Chapter 101 Lilith.

Chapter 101: 101 Lilith.

"Mmm."

I pulled the receiver away from my mouth right before Roger had the chance to violently slam his down on the other end. Petty little shit.

"...and her hair is such a lovely pink. Like it was made of bubblegum cotton candy..."

I looked over to find the guard still going on, staring raptly at Psyren as she soaked in the praise, practically glowing under the undivided attention. "You can let him go now," I told Psyren, using my magnetic powers to casually drift the walkie-talkie back into the guard’s shoulder holster.

"Aw, but he seems to have so much more to add," Psyren giggled with a coy, razor-sharp grin.

"Yeah, I’m sure he’s got a whole poetry slam locked and loaded in there," I said, looking past the rotting wooden walls of the shack. Directly behind the tiny front desk, a set of heavily tinted, reinforced glass doors slid open with a soft, expensive hiss. "But we’re done here."

Roger Benz spotted us immediately and marched through the threshold, stepping out of his pristine corporate fortress and into the dilapidated shack with a sharp, aggressive stride. He still looked exactly like a bargain-bin Steve Jobs—shaved head, severe black turtleneck, and round wire-rimmed glasses. He carried himself with the born air of the finest toady; with Edna, he’d perfected a sort of groveling obeisance that could only be improved upon if he surgically removed his own spine. But anyone else was treated like something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

He marched up to us, lips pursed in intense distaste, his buggy eyes glaring from behind those fashionable round glasses that just made him look like an absolute tool. Under one skinny arm, he clutched a sleek tablet. As he stopped in front of us, he forced a sudden, sunny smile that positively oozed polite loathing.

"Miles. So good you could make it. Please, follow me."

"Roger. Thanks. You didn’t have to come all the way down here to the shack," I said, stepping past the still-drooling security guard as Psyren sidled up beside me.

"Nonsense!" Roger clipped, turning on his heel. "How could I possibly let one of Edna’s... acquaintances try and navigate the building alone? Or be handed off to some intern as a guide? No, no! That wouldn’t do at all. Especially after the unfortunate scheduling error. We just recently upgraded to a new software system and the whole thing has just been an absolute mess!"

"Yes, I imagine it has," I said dryly. "How lucky Edna is to have you here to manage her affairs."

He flashed me a deeply suspicious look, trying to figure out if I was mocking him, but I just let it roll right over me. He sniffed dismissively, then led us through the sliding doors.

The transition was jarring. One second we were standing in a rotting wooden shack that smelled like mildew and old splinters, and the next, we were inside a multi-million-dollar architectural marvel. It always amazed me how utterly sterile the environment inside a high-end fashion company was. I’d been to a number of them over the years—often acting as the reluctant gofer for new heroes looking to show off their latest brand-sponsored designs. Plenty of models had used their careers to vault into the superhero business, though most of them strictly avoided fighting actual, dangerous villains. They might break a nail, after all.

Ergo, mercenaries like me were called in most of the time to throw a fight for the cameras. It worked pretty well for their marketing departments; nothing said ’style’ like beating the crap out of the local bad guy while wearing tactical stilettos.

But though fashion might involve copious sequins, ballistic weave, and gold lace, these businesses always seemed to surround themselves with glass. Glass dividers, glass walls, glass desks—even the massive lettering hovering above the main reception area was etched from sparkling, transparent glass. It was distinctly off-putting and honestly kind of creepy, like walking through a sterile laboratory waiting for a pathogen outbreak. I kept my face entirely neutral as Roger led us to an elevator (made of glass) and hit the button (also glass) for the top floor.

When the doors slid open again, it was to look out upon an absolute sea of carefully coordinated terror and chaos.

Assistants in severe, highly fashionable black skirts and tightly plaited hair moved with the mechanical precision of a SWAT team, clicking across the polished floor on heels that could snap an ankle with one wrong turn. Bundles of Kevlar, carbon-fiber weave, and impact-resistant silk were frantically ferried in and out of the room. Terrified models stood atop raised plinths like frozen statues, terrified to so much as twitch, while junior designers bent their heads together over drafting paper with the grim seriousness of engineers trying to defuse a live bomb.

And at the absolute dead center of the room, standing on a raised platform and glaring at a half-finished bodysuit like it had personally insulted her ancestors, was Edna.

She was four-foot-nothing, wrapped in a severe, geometric black dress. Her jet-black hair was cut into a flawless, razor-sharp bob, and massive, thick-rimmed round glasses dominated her face. She practically radiated a localized field of hostility.

But it was the creature hovering directly over her shoulder that made me pause.

It was a demon. Literally. Towering at least six-foot-three, with flawless crimson skin, a pair of curled obsidian horns framing her face, and a thick, spaded tail swishing excitedly behind her legs.

She was stacked like a comic book heroine drawn by an overly enthusiastic teenager, her gloriously curvy figure pouring out of a tight, pinstriped pencil skirt and a white blouse that was actively fighting a losing battle against her massive cleavage.

"No, no, NO!" Edna suddenly barked, her thick, indeterminate European accent cutting through the studio like a crack of a whip. She violently swatted at the fabric on the mannequin with a rolled-up fashion magazine. "This is derivative! This is pedestrian! It looks like a hobo stole a parachute!"

"But Ednaaaa!" the demon assistant whined, her voice impossibly bubbly and high-pitched, completely lacking the sulfurous gravitas you’d expect from a creature of hell. "It’s so cute! What if we added a plunging neckline? Men love a plunging neckline! Oh, and spikes! Just a few little spikes on the shoulders!"

"I will plunge this pair of fabric shears into your eye, Lilith!" Edna snapped, whirling around to point a pair of massive, terrifyingly sharp scissors directly at the demon’s face. "Spikes catch on doorways! Do you want the client to die because she got snagged on a doorframe while trying to escape a collapsing building? And a plunging neckline? In a tactical combat scenario? It is a bullet funnel! You are an idiot! A bubbly, over-inflated idiot!"

Lilith just pouted, completely unfazed by the threat of ocular trauma. She blinked her glowing yellow eyes, glancing away from the scissors, and that was when she spotted me stepping off the elevator.

Her face instantly lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Milesyyyy!" she squealed.

Before I could even brace myself, the towering demoness closed the distance in a terrifying blur of crimson skin and pinstripes.

She had absolutely zero concept of personal space. She threw her arms around me, violently yanking me forward and burying my entire face directly into the suffocating depths of her pillowy, demonic cleavage.

"Hello... Lilith," I wheezed, my voice entirely muffled by her chest, my lungs burning as I was overwhelmed by the intense scent of expensive vanilla perfume and faint brimstone. She squeezed me so hard I heard my spine pop.

"Lilith! Release him!" Edna barked, marching over and swatting the demon viciously on the hip with her magazine. "You are wrinkling his jacket! And you are suffocating him. And he’s late!"