Private Finished Move-In Day

"Yup!"

Chloe opened a door across the hallway from the bathroom. "Here's my bedroom." She had a queen size canopy bed; intricately patterned curtains were pulled back to reveal a multitude of pillows and a fluffy quilt. On the bedside table, there was a short stack of books.

The walls were painted with jagged black shapes on a red background, and cloudy gray blobs scattered throughout. It resembled the hell her father had shown her, what could someday become her home and her kingdom. There were posters which Chloe had made - a mess of names of demons and their symbols, a diagram of a summoning circle, and other esoteric study aids. There was a mirrored dresser, a wall-mounted plasma screen across from her bed, and entrances to a walk in closet and to a balcony with a view of the city.

They would continue their tour with the meeting room downstairs. There was a long table with swivel chairs, good for card games or board games (some of which were available in a cabinet in that room), but there were also connections for a computer to interface with an overhead projector.

When they reached the next door, Chloe stopped. "So, here's my study. Feel free to borrow anything that's not locked away, since I borrowed most of it from grandpa anyway, but... promise to let me know if you ever start hearing voices in your head in here, ok? Like, immediately."

With that primer, she opened the door. Bookshelves reached to the ceiling, nearly full with books. Most of them were old and nonfictional in nature; Chloe didn't expect Amber to find them interesting, but there might have been some stories tucked away somewhere. There was a desk with a swivel chair, and a big cozy chair with arm rests with a lamp directly over it. In the corner of the room sat a locked cabinet.

Amber kept calling her 'mom.' Every time she heard it, Chloe felt more and more like she wasn't prepared for this. But she would try.

"It depends," Chloe said to Amber's first question. "Usually school stuff. But Arach has been bringing me up to speed on demonic hierarchies and stuff, for the hell grandpa Gabriel is from. I have some books about that. And sometimes I just read the magic and history books he's collected."

As for the second question. Well, of course Amber was going to ask about those. Maybe it would be best to be transparent.

"Cursed books, mostly," Chloe said. "Some of them are possessed by lesser demons or parts of people' souls, and some of them are booby-trapped in other ways. If you're not careful, they can kill you or worse. I haven't gotten around to finding out what's in some of them yet, but most of them are journals either by demons or people who dealt with them." She shrugged. "You'd only think it was interesting if you've already read a lot about that sort of thing, anyway."

Chloe was terrified of the idea. She spent a little bit too long looking at one of the books on her shelf, considering how to answer.

People would talk, wouldn't they? She was still a teenager, and here she had a kid. Everyone would know, that way. All of her friends from the DSU, all of her classmates. The rumor about her having a child would stop being rumors, and it would start being a physical reality, staring right back at them over lunch. They would think less of her.

But Amber was her child, and she wanted to be with her mom during her lunch period. Chloe didn't want Amber to grow up feeling like her mother was ashamed of her. If she was going to be a mom, she might as well be a good one.

"Well, I think I've had classes during your lunch periods this semester, but... next semester let's plan on doing that. That sounds like a great idea, Amber." She smiled.

She decided that she would pretend to be way older than she really was. If she wasn't a teenager, it would seem less weird and shameful for her to have a kid. Plus, how could someone her age have a child as old as Amber seemed to be? Clearly, Chloe would have to be older than 20 - it was a perfect lie.

"Oh, uh, now that our next stop is the kitchen, do you want some hot chocolate?"

The kitchen looked like something out of a catalog. Chloe poured some milk into a mug and started steaming it, using their espresso machine. "You'll love this," Chloe said. "I got this stuff called truffle powder that I add to it. It makes it even tastier than normal hot chocolate." At least, Chloe hoped this was right; she imagined a spider demon would like different flavors than a human would. If Amber didn't like it, they would figure something else out.

"What all do you like to eat, by the way?" Chloe asked. She could send Arach to grab groceries, later.

Soon, the milk would be steamed. Chloe would stir a few powders into the milk with a fancy silver spoon, then hand it all to Amber before starting to make a second one for herself.

Amber ate humans.

Chloe didn't expect this to bother her so much. She didn't mind it when she heard about other people eating human, but this was different, somehow. Chloe helped bring Amber into the world, and she was a man-eater. The thought began to burrow into Chloe's mind, haunting her: would Amber end up like Pandora? Would she, too, kill and eat humans just for the flavor of them? Was Chloe raising a future serial killer?

She hid her worries well. She grimaced at the cappuccino machine as she turned the steam on again, then turned to Amber with a smile. "Well, we have pasta here for now, and a few sweet things. I'll see if I can get Arach to go out and get some human, sometime. I can't eat it myself, but I know she's been interested in trying it too."

She needed to love Amber unconditionally, she reminded herself. It didn't do any good to dwell on how un-ideal this situation was.

"Anyway. My dad - your grandpa - is super old and powerful. He says humans used to worship him thousands of years ago. Most of the rest of the rooms are his, and he doesn't want us poking around in some of them, but I can show you most of his collection. People give him expensive gifts a lot."