Page 1 of Cooking Up a Demon
Chapter One
One
The bipolar weather in Ghostlight Falls, Oregon, is going to be the death of me. My headstone will read: Here lies Bea, the idiot who moved from sunny Florida to Oregon without so much as a winter coat to her name.
Okay, probably not. That is way too wordy for a headstone. But my head and nose are stuffed, my lungs ache, and the rainy weather that has persisted since my arrival in the small town two weeks ago has broken me at last.
I sneeze into my elbow before I return my attention to the recipe book in front of me. It is an old journal full of recipes in my Nonna’s careful handwriting. Just reading it is a bittersweet ache.
“Five cloves garlic.” I wrinkle my nose. That is a lot of garlic. But I am trusting the process with my Nonna’s “Fix Shit” soup. The page is filled with adjustments to the recipe, notes in the margins. Even a few splashes, proving it was a favorite. Hell, maybe it will actually help me feel good enough to fix some shit.
“Trusting you, Nonna.” I say to the empty kitchen. I dump the roughly chopped garlic in and move to peeling large carrots.The recipe is specific about them being large carrots, not baby carrots. The recipe is oddly specific about a lot of things.
The soup is at a slow simmer by the time I finish peeling, slicing, chopping, and measuring all of the ingredients. I am kind of wishing I just bought the chicken noodle from the grocery store instead of deciding to make it from scratch.
“Okay, a pinch of pepper and we’re done.” I find the container in the haphazardly organized cabinet beside the stove and grab a pinch. The second I drop it into the pot, it starts to smoke.
Not a little steam, but a billow of white smoke that quickly fills the small kitchen.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I wave at the smoke over the pot as I desperately try to remember where Nonna kept the fire extinguisher. I rush to the sink and push open the windows over it before grabbing a cloth to wave the smoke toward the opening.
“You dare summon me again?” A booming voice says from behind me. I whirl around to see a creature of nightmares standing beside the stove.
It is stony grey and giant, with huge curving horns. Its horns scrape the ceiling of the kitchen, and booted feet smudge the freshly washed tile floor with some sort of black soot.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yell, at my breaking point. I spent two weeks cleaning up the chaos left in the wake of Nonna’s death. Sure, I probably should be more concerned about the giant demon in the kitchen but…the mess!
“Who are you?” His voice a growl this time, instead of the echoing boom from before. “Where is May?”
“Dead.” I say bluntly. “She had a heart attack a few months ago.”
The demon seems to shrink into himself a little bit. His horns stop scraping the paint off the ceiling. Fuck. There are furrowsdug into the board. Before I can yell at him, he expands back to his overwhelming size and bellows at me again.
“Why have you summoned me?”
“Dude, I was just trying to make some soup.” I breathe in some of the smoke still lingering around the room. It sets off a coughing fit. I grip the side of the sink and bend at the waist as my lungs try to make their way out of my body in wracking coughs.
“Soup?” He glances at the now-empty pot on the stove.
Empty. Pot.
“Where the fuck did my dinner go?” I toss the towel over the side of the sink and move to the stove. Sure enough, the pot is completely empty. The fuck?
“Dinner?” The demon’s voice is horrified. “You couldn’t possibly have been planning to eat the summoning potion.”
“Summoning potion? It’s soup!” I turn off the burner and point to the “Fix Shit Soup” page in Nonna’s recipe book.
The demon squints at the page before he throws back his head laughing. The movement digs long furrows into the ceiling. I clench my teeth against the damage.
Should I be concerned about the demon in my kitchen? Probably. But I am sick, exhausted. In the two weeks I’ve been in Ghostlight Falls, I’ve already seen some shit. I just don’t have the energy to get pressed over a demon who seems more interested in laughing at me than killing me.
“Your grandmother is a riot.” The demon brushes tears from his eyes before he settles his gaze on me. “What is your bidding?”
“Bidding?” I have no bidding. I don’t have time for bidding. I have a store costing me money every day it’s closed, a chest cold, and a demon standing in my kitchen. I am at capacity.
“You summoned me. I cannot leave until I meet the terms of the agreement. So what is it I can do for you? Revenge on a lover is popular.”
I snort out a laugh. I haven’t had a lover in nearly a year. Especially not since moving to the Pacific Northwest after inheriting a failing bookstore and a creaking cabin.
