Chapter 125

"Ugh." I pointed to my head. "Holes. No good for talking marriage."

He shook his head, not even a trace of a tempting smile on his full lips. His expression was softer than I'd ever it before, kinder even, but his sapphires sparkled as bright as ever. He crossed his boot-clad leg over the other. "I'm not here for that. I wanted to see how you were holding up."

For some reason, I could hear him perfectly over the static in my head. I shrugged and decided to skip right to the heart of it. "Everything scares me? I have no idea if I'm really talking to you or not? So, I mean...I've been better."

He glanced at the inked KEY on the back of my hand and then away with a sharp nod. A look of pure torment crossed his face, there and then gone, and I had to wonder if he'd witnessed firsthand the madness that had gripped each slayer at different times and to different degrees, the ones he'd chosen to take on such a shitty task, and if so, how that had affected him all these years.