Page 49 of Psycho Gods

The demons were the only people in the room who had the decency to sit slumped over, looking depressed.

Everyone else was smiling and chitchatting.

A headache throbbed harder in my temple, and the eraser in my hand was streaked with ice as cold burned my fingertips.

Lately I was covered in ice, and it seemed to expand out around me.

I shivered as I remembered the blue flames that had trailed off Mother’s fingers when she was feeling emotional.

Was I becoming just like her?

Sweat dripped down my temple, and I wiped it away before it could freeze.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

I focused on the numbers and not the emotions scouring my insides.

An angel laughed loudly, and I jolted.

They lounged in the leather chairs and sipped from china cups like aristocrats suffering ennui. Rina had made a call into her earpiece, and a worker had appeared with a tea cart and finger food.

I fantasized about bashing the kettle over their heads and shoving mini cucumber sandwiches into their unconscious mouths, pressing my hands to their smiling lips and freezing their mouths closed, turning them into blocks of…no. I was not going there.

“How did we forget such a pertinent factor?” Jinx slapped her palm to her forehead as she stared at our strategy board. “We’re being stupid and careless.”

I rubbed my aching forehead in agreement.

We’d been strategizing for what felt like an eternity, and we were working in circles.

Chalk scratched loudly against the other end of the blackboard as Malum added “stealth” to the list of factors we needed to take into account.

The enchanted binoculars had mapped the structure that filled the valley, and the visual was projected onto the blackboard. Jinx tapped on the tablet, and the enchanted swords also appeared.

“The infected will cut through our weapons,” I pointed out.

Malum scribbled down the information onto the board.

Jinx looked at me and said, “Duh.”

“I was just saying,” I mumbled.

Jinx patted Warren’s furry head. “Well—don’t say stupid things.”

Chalk cracked between my fingers, and I breathed roughly through my nose. My breath froze into tiny pieces.

Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five.

“Hopefully not everyone in the compound is armed,” Malum said as he studied the list of objectives we had written out. “We need to eliminate the armed people first.”

Jinx looked at him like he was an idiot. “Obviously.”

Malum’s jaw clenched, and his shoulders smoldered with fire. After a long moment of him breathing harshly, the flames disappeared.

Too bad.

I was hoping he’d explode and kill us all.

It was a minor consolation that Jinx was torturing someone besides me.