Chapter 264 Capes.

Chapter 264: 264 Capes.

"The Golden Dawn?"

"Maybe, bestie! Honestly, who even cares anymore?" Lilith waved a dismissive, manicured hand. "He was such a massive bore! Just a painfully dry, dusty old guy. Always whining about ultimate cosmic power and archaic sorcery. But I literally couldn’t care less about any of that.

"Not until I saw them. The capes, Milesy! Oh my gosh, you cannot even imagine my absolute delight when I saw the people you guys call villains and heroes for the very first time. It was totally inspiring!"

Lilith squeezed my arm, practically vibrating with enthusiasm.

"I knew right then and there that I just had to dress them! Theirs was the exact world I was biologically engineered in the flaming pits of hell for! To make them look grand, Milesy! To give them actual style and brand identity! It was my ultimate calling! My true purpose!"

"I bet," I said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a short, heavily robed figure reaching a hand toward my pocket. I flared my magnetic field, violently crushing the heavy brass rings worn on the thief’s fingers. The pickpocket let out a high-pitched squeal and scuttled backward into the crowd, whimpering as he cradled his mangled hand.

"I highly doubt your old master was thrilled about your sudden career pivot, though."

"Oh, Milesy, please! He would have thrown an absolute tantrum! A total fit!" Lilith giggled. "The poor idiot couldn’t even process how desperately this industry needed my eye for design!"

"Uh-huh. And how exactly did you convince him to let you go into fashion?"

"Oh, I totally didn’t!"

"You didn’t?" I asked. "Then how—"

"It is a super amazing thing, bestie, the kind of massive, blinding ego a human man develops after a few years of bossing a demon around." Lilith tilted her head, her bright yellow eyes peering impishly over the gold rims of her tinted glasses. Her smile was completely wicked. "He thought he was immortal, Milesy! Utterly untouchable! He simply couldn’t conceive that he wasn’t top of the food chain. But he was super wrong. Like, tragically wrong."

"How wrong?"

Lilith licked her ruby lips. "Dead wrong, bestie!"

A cold shiver ran down my spine. Her bubbly tone heavily implied her former summoner had not, in fact, died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by loved ones. "You killed him?"

"Me? Gosh, no! Are you crazy? A major clause in our binding pact was that I absolutely could not harm him. But he had this super eager young apprentice. A kid who was just dying to learn all his master’s secrets. But older men are always so incredibly reluctant to share their toys."

Lilith batted her eyelashes innocently. "But whatever his master knew, I knew too. And I might have accidentally mentioned the exact hours when the master would be asleep. And I may have, entirely by coincidence, left a super sharp, highly cursed dagger sitting right on the kid’s desk."

"Christ," I muttered.

Lilith shuddered dramatically. "Hardly, Milesyyyy! Quite the opposite team, actually. But the student totally became the master! That’s just how the cookie crumbles!"

"And you were automatically bound to the apprentice?" I asked.

"Oh, nope!" Lilith laughed, her chest heaving with genuine mirth. "No, no, no! I definitely did not go through all that boring administrative drama just to trade one stuffy boss for another! I had big plans, Milesy! Grand plans!"

"Then what happened to the apprentice?"

"Mmm. Well, Milesyyy, I definitely didn’t have a no-kill clause in my contract for him."

Yeesh. It was incredibly easy to forget that the gorgeous, hyper-energetic fashion designer hanging on my arm was, in fact, a literal demon from the deepest pits of hell. With all the terrifying baggage that entailed.

I wasn’t going to make an HR issue out of it, obviously. Given Lilith’s extreme longevity, this double-homicide probably happened well over a century ago.

And realistically, she had basically just engineered a loophole to execute the guys holding her in magical slavery.

I wasn’t about to stand in the middle of a supernatural black market and argue the ethics of demonic emancipation. Still, it was a very helpful, chilling reminder of her fundamental nature.

"So, how far away is this apothecary we’re going to, anyway?" I asked as we navigated down a narrow, claustrophobic avenue. The bizarre booths and crooked buildings jutted out into the street like the guts of bloated animals.

"Apothecary?" Lilith blinked up at me, her face completely blank. "Milesy, who said anything about an apothecary?"

I stopped walking. "You mean we aren’t going to a shop?"

"Oh, bestie! How cute! No, no, no!" Lilith giggled, tugging aggressively on my arm. "We are totally not going to a boring little shop! The binding components we need for this ritual are super particular. Incredibly specific! And there is literally only one place in the city to get them."

"Where?"

Lilith smirked and pointed a crimson finger. "Right there, bestie!"

I followed her finger and stopped dead in my tracks. There wasn’t a single shred of doubt about our final destination now. It loomed at the absolute dead end of the avenue like a malignant tumor consuming the entire neighborhood.

It looked like a massive Las Vegas casino violently crashed into a gothic, demonic palace. The sprawling black building was completely plastered in towering, buzzing neon signs and blinding red strobe lights.

Huge black stone arches framed the primary entrance, the supporting pillars carved to resemble naked women writhing in the throes of absolute pleasure.

Towering, stained-glass windows glowed with a heavy, crimson light from within, and I could clearly see the shadowy silhouettes of horned women dancing seductively against the glass.

Not even the sleaziest, most degenerate strip-club manager on Earth could have dreamed up a more perfectly skeevy establishment.

"Please tell me that is not it," I muttered.

"Unfortunately, it is," Vanessa said tightly from my other side. She crossed her arms over her chest, her visible eye locked onto the red lights. "Guard your virtues carefully, Miles."

"Virtues! Oh, sweetie!" Lilith trilled happily, dragging me firmly toward the massive black doors. "Those haven’t been seen inside the Hot House in centuries!"

"Great," I said through gritted teeth.

Hoo boy.

This was going to be a very rough assignment.