Page 100 of Cookbooks and Demons

“What do you think happened here?” Agent Sophia asked, looking inward. Flashes sharpened the horror of the scene as the techs kept up with their work: documenting.

“Someone summoned a demon,” Agent Archon said.

“Well, yes, that muchis clear.”

“But that is all we know. They could have just been victims. They could have been the summoners… Have we made any progress on finding the other assistant…” Agent Archon glanced down at the notes. “Helena Rhodes. Do we know if she’s safe?”

“No one here has seen her. The guard is getting checked out, but he seems to have suffered from the demon attacking him. He doesn’t remember anything. And of course the minute the summoning happened, all the cameras back here fried. I’ve sent a unit to her house to confirm if she’s there or not, and we have a call out to all the hospitals. I do have a report that she was last seen helping the chef for the event.” She glanced at her notes. “He seemed sick.”

Agent Acheron tapped her teeth. “Hmm, that sounds promising. High stress jobs are prone to demon summoning.”

“Cooking is highstress?”

Agent Acheron looked over the rim of her glasses at her partner. “Sophia, you need to getout more.”

The blip of the ambulance made both agents glance over as they took away the survivor. “First stop is the hospital though, where I’m sure a lawyer will be present to make sure we don’t get anything,” she said dryly. “Come on. It’s going to be a long night.”

“You were right, honey lips. I will admit it. You saw something that I didn’t, and I will own it,” the being calling herself Honey said.

“While I thank you for the acknowledgement, I do question it,” the being called Éliott said. “If we had intervened when you said to, an innocent person would be alive right now. And the anathema would not have beencreated.”

“We can’t interfere in their choices. No more than a demon under their control can ignore a direct command,” she reminded him, then laid a hand over his, patting it. “But this is not entirely a tragedy, and that is thanks to you. You should have more faith in your judgment. She pulled the demon outof hell.”

“But he is still a demon.Sort of.”

“One step at a time. There was something to be redeemed within him.”

“But I do not understand what has happened?” Éliott insisted, fluttering his wings in a show of agitation. One of his gray feathers dislodged and drifted down to sit between the crest of the ram-like horns circling the sides ofhis head.

Honey lowered the newspaper she was reading to look at the other angel sitting before her. “Well, what do you think happened?” she asked as she leaned forward and caught his feather off his head, holding it up to study its beautifulpatterns.

“I do not know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

She fluttered her own pure white wings behind herself. It felt so good to stretch them out. “Well, to be frank I’ve only ever seen this happen a couple times myself, but every so often when a very old soul, one who has lived many lives and figured out many things, they sort of, take a leap and become one of us.”

Éliott thought about that, mulling it over. “Is that how we came into being?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t have any memory of being a mortal before. There are some questions I don’t know if I can ever answer, but that is what she did. And now we’ll have to deal with that.”

Éliott nodded, looking down at the headline and sub headline of her paper.Socialite sacrifices assistant in demon ritual for youth and beauty. Federal agency for demonic security and prevention (DSP) investigating.

He shook his head. “It didn’t have to happenthat way.”

“But it did, crab cake,” Honey said, folding up the paper. “They make their choices and we can only do so much to protect those that don’t deserve to be draggedinto it.”

“But even then, what we do is so inadequate,” Éliott said, despairingly.

“There are only so many of us that even want to come here and way more ofthem. We do the best that we can. And chin up. Now we’ve gotone more.”

“But what are we going to do about the demon?”

Honey hummed on that a little while. “At this point, nothing. We’re going to watch him and see whatshe does.”

“Do you think she would be able to send him back if it came to it?”

Honey beamed. “We’ll just have to waitand see.”

“Wonder what she’s going to say when we tell her what is reallygoing on?”

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