Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

the demon and his pets and throw myself into rectifying the damage done to my house. I do everything by hand, without magic, as penance. Spackling the deep scrapes on the dining room ceiling from the demon’s horns. Gathering and stacking the books that still lie scattered across the table and floor. I leave them on the dining room table, glancing at them as I move between dining room and kitchen, washing down the walls, hoping that an answer to my problems will suddenly leap from their pages.

I have no idea of how to send him back. No one I can ask. Everyone I’ve drawn into this has gotten killed. I’m on my own with no idea of where to start. Even in this modern age, warlocks don’t usually post their secrets for banishing demons on the Internet. Unless I stumble across another weakness, I’m going to have to make it up as I go along. I hate making it up as I go along. I like recipes. Instructions. Focal points for summoning and directing the energies I call. I’ve been afraid of wild magic since I was twelve, and now I’m reduced to it again.

I scrub at the bloodstains furiously.

While the floor and walls and ceiling dry, I change into even older jeans and a shirt that I don’t mind ruining and dig through my basement to find the left-over cans of paint from when I painted my kitchen and dining room. The fresh paint covers the burns and bloodstains and soon there’s nothing left of the damage done to my house, except the burned kitchen table, which the cantrip has left so highly polished that it looks kind of trendy. Only the dining room floor stubbornly resists my efforts: first to smooth over the splinters with sandpaper and when that fails, with magic. I stare at the ragged mess for a few minutes before climbing up to my attic again and digging out an old latchhook rug that I must have made at Wydlins. I toss it over the hole resignedly. I can’t afford a new floor. The pink kittens on the rug stare back at me. They’re only slightly less ghastly than the memory of the demon eating Justinian in that spot.

Tired, aching, paint-spattered, my temples banging with the remnants of my hangover and a slow-boiling anger that’s evolved out of my frustration and guilt while I’ve patched and painted, I go to find the demon. I’m spoiling for a fight. I can feel it, bubbling in my gut: the need to shout, accuse, hurt. I want someone to blame for everything that’s happened over the last few days, and the demon is it.

I follow the sound of the television and find him on the couch. He’s lying on his side. His head’s propped on a couch cushion, eyes closed, long legs stretched out, bare feet dangling over the far end of the couch. The three salamanders are draped over his hip in a complicated coil. One of them, Izzy or Gizzard, I can’t tell them apart, is snoring a hissy little salamander snore.

I stand over the tableau. The impulse to yell, wake them with a jolt, is strong. It’d make me feel so much better, to vent some of what I’m feeling. But even as I struggle with myself, my anger’s beginning to slip away. How can I wake him when he’s sleeping so peacefully?

How can I send him back to Hell when I know what’s waiting for him there?

My great-grandmother’s cuckoo clock ticks. One of the salamanders snores. I stand silent, unable to shatter the moment, struggling inside.

A cheerful tune bursts from the television and I glance at it. A round, red-bearded man in chef’s whites walks through a market, picking up tempting-looking produce. What on earth is the demon watching? Molto Mario, the television informs me a moment later, and the man in chef’s whites appears in a kitchen decorated in Mediterranean colors, chopping basil.

Cooking programs. The demon’s watching cooking programs.

That robs me of the last of my anger. I slump over, wrap my arms around myself. He is what he is. I can’t hate him for being a demon. For doing what demons do.

If you’re finished bein’ pissed at me, c’mere.

I start. “I thought you were asleep.”

I was. Then you stomped in with that nuclear meltdown going on inside your head. C’mere.

I sink onto the cushion in the space left by the curve of his hips. He doesn’t open his eyes and I watch his face for a moment. I’ve read somewhere that people look like the children they were in their sleep. The demon just looks like the demon. His face is relaxed, the clean lines of cheek and jaw showing under his skin. Dark lashes lie in crescents against the deep gold of his cheeks. His dreadlocks fan over his shoulders. I pick up one and run it through my fingers. The strand is warm, fuzzy. I rub it against my cheek.

He wraps an arm around me and pulls me down so that I spoon against him. The salamanders protest, grumbling and hissing, but eventually shuffle and recoil so they drape over my hip, too.

“Enjoy it while you can, boys,” the demon grunts. “You’re not sleepin’ with us.” He slides one arm under my head, wraps the other around my ribs. Wanna tell me why you were so pissed?

I sigh and settle against him, into his warmth and strength. “I’m not sure I can explain.”

Yeah, I can tell from the hurricane going on in your head. Gimme the condensed version.

“I want things to be different.”

You want me to be different.

I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes, I want you to be different.”

Yeah. He blows out a breath, ruffling my hair. Thought we’d come to this. I can’t be human for you, sweet meat. No way I know of. Next best thing I can think of is to make you a demon.

Which I don’t want to be. Ever.

I close my hand over his