The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”Come now, Sashkia. Such a small tease, and already you are working yourself into a state.” Cassian’s mouth curved slowly. ”Did I strike a nerve?”

”I will come as soon as I am able,” Sashkia bit out. ”But you owe me for this, Cassian. When the day comes that I have need of you, you will come, and you will help me.”

”Of course,” he agreed, easy as breathing. ”And, by the way, it was rather fun, reminding one another how very tragic our pasts have been.”

He said it without a flicker of feeling. His gaze drifted up to the mirror set into the ceiling.

Cassian ended the call and set the phone aside.

The instant it touched the wood, the screen lit again. A message. From Binge.

This time, Cassian did not reach for it.

In the mirror, his reflection did. It plucked the phone from the bedside table, carried the cigarette to its lips, and read the message through a slow curl of smoke, while the real Cassian lay unmoving beneath it and squinted upward, watching himself read. Whatever the reflection made of Binge’s words, it made Cassian’s eyes narrow a fraction further at his own unhurried double.

”We found something about the attacks.”

He moved to rise from the bed.

Cixi tightened her hold on him at once, her arms winding hard around him, her head pressing down into his chest as though some part of her, even in sleep, had felt him think about leaving.

He waited, then tried again, and again she stirred, a small frown gathering between her brows, her grip refusing to loosen. So he let it go.

He settled back against the pillows and drew his fingertips in a slow, absent line along her arm, from the delicate bones of her wrist all the way up to the curve of her shoulder, and back again.

He looked up at the mirror once more.

His reflection grinned back at him. He picked up the cigarette pack from the bedside table, which was also mirrored in the glass, and lit one up. He took a drag before exhaling. The way Cassian smoked, his reflection mimicked the same style effortlessly.

The strange thing, the thing that would have stopped anyone else’s heart, was that in the reflection there was no woman lying against his chest at all. No Cixi. No belly, no tangle of dark hair, no small hands fisted in his shirt. In the glass above the bed, Cassian’s reflection lay entirely alone, smoking, smiling, and watching the man below hold something the mirror could not see.

*

It was already dawn when Cixi woke, the first pale light seeping grey into the room, and found Cassian still there, still lying beneath her, holding her in the crook of his arm and letting her use him as a pillow.

”You are still here?” she murmured, and yet she made no move to pull away. She stayed exactly where she was, cheek to his chest.

”You were weeping in your sleep the moment I tried to separate myself from you,” he replied, his voice low and rough with the long night. ”And I have work to do.” A pause, faintly amused. ”I thought I was the one obsessed with you. It seems you are the worst of the two of us, if you cannot bear to be parted from me even while you dream.”

”You!” Cixi lifted her head to glare at him, only to find him gazing down at her with a maddening gentleness. She furrowed her brows and made a half-hearted effort to wriggle free, and his hold merely tightened, keeping her pinned comfortably against him.

”Now that you are awake, you no longer want me?” he lamented, the picture of wounded innocence. ”I feel used.”

Cixi’s jaw dropped.

It took her a moment to climb out of her shock. ”I. Used. You?” she echoed, each word landing separately.

Cassian only shook his head in slow disappointment, as though she truly were the guilty party here, as though she had been the one to take shameless advantage of him in the dark. Cixi stared up at him, still reeling, thinking that this devil knew exactly, precisely how to play with her.

”Did you or did you not just tell me you have work to do, and that I was the obstruction keeping you from it?” she retorted, finding her footing at last. ”I was simply making your wish come true.”

Then her eyes caught the window, and the grey light behind it, and she registered properly that it was dawn. Whatever sharp thing she had been about to add slipped clean out of her mind.

”Soon,” she said instead, quieter now, ”you have to give me my answers.”

She looked up into his eyes as she said it, and he looked back, and neither of them moved. They stayed like that, held in each other’s gaze, lost somewhere in it, the argument forgotten, the dawn brightening slowly around two people who had entirely forgotten to keep speaking.

*

It was already eight in the evening by the time Cixi had finished her meal with Cassian.

She had not left her room all day. Now the two of them sat close together on the couch, closer than was strictly necessary, and Cixi waited, eager and impatient, for the answers she had been promised. Her eyes clung to Cassian’s face with the bright, greedy excitement of a child watching a vendor spin cotton candy, willing the sugar to finish forming, waiting for the moment it would finally be placed in her hands.

”I am missing my cigarette,” Cassian murmured.

And with that, he leaned forward and laid his lips over hers.

Cixi went still for half a breath, and then she melted into it. Her eyes fell shut, and she kissed him back, utterly willing, her hands rising to fist lightly in the front of his shirt the way they had in her sleep.

He tasted like something dark and warm, and she leaned into him without thinking, chasing the pressure of his mouth when he teased her by easing back.