Page 61 of Cookbooks and Demons

“You’re… I thought it would help…” he struggled.

“You wanted me to hate you, so I would feel violated? To make it easier to let you go.”

“Dammit.” He gave in as soon as the truth was voiced. Dropping his head to her shoulder, he nodded against the crook of her arms. “How do you always know?”

“Because you wouldn’t do something to me without my permission.”

“I could have.”

“No, youcouldn’t.”

He growled low. “Your faith in me… I can’t believe it.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need you to for it to be real.” She hated this. She hated it was ending thisway, but…

“Couldn’t I summon you again? Not all the time, but again … sometime?” she asked, practically begged.

“You could,” he agreed. “I can’t stop you, even though Iwant to.”

He hugged her back, squeezing for all he was worth, his body pressing into hers. Then he pushed away harshly like she was hot to the touch and burning him. It caused him to stumble. She moved to help him again, but he kept his arm locked to hold her back. “Don’t come in here until I am gone. It could make you sick. I’ll try to take as much of the damage with me as I can. Do you remember the recipe I gave to clean this all up?”

She nodded, her throat becoming too thickto talk.

“Good,” he said. “The grooves will remain, unfortunately, until the circle is completely purged, which takes a year. You’ll have to put down a rug … or something.”

“I’ll figure it out,” she assured him.

Reluctantly, he let her go, stepping back toward the summoning circle. Like a man preparing for his execution, he unbuttoned his clothes, taking them off. Helena thought about looking away, but she couldn’t. He folded the shirt and pants she had bought him, laying them to the side of the circle while still wearing the boxer briefs. He stood one last time, not looking in her direction and stepped into the center of the circle. As soon as he passed the invisible wall, he shifted back to the demon with the horns that swept back and his triangle tipped tail that whipped behind him, conveying hisanxiety.

As he moved, Helena noted his bare feet and realized something that made her giggle.

He paused and looked back, clearly perplexed by her inappropriate levity. “What?”he asked.

“Your feet,” she said, gesturing. “You have horns and a tail, but human feet instead of hooves.”

Looking down at his own feet, he lifted one up as if he had never noticed that before. “Maybe I’m not wholly demon then,” he said with a sad smile.

And then in a flash hewas gone.

Chapter 32

It Was Worse Thana Breakup

It took Helena all night to clean up what remained of the infested kitchen. When Rafferty went back through the circle, the tendrils and growth went with him, as well as the majority of the eerie detritus. As well as her coffeemaker and toaster. Her crockpot had been half dissolved and the dishwasher made a funny noise now, but it still worked. The inside of the fridge was also fine. Everything was still coated with the gross, unnamable film. It took most of the night to clean up. Amazingly enough, Rafferty’s cleaning concoction, when she sprayed it on and left it for a few minutes, wiped the mess away almost instantly. She did the counters and walls first, the surfaces of the remaining appliances and then her windows before finally mopping up the floor, throwing away a month’s supply of paper towels, so it was lucky she bought those sorts of things in bulk at the local warehouse outlet.

The whole time she went through a bevy of emotions from outright heartbreak and melancholy to even laughing at some of their shared memories. If anyone had been watching her, they would have thought she had been driven mad.

This was worse than a breakup, she decided.

Finally, just when dawn started to crest, she finished enough for her to go to sleep. She knew she would need to do this level of cleaning again for a while, but at least the sick feeling it gave her was much, much less. Yet, as she dragged herself to her bed, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

“Crap, I got to shower,” she told her reflection.

The water burned as it hit her skin, like she had been out in a snowdrift. Leaning against the wall, she pressed her hands into the tile as she let the water hit her from above. Hanging her head, her hair streamed a curtain around her face. She endured it and after a few minutes of slow breathing, it got easier. The water slipping down the drain was black and greasy brown, reminding her of oil. It took everything she had tohold on.

“Rafferty, I am so sorry,” she whispered. She knew she couldn’t imagine the pain he had to be suffering at that moment; hers was definitely nothing in comparison. But she hoped he could hear her, wherever he was, and that it gave him somecomfort.

After washing her hair twice and simply standing in the water until it ran cold, Helena made her way back to her bedroom, moving freely without fear of anyone else seeing her natural state for the first timein ages.

---