City of Thorns by C.N. Crawford
Chapter 33
The demon city was an inverted world, one where I seemed to sleep all day and rose as the sun was setting.
Maybe it was having an orgasm for the first time in my life, or maybe it was Orion’s incubus sleep magic, but I slept long and hard. By the time I woke in his grotto, the late afternoon sun was slanting over the ocean, streaming into the cave in horizontal rays of coral.
It was the sunlight that reminded me of a painful reality: sexy as Orion was, he was still technically one of my suspects.
I rubbed my eyes, and the smell of coffee greeted me. When I felt the breeze rippling over me, I remembered I was still naked, and I pulled up the sheets around myself.
I smiled when I saw Orion sitting at a table by the side of the pool, coffee in one hand. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to wake. I even returned to your apartment and picked up some clothes for you.”
“Thank you. I don’t suppose the grotto has a shower?”
He nodded at the pool. “I have a natural bath. It’s warmer than you’d think.”
Of course. This was magic demon water, which frankly, was much nicer than Massachusetts water. It was a damn shame the demons had spent so long trying to eat us or fuck us to death, or we could have worked together.
Orion had already seen all of me, but for some reason, I still kept a sheet wrapped around me as I crossed to the pool. I dropped it only before I jumped in.
As I sank beneath the surface, the heated pool enveloped me. When I came up again for air, I folded my arms over the side and looked up at Orion.
He gave me an amused smile. “Still shy in front of me?”
“Maybe a little.” I sighed. “I love it here. Is the grotto a secret from everyone else?”
“You’re the only person in existence who knows it’s here, besides me.”
The warm water was lapping at my back and my breasts. What I was thinking was that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay here secretly for a while, assuming I cleared Orion off my list of suspects. But maybe hiding in a demon’s sea cave wasn’t a realistic life plan. And maybe trying to move in with someone after a single night was a bit much. “So should we investigate a murder?”
Orion reached for something on the table, then lifted an envelope. “While I was picking up your clothes, I ran into Shai. She gave me this to pass on to you. And as luck would have it, it’s got the skeleton key you were looking for.”
I rested my chin on my arms as I looked at him. “She just gave you that?” She didn’t know he was going to help me. Why would she hand it over to him?
“Well, not willingly. She was standing outside your flat looking for you.” He gave a lazy shrug. “So I forced her to tell me what she was doing there.”
My fingers tightened into fists. “What do you mean, you forced her? Like, you threatened her?”
His eyebrows rose. “No, of course not. I can’t threaten her when she knows I can’t hurt her.” He dropped the envelope on the table. “So I just controlled her mind with magic.”
I stared at him. “You can’t just mind-control people, Orion.”
A line formed between his brows. “Yes, I can. That’s how I got the key. I just told you.”
I shook my head, starting to lose patience. “I know you’re physically able to. I mean, it’s…immoral.”
“I am a demon,” he said slowly, like I was an idiot.
I dropped my head into my hands. “Okay. But you feel guilt for something in the past.” I looked up at him again. How did I explain this? “Guilt is about the realization that you’ve done something wrong. Like, you’ve done something to another person that you wouldn’t want done to yourself, right? And it makes you feel bad. That’s guilt.”
He was staring at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “But I don't feel guilty for using mind control on Shai. You asked me to help you find your mother’s killer. This key seemed to be one of your only clues, and I got it for you.” He opened the envelope and pulled out the skeleton key on a long, black ribbon. “See?”
Maybe it was too much to ask a demon to understand the moral issues with mind control. One step at a time.
But more importantly, they key had my attention right now, because for whatever reason, my mom had a key to a room in the City of Thorns. And it reminded me a lot of the one I’d seen on my arm. “Do you think it could go to a room in the Asmodean Ward?”
“It looks like the keys in the Asmodean buildings. The locks haven’t been updated in hundreds of years.” He brushed his fingertip over it. “And this one has a faint carving of a skull. It’s one of the few things I remember from before I was imprisoned. The keys like this…” He stared at it, lost in his memories. “I think I was scared of them, if you can imagine such a thing.”
My mind shimmered with the memory of the key I’d seen flickering in and out on my arm. Had there been a skull there, too?
I hoisted myself out of the pool, my heart slamming hard. As my mind churned, I wrapped his sheet around me like a towel.
His gaze flicked down to the sheet. “You know how you were talking about guilt? Do you feel guilt for soaking my sheet in seawater?”
I looked down. “Sorry, I was distracted. Orion, what the fuck was my mortal mom doing with a key to a building in the abandoned Asmodean Ward?”
He turned it over in his hands. “If we locate the right building, I think we’ll find out.”