Page 60 of Cookbooks and Demons

Laying her hand on the door, Helena could feel a strange heat from the other side of the door. For a brief moment, she thought her kitchen was on fire on the other side, but if that had been the case… the fire alarms would havegone off.

She looked over at the one attached to the wall beside the door, her fire alarm and monoxide detector in one. It was off. She could see that someone had pulled it off the wall, then set it slightly at an angle so it still hung there, but no longer connected tothe base.

“Oh God,” she whispered and then fortified herself to push her kitchen door inward slowly.

The smell that hit her was awful. She had no idea how she hadn’t been smelling it in the rest of the house, but it was like cat sick and burning tires mixed with decaying body and a hint of pumpkin spice. Grasping at the top of her shirt, she pulled it up over her nose and it only helpeda little.

Daring to open the door enough to actually see, she swore the room had its own light. Even though her kitchen came with windows, they were blacked out, caked with some sort of grease-like substance, both over the sink and covering her back door. The remnants of her kitchen remained, like the stove and the countertops, the dishwasher and the refrigerator, but all of her smaller appliances were gone, smothered under a sickly growth that branched around the room from no obvious source. In the center of the room, still burning into the tile, was the summoning circle. It had changed from when she last saw it. It had cut itself deep into the grooves of her floor, at least six inches below the surface. Smoke billowed from it, like someone had just snuffed out a candle, dancing on its own breeze in wicked curls and strangling shapes.

Blackness, different from what was on the windows, stained the rest of the tile. In places it flaked like drying blood on stone. Bits of detritus were everywhere, like the rotten foliage from a swamp or dark, sinister forest, but if she looked too long at what she thought was a twig, she knew such a thing could never have grown on a real tree. In fact, the longer she stared at it, the more it looked like bone.

She thought she would go in, but she couldn’t make herself. It was all toohorrible.

“How… how could this happen in a few days? I thought you said we had longer?”

“I made a mistake in my calculation,” he said. “I didn’t take into account how much demonic magic it would burn to keep me in reality in this body twenty-four hours a day every day. In a few days, we burned through what is normally two weeks’ worth of energy.”

“Two weeks!” Helena’s eyes couldn’t have been wider.

“You asked me where I was sleeping… when you’re not here, I have gone back in to lower the strain on the circle.” Rafferty stepped into the kitchen, unbothered by the decay and rot around him.

“You’ve been going back into hell?” she asked, horrified by the implications.

He tapped the circle with a toe. “To the threshold, not completely back in, but enough. Now…” Turning back to her, he folded his wings behind him, the black clothing ruffling about him in the stirring of the unearthly air over the circle. “I must return completely,” he said withfinality.

“Rafferty,” Helena said. She wanted to say no, but how could she? What was happening was terrible anddangerous.

He shifted back to his human visage. “Don’t worry. I’ve controlled the cost. You’ve given me enough good memories to cover it easily. And I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be sorry—” Helena started to say, but he held up a hand tostop her.

“Wait. You don’t know what I’m apologizing for yet,” he said and crossed the space back to her. As soon as he was close, he brushed a hair out of her face gently, roving his eyes over her like he was trying to memorize every inch of it. “I’ll never give up this memory,” he said softly and cupped her face. “Never.”

She held his hand to her face, pressing it in. She couldn’t believe this was happening, that she was losing him, but they needed to do this. “What is it you’re sorry for?”

He sighed and leaned forward, to press his forehead against hers, closing their eyes. “I’ve been eating your memories,” he whispered.

“I know. That wasthe deal—”

“No, the bad ones. This isn’t the first time you’ve discovered the circle, and I’ve eaten those memories so we could continue on, but now that it’s over… I can’t leave without you knowing that you’re missing pieces of your life.”

“But … weren’t they bad memories?” she asked.

He nodded against herforehead.

“And they don’t … taste good?”

He nodded again.

“But you ate them anyway?”

“So you wouldn’t have to suffer,” he whispered, the truth forcing its way out of him.

“I love you too,” she whispered and wrapped her arms around his neck, tucking her face into his shoulder and squeezing hard.

“No, that’s… that’s not why I told you,” he said, trying to push her away, but not having the heart or willto do it.

“Then why are you telling me?”

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