Page 5 of Cookbooks and Demons

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh. Uh, well.” She rolled what remained in her mouth. “It’s very intense. Like intensely sweet. I don’t think I could do more than aspoonful.”

He grunted and nodded at the feedback. “Ice cream,” he muttered and turned away to his prep area. “Or maybe a semi-sweet cake with this layered in between. We have time. Yes, mousse cake. Maybe.”

Helena stood there a bit confused, then amazed. The chaos that had been her kitchen had been tamed. While most of her disaster had been piled into the sink, the stove had a couple of pots simmering nicely, and it was clear there was something baking in the oven if the shadow backlit by the inner light was any indication.

“Do you… do you need help with anything?” she asked, lacking anything else to say.

“For you to get your ass out of my kitchen,” he said matter-of-factly as he lifted up the pan that had her ruined cake in it, critically inspecting it.

“Oh, you can’t use that,” she warned, jetting forward to take the pan from him. “I got fire extinguisher allover it.”

He blocked her with his arm, seizing her wrist in a vise-like grip. “Never touch anything in my kitchen. Understand?” he said very carefully. A shiver fluttered through her as her heart pounded. The illusion over the demon slipped, and Helena’s throat constricted at the sight of the too-thin, gray-skinned creature before her. The stars in his eyes flared inhumanely bright into suns as he pinned her with his warning gaze, which didn’t change, even as he shifted back to looking human.

“I… I’m trying to help,” she said softly.

“So am I,” he said. “Now get what you need andget out.”

Like a startled deer, she scrambled as fast as she could under her sink, the door of which was right next to his leg and grabbed a garbage bag. Her desperate need for speed made the job take twice as long, the bag getting caught in the door as it closed.Then she had to double back for a cleandishcloth.

Helena glanced up fearfully at the demon, praying that he wouldn’t do anything to her, but he just looked down his nose at her impassivelywaiting.

She fled the kitchen, back into her dining room. Gripping the back of a chair with both hands, she let the garbage bag drop to the floor while she panted like she had run amarathon.

“Oh, God, what have I done? How did I do it? What am I going to do?”

On top of everything, her tongue hurt from where she bit it. Rubbing the wound with a finger, she checked for blood.

Dammit, this is going to bug me all night,shethought.

“What’s wrong with you?” the gruff voice from the door asked. She spun to face the demon poking his head through the kitchen door.

“I… I bit my tongue…before.”

He grunted. “Come here.”

Each step weighed a ton, but she went back tothe door.

Then he stroked along her cheek. She practically jumped out of her skin at his touch. “There. Now you can taste the food,” he said. “Don’t thank me. I’ll add it to your tab.”

“Great.”

It wasn’t.

Chapter 4

Then the Boss Arrives

“Helena, come on. It’s just a dinner party. Don’t panic,” Cindy chided as she came back in from her bedroom. The ER doctor was gone and, in her place, stood a perfect silhouetted socialite in tight black pants with bell-bottoms dusted in white and a bare-midriff halter top that sparkledblackly.

“You look…” Helena tried to find the right word, but snazzy was the only one that came to mind and there was no way in hell she was sayingthatone.

“I haven’t dressed up in so long I needed to go the distance,” Cindy explained and flipped a bit more at her short hair, now infused with product to make the back turn up toward the sky like her hair was made of feathers instead of strands. It gave her an airy beauty and highlighted her golden blondeness.

Her gorgeous friend came to the table and surveyed the dishes, picking one up. “Oh, this is nice. Good choice.”

The ordinariness of the plate helped refocus Helena back to earth. “Thanks. I thought it would be nice…you know.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. Let’s get all this laid out,” Cindy agreed and helped her set the table. Between the two of them, they had it looking fairly nice with the forks and knives in the right places and the crystal glasses sparkling beside each plate. Helena set the garbage bag next to the kitchen door, now filled.

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