I said. Zeke’s brows shot up. “I mean, it looked like someone carved them out of his face. He had all this shredded skin like raw ground beef.”

Ezra crossed his arms, eyeing me as if I were an idiot. “And you thought he was a regular human?”

“I mean, everything about him looked human, like you do now, except the eyes.” I shrugged. “He purchased items. I figured maybe he was possessed. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen someone change in appearance, only to return to normal.”

I realized that was the same thing Cyn had done the night we met, and while he looked like a human now, he was anything but.

“Maybe he was an infernal hiding behind a human form,” I mumbled.

“It’s more likely he was possessed if he was on Earth,” Ash said, finally releasing my shoulders so I could turn to look at him. “While higher infernals look human, lesser infernals, and those who are more beast than infernal, can’t take on a human form on their own. They can only possess a host, like a parasite. That’s why you see grotesque partial transformations. Only higher infernals are capable of partial transformations that don’t deform us.”

Ezra stepped forward, and I made an embarrassing sound—half gasp, half squeak—as I backed into Ash.

That’s when I heard it.

Ezra’s low, dark chuckle wrapped around me and made my heart flutter. No one, human or otherwise, had the right to make such a dangerous sound.

Ash’s hands settled on my shoulders, and I flinched.

Get a grip.

Ezra halted and tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks, speaking as if nothing had happened. “You said there was a message.”

“Oh, yeah. Uh. He left a message with Maya telling me the princes won’t save me. I didn’t think much of it until…” I looked up at Ash and over at Zeke. “Well, until they told me who you are.”