Page 15 of Dreaming of the Demon

“We’re already in your home, but I will turn the clock back to where we started. Hold on,” Malik murmured.

The world started spinning again and I gave a muffled gasp and grabbed his arms, which were wrapped securely around me.

“It’s all right, baby,” I heard him say. “I’ve got you—I won’t let you go.”

Which was exactly what I was afraid of.

The spinning seemed to last longer this time. When it finally stopped, I was so dizzy I could barely see straight.

“Oh!” I moaned, putting a hand to my forehead. “I feel awful!”

“I’m so sorry, Celia—I forgot how difficult it is for a mortal to see into the past and then come back to the present.” Malik sounded genuinely contrite as he laid me gently on my side. “Just relax,” he murmured in my ear. “Close your eyes and rest. You’ll feel better soon.”

I did as he said—what choice did I have when I was so dizzy I couldn’t even sit up? But somehow the relaxing turned into a deep sleepiness that overtook me. I warned myself to stay awake—I needed to find a way to get rid of the pesky Incubus and I was never going to do that if I fell asleep.

But no matter how I lectured myself about staying awake, my eyelids were just too heavy. It seemed that seeing into the past had tired me out tremendously and my body just wasn’t willing to fight the weariness that was dragging me down into sleep like an anchor tied around my legs.

At last, I had to give up.

Tomorrow,I told myself.I’ll get rid of him tomorrow.

I had no idea that I would have a whole new set of problems the next day that would completely take my mind off my uninvited house guest.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Iwoke up bright and early thanks to my alarm. But honestly, even without theDing-ding-a-ding-a-ding-ding-a-dingI still probably would have been up. I’ve been a baker too long to be able to sleep in. Even on the one day a week I take off, I still wake up at the crack of dawn.

Strangely, the first thing on my mindwasn’tMalik or the adventure he’d taken me on, into the past the night before. That all seemed like a dream to me—one that was already fading from my mind.

What I was most concerned about at the moment was the Golden-Skinned Warbler Pears—I had a very strong feeling that today was the day they would be ripe. Call it whatever you want—women’s intuition or a witch’s instinct—either way I had learned to trust my gut and the feeling was too strong to ignore.

But still, the dream lingered—it was too strange not to. I sat on the side of the bed, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, and looked up at the wall, expecting to see the portrait hanging there and the smug-faced Demon staring down at me.

Only a blank spot on my wall greeted me. And when I let my eyes drift downward, I saw an empty picture frame with cracked glass.

I put my head in my hands and let out a groan—oh no, ithadn’tbeen a dream after all! But if that was so, then where was Malik now?

A quick check revealed he wasn’t in bed beside me. The quilt and sheets were rumpled, as though someone had been lying there but he was gone. Where was he then? The bathroom? Did Demons have to go, like humans did? There was only one way to find out.

A look in the bathroom showed it to be empty and the rest of the house was likewise lacking evidence of any supernaturally sexy demonic presence. I began to have a cautious sense of optimism. Maybe Malik was gone for good. He must have been lying when he claimed he had to fulfill my deepest, darkest fantasy and when he realized I wasn’t going to sleep with him, he’d decided to skip town.

The thought filled me with a confusing mixture of relief and regret. After all, it had been a long time since any man had showed me such intense sexual interest. It was nice to feel so desirable—it spoke to the core of my femininity to be lusted after like that.

Then I gave myself a mental kick—what was I thinking? What I had told Malik the night before aboutnotsleeping with strangers still held true. I had too much dignity for that, I told myself firmly. I wasnotgoing to allow myself to be sucked into a sexual relationship—however brief—with a man I didn’t know. Especially since the man in question wasn’t even a man—he was an Incubus—a sex Demon.

Only youdoknow him—in a way,whispered that contrary little voice in the back of my head.Haven’t you been dreaming about him for the past six months?

It was true, I realized as the half-formed dreams I hadn’t been able to remember suddenly came rushing back. Malik hadbeen in every one of them, taunting me, teasing me, doing all kinds of erotic things to my body no man had ever done before…

“No!” I said out loud and then jumped at the sound of my own voice echoing through the empty house. Empty—that’s right, the house wasemptybecause Malik wasgone.So it was time to stop stressing over a problem that had solved itself and go check on the pear tree.

I slapped on a little makeup and put my hair up in ponytail. Then I got dressed quickly in Yoga pants and an old t-shirt. I would change into my baking whites later at the bakery. I always kept my work clothes there so they wouldn’t get dirty going back and forth.

Before leaving the house, I grabbed the enormous wicker basket that Sarah had given me just the other week. I was extremely excited to use it because she’d bespelled it to make anything I put in it extremely light and easy to carry.

As I said before, I can hold my own when it comes to lifting heavy things but pears aren’t a light fruit and the more of them you have, the harder they are to handle. And since I can only pick from the tree once in an entire year, it’s not like I can go back and forth and get more. So what I gather in that one picking is all I have to work with. Which meant for the past few years I’d been breaking my back hauling an enormous heavy basket jam-packed with pears back to my bakery.

Sarah, being a Natural Witch, hadn’t even had to do much. When I explained about the problem in gathering the Golden-Skinned Warbler pears, she simply asked what basket I was using. When I pointed it out to her, she touched it and said, “lighter,” and that was that.

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