I braced myself for his next question. I knew what it would be. It was inevitable. Everyone always asked. What about your family? I didn’t know how to answer him if he brought it up. Rarely could I discuss my parents, my sister, without tears forming in my eyes and blurring the world away. And I had zero desire to cry in front of a fucking demon who’d made a deal for my soul.

“Well,” he said, leaning back into his chair.

“Well,” I repeated.

“Maybe it’s time you changed that.” His chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it away from the table. “You have one wild, precious, and very short life, Mia, made better by the people you surround yourself with. Make the best of it.” With a sigh, he turned toward the door leading into his bedroom. “I have some business to take care of for most of the day, so I’ll be out until tonight. Make yourself at home. We’ll leave for our date at eight.”

Asmodeus vanished into his bedroom, leaving me with a mouthful of pancake and a hell of a lot of questions. Stunned, I replayed his words in my mind. Had he really just said I had one wild and precious life? And not to waste it? That wasn’t a very demony thing to say. Were the angels wrong?

No, I thought. Deep down in my gut, I had sensed something about him the moment we’d met. A strange energy seemed to pulse off his skin, and he could do things that weren’t normal. At the time, I hadn’t understood it, but I did now. He wasn’t human.

And we had our first date tonight.

* * *

The angels’ business card burned a hole in my pocket as I paced from one end of the penthouse to the next. They’d asked me to spy on Asmodeus. Truth be told, I didn’t really want to, but my curiosity made every hair on my arms stand at attention.

Asmodeus would be gone for hours. I was here in his penthouse alone. What if there was something here? Like…incriminating evidence that he was the bad sort of demon. And if there wasn’t, maybe that would soothe my jangling nerves. I had to make it through the next month, or I’d lose my soul. Confirming that he wasn’t hiding something big—bigger than being a demon—would go a long way.

On the other hand, if I did find something, I could call the angels and tell them everything. They’d arrest him, or whatever it was angels and demons did to keep the peace. Hopefully, they’d be able to get me out of my contract.

There. I nodded to myself. I’d convinced myself to peek into Asmodeus’s things.