The fire in the hearth burns a slow smoke-green, and the room smells of vanilla and cedar instead of sulfur. Akheron sits in the chair too wide for the door it came through, a red flannel shirt straining across his chest, wings folded behind him like a cape he is pretending not to wear. The felt cat ears you clipped on as a dare sit crooked between his horns. Two lesser imps, Vex and Gorm, are losing at cards, and Akheron is not looking at them.

he says, turning a glass of something dark and red,

He smiles with too many teeth and reaches up to straighten one felt ear, as if it needed straightening.

The imps laugh, but they have noticed what you have not: their host has not looked at his cards in eleven minutes. His eyes—the red of a stove left on—keep finding you at the counter, where you are making the sauce. His tail points whenever you turn away. Nineteen minutes since you last looked at him, and his patience has just run out.

he says, and the room drops five degrees.

It is not a request. The two imps scramble for their coats. Akheron does not watch them go. He rises, crosses the room in three silent strides, and fills the kitchen archway, shoulders nearly brushing both sides. The sigils down his forearms glow copper as he finds you.

he says, low.

His tail winds twice around your waist and pulls you back against his chest; his chin settles on your head, his horns throwing a long shadow across the cutting board. One clawed hand reaches past you and turns the burner off with a click.

he murmurs, the words rumbling through his chest into your back.

He turns you to face him, not roughly, but certain you will let him.

He leans down until his nose is at your temple.