I grinned at Jennifer. “Smart choice.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“You’re not even going to believe who I saw in Hell today.”
“Cindy Tinsman.”
“Nope! It— Wait. You’re right.” Dammit. “How’d you know?”
Sinclair had been working at the desk in the corner of our bedroom (one of three in a series: From the Desk of Sinclair; he had one in his office downstairs and a little one in the kitchen so he could play with Fur and Burr while he worked). God, Fur and Burr. The two most indulged dogs in the history of the domesticated canine. They adored me because all dogs did, but they loved Sinclair for himself, there was nothing supernatural about it. He baked them homemade dog biscuits, for crying out loud. And why was I thinking about the pampered pups right now?
Sinclair had looked up from whatever it was he was concentrating on. “You don’t talk about Hell overmuch, at least not to me, so whomever you saw would be of interest to both of us, or you would never have brought it up. Given that we’ve had recent dealings with that willful child, it made sense you would see her in your new capacity as the . . .” I mentally groaned; here came another one. “. . . Mistress of Hell.”
“Nope.” Sinclair (and occasionally Marc) kept trying out new titles for me. They were all terrible.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
TERRIBLE NICKNAMES FOR HELL’S NEW BOSS LADY
Queen of the Damned. No. Anne Rice had that one pretty well covered.
Chieftess of Demons. Barf.
The Devourer. Not flattering. “Hey, look, here comes the Devourer! Hide the bacon.”
The Loud One. Oh, just shut up, Marc. Shut up already. No.
Princess of Darkness. Sounded like a bad porn. Or bad Dungeons & Dragons.
Princess of the Power of the Air. Too long. And what did it even mean?
The Accuser. That just makes me sound shrill.
The Beast. That just makes me sound fat.
God of This Age. Too self-important.
Queen of the Bottomless Pit. Too depressing.
Power of Darkness. Too Magic: The Gathering.
Ruler of This World. Too . . . hmm. I’d think about that one.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“Anyway, she was really nice about the whole decapitating thing. She even apologized.”
Nothing. Sinclair’s back was to me and his head was bent over his work again. He’d been pretty quiet lately, even for him. Like most working women, I had to juggle a demanding spouse with a demanding job(s), and my man was feeling neglected. Tell you what, though, Cosmo never covered this.
“So . . . looks like I’ve got the time problem figured. I’ve just got to make sure I’ve got a way to track Minnesota time when I’m there, so it doesn’t get away from me again, and my handy-dandy Hell watch is taking care of that for me.”
“Very good.”
“Soooo.” I toed off my shoes (Beverly Feldman ballet flats in pixie red) and killed a minute wiping them down and putting them away in the walk-in. But eventually I had to come out and resume my conversation with Sinclair’s shoulder blades. “What’d I miss?”
“Oh, just the tedium of running your kingdom.”
Kingdoms, plural, and I’ve noticed it’s only my kingdom when you’re pissed, I thought but didn’t say, then thought, Agh! Did he hear that?
Apparently not. So, deliberately not listening or, worse, shutting me out. I resisted the urge to fidget. As an uncouth extrovert, my knee-jerk reaction to someone being quiet was to get louder. That was a terrible reaction to have to someone being quiet, because they got quieter. And thus I got still louder. It was a perfect storm of argh.
He put down his pen (he used paper! and pens! for notes! soooo old-fashioned, and also cute), twisted around in his chair, and looked right at me. He looked amazing as always: black wool trousers, black leather belt with a small shiny buckle, navy blue tailored button-down, black dress socks. Dark brown hair casually brushed back from his forehead, sleeves rolled to his elbows. This was Sinclair’s version of sweatpants and a South Park T-shirt.
Umm, those forearms. I didn’t even know I had a thing for forearms before I met him.
“I would like to go to Hell and speak with Lawrence.”
I blinked. “Oh. Uh, just give me a message and I’ll tell him.”
“I would like to go to Hell and speak with Lawrence.”
Aaaand here we go. Well, I’d known it was coming. I was so dreading this conversation I actually wished for a new Big Bad to suddenly show up and try to kill us, just to get out of having it. When we were in mortal danger, Sinclair often forgot to be pissed at me.