Fiends and Familiars - Debra Dunbar Page 0,44

patted a little paw on his chest, an innocent-squirrel look on his face.

“Talk, or I’ll kick you outside of my house and outside of the wards,” I told him. “My magic is wearing off the hellhounds. They’ll hunt you down and have you within minutes without my protection.”

Rhoid sighed then hopped along the edge of the counter, leaping ten feet onto the nearest chair where he sat with his arms crossed in front of him.

“Are you really Faust? The Faust?” I waited for his nod. “Tell me how you ended up in hell, how you managed to escape, and everything since then.”

I made a bargain with Satan when I was alive, he told me. Through smarts, trickery, and magic I managed to live for nearly three hundred years, but Satan finally outwitted me and I died, my soul forfeit to hell for all eternity.

I had no idea what his original bargain had been, but he’d gone into it with open eyes and managed to evade paying the price for far longer than had been the original intent of the deal. As much as the idea of hell’s punishments gave me the creeps, the guy had willingly entered into this deal.

After suffering for a few decades, I bribed and tricked a few demons, then stole Charon’s boat and managed to escape. But one of the demons I’d tricked was smarter than I thought and my resurrection spell came with a curse.

You’re a squirrel. That’s your curse.

He nodded. Do you know how sick I am of eating nuts and cracked corn? Of having sex with squirrels? I can’t even perform magic like this. He held up his tiny paws. Ever since I escaped hell I’ve been like this, trying somehow to break the curse.

“Well, I can’t help you break the curse. That’s not the sort of magic I can do,” I told him. What I didn’t tell him was that one of my sisters might be able to help him. Sylvie was a luck witch, and also had the opposite skill. If she couldn’t break a curse, then I was pretty sure Cassie could. But I wasn’t offering that up at this point. I might never offer that up. Being a squirrel was a better fate than being tortured in hell, and I couldn’t justify Rhoid avoiding all that he’d agreed to when he’d sold his soul to Satan. Plus he was a bit of a jerk. There was a reason I’d named him Hemorrhoid, after all.

I didn’t come with you because I thought you could break the curse, although that would have been an added benefit, Rhoid said. I came with you because I knew you could protect me against Typhon and his hounds. I saw the effect you had on my squirrel friends, and knew you had the power to wrest control of the hellhounds away from their demon master. And I saw what a soft, weak, emotional response you had toward animals. I knew you’d protect me.

I was starting to regret that I had protected him. Rhoid had used me just as Typhon had used me. Both of them deserved to be tossed out of my house and left to their own fates. But if I’d escaped hell as a squirrel with a pack of hellhounds and demons after me, maybe I’d use a capable witch for my protection as well. I couldn’t completely blame Rhoid, even though he was a total asshole.

And I couldn’t completely blame Ty either. Faust had made a deal then welched on it. Ty was just doing his job in trying to retrieve him. And if I’d had a job to do and encountered a warded house with my quarry locked inside, I might try to sneak in via a dream as well.

It wasn’t Ty’s fault the dream had turned erotic. That…that was probably on both of us. There was an attraction there, and I knew it wasn’t just on my side. Yeth had said Ty had thought himself enchanted. Maybe he’d doubted our attraction to each other just as I’d doubted his intentions.

Yes, he wanted Faust back, but now that I thought about it, he truly hadn’t tried to attack me with his hellhounds. Plus if he’d wanted inside my house to get the squirrel, he wouldn’t have had to endure a putt-putt date with me when he could have broken through the wards and forced his way in.

And he’d left when I told him to, although I knew if he really wanted