A Demon’s Book Of Shadows (Witches & Demons #1)

10. Amon

10

Amon

I’d abandoned Lucy’s feisty little maggot earlier that evening, hoping that the hedgehogs would help dispose of him. I wished to my very core that they would gobble him up as quickly as a child devoured Halloween candy. Hedgehogs ate bugs, right?

I found myself wandering the streets, dodging funnels of spiderwebs, their familiar creators all singing. “ Halloween! Halloween! Tis the time when our earthly magic is ringing !”

The celebratory chorus of the earth’s magical creatures could put humans to sleep. For a demon, however, the sound could make his ears bleed. Halloween was a word created by humans only after they had heard the familiar’s song about Hallowing —the term used to describe the process in which a demon’s shadows retreat.

The one place I would be safe from both Melrose and the chorus of familiars was at Shadow Daddy’s bar.

A blink and a funnel of spiderwebs later, Krim’s bar manifested before me. The door was locked, but the purple neon sign of a martini glass with a toothpick stuck through a large bulging eggplant was still blinking .

I stepped forward, shifting through the glass, entering the bar. The stench of bleach and something grungy burned my nose. The room was murky dark, saturated with the musk of cheap alcohol, perfume, and body odor.

Krim was nowhere. He was doing one of two things. He was either cleaning, or elbow-deep in his tiramisu recipe. My second youngest brother worked two jobs. He worked as a chemistry professor at the local university, and was also the owner of Shadow Daddy’s bar and nightclub. He used the hours from three AM to dawn for decompressing with his favorite pastime.

“Amon.”

I turned to face Krim’s gravelly voice that was quieter than normal. He’d probably spent his evening yelling at customers, as his bar could get pretty rowdy.

Krim was the beefiest of us brothers, and also the most introverted grim reaper of a demon, preferring to himself most of the time. And he was probably the smartest of us, too. He might look like a thug, with his big bulging biceps and thick neck. But Krim had a love for alchemy for as long as humans had shown interest in conjuring up ways of manipulating the elements.

I spotted him hunched over something I couldn’t see at the bar. Green neon signs framed the backlit wall of alcohol behind him. His head was turned down, wisps of his long brown hair hanging over his face. I got the feeling he was contemplating one of two things. Either a way to quit the bar scene for good, or convert the space into a shop for his secret side passion—baking.

“Every year, I hate this holiday a little more,” Krim grumbled, his expression hard in the dim green light of the bar. Empty beer bottles crowded the space a few seats away, and I was pretty sure that liquid puddle in the corner was fresh vomit. “Well? How did the gig at the library go?”

I took a seat at the bar in front of him. “Not as well as your current baking experiment.”

“What does that entail?”

I set my forearms on the bar and leaned forward, crossing my good arm over my wounded one. I caught a whiff of some cloves and cinnamon and some other spice that should not be combined.

Krim reached under the bar and set out a shot glass.

I shoved it aside, throwing out my hand. “Just give me the bottle.”

“You pick. But I’d stay away from the Krackin.” His eyes dipped to the bottle of rum sitting on the bar next to me. “I’m pretty sure a lady was giving the bottle a blow job before I closed.”

I second-guessed the liquor collection.

Krim’s gaze dropped to my wounded arm, where my tattoo looked like it had gone to hell. He set a glass next to my arm, where my shadow poured like liquid black silk out from my forearm. “Perfect timing. Blood orange is all the rage right now.”

“Are you really going to flavor one of your baking goodies with my blood?”

“I don’t see why not. As long as it doesn’t have mushrooms in it, it’s edible.”

“How is teaching?” I asked, desperately wanting to change this awkward conversation away from demon blood flavored pastries .

“It’s always the same. I’m surrounded by a bunch of horny twenty year-olds who change their majors as much as what they sexually identify with.” Krim shoved a pastry that looked like a half donut, half cookie toward me. “Taste this and tell me it’s not the best thing you’ve shoved into your mouth all day.”

I took the pastry, unimpressed with the lack of form. It was like a smashed piece of burnt toast decided to flirt with a pound cake. Taking a fork, I stabbed it into the side of the soggy dough. It jiggled uncontrollably. “Gross. It’s the consistency of barf.”

“Perfect. That’s the exact reaction I wanted.”

I shoved Krim’s nasty dessert concoction away. “Why are you baking all of these goods?”

“I have an event coming up, and I wanted to get a head start. Rumor has it that Zed’s band is going to start rehearsing here after hours some evenings.”

“I talked with him earlier. They still haven’t decided on a band name.”

“Didn’t they call themselves the Nipple Splinters at one time?”

Krim’s phone buzzed.

“Grab it,” he ordered.

“Why?”

He wiggled his sticky fingers. “My hands are covered with cupcake batter.”

I grabbed his phone. “Who is Marsha?”

“A biology professor who wants a one night stand every night.”

“Why are you baking cupcakes and not with her?”

“She’s not my type. ”

I shrugged. Krim was very picky about his women, witch and non-witch alike. While he was busy turning down women left and right, I couldn’t seem to figure out how to get Lucy out of my mind.

