CHAPTER 150

Kisa snorted, then pulled one of the buds out of her ear to look at it. It looked like something from space, but the sound quality seemed pretty nice.

"There's always a catch," she muttered.

"You'd think so," said a feminine voice from behind her. Kisa startled and dropped the earbud, only for a black scorpion's tail to whip around her and snag it with a pair of pincers on the end.

"Is everybody trying to scare me off this fucking roof?" She turned around to see Lily the succubus there. "Seriously, none of you make any fucking noise moving around up here! And why are you even up here anyway?"

Lily contemplated Kisa and then took the earbud off of her tail. "Actually, I've been up here quite a bit. You don't even know I'm here most days, because I make myself small and hide on the other side of that." She pointed to the top of the turret. "I don't like it in the house because it's just so full of people all the damned time and I just want to kick back and look at the clouds."

"Maybe you should go back to your corner of the roof, then, and leave me alone."

"Now, now, Catnip, you keep talking to me like that and I'll show you just how many lives you have left." She handed over the earbud. "I overheard what you said about him and decided to do my good deed for the month."

"And what? Tell me he's actually a good guy or something?"

Lily sighed. "Ugh, never mind. If you want to waste the next few months of your life wallowing, be my fucking guest. I'll do my good deed somewhere else." She started to walk away and then spun around. "And you know what? Demons can't lie. So whatever I had to tell you was going to be fucking golden."

Her wings popped open and she launched herself into the sky, spiraling upward until she was little more than a speck.

Kisa frowned, then looked at the earbud in her hand. The succubus was one of the few people here she didn't already have a missing history with, and it occurred to her that her own response had been less than kind.

Had she always been this way? So angry and eager to push others away?

"Kisa." When the old man spoke, she immediately shook her head and put in the earbud, eager to drown out whatever memory was surfacing. With the touch of her finger, she started a hip hop playlist that made her tail flick back and forth to the beat. Looking down at the iPod, she contemplated Mike and his words as a song she had never heard before saturated her thoughts.

He seemed too good to be true, but was he? If not for the sex stuff, she would probably be less distrustful, but she hated the idea of just ending up as another notch on his bedpost.

She felt a stirring in her stomach, thinking about how he had looked standing on the edge of the roof. Would it really be that bad if she did?

A shadow passed overhead, and she looked up in time to see Abella land on one of the reinforced beams of the roof, the metal groaning under her weight.

"Fuck it," she muttered, then moved toward the same spot where Mike had descended. Her rooftop refuge was no longer quiet, and she decided that her room would be a better place to stay.

Once on the ground, she walked past Tink, who was running the wire along the side of the house. She stopped for a moment to watch, then continued inside to find somewhere quiet.

The house itself was crowded with rats who were repairing holes in the plaster. It looked like the house would be back to normal again in a few days at the current rate, and she found herself distracted more than once by the swishing tail of one of the rats. She had discovered not too long ago that she not only had a prey drive, but the sight of a dangling string awakened weird feelings in her that she avoided indulging in.

The last thing she wanted was shit from Tink about playing with a string.

Once in her room, she saw that a note had been put on her brand new bed. Her room actually had furniture now, which was a welcome change from when she had first arrived. She picked up the paper and turned it over.

Green dress in armoire, Tink adjust tomorrow, it said in curly letters.

Crumpling up the note, Kisa moved over to the small armoire that they had put in her room and then opened it. Hanging from the rod was an emerald green dress that felt like silk. Tempted to shred it, she pulled it down and held it against her body and then walked over to look at herself in the mirror.

It had been cut to account for her tail, and the skirt was flared at the bottom. Kisa twisted her hips in time to the music from her earbuds and noticed that the fabric shimmered with her movements. The sides of the dress had high seams, which would allow for maximum mobility.

It not only looked like it would fit her, but it looked like it had been designed for dancing. As the beat in her ears continued, she just had to know how it would look while it was on.

"God damn, tiny-titted booger," she muttered, then slid out of her clothes to try the dress on.