Page 25 of Cookbooks and Demons

Taking a step forward, he pulled out one of the celebrity chef books Helena bought in college. She had burned two things she tried to make from it and had never opened it again. On the lower part of the cover over the smiling chef’s face was the printed tagline: “As seen on the FoodNetwork!”

“Oh my dear lord,” Helena breathed. She went back into the main room, passing by the dining room to go into the living room section where the TV continued to broadcast its latest offering, You Think You CanMacaroon?

“Oh my God. It’s like I left a drug addict at home and forgot to lock up my cocaine stash,” she stated, then glanced over at Rafferty as he followed her into the room. “I don’t have a cocaine stash, bythe way.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything if you did,” hereplied.

“But what I still don’t understand is… how did you get all this food? I know for a fact I wouldn’t buy…” she glanced over at the table, trying to pick out what she was seeing amongst the cornucopia of options, “pomegranates or seaweed or whatever that purplestuff is.”

“Purple cauliflower rice.”

“Yeah, you see. I know for a fact I do not have any purple cauliflower rice.”

“Well… you don’t buy the rice. You get the cauliflower andthen you—”

“Not the point!” Helena said, torn between anger and amusement at this bizarre situation. It was just so much food! “How did you do all this? Is it all demon magic?”

“I…” He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a black mobile smartphone. He held it out to her. “I saw you have one of these and while I was watching this show about dive diners in the Southwestern Americas, there was this commercial for an app on a phone that can allow you to order whatever groceries you want and so I made a phone and then made the numbers go up in the wallet thing and…” He looked around again at the groceries. “I got carried away.”

“Yes, we’ve established you got ‘carried away.’” she said, attempting to make sense of what he was telling her. “So you magicked a phone into existence and then basically magically hacked it to give yourself enough money to order all this food.”

“And give a generoustip, yes.”

“Uh huh,” she acknowledged. “Therefore, you stole all this food?”

He froze at that. “I… yes. Technically, as far as human laws are concerned. Though the authorities would have a difficult time proving that I did,” he agreed. “I didn’t want to use demon magic to cook with because then I wouldn’t know how it actually turned out, like if the dish workedor not.”

She didn’t think her eyebrows could furrow harder, but she surprised herself. “What? Why?”

He cleared his throat. “Demon magic can make anything seem tasty, even garbage. I wanted to know if the dishes actually worked, so for that … I needed real food.”

“Oh. Wow.” Helena nodded, practicing radical acceptance. “Okay, that made sense. Well, I guess I should be relieved it’s not all made out of children and dogs or something.” She hooted and retreated back into the dining room to look at it all. “It’s … not, right?”

“No,” Rafferty said, bringing the casserole dish with his grilled sandwiches on them as he followed her into the dining room.

Helena’s stomach growled. Despite the issue at hand, it had been a long day, and she couldn’t quite remember what she had for lunch. She looked down at the pile of grilled sandwiches he had made. All but the last one had been cut into triangles. They didn’t quite look right, yet she couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong.

“What are those?” she asked.

“French Toast Turkey Sandwich,”he said.

Her stomach insisted she try one. It was getting too hard to think with all this food around. Still she hesitated. “Is anything more going to happen to me if I eat one?” she asked.

“No, these don’t have any demon magic in them, like I said. I wanted to know if the recipes actually worked,” he said, holding the casserole dish out to her. She took one and dared herself to take a decent bite.

“I mean don’t get me wrong, I—my God…” was all she got out before she stopped as the pillowy delight of the sandwich hit her mouth. She had had turkey and cheddar cheese sandwiches before, but this was something entirely different.

“When you said, ‘French Toast,’ I thought this was going to be sweet,” she said as she took another mouthful. “But it’s not! It’s amazing.” Mustard with mustard seeds bursting in her mouth added tanginess and the whole thing was gone before she realized it. “That was inspired,” she complemented. “Did you come up with that?”

Rafferty averted his gaze. “I saw it on Diners Vs Dining.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a show about diner cooks and high-end restaurant chefs competing to make the most original, high-level cuisine. I saw one of the diner cooks make this, and I felt compelled to try it.”

“Hmm,” Helena said, looking down at the casserole dish of remaining sandwiches, wondering how something so delicious could be the cause of so much drama.

“I don’t know if it’s price-of-my-soul good, but it’s really good,” she added, reaching for another triangle. Still, there was no helping it. “Alright, so how are we going todo this?”

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