Page 8 of Dating the Dealing Demon

Fear slides through me. What is going on?

I rush to help her pick up the cards but only one landed right side up. On it, a woman wears skull makeup and a long lace veil with the wordDeathprinted below. I hold it out to Rosemarie. “The Death card landed right side up. That can’t be good.”

“It doesn’t mean literal death. Just new beginnings,” she tells me, but there’s a tightness to her voice—a nervous energy so out of character that I wonder if she’s lying to keep from scaring me.

“Then why call it a Death card if it’s not about—?” I don’t want to keep saying the word so I pull my finger across my neck.

She launches into awoowooexplanation, cut short when a scream comes from somewhere inside the house.

My heart jumps into my throat, and prickles break over my skin worse than one of my beauty product attempts gone bad. That could’ve been a recording, right? Or a production assistant screwing around?

“Think the tour people did that as a scare tactic?” I ask Rosemarie, almost breaking and admitting I believe my family’s messing with us. I haven’t found any proof other than Theo being hot, but…

“If so,” she whispers, “it’s working.”

Heavy thuds come from outside. It sounds like wrecking balls being dropped on the front porch.

Rosemarie and I both run for the double doors. I reach them first, yanking then pushing on them as hard and fast as I can with my whole body shaking. But the doors won’t budge. “They’re stuck.”

Theo yells at someone on the other side of the doors. What’s going on out there? I don’t care how badly my mom wants ratings. This has gone too far.

We jam the doors open, but they bounce against something heavy with a shuddering crash. Once, twice, three times. We manage to shove them until a few inches gape between, not leaving enough space to see what’s blocking them, but letting a tiny, feathered body zip through.

“What is that?” I ask, my voice squeaking on the question. “Is it an owl? A weird bat?”

But Rosemarie chases after it, circling back toward me as the doors crack open again. A blue-grey hand with claws pulls her out of the room and slams the doors in my face.

Panic spirals through me, and I fight to get to her. But the doors won’t move.

I bang my fists against them. “Rosemarie!”

She doesn’t answer.

My chest goes tight, and I pound on the wood, screaming for someone to let me out of here.

I haven’t been a jinx my entire life without learning how to cosmically mess some shit up.

Screw the idea of the show must go on.

If one of my friends gets hurt, I’ll burn this place to the motherfucking ground.

CHAPTER FIVE

Theo

This day has gone wrong in the worst way. I’ve matched dozens of monsters with their fated mates. Hundreds. Yet never have I dealt with a shitshow like today’s mess.

If my kingdom wasn’t at stake, I wouldn’t have bothered matching all four women. I would’ve simply snatched Val and dragged her to hell until she agreed to become my forever mate. Instead, I’m stuck in this fiasco.

My sweet mate pounds hard on the library doors. “Let me out of here, you asshole. I don’t care what producer promised you a walk on role for his shitty little movie, Theo, if you don’t open this door and bring my friends back right now, I swear you’ll be wishing you could beg your way into a no-budget foreign commercial without that pretty face once I’m done with you.”

She likes the way I look in my human glamour?

A heavy thud pounds against the doors as though she has launched books at the thick wood. “And without your balls.”

What shrew of a she-demon did the Fates saddle me with? With a bellow like that, she’ll make a great lady of the demon court as soon as she accepts me as her fated mate. Until then, I’ll lock her in a suite of my castle far enough away from the nobles that none can hear her scream.

Or steal her away like someone took her friend Ava.

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