Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex Demonized #1) - Annette Marie Page 0,8

kitchen lights were already on when I walked in. Kathy stood at the sink, a pink apron tied over her floral-patterned dress as she scrubbed dishes. Her black pumps clacked against the floor with each shift of her feet.

I stopped at the counter, confused. The cooling rack was gone. No, not gone. I spotted it in the draining rack beside the sink of soapy water.

“Aunt Kathy? Did you move my muffins?”

She smiled at me with her overly red lips. “Did you make them?”

Who else would’ve? “Yes, I—”

“Travis is allergic to peanuts. Didn’t I tell you? I threw the muffins out.”

My mouth hung open. “You threw them out? But—”

“Just because Travis has an epi-pen doesn’t mean—”

“They didn’t have peanuts!” I interrupted shrilly.

“There were nuts on top.”

“Pecans!” I exclaimed, my hands curling around the hem of my sweater and squeezing. “Those were pumpkin muffins with cream-cheese filling and cinnamon-pecan streusel topping.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I didn’t realize. Can’t be too safe with a peanut allergy.”

“You could’ve asked me!”

Her black-lined eyes squinched. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.”

I glared into her foundation-coated face, her pouchy cheeks quivering above her wide shoulders, then my gaze fell to the floor. I walked out of the kitchen.

Earlier this afternoon, I’d bussed to the store to get ingredients. I’d prepared the cream-cheese filling before dinner so it could harden in the freezer, then made the batter and streusel after the kitchen was free again. Just because I was using baking as an alibi while I searched the house didn’t mean I’d committed minimal effort to the task. The muffins had come out of the oven perfect. The pumpkin aroma still lingered in the hall.

Tears stung my eyes. I hated this house and everyone in it.

I’d searched the storage room in the basement. The garages—both of them. The spare bedrooms. Every closet in the house, except the ones in Uncle Jack’s, Amalia’s, and Travis’s rooms. There was nowhere else to look for evidence of Uncle Jack’s lies or my parents’ belongings.

Well, there was Uncle Jack’s office, but he was always in there and I wasn’t brave enough to risk him catching me. The library, however … If Uncle Jack had somehow gotten his greedy hands on my mother’s grimoire, the library would be an ideal place to store—or hide—a book. Yeah, it was a long shot, but what else could I do?

I squinted at the library door, a foot in front of my nose. I hadn’t been back since the cookie-throwing incident.

At the reminder, I lifted the paper towel I held. Stacked on it were half a dozen dark brown cookies, their crispy surfaces deliciously cracked to reveal the fluffy, cake-like insides mixed with chocolate chunks. White sea salt sprinkled the tops.

When I was stressed, I overindulged in my two favorite hobbies—reading and baking. I bit into a cookie and almost moaned. Perfect. Melty, chocolaty, sweet and rich, and a touch salty. Absolute perfection.

Fortified by sugar, I cracked the library door open and peered inside. Abandoned. Jack and his partner, Claude, usually visited in the afternoons, and it was almost nine o’clock now. I turned the lights up, then waited, staring at the black dome where the cookie-hurling demon hid. Had it saved any crumbling missiles for my inevitable return?

It seemed not, because nothing happened. I scooted the long way around the room to the sofas, set my snack on the end table—the one farthest from the circle—then surveyed the room. I’d already given the shelves one pass, but I hadn’t been looking for grimoires.

Keeping an eye on the inky dome, I started with the section on magic. I pulled out each book, checked it, then slid it back. Slow work, but I didn’t want to miss anything. The always-ravenous bookworm in me filed away each title, compiling a reading list so long it’d take me all year to finish.

Something scuffed against the floor.

With my hand raised to slide The History of Celtic Druidry onto a shelf, I froze, my senses stretching toward the summoning circle four feet behind me. Another soft scuff—like a body shifting position, limbs brushing the floor.

Silence thrummed in my ears. After a minute, my spine relaxed and I released the breath I was holding.

“Hh’ainun.”

I gasped in air to scream and choked on saliva. I started to lurch backward but realized the circle was right behind me, and as I spasmed in place, Celtic Druidry fell out of my hand and the spine hit me in the forehead. The thick tome tumbled to