She nods her head, still holding out her palm under the spray. We don’t speak, a million words hanging between us waiting to come out. Once the water meets her requirements, she takes my hand and pulls me into the shower.

She likes the water hot. She would do well in Hell. The thought churns in my stomach over the fact that I could never take her there. That this can only last for so long. I can’t think about this, about everything I’ll lose because of what I am.

The warm water hits my chest and the back of Blair’s head as she presses the side of her face against my chest. I wrap my arms around her. One on her lower back and the other wrapped in her wet hair.

“I killed my mom,” Blair whispers.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, because I’m not sure what else I could say.

“I feel like I should be feeling more. It’s like how is my first emotion relief? My soul should be tarnished, I should be in physical pain from using that spell. I killed my mom, came home, went to sleep, and then had sex with you. That’s not normal.”

“Were you protecting yourself?”

She places her head against my chest again and nods her head. “She hurt Stevie, and I’m pretty sure she was summoning Mara to the cabin.”

“You did what you had to do. Not being human means we feel things differently. Even though we’re surrounded by them, our expectations of our emotions shouldn’t be the same.”

“I wish I could be human sometimes,” she says.

“Me too,” I say, surprising her. Her face pulls back from my chest so she can look at me.

“Why?”

I sigh loudly. She just told me something that she did, and what I have to say has been weighing on me. “I have a son,” I say. She looks a little perturbed. “He’s grown, probably around your age. Lucifer had this whole idea that he could create more demons, and sent us to this realm to impregnate humans. So now I have a son, who is biologically half demon, but really isn’t. He’s just plainly human.”

“So, why would you want to be human?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed.

“I’ve been a shitty dad. I see him now and then, but I always keep my distance. The idea of outliving my son by multiple thousands of years made me sick. How could I let myself care about someone I knew was going to die? And in a timeframe that is in a blink of an eye to me?”

“You care about him?”

“The most I’ve allowed myself. I’m supposed to meet him for dinner tonight.”

“Why don’t you tell him what you are? Tell him what you just told me?”