Selling Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

but leaves and all that shit. Even foreign assassins coming to murder us would get a decent meal before we tore their skins off and fed them to the dogs. She’s coming in as my Otopian groupie.”
    “Your groupie,” Lila repeated. Sorcha was as much of a pop phenomenon as her brother was a rock one, but their relation wasn’t known about in Otopia and, even though she was sublimely beautiful and a great talent, Lila didn’t feel in an homage-ous mood.
    Sorcha snorted. “Okay. Friend. My geeky scholar friend come to assimilate our information for the Otopian homelands, ready to report back to all the glamorous magazines and medianets on the glorious realities of life in the perfect world.”
    “Report?”
    “You are going to write journal articles, reports, and press releases for various outlets,” Sarasilien said drily. “And some for the Demonian Tourist Board.”
    “You have a tourist board?” Lila’s sense of unreality peaked. The soft warmth of Sorcha’s crimson hair flames licked playfully over her chin.
    “Of course, darling,” Sorcha purred. “We are getting ready to welcome Otopians for city breaks, countryside retreats, and extended adventure holidays. Demonia enjoys the most cordial and free of trade relations and . . . Well, it will, in a few months’ time. And you are going to prime the pumps. In return, I and all my esteemed contacts, relations, lovers, exlovers, adoring fans, and various multinational organisations, will release selected but important information to your lovely security services to promote interdimensional harmony and the spirit of cooperation and trust so that we can make beautiful money together.” She wriggled her foot in the elf’s grasp. “More.”
    “And you’re another secret service agent, are you?” Lila asked. “What, is it a family business?”
    “Me? No, honey. I’m simply myself. But I am acting as Demonia’s representative here, and in my own interests, and mostly, mostly in Zal’s interests, because you his baby, baby. And you’ll need somebody like me fighting in your corner because of that. Somebody who’s smart and popular, and who’s got stuff on you. So I was just recruited.”
    “By?”
    Sarasilien looked up. “I thought it would be best.”
    Lila gave him a wide-eyed meaningful stare, looking from his face down to his hardworking hands and back again. What gives?
    His ear tips went pink.
    “I thought elves and demons had oppositional magics and didn’t like each other.”
    “We do. We don’t,” Sorcha sighed. “Have you ever had an elf, Li? What am I saying? Of course you have. Look at this.” She snapped Sarasilien’s andalune again. “That kind of hurts us both. But it’s also kind of nice. Like picking scabs that are just about ready to come off. You know? It’s fizzy. The magic is all attracted to each other, but then it meets and pow! It doesn’t match and where it touches there’s this reaction and zap! Ouch. Lovely. Really, really good. And then you do this.” She penetrated Sarasilien’s blue-green shimmer with her tail point and shuddered deliciously, “and it’s like scratching the most intense itch—sooo gooood! But then.” She pulled out. “You have to stop, or else you’ll start to bleed and it burns—ahhhh! And you just know that in ten seconds it’ll be itching like you can’t believe.”
    Lila didn’t think she should be listening, looking, or knowing about this.
    “Miss Sorcha is trying to explain that there is more to our difference than simple alchemical responses or aetheric reaction. Culturally we are . . .”
    “Well, you know them,” Sorcha cut him off. “Captain Uptight and the Uptightathons. All serious and holy and pure and dull as the dullest thing.”
    “And I know you,” Sarasilien said without twitching an eyebrow, “oh exemplar of the most exquisite indulgence. And you know that demons always say this about elves,” he did something to her foot and she squeaked, “because you