Page 8 of Cookbooks and Demons

“Oh! No, it’s fine. It was just a compliment, right?” Helena agreed, relieved to be getting off thesubject.

“I saw a demon once.”

The statement froze the table, and all eyes slid over to Scarlet. Yosef sitting next to her paused as well, his wine glass halfway to his mouth before he dropped his head and shook it indespair.

Scarlet didn’t seem to notice or care if she did. With a tricky, conspiratorial smile, she leaned her elbows onto the table, lacing her fingers together in front of her. “He wasgorgeous.”

There was an intake of breath around the table. “An incubus?” a voice asked in awe.

“The most dangerous demon known to woman, yes,” Scarlet said, relishing her command of the room. Her eyes grew distant as she stared into the past. “And he was everything they say. Tall, dark, otherworldly. ‘Beautiful’ wouldn’t capture what he was. Still a man in shape. In every shape. And he smelled…” Then Scarlet seemed to wake up from the dream she was building, seeing her captive, breathless audience. “There is a reason incubi and succubi are the most commonly summoned of all the demonspawn,” she purred.

Chris licked his lips. “And … what washe like?”

Scarlet blinked once. “Like?”

Chris shifted in his seat and Charlie planted his head inhis hand.

“Yeah,” Chriscontinued since no one was going to bail him out. “You know.”

Scarlet smiled predatorily, looking a bit demonish herself. “Why dear boy, I wasn’t the one who summoned him, of course. But let me assure you, demonic sex is just as tragic as the rest of it. It robs your self of the energy of life, and nothing is ever right again. Nothing ever tastes right, touch from normal humans feels like numb pawing, and it spoils any other delight the world has to offer. All the victims are left with an insatiable craving for their lover, and they will do anything to get it.”

“Like having sex onecstasy?”

“Worse,” Scarlet assured. “They destroy everything you were and everything you could be and leave a hollow shell screaming out for a memory of what they had done. Incubi kill just as effectively if not morecruelly.”

Just then the kitchen door opened as the demon caterer backed into the room, carrying a tray laid out with several bowls of chocolate mousse cake. He paused when he encountered the tension inthe room.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Did something happen withthe food?”

“No! The food was delicious,” Helena said, jumping in and chorused by her guests, who also agreed with her sentiment, all worried they had offended him. “That’s the… uh problem. We all thought it was too good to be … earthly made,” she said adequately, if awkwardly.

The demon sniffed at that, the human face he wore truly hiding his secret beneath it.

Just imagine he’s real. Just imagine he’s human. He’s human. He’s human,Helena repeated in her mind as she stood up and came over to him as natural as if hehadbeen human. Because he was. He was human.Totally.

“Let me help you with that,” she offered and took up two of the small bowls with cake upon it. They were beautiful sculptures, chocolate cake layered with mousse cream, each cut into different shapes. They were all proportionally the same size and topped with lattices of chocolate that were already sweating condensation.

“These are beautiful,” Cindy chimed as Helena set plates before her and Scarlet simultaneously. Her friend turned back to the demon. “Really, this is just gorgeous. It just got us talking about demons and demon summoning, you know, because your food is honestly too good tobe true.”

Again, the demon sniffed at that. “Demon summoning is a stupid practice,” hedeclared.

Helena almost dropped a plate of cake onto Chris.

“Yes, I think that is the conclusion we have all reached this night,” Scarlet declared and everyone nodded. Yosef held up his glass for more wine, and everyone dug into the dessert, turning the conversation to safer topics.

The conversations lingered long after the plates were cleared and the last sip of wine was drunk.

“Well, I don’t know about you youngsters, but while I have had a lovely evening, I must be the first to make a graceful exit,” Scarlet declared, standing up from the table. All the males leapt to their feet in a surprising show of old-fashioned manners, and Yosef came around to offer his arm to his employer, which she took with the grace of a Duchess. “All of you, sit, sit! Enjoy the rest of your evening. Our host seeing me out is more than enough.”

Everyone offered good-byes and platitudes. Chris even raised his empty glass in salute and Helena did just that: escorted her guest of honor to the door. Yosef went and fetched the arm crutches she had brought from next to Helena’s coat rack while Scarlet turned to Helena, setting her hand on the younger woman’s arm.

“Come talk to me in the morning,” Scarlet said softly. “I have an idea I’d like to discusswith you.”

A flutter of excitement tickled inside Helena’s chest. Was this it? Were “big things” going to happen for her at the office?

“Absolutely, I would love to,” she said effusively.

Scarlet nodded, satisfied by her barely contained reaction. “You did good tonight, my girl. I’ve had my eye on you awhile, and I think it’s time we did something usefulwith you.”

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