Page 46 of Cookbooks and Demons

They were sitting at her dining room table now, enjoying the coffee he made while going over the desserts that had been provided for them. And of course the conversation drifted back to the nature of demons.

“It’s not by any means the only way to categorize all of us. It’s just a really handy guide to thinkingabout it.”

“Alright, I think I remember this. There is Anger, Gluttony, Lust,” she said, ticking off herfingers.

“Good,” he nodded.

“Wrath.” She stopped furrowing her brows. “No, that’s the sameas Anger.”

“You arecorrect.”

“Sloooooth,” she said slowly, though she didn’t mean it tobe funny.

He chuckled anyway, clearly enjoyinghimself.

“Greed,” she added. Then she ticked off her fingers again because she forgot how many she had figured out. “Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Anger/Wrath, Sloth… Okay two more.” She wracked her brain, but it just didn’t come to her.

“Ugh, okay, I give up. What are thelast two?”

He raised his eyebrows at her, teasing that he wasn’t going to tell her. “Eeeeee-nnnn-vvvveeee—”

“Envy!” she shouted, which led her to “and Pride. I win!”

He grinned at her. “I’m not surprised you struggled with those last two. You have nothing much to do with envy, do you?” Rafferty said.

Helena shrugged. “I guess not, but Wrath? Oh yeah, been there.”

“Really?”

“You should have met me in high school. Or actually it’s better that you didn’t.”

“Better for you thatwedidn’t.”

That sobered the conversation.

“Like I said, will leave a bad taste in your mouth,” Rafferty said, and he wielded a fork on one of the three desserts waiting on the plate between them to try. “Which do you want first: the mini hazelnut dacquoise, raspberry macaron, or mini chocolate ganache cake?”

“Yes, please,” she said as a non-answer, smiling. There were in fact two of everything as the restaurant had sent home enough for her and her guest.

He gave her a faux-annoyed look and picked the chocolate ganache. Stabbing the mini dessert with his fork, he lifted the whole thing as one large bite and held it out to her. She opened her mouth and let him feed it to her before she quickly did the same, stabbing the other mini ganache. Her feeding was a bit more awkward, however, since her little cake decided to try to split in half, but it just made them both giggle as he had to chomp at the air to keep from losing it.

“Wow, that is rich,” she said around her mouthful as they both savored. “We don’t need wine. We need milk.”

But as she got up to go get it, Rafferty stood quicker. “I’ll go get it,” he said and disappeared through the swinging door before she could even object.

“Well, okay,” she said to herself and sat back down.

Lacking anything else to do while she waited and not really willing to get up and go find her mobile phone to mess with, she looked down at the plate with the other two desserts. All the offerings were mini versions, again because the chef was trying to showcase what he could do. She was really curious about the mini Hazelnut Dacquoise which was a little meringue layered with chocolate buttercream, the layers on display inside an equally little shot glass. The other delight was a Raspberry Macaron. The chef had stenciled the restaurant’s logo on the top of each Macaron, probably with an air sprayer of food coloring, giving them a regal look. Wedged in between each of the dark pink cookies was a lighter pink Chantilly cream.

She couldn’t wait to try them and soon enough, Rafferty returned with the palate cleansing milk.

“Okay, so if I were to take a guess,” she said after a hearty swallow, “you would be a demon of Gluttony? Because of allthe food?”

“Again, this is a hard and fast guideline, not really an official designation, but yes, I do tend to get people whose greatest desires tend to be around consuming more. But I do also get Prideful ones like you nearlyas often.”

“Prideful?” Helena asked, surprised. “How am Iprideful?”

“Well, you just couldn’t let yourself be embarrassed in front of your guests that you ruined the meal,” he said simply.

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