Page 10 of Spit

This was the first time I had managed to evade Mr. Bub for so long. I wasn’t fooled through. I was willing to bet that whatever creature in the hall was there at his behest.

The dulcet tones of Ella Fitzgerald in the other room were the only sound as I waited for the demon to knock. I had plugged the vinyl player in as soon as I got home to push the scheduling spreadsheet from my thoughts.

I preferred my music to be a balm. A warm blanket around my brain, shutting out everything else. Kailee preferred to feel like bees were coming out of her ears. Hence her love of EDM.

I stilled, feeling my sweat chill on my skin in the warm Louisiana air. It was autumn, but that didn’t stop the humidity. The hairs on my neck rose as whatever demon on the other side of the door grew closer, though I couldn’t see it through the peephole.

My shadow curled around my legs, coiled and prepared to strike.

Then I felt it.

My skin prickled with goosebumps, and my stomach flipped. The light through the doorframe from the hall blinked for a moment, and my shadow began to elongate.

“Your boss said I was done after I did the last job,” I called out through the door.

My shadow licked its lips as the demon in the hall began to spindle magic. I didn’t know what they were planning to do, but I wouldn’t have put it past them to knock me out and drag me to hell and into Mr. Bub’s lap.

“You don’t want to do this.” I sang, shaking my hands as I felt the hunger inside me begin to build. “Or do? I don’t care. I need a snack.”

I’d been a normal null witch once.

Then I met Beelzebub.

There was a reason he kept giving me jobs and a reason he viewed my debt as so significant. The shadow that was shackled to me protected me. I wasn’t meant to have it. Something had gone wrong.

As the hunger began to build inside me, I reached forward, feeling my shadow clash with the intruder as it took a bite and gulped it down.

The intruder slunk away like a wounded animal.

Part of me was sad that it didn’t come back—I was still hungry.

Chapter Two

My phone rang with a private number when I woke up in the early afternoon. The only person I knew to ever call me like that was Beelzebub—part and parcel with his demonic mystery, I supposed. I had to bite the bullet and speak to the demon king eventually, or I would be dodging his calls for the rest of my life.

I shivered as I swiped my screen and put the phone on speaker. “Did you send one of your goons to my apartment last night?” I demanded.

The person on the other end of the call cleared their throat. “Ms. Boudaire?”

I didn’t recognize the voice. Sitting up, I snatched up the phone and put it to my ear. “Yes. That’s me.” I cringed and tried to soften my voice. “Who’s speaking?”

“My name is Antonio Bandana. I’m the tour manager for The Elementals. I believe I spoke to your assistant yesterday, Kailee Gordon?”

I said nothing about his name, though a joke hovered on my tongue. My eyes widened in their sockets, and I sat up in bed. “Yes.Yes. Kailee mentioned you called her. She said that you needed a new head of security for the last leg of the tour.”

Antonio hummed his agreement. “Our previous head of security ditched us in Atlanta, and the Elementals have a sound check in NOLA in forty-eight hours.”

“Why did the previous HOS leave?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Antonio grumbled.

That wasn’t a good sign. “Can you email over the contract?”

“Grazie. Will do. We have one month left on tour and twenty dates left. We finish up at the Hollywood Bowl.”

Then Antonio quoted a dollar amount that made my eyes bulge and almost roll out of my head.

“You’re a magic user, yes?” He pressed.

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