Authors: SM Reine
They were cookies.
His mind flashed back to Elise emerging from the kitchen with oven mitts. He had assumed that she was just trying to hide her gloves, which were a necessary but unsettling feature of her wardrobe. But she hadn’t been trying to hide anything. She had been baking.
“You baked cookies. You actually baked cookies,” James said.
She shifted uncomfortably on her feet and glared in silent fury at the cookie sheet.
“The Packards left the ingredients out and the cookbook was open on the counter. I thought…I don’t know. I’ve never tried to bake before.”
Elise didn’t hesitate to punch her hand into a man’s chest to pulverize a demon eyeball, but a batch of burned cookies could bring her to her knees. Kind of cute, really—not that James would ever tell her that.
He tried to smother his laugh. She wasn’t fooled.
“You don’t have to pick on me,” she said.
Oh, and now she was pouting. That just made it harder not to laugh. He finally gave up the ghost and slung an arm around her shoulders as he chuckled. It didn’t brighten her mood at all. “I would never dream of picking on you. Look, they’re not
that
bad. I can just break off the burned portion.” Which was the entire cookie. But he had to make up for laughing at her somehow.
“Wait,” she protested, holding out an arm, but James was tall and her efforts to fend him off were halfhearted at best. He snagged a cookie off the sheet and bounced it between his hands while it cooled. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Of course I don’t,” James said.
The center of the cookie wasn’t quite as destroyed as the edges, so he crumbled off the blackest parts and popped it into his mouth.
He tried not to make a face. He really did. But Elise knew him too well, and whatever minute change in expression sneaked through was too much. Disappointment crashed over her features.
“I told you they were bad,” she said, stomping the trash can lever to lift the lid. She tossed the entire sheet in. As soon as her back was turned, James spit the cookie into the sink and wiped off his tongue.
She turned back, and he composed himself again.
“It’s really not
that
bad,” James said, fishing the cookie sheet out of the trash. The Packards were going to be distressed enough to see what had happened to their bedroom. They didn’t need to lose kitchenware to Elise’s bad mood, too.
“Screw it,” Elise said. “I don’t even like cookies.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone likes cookies.” James’s lips spread in a devilish smile. “There are more ingredients, you know. We could try again.”
“Try to…what, bake another batch? Seriously? The Packards are going to want their house back eventually.”
“They’re in a hotel for the night, and Lucas will have to clean up the bedroom before they can return anyway,” he said. “Come on, let me teach you. Your cookies spread out too much and were a bit, uh, salty. Those are both easy fixes.”
Elise rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t keep from smiling. There wasn’t much James wouldn’t do to make her smile like that.
“Fine,” she said.
By the time
they stuck the third batch of cookies in the oven, the jar of Nutella had been licked clean, the sun was falling toward the horizon, and the issue of Courevore’s offspring still hadn’t been resolved.
“He would have to be keeping his eggs nearby,” Elise said, sitting on the counter by the sink while James leaned at her side. “It takes a lot for his ilk to breed. Good thing it’s easier for humans.” Elise toyed with one of the cookies from the second batch. They hadn’t spread as much as the ones she had burned, but she had no appetite for them.
Malformed hermaphrodite
, Courevore had said.
“Most humans,” she added, tossing the cookie back onto the pan.
She could feel James watching her, but she didn’t want to see his pity. She pushed the cookies around the pan with a spatula like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “You can’t take anything he said to heart,” James said. “Everything that comes from a demon’s mouth is a lie.”
She stabbed a cookie with the end of the spatula. “What did you say to him?”
“Hmm?”
“You whispered something to Courevore when he tried to talk to you. It looked like it surprised him. What was it?”
“Oh, I can’t even remember now. Just an idle threat,” James said.
“Must have been pretty good to mess with his head.”
An engine rumbled up the street, then stopped by the window. She pushed one of the flowered curtains aside and peered outside. The noise had been McIntyre’s pickup arriving—not the cops—but his car wasn’t the only one on the street. Rich’s beater was parked at the opposite sidewalk. There was a ticket flapping underneath his windshield wiper.
“I might have an idea about Courevore’s offspring,” Elise said.
The front door opened, and McIntyre and his girlfriend walked in carrying duffel bags. Leticia wore rubber gloves that covered her to the elbow. It was hardly the first time they had cleaned up such a scene, and they came well-prepared.
“How did everything go?” McIntyre asked.
“Perfect,” Elise said, popping the last of a cookie in her mouth. James was right. Even she liked Nutella cookies. “The Packards are going to need new flooring in the master bedroom.”
“And groceries,” James added helpfully.
Leticia laughed and headed upstairs.
“This is going to take a while,” McIntyre said. He tossed his keys to Elise. “Why don’t you guys go get some grub?”
“An excellent idea, but I think I’m full on cookie dough now,” James said.
Elise hopped off the counter anyway. “No, dinner’s a good idea. There’s still one more batch in the oven, and they’ll be done in five minutes. Don’t forget to grab them when the buzzer goes off, McIntyre.”
He threw an ironic salute at her.
But when James and Elise stepped outside, she didn’t head for McIntyre’s truck. She went to Rich Harris’s car instead.
The pavement was hot under her bare feet as she crossed the street, even though the light of day was fading rapidly. The driver’s side window was open a crack. Elise wiggled her arm inside. It was hard fitting her bicep in deep enough to reach the lock, but she managed to flick it with her middle finger.
She opened the door, and the smell of sulfur seeped out—along with the distinct odor of blood.
Elise pulled the lever for the trunk. James waited until she was at his side, swords at the ready, before swinging the trunk open the rest of the way.
The smell that had been faint in the passenger compartment slapped her in the face, so bad that she nearly gagged. Elise stepped back with a hand over her mouth.
“He nested in his trunk,” James said, voice weak with disgust. “He nested. In his trunk.”
There were seven eggs nestled among the blankets. They were each the size of Elise’s fists pressed together, and the first six of them were drenched in blood; the one on the far left was even beginning to crack, like it was trying to hatch. They shivered with internal motion.
Elise was about as touched by the sight of the eggs as she was by the sight of human infants, which was to say, not at all. “Baby hellspawn,” she said. “How sweet.”
“Good thing you killed him before he, er, fertilized that last one,” James said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I bet Rich Harris had fun shitting these out.”
Elise smashed her sword into the first egg. Blood and ichor spilled over the trunk. James didn’t watch as she destroyed each of them in turn, hitting them again and again until they were thoroughly pulverized.
So much for Courevore’s baby army.
She slammed the trunk shut. “Have fun with that one, McIntyre,” she muttered, wiping her hands off on the butt of her skirt. She had been splashed with ichor, and it left behind tiny burn marks on her skin.
“You know what today is?” James asked as Elise walked back to the McIntyre’s truck with him.
“Saturday,” she said.
“The fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. Seems appropriate for a demon that feeds on broken hearts to make his last move today, doesn’t it?”
“Sure,” Elise said. “And demonic infanticide is an equally good way to spend a romantic holiday.”
James laughed. “Do you want dinner? Let’s get dinner.”
He opened the passenger door on McIntyre’s truck for her, and Elise gave him a rare smile before slipping inside.
They drove into the sunset, leaving the bodies, eggs, and burned cookies behind them.
A
N
OTE FROM THE
A
UTHOR
I hope you had as much fun reading that as I did writing it! :) This is dedicated to all the readers crossing their fingers for James and Elise—the last couple books in the series will be very exciting, I promise. Paradise Damned will be out by June 2013.
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