Page 14 of My Blind Date is a Demon

Iwatch Beverly drive away, waving as she reaches the end of the driveway. I then realize I’ve left my child alone with a demon and rush back inside.

“What do you do all day?” I hear Bella ask as I enter the kitchen. She’s sitting on the floor, looking up at Damon expectantly. Dash and Mr. Darcy are sitting near her, looking up at him as well. It’s like they are all waiting for him to tell them a story. Damon is standing there with his arms crossed, looking less than impressed at his raptured audience.

“What do you mean?” Damon asks Bella.

“Just what I said. What do demons do all day?”

“We are very busy doing things a mere human child would not understand.”

“That boring, huh?” she says, shaking her head.

“What?” Damon roars. “I am not boring. I am terrifying!” His eyes blaze and waves of heat radiate from his head. Dash whines and Mr. Darcy runs behind me. Even I take a step back, eyeing my block of knives on the counter. Though, I suppose they wouldn’t do much good against a demon.

“Okay,” Bella says, getting up and stretching. “I’m going to go read,” she tells me.

“Oh, okay.” Wow, she really must be bored if she’d rather go read than learn more about the demon in our kitchen. She picks up Dash, and Mr. Darcy follows them upstairs to her room.

“Why is she not afraid of me?” Damon asks me.

I sigh and head to the living room. “Beverly said you weren’t a threat to us.” He follows me as I flop onto the couch. He takes a seat in a chair across the room. “And the reason you aren’t a threat is because a ten-year-old kid trapped you. No offense, but you must not be very powerful.”

“Every offense taken!” he says. “A child cannot defeat me!”

“A child did,” I say, letting my annoyance show. “And not a very powerful one at that. How did you even let that happen?”

Damon grunts. “I didn’t know a witch would be here. I let my guard down.”

“What did you know about me before you arrived?”

“The Dark Lord only told me that a human woman was to be possessed and tortured. I don’t know why or who asked that it be done.”

A shiver runs down my back. “The Dark Lord. You mean…Satan?”

Damon scoffs. “He is far more than some Disney villain from a children’s fairy story.”

I shake my head. “That’s not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

I lean back in my seat and put a pillow on my lap. As if a bunch of stuffing could protect me if Damon suddenly found the will to attack me. “Anyway… Look, I don’t want you here anymore than you want to be here. We should work together to figure this out.”

I notice movement behind Damon’s chair and see Mr. Darcy curiously investigating our guest, his little nose working furiously to figure out if Damon is friend or foe. I snap my fingers to summon the cat to me. Instead, Mr. Darcy jumps onto the edge of the chair and slips onto Damon’s lap. The cat curls up and lays down, purring. Damon strokes the cat’s long fur.

“You made a friend,” I say.

“Cats find comfort in dark spaces,” Damon says. “Besides, my kind have no reason to hurt an animal.”

“Don’t you usually require, like, animal sacrifices?” I say.

“We require blood,” he says coldly. “Spilled blood signifies the seriousness of the bond between humans and demons. It is not our fault if humans would rather spill the blood of an innocent animal than their own.”

His words make me shudder. I hear Dash whining at the back door to be let out.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, going to let her out.

I follow Dash out to the backyard, rubbing warmth into my arms. What am I going to do? I can’t have a demon in my house. I have to get rid of him. But I have no idea how. I’ll have to reiterate to Bella how thankful I am that she stopped Damon from…doing whatever he was sent here to do to me. I just can’t believe someone sent him to curse me, or possess me, or whatever. Anyone who knows me knows how miserable I am. How much I torture myself over my husband’s death. And if something happened to me, who would take care of Bella? I mean, yeah, she has grandparents on both sides to help out, but it’s not the same as having your parent in your life. Hurting me hurts Bella. So, whoever sent Damon here must not care about Bella. But I still can’t imagine who would want to hurt me.

I follow Dash back into the house and see Damon standing by the fireplace. He is holding one of our family pictures.

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