Krim’s attention returned to my arm. “What’s caused all of this bleeding mess?”

“I found the grimoire all right, but Melrose’s spirit has escaped it.”

Krim’s eyes got huge. He slammed his fist down on a spoon, sending a marshmallow flying. It stuck to the glass behind him, oozing down in a sticky white and charred mass, where it lit one of the bottles of alcohol on fire. “That’s serious.”

“No shit.”

Krim took a spatula and swatted the flaming marshmallow until the flames died. “Dad sealed her spirit into that book how long ago?”

“Apparently not long enough,” I bit out. Melrose had died over three hundred years ago, however, her spirit refused to move on. She had wanted to get into the shadow archives when she was alive, died, then promptly forgot what she had been looking for. Trapped in her own confusion, she haunted me for decades, begging me to let her back into the archive.

That’s when my Irish demon father, Eugene Ravenblood, got involved. Dad bound her angry soul into the book that she had stolen from the shadow archives. But even the talons from Dad’s two ravens weren’t strong enough to keep her soul contained—not when a book-loving witch like Lucy got involved .

I clenched my fist. “The Bone Threader recently learned that the grimoire was missing from the shadow archives. He sought me out and asked me to recover it.”

“You’re talking with the Bone Threader?” Krim asked, alarm ringing in his voice. “Why didn’t you say anything about getting involved with that nasty demon?”

“Because I knew you would react this way.”

Krim grabbed a knife and stabbed it into the bar. “No shit. That wendigo will devour any kind of magic.”

I shivered. The cannibalistic demon who took over the shadow archives after mom passed was Dad’s nemesis.

“Well? Who was able to open the book and release Melrose’s spirit?” Krim asked.

“Lucy. She’s a librarian witch who currently has the grimoire.”

“And you haven’t gone after her, why?”

“There is this nasty little familiar of hers that keeps getting in the way. I did feed him something Zed gave me, some bewitched rose petals that put him to sleep. But knowing him, he won’t be sleeping for long.”

Krim continued to rearrange his cupcakes. He placed two jumbo marshmallows on the top. Both had been shaped and decorated with candy eyes and teeth to mimic skulls. “Maybe you should stop chasing the shadows of the past, and look at what’s in front of you. Dad and the Bone Threader will always have bad blood, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun with this witch librarian.” He grabbed a sieve, cocoa powder, and began shaking it over the top of his dessert, darkening both of the marshmallow skulls. “I should have gone to culinary school.”

“At least you are a professor. Chicks dig that.”

“They’ve got to dig a tattoo artist too.”

“Not the chick I want to dig my needle into,” I bit out, thinking of the sexy skin on Lucy’s lower back every time she bent over to shelve a book. I grabbed the shot glass, a bottle of whiskey, and poured myself a drink.

“What kind of familiar does Lucy have that keeps scaring you off?” Krim asked as he arranged his dessert.

“A bookworm.”

Krim chortled.

“Melrose had them too. I’m convinced they live in the same place where she was experimenting with shadow magic.”

Krim shook his head. “Look, I know she got herself killed, but she was also playing with magic only demons are meant to manipulate.”

I tilted the glass to my lips and downed the shot. How I wished the alcohol would burn away the memories of Melrose as much as it did my insides. I didn’t want to revisit that night when I saw Melrose in the garden, roses coiling in her vibrant strawberry blond hair. I remembered how stunning the curves of her wrist and cheekbones were as she twirled her hands high in the air. The words escaped from her mouth—an incantation that was meant to make her garden grow better. Instead, she’d summoned me out of the earth, right when my shadow was trying to manifest itself.

Krim set the sieve and cocoa powder down. “Why not bring Lucy here? ”

“What would that accomplish?”

“My desserts have hexes inside of them that a witch can’t resist. How do you think dad trapped Melrose's spirit in the grimoire in the first place?”

“By feeding her sweets?”

Krim’s wiry mouth twisted. “Leave the hexed desserts to me. Dad won’t know she ever got out. We’ll trap her and send her back to the grimoire.”

I shook my head. “Lucy won’t give the grimoire up that easily. She’s a librarian, and fiercely protective of her books.”

Krim turned around his now blackened cocoa-powder dessert experiment toward me. He doused it with a splash of vodka, struck a match, then tipped at the base of the plate. “Maybe this librarian needs something sweet to munch on other than Halloween candy. I highly doubt she’ll turn down an event that involves both books and sweets.” He flashed his teeth as a ring of fire encircled his creation. “I call it flaming skull balls.”

“Do skulls have balls?”

“I don’t know, ask Zed. He seems to know things about skeletons neither of us have any real knowledge of.”

The flame caught one of the marshmallows on fire, causing it to droop sideways. It caught the edge of a paper pamphlet on fire.

Krim batted out the flames with his hand, sending smoke into the air. He tapped his hand on a pamphlet next to my shot glass that read:

Shadow Daddy’s Books & Baking Event!