Page 49 of Demon's Desire
He cut me off by laughing. “I’m twenty-six.”
“Oh!” I glanced back at him in surprise. “So you’re young?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “We keep a different calendar than you, so I don’t know what my birth date is, but I know I turned twenty-six earlier this year.”
I started to suggest that we throw him a party of some kind, but I stopped myself from saying that as I reached the fridge. Why would I throw the demon that’s eternally bound to me a birthday party? Why did I care?
“Well, happy late birthday,” I said to him as I started looking through the fridge. “How long do most demons live? Like, humans can live past one hundred. It’s not common, but they can. I think most people live between sixty and eighty, but I could be wrong.”
“I believe the oldest demons live to be around three hundred, but that’s rare as well,” he answered. “Most pass sometime before two-hundred fifty.”
I looked at him over the fridge door and blinked. “Wow.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Don’t be too impressed. From what I hear, after one-twenty-five, things get pretty repetitive.”
I laughed at that as I looked back in the fridge. “Good to know.”
After searching for a while, I ended up making us each a turkey sandwich. They were simple enough, and all the ingredients came in bags large enough that I didn’t think Kelly would mind. I hoped so, anyway.
A while later, at around one in the afternoon, Kelly came through the front door. When she did, Suldeargan and I were still on the couch watching Full House.
“Honey, I’m home,” she sighed as she hung her keys up and looked over at us. “Why are you watching that show?”
“Oh, I just put something on to entertain him,” I muttered, grabbing the remote and quickly shutting it off.
Kelly came around to sit beside me on the couch. “That show is so preachy. Doesn’t your mom like that show?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “It was just the first thing I found. How was work?”
“Work was awful,” she groaned. “I’m still getting used to the damned pacing. The slowest hour here in Chicago is busier than our peak times back home.”
“I’m sorry.” I gave her a sympathetic smile and took her hand.
She shook her head and huffed. “I lived, at least. And the higher foot traffic means I’m making twice as much in tips. How were things here?”
“Mostly fine.” I glanced at Suldeargan. “A couple of weird things happened.”
“Are you okay?” she interrupted quickly, squeezing my hand. “Did he do something to you?!”
“No. No.” I shook my head. “It was actually–”
“As long as he didn’t hurt you,” Kelly said, glaring at Suldeargan.
He simply gave her a cocky smirk. “I didn’t do anything, Kelly.”
“I really don’t like it when you look like that,” she said to him.
“I really don’t care.” He crossed his arms.
“Okay!” I said quickly before they could keep arguing. “All right, there are some things we should talk about.”
“Right. I agree,” she added. “What do you want to do?”
“About him?” I pointed at Suldeargan. “I’m still trying to figure that out. It doesn’t seem like we can separate without one of us dying.”
She rolled her eyes. “Great. But I meant what do you want to do for work?”
“Oh, right.” I looked at my laptop on the coffee table. “I was working on my resumé earlier. It’s been a bit hard to focus today.”