Page 78 of Demon's Desire

“Yeah, it’s not…” I started to explain what Soul and I had found at the bar. I’d told her that we had gone back, but she hadn’t asked why yet. So I told her about his suspicions the other day and the evidence I’d found the night before. She seemed relatively calm. At first, anyway.

When I finished, she pressed her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “My grandmother said that big cities would kill you.”

“You aren’t going to die!” I assured her. “I promise. Whatever is going on, Soul is going to figure it out. At the very least, we know that there’s one demon hunter in the city, and he’ll be able to stop this other one. That might even distract him from Soul for the time being. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Alright, but I’m holding you to that,” she huffed. “If I die, I’m going to come back as a ghost and haunt you, because apparently that’s possible.”

“It is,” Soul confirmed as he came out of the bathroom. “But I doubt you as a ghost would have the strength to haunt.”

Kelly gave me a look that asked very clearly if she had permission to slap him. I put on a tense smile and looked between them. “Soul, things are going to change now, alright? You and Kelly are going to be friends. I don’t want any snide comments or rude remarks about each other.”

“Wait, you said I had to tolerate him!” Kelly argued. “‘Friends’ was not part of the deal!”

“That wasn’t an insult,” Soul added. “If anything, it’s a compliment. When humans die, their spirits either pass on, or they remain in place because of trauma. If someone’s life was hard and they spent most of it struggling, the trauma of the soul won’t let them pass on until they heal, which can take centuries, depending on what they suffered. If a spirit is weak after death, it simply means there’s nothing tethering them to the world anymore and they pass to the next life.”

I gave Kelly a look. “See? It was a compliment!”

She sighed. “Alright. I’m not even sure I want to know the answer to this, but what does ‘pass on’ mean? To Heaven? Or what?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and sat down beside me.

We both looked at him, a bit surprised.

“You don’t know?” Kelly raised an eyebrow. “How can you not know?”

“I just don’t.” He shrugged. “I know of this world and the creatures that inhabit it, human or not. But when a soul dies and it doesn’t remain here, I don’t know what happens. Maybe it goes to a place called Heaven. Maybe it’s reborn. Maybe it just disappears. I won’t know until I die.”

Okay, I had about a dozen questions in regard to what he had just said, but I decided only one was worth asking now. “Then… if souls can remain in this world after death, is there a chance… Could someone from your family–”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, humans are the only creatures capable of remaining on earth after death. Demons or poltergeists or vampires, whenever they die, there is nothing left, no matter what.”

“Did he just say vampires?” Kelly whispered.

“Did you just say vampires?” I asked, a look of shock on my face.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Okay, well–” I was about to ask him to explain when an alarm on my phone went off. “Dammit. Okay, well we need to leave so I can get to work on time. But… let’s talk about vampires later. And maybe every other kind of non-human creature.”

He laughed as he stood up. “Alright then. Let’s go.”

Soul made sure he was invisible to everyone, and we made our way to the bar. Hudson was right, it was definitely a more upscale environment than Hundred had been, but things were casual since it was karaoke night. Kelly stationed herself at the bar to chat with me in between customers and Soul immediately took to rifling through purses and tilting peoples drinks up when they were taking a sip so they spilled it on themselves. That seemed to be a personal favorite of his.

The bartender who trained me seemed fairly impressed by my skill level. He warned me that weekends were far busier, but since the night was mostly dead, he let me go home a half hour early. True to her word, Kelly got tipsy, so I drove her car back.

When we got back to the apartment, she immediately went to wash her face, then started getting ready for bed.

“You don’t want to stay up and watch Real Housewives until three AM?” I teased her as she headed for her room.

She laughed and shook her head. “No. I have to be up early. I open tomorrow. But you two have fuuuuuun. Don’t stay up too late.” She smirked as she left me alone with Soul.

He chuckled and gave me a look. “What was that about?”

“Don’t ask.” I rolled my eyes.

“I’m asking,” he insisted, clearly amused.

I sighed and shook my head. “I told Kelly about… you know. What we did.”