Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 958: Getting Ready

”It’s how everyone shops now. You pick, they deliver, nobody has to leave the building,” Aria replied, amused.

”Get on with the times, boomer kitty,” Luna added for good measure.

”...No. I won’t.”

Calypso, meanwhile, had been holding her own tablet six inches from her face for ten minutes, and the fight was going badly.

The catalog app had defeated her twice already, once by opening the camera and once by adding four hundred of an item called a credenza to a cart she could not find.

Every instinct she owned wanted to grip the wood, knock on it, sit on it, and hear what it said back, and the phone offered her pictures of wood instead, which was like being offered a photograph of a meal.

She caught Kaiden watching and turned the tablet toward him, in silent appeal.

”It keeps asking me to log in,” she said, eyes drooping. ”I am logged in, darling. Help...”

”Let me see,” Kaiden smiled, stepping up to his beloved demoness.

But even after helping her log in, the situation did not change.

The three of them kept building their walnut-and-cream empire in the middle of the floor, heads bent over one screen, thriving in a world made of thumbnails. And his two monster girls stood at the edge of it, side by side at the glass, out of the game entirely.

They were old-world creatures, both of them. One had held court as the desert queen, ruling over her subjects from her majestic pyramid. The other had furnished her own dungeon with whatever survived her.

Neither of them had a single use for a catalog, and neither of them had said a word of complaint. But they were both quietly resigning themselves to offices assembled by committee.

’Yeah, no,’ Kaiden decided. ’Not on my watch.’

His monster girls deserved some love too.

”Bastet. Calypso.” Both heads turned. ”We’re going shopping. Get changed.”

Calypso’s grin went wide and total, and she was moving for the stairs before he finished.

Bastet did not move at all for a moment. Her tail curled up behind her, slow and thoughtful, and for exactly one second the desert queen was visibly, nakedly delighted, before the crown came back down.

”An outing,” she said, tasting the word. ”In person. With Master.”

”Yes. Just the three of us, in person, at whatever the best showroom in the city is. You two are going to touch every stick of furniture in that building, and whatever you approve of, we’re buying. That’s the offer.”

”Then I accept. Obviously.” She crossed to him instead of past him, took his face in both hands, and kissed his cheek, unhurried, her tail curling around his wrist and squeezing once. Her ears had come all the way up and had no intention of coming down. ”You noticed,” she said against his ear, quieter, only for him.

Then the Manifestation of Dominion was moving for the stairs at a pace no court would have recognized as queenly.

Behind them, the war room had gone quiet.

Aria was staring at Kaiden with her lips parted, the wounded party in a crime that had taken her a full three seconds to process.

A date. He was taking the monster girls on a date.

”Excuse me,” Aria said.

”Yes, my beautiful moon?”

”Don’t you ’beautiful moon’ me right now, Kaiden Grey.”

She crossed the floor with her arms folded, and the pout on that supermodel face was a work of art, full lower lip and everything, deployed with total precision, because Aria knew exactly what her pout was worth. ”I have been in that chair since the sun came up. I picked the walnut. I found the lighting scheme. And the reward for my hard work is watching you walk out the door with two other women in the middle of a workday.”

”You’re right,” Kaiden said, and crossed to her, and took his beautiful moon by the waist before the pout could reload. ”Which is exactly why I need you here. I’m taking two of our heaviest hitters out the front door, and somebody I trust has to hold this floor while I’m gone. That’s you. It was always going to be you.”

The pout lost structural integrity somewhere in the middle of that.

”...Flattery,” Aria managed, melting anyway, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. ”Cheap, transparent flattery.”

”Is it working?”

”Completely.” She sighed, defeated by her own heart, and behind her Luna announced to the windowsill that the tribute phase was beginning and everyone should brace.

”I want tribute,” Aria confirmed.

Kaiden pulled her in the rest of the way and kissed the pout off her mouth without the slightest regard for workplace professionalism. It took a few seconds. Ms. Rook examined her monitor with great focus.

”Dinner,” he said against her lips. ”You and me. Dress code, reservations, the whole performance.”

”Rooftop,” Aria negotiated, arms sliding around his neck.

”Rooftop.”

”Then I withdraw my objection.” She stepped back, entirely satisfied with her extortion, and made a small shooing gesture at him. ”Go. Spoil those two. They’ve earned it.”

”I also object,” Alice announced from her folding chair, hand raised. ”Unlike her, I can’t be bought.”

”Waffles,” Kaiden said.

”I withdraw my objection.”

Nyx, notably, had not objected at all. Nyx had gone very still with her catalogs forgotten, and the smile spreading across her face was the one she wore when a plan she hadn’t even needed to make assembled itself in front of her.

”Lexi,” she said, standing and cracking her knuckles. ”Get the kit. If my besties are going on a date in public, they are going on it armed.”

”On it!” Alexandra was moving before the sentence ended, and there was steel in it, the household’s gentle blonde converting on the spot into something with pins between its teeth. ”Nobody leaves this building in combat leathers!”

The two of them hit the stairs at a jog, hunting monster girls.

...

The family home was still the Abyssal Palace, a long walk past three biomes and a waterfall that had no business being that beautiful, and its wardrobe situation had scaled with the family’s finances, which was to say it had gotten completely out of hand.

Calypso stood on a fitting pedestal Nyx had ordered during a different crisis, wearing sundress number four, while Alexandra knelt behind her with a seam ripper, a needle, and total concentration.

The problem had a name, and the name was tail.

”Stop wagging it.”

”I am not wagging it. It moves when I am excited. That is involuntary.”

”It’s going to be involuntarily sewn into the hem if you don’t hold it still for twenty more seconds.” Alexandra worked the fabric around the base of the demoness’s tail with tiny, ferocious stitches, reinforcing the opening she’d cut so it would drape instead of bunch. ”There. Swish.”

Calypso swished. The tail swept out through the tailored vent, smooth as water, and the skirt settled around it like the dress had been born with the idea.

”Oh,” said Calypso, delighted, and wagged.

There had also been an attempt at a sun hat, briefly, on the theory that a summer dress wanted one. The horns had declined it from three angles and punctured it on the fourth, and the hat was retired from service.

Alexandra’s compromise was a strip of white ribbon tied at the base of the left horn in a small stubborn bow.

”There! You’re so cute!” she beamed, satisfied.

and Calypso studied it in the mirror from every angle she owned and then guarded it for the rest of the fitting.

”Cute...?”

”Yeah. He’ll love it!”