Free The Devil's Playground by Jenna Black Page B

furniture, no dents in the wall, no broken glass, so I had to presume Mary hadn’t put up a fight when Adam and Raphael had jumped her. She wouldn’t have been able to take them, but I was surprised she hadn’t even tried. Demons weren’t usually wimps, even the ones who didn’t like pain.
    “How long?” Adam roared, and Mary curled more tightly around herself.
    “T-two d-days,” she stuttered, her voice hard to understand because she had her chin ducked to her chest and her arms over her head. The fact that she was blubbering didn’t help, either.
    “Very good,” Adam said in his most condescending manner. “Now, it seems clear to me that you are in anunwilling host. I’d like to know how you got to the Mortal Plain, and why you’re in this particular body. Just keep talking, and I won’t hit you anymore.”
    She didn’t uncurl, but she relaxed just a little. Giving in to the inevitable, I suppose. “My host performed a summoning,” she said, sounding defensive.
    “There’s a difference between being willing to do something and actually
wanting
to do it. Tell me, Mary dear, did your host perform that summoning ceremony of her own free will?”
    Mary didn’t answer, and Adam punished her with a brutal kick that made me wince and Barbie gasp. I had to remind myself once more that this was a demon, not the fragile mortal she appeared to be. And that she had taken this host when the host was unwilling—stealing her life, violating her every boundary. Mary did not deserve my pity. No matter how pitiful she seemed.
    “Do I need to repeat the question?” Adam asked. “Or would you prefer to answer me?”
    “No, my host isn’t really willing,” Mary sobbed desperately. “They hurt her, then threatened to kill her if she didn’t perform the summoning.”
    “They?”
Adam prodded. “Who are ‘they’?”
    “She doesn’t know. They were strangers, and they wore masks.”
    “I didn’t ask whether your host knew them. I asked who they were.”
    “Please,” Mary said with another sob. “I don’t know. I didn’t care enough to ask. I just wanted to get out.”
    “Get out of where?” Adam asked, his brow furrowed.
    “Prison,” she hiccuped.
    “Shit,” Adam said. Raphael’s response was even more colorful.
    I didn’t know exactly what this meant to them, but I wasn’t about to ask in front of Mary.
    “How many prisoners have been sent through?” Raphael asked, and it was just as well Mary still had her chin tucked protectively down and couldn’t see the look on his face or she might have died of fright.
    “I don’t know.”
    Adam growled, and Mary raised her head for the first time since I’d entered the room. I thought she’d looked pathetic before. She looked positively hideous right now—mascara-stained tears leaving tracks across her battered face, a line of blood snaking down her chin from a split lip, and a look of terror and hopelessness in her eyes.
    “Please,” she begged. “Please! I don’t know. I’m nobody. I’d been imprisoned for centuries. They pardoned me and let me out early, but as soon as I was out, I was ordered to come to the Mortal Plain.”
    Adam was still circling her, and Mary followed him with her eyes until he was out of her line of sight. She didn’t turn her head to watch him, instead closing her eyes and tensing, every muscle in her body quivering.
    Was this what happened to demons who were imprisoned? Or had she been this pathetic beforehand? I had a nasty suspicion it was the former. I couldn’t imagine this terrified bundle of nerves having the gumption to break a law.
    “Again I ask you, who are
they?”
Adam said. “Name some names for me.”
    But Mary shook her head. “I don’t know who they were. I only know they were elite, and they told me if I was still in the Demon Realm when they came looking for me next, they would destroy me.”
    Barbie frowned, interested in spite of herself. “I thought there was a decades-long waiting list