Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex Demonized #1) - Annette Marie Page 0,89
keep me safe, and if I’m safe, I can focus on researching a way to get you home.”
The demon speared me with a disparaging look. “I know that, payilas. Why do you think I convinced him to accept you?”
I hadn’t explained to Zylas how important it was to win Darius’s approval—though in retrospect, I really should have. Zylas was disconcertingly observant; he could figure out far more than I ever anticipated without needing any explanation.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, “for convincing him.”
I could feel the demon’s attention on me as I stared at the floor.
“Find me a way home, payilas.”
“I will. I promise.” With a deep breath, I pushed my shoulders back. “You’ll have to pretend to be enslaved when you’re outside the infernus. No more talking.”
“I know,” he said, annoyed. “You will have to be smart when I am not with you—if you can.”
A scowl pulled at my mouth. “I can handle it. And Zylas, if someone does find out this time, don’t kill them immediately. Darius knows about you now, so you can’t go around murdering people.”
He glanced thoughtfully at the closed office door. “You did not tell him about the grimoire.”
Though I’d explained almost everything to Darius, I hadn’t told him about my mother’s grimoire or Claude’s insinuation that Zylas was special compared to other demons.
“No one can know about it,” I whispered. “It’s too valuable and too dangerous. As soon as we’re set up with this guild, we’re going to find Uncle Jack and make him give up the grimoire.”
Zylas grinned viciously.
“You can’t kill him,” I added.
His grin faltered into a growl. “Why not?”
“Because he’s my uncle!” I paused. “You can scare him, though. I think I’d like to see that.”
Zylas laughed huskily. “Closer, payilas.”
“Closer to what?”
“To not being a weak hh’ainun.”
Scowl returning, I marched to the stairs that would take me down two stories and out of the guild. As Zylas’s laugh followed my retreat, red light flared. Streaks of power swirled around me as he returned to the infernus.
I wiped my hands on my apron, let out a weary breath, and picked up the platter. Balancing it carefully, I set it on the counter.
Zylas, perched on the stool across from me, stared at the dish.
“My best recipes,” I told him, gesturing at its contents. “Chocolate-dipped toffee butter cookies, salted caramel pretzel pecan cookies, red velvet and white chocolate cookies, raspberry almond shortbread cookies, and my personal favorite, marshmallow-stuffed s’more cookies.”
He blinked slowly at the heaps of fresh-from-the-oven deliciousness. Behind me, the