DEVERAUX NORA Holding Hands With His Demon

Chapter Three — The First Night

The penthouse was quieter than Nora expected for a place so large.

She had assumed the kind of man who lived here would have people moving through it constantly. Staff, meetings, the low hum of importance. But it was just Elena, moving through the rooms with a calm that suggested she had been doing exactly this for a very long time, and Nora, who was still figuring out which hallways led where.

She ate at the kitchen island while Elena made tea. Real food, simple and warm, and she ate more of it than she intended to.

"How long have you worked here?" Nora asked.

Elena considered this. "Long enough that I have stopped counting."

"Does he have a lot of staff?"

"No. He prefers quiet."

Nora looked around the kitchen. Everything was clean and ordered and cost more than her monthly rent. "He certainly has that."

Elena set a mug of tea in front of her and sat across from her with her own. "This must be very strange for you."

"That is one word for it."

"I will not pretend to know all the details of your arrangement," Elena said. "But I want you to know that this is your home now too. Whatever the circumstances. You are not a guest here."

Nora looked at her. There was something straightforward and genuine about Elena that she had not expected to find anywhere near Lucian Deveraux's world. It loosened something small in her chest.

"Thank you," she said. "That actually helps."

She explored after dinner, slowly, staying in the parts of the penthouse that felt open to her. The living room with its floor to ceiling windows looking out over the city. A library she found down one of the hallways that smelled like old paper and something she could not name. She stood in the doorway of it for a long time without going in.

She called Sera from her room that night.

"How is it?" Sera asked immediately.

"Big," Nora said. "Quiet. The woman who runs the house is kind."

"And him? The man?"

"Not here yet."

Sera's voice dropped. "Are you okay? Really?"

Nora looked at the ceiling of the room that was now technically hers. The light fitting up there probably cost more than her laptop. "I am okay," she said. "I promise. How is Gerald?"

"Thriving," Sera said, and Nora could hear the reluctant smile in it. "I watered him this morning."

"Do not overwater him."

"I know, I know."

They talked for another half hour about nothing important. By the time she hung up the city outside was fully dark and the penthouse was very still. She lay in the bed that was softer than any bed she had ever slept in and stared at the ceiling and thought about nothing until she fell asleep.