WHAT A DEMON WANTS
KATHY LOVE
For Kate.
This book was a struggle without you.
You will be deeply missed.
SPECIAL THANKS
Julie Cohen—thanks for all the plotting help. And for driving, too.
Erin McCarthy—just for answering her phone. Always.
F. Paul Wilson—for all the weapons info. All mistakes are my own…. Oh—thanks for the sweet websites, too.
The Tarts—for being there.
Megan Records—for her patience and hard, hard work.
And for Emily—my life.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Prologue
Where the fuck is it?
This was the second time going through her shit. Her computer, her notes, her books.
He grabbed one of her New York Times bestsellers off the shelf, where it sat with eight others in the series. Fantasy, fiction. But not all fiction. He knew that all too well.
And this was the one. The one that had brought him to this place.
He flipped to page 128 where, in innocuous Times New Roman print, italicized of course, as all her spells and incantations were, was the one spell that had brought him to this lowly state. Intolerable state.
He didn’t reread the passage. He’d read it dozens of times before. He had it damn near memorized. The goddamned spell. He shoved the book back onto the shelf. Then his rage overtook him. With a sweep of his arm, he brushed all the books off the shelf. Then another shelf. And another.
But with each crash, each thump of the falling books, his rage didn’t lessen. It only rose until it strangled him. Blinded him.
He turned on her desk, attacking that with his fury.
When he was done the room looked as if a violent storm had hit, leaving destruction in its path.
He was breathing heavily, his chest puffing up and down with his exertion and his anger. Another wave of rage filled him. He was weak and pathetic now. He couldn’t stand this…not a moment more.
But how? How did he reverse this spell?
He stepped forward, walking on her books and papers as if they were nothing but trash. Then, in the moonlight filtering in through the French doors, he saw something.
A single sheet of lined paper with neat, precise handwriting listing ingredients and chants. Something about those tidy words drew him. He leaned down and carefully picked it up. Something told him he needed to be calm now. To focus.
He zigzagged his way through the mess until he stood in a direct beam of moonlight. The full moon illuminated the page, so the words were bright and clear even to his inferior eyes.
A Spell of Escape.
His heart, not fully recovered from his fit of anger, sped up more. This could be it. This could finally be his ticket out.
Escape. Freedom.
He read the words.
This would work, he realized. This would release him from the awful bonds he’d been stuck in for months. He’d be strong again. He’d be free.
Relief and excitement made him almost giddy, replacing the anger that had seemed to simmer within him for weeks.
He’d be free!
He read the spell again. It was really quite a simple incantation. Some herbs and other sundries created into a powder that he would dust over himself. Then he would read the invocation aloud. There was only one part that could be tricky.
While dusted in the charmed concoction and saying the chant, he had to commit a human sacrifice.
A smile turned up his lips. Lips that hadn’t smiled sincerely in weeks.
Hmm, who to kill?
He glanced around the office that he’d just ransacked. Well, that was a no-brainer, wasn’t it?
“Found dead today in her New Orleans home was Ellina Kostova, the reclusive author of many highly successful fantasy novels.”
He laughed as he carefully folded the paper in Ellina’s own handwriting, her handwritten death warrant, and exited her home through French doors that led into her courtyard.
Chapter 1
“Why would a demon need a bodyguard?” Ellina Kostova pushed her relentlessly unruly hair out of her face and attempted to give her brother her most formidable look.
Maksim ignored her and continued to thumb through the papers he held, pulling out one and tossing it on her desk.
“You need a bodyguard, and I have a man coming here today to meet with us,” he said.
“Maksim, you are being ridiculous.” She didn’t bother to look at the paper, which she knew was probably the equivalent of a bodyguard résumé. It struck her as sort of amusing. What would a résumé like that say? Took a bullet for so and so in 2005. Roughed up so and so in 2007. Fended off crazed paparazzi in 2009.
“And you’re overreacting,” she added.
Maksim lifted an eyebrow. “You do realize you live in a fantasy world?”
“If I can’t live in a fantasy world, who can?” She pushed the paper back toward him, trying not to disturb any of her notes. She’d just finished researching The Ritual of Restraint, which was a particularly involved incantation for binding the most powerful of demons, and one she was using in a key place in her next Jenny Bell, Demon Hunter, book. So she did not want to get her notes out of order.
And she prided herself on her accuracy. She might write fiction, but her demon knowledge was correct. It should be; she was half demon, after all.
She glanced back to her brother. Of course, she couldn’t always be totally accurate. Some things humans wouldn’t necessarily buy. Like how sullen demons often were.
Oh, they were evil and manipulative, sure. But oversensitive and cranky…
That just didn’t make for good