Sympathy for the Demons (Promised to the Demons #1) - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,19

that guy.”

The heat kept spreading. I sank half my face under the blanket, feeling suddenly shy. “I…I won’t go back.”

“You haven’t spent much time in the human world, have you?” he asked.

“The Fixed Plane? Oh, no. None at all, really.”

“I thought not. That’s normal for familiars. I was just curious.”

“So you’ve lived among humans, Bevan?”

“Actually, not much. I’ve always been a believer in familiars being familiars. Keeping to the magical world. Not poking our noses into wizard business much. Not getting caught up in human desires…”

“You don’t sound sure.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s been a weird week.”

“What sort of desires do humans have?” In this case, when we said human, we meant our wizards too, although when we spoke of the human world, we meant the mundane world. Our wizards were both human and not-human, just as…

“We’re animals as much as we’re humans,” Bevan said. “Animals don’t get caught up. They don’t worry about things in advance. They don’t try to change the world. I think it’s an easier way to live. But…I also didn’t know that some familiars have a bad situation.”

“Well, we are human too,” I said. “Aren’t we?”

“I don’t really know what we are,” he muttered.

Chapter Eight

Jenny

What are we?

I thought about that a lot, since I was in bed recovering, and I had a lot of time to think. I knew I wasn’t really a toad or I wouldn’t be wondering what I was, or why I was born with Bernard and would die with Bernard, like every familiar. Why was I tied to this man who called me useless and tried to kill me?

I carried a knot in my gut, all the time, just knowing that Bernard had hurt me. I didn’t want to see him ever again.

Yet, he was always on my mind. I still worried about him. Something inside me was trapped under him and couldn’t get out.

Thanks to Bevan’s potions and poultices, and good food, I felt better every day and soon I was out of bed and offering to help him out.

Being with Bevan was a world away from being near Bernard. I was never tense with him. He patiently showed me how he made different potions and tonics. He helped me learn to identify the unfamiliar herbs that grew in his garden. A familiar should have known all about different herbs, apparently, but Mrs. Franch didn’t keep a garden. I only had dried ones from the market and I mostly used them for cooking and teas, not real magic.

But I didn’t just learn about spells, I learned about Bevan, and I learned what having a crush really felt like—like the greatest joy and total agony at once. I was so happy to be near him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him even when I tried. I learned that he could whistle, and sleep very soundly while sitting up, so I could have the bed, and that he always walked like gravity didn’t affect him—he would drop into a crouch and then pop up again and climb a tree or a ladder the next minute, somehow existing on more layers of the world’s surface than most people.

I learned that his animal form was a bat.

“An attractive kind of bat,” he added.

I didn’t say that I would probably find him an attractive bat even if he had one of those weird noses and beady little eyes. “I’m a little jealous! I wish I could fly.”

“Maybe you could fly with me if you trust me to hold you in my toes.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Ah, well. Your loss, then.”

“No one wants to see a splatted toad!”

“I wouldn’t splat you. Do I look like a man who would let something happen to my passenger?”

I smiled and shook my head. “But still…no. I’m afraid of heights.”

He looked like he wanted to touch me, just then.

“Toads are the perfect garden familiars,” he said. “I have a lot to teach you before you go.”

My heart stopped for a second. No, don’t make me go! I didn’t ever want to look desperate, though. “But you will teach me?”

His eyes gave me his real answer. “I feel obligated,” he said.

“I think it might take me a long time to learn.”

He was showing me how to get the gel from the center of an aloe leaf. His hands were quick, and his jaw tightened whenever he was working on something. He had one particular curl of hair that sat over each of his ears, the same on both sides,