Page 13 of Cookbooks and Demons

Helena carefully backed up. Then nodded. “Yes, I understand,”she said.

He lowered his finger. “Good. Now sendme home.”

“Okay,” Helena agreed. “Um, how do I do thatexactly?”

Chapter 8

A DemonNamed Rafferty

He sighed, the bat-like wings on his back drooping. “Where’s thecookbook?”

She scurried over to fetch it while he took position in the middle of the room. The summoning marks from before flared to life, and Helena realized that they had gone invisible before when her guests had been there. But she supposed since he could hide his appearance, he could have hidden the marks of her demon summoning as well. She hugged the open book against her chest, not knowing what page she needed to go to next and waited.

Her … guest took up position in the middle of the circle, down on both knees and tucking his wings comfortably behindhimself.

“Before I forget,” he added, and his tail whipped out to snatch at a piece of torn paper on the counter. His prehensile appendage held it out to her to take. “I wrote down a formula that you need to use to cleanse this circle after I’m gone. Mop once will take the initial mess out of your floor as well as the remnants of demon magic and then again for a year tothoroughly,” he leaned forward to make her meet his eyes to stress his emphasis, “thoroughly clear out the magic so no one else can ‘accidentally’ call me again. And you should be fine. I checked. You got all the ingredients there, but if I make it for you, I’ll corrupt it, so you got to do ityourself.”

“And then go to church every Sunday and get blessed or something?” she asked. She sort of meant it as a joke—she had seen it in a movie once.

The demon just shrugged. “I mean, if you want to. If it’ll make you feel better, sure. Now turn to the spell you used to call me and read it backwards.” And then he resettled back, wrapping his tail around himself. The pose he assumed looked so very … zen-like and peaceful. He even had his eyes closed as if preparing to accepthis fate.

A new sensation cut through Helena, watching him, one that had nothing to do with herself,just him.

“Um, are you going to be alright?” she asked, hesitating with her grandmother’s cookbook in her hands.

“Am I going to be alright in hell?” he asked wryly, again that eyebrow cocking up in amusement as he peeked his eyes open.

“Well, yeah,” she said, not knowing how else to express the feeling creeping in.

A look of almost tenderness warmed his star-burning eyes. “Yeah. I’m going tobe fine.”

“But how can you? It’s hell?”

He flicked his wings in surprise and confusion.“Look Helena, you’re clearly a very good person, but you have to understand, it’s where I belong. I did plenty to earn my place there. That’s not your responsibility.” But his hand did something else contrary to his words. Where he had had his fists balled and resting against his thighs, his right hand uncurled and lifted. The clawed fingers stretched toward her as if asking her to take it. Then he closedit again.

“You’d better get reading,” he said softly, resolutely.

Helena pursed her lips together, then pulled the book away and looked at the spell her grandmother had scrawled in her clean perfect cursive. “Thank you, by the way,” she said beforereading.

His strange, alien face smiled sadly. “It was lovely to meet you, Helena.”

“It was lovely to… wait. What is your name? I know you said itearlier…”

“I ate it. Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving a hand.

She blinked once. “Why would youdo that?”

He sighed. “Like I said, I clean up after myself. And because if you know my name, you can just summon me again without the spell, so forget it.” He narrowed his eyes inwarning.

“How about Rafferty?” she asked quickly. “Can I call you Rafferty? That won’t summon you, right?”

He cocked his head at that.“WhyRafferty?”

“Rafferty Jones,Food Emergencies? He’s a famousTV chef?”

The demon chuckled and shook his head. “Sure, you can call meRafferty.”

“Thank you for everything, Rafferty,” she said. Her heart twisted as she said his new name. His presence still disgusted her, but he had been nothing but kind. “It was nice tomeet you.”

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