Accidentally Married To A Demon - Mila Young Page 0,18

I left the plate and fork on a side table in the hallway as I continued exploring.

The room closest to mine was covered in dust and clearly hadn't been used in decades. Even opening the door kicked up a cloud of it. The shutters were closed, but what light came through them revealed a bed from the fifties that was coming to pieces, wallpaper torn and hanging, and various pieces of furniture that were difficult to make out with how thick the dust and cobwebs were.

"Need to get me a contractor on this one," I whispered, closing the door quickly, shaking off the chills that the room gave me and heading into the other one.

At a glance, it was clearly Aunt Moira's room. The woman had been a neat freak for as long as I had known her, and there was no mistaking that painstaking attention to detail in this place.

Maybe Rog had been cleaning up after she was gone. There was not a single speck of dust in the room, despite the fact that Moira was something of a pack rat. There were dozens of talismans spread out through the room, and I could feel the protective auras that they were casting.

Like there was something physically prickling my skin, but not quite stopping me from stepping through them.

The window was open, giving me some natural light to work with as I studied the room. The wallpaper was a little faded, with small stars instead of flowers, like they were for mine. Those looked like they had been hand-drawn.

"You always did like to doodle," I whispered, running my fingers over the indentation of a pencil on the wallpaper.

The rest of the room was covered in writings in dead languages. A few of the papers were pinned up, cut from their original books. I could think of at least fifteen students of the occult that would have a heart attack over what my aunt had done to books that were centuries old.

"Not one for preserving old shit, were you, Auntie?" I whispered, moving over to a handful of coins that were laid out in a rainbow pattern.

There were jewels as well, taken from gold and silver jewelry and left in organized piles.

She was studying something, and I could feel the prickling of magic from all over the room, making it impossible to really pinpoint the origin.

"What the fuck were you doing here?" I asked to nobody in particular. The whole feeling of the room was making me sick. I needed some fresh air.

And an early tasting of whatever wine Rog had stored in the cellar.

Chapter 6

Finding a bottle to drink in the winery building on the grounds wasn't really the problem. I had no idea what Moira had been up to while she was in this place, but it had been a productive vineyard at one point. I’d spend most of the day searching the house and finding nothing out of the ordinary, just lots of empty rooms, and well except that one room upstairs that had potential. I needed to search again later. There had to be something here to help me with the demon contract.

Around me, the cellar was dusty and seemed untouched. A large bar stood behind me with a wall of shelves filled with wine bottles. In front of me lay a round wooden table and four chairs near the windows letting in sunlight. Deeper to my left were rows of wooden wine barrels. By the looks of them scattered about, I would say they held no wine.

"This place looks like shit," I said aloud, hearing footsteps coming from behind me. "That's not me being a terrible person, not seeing the possibilities and all. I have an eye for this sort of thing, and I know that sunsets are supposed to make things look better. All it does here is... emphasize how much dust there is."

"I'd give you a speech about how you're supposed to be paying attention to what this place should be instead of what it is," Rog answered. "But I have a feeling that you're in no mood."

"Look out, it's learning." I turned back to look at him, seeing that he had two plates in his hands, both with appropriate silverware. "That... does smell good."

"Americans are keen on baked potatoes, I've been told." He placed one of the plates on the table next to me, and the other next to the other chair on the house's veranda. "This one has cream cheese, prosciutto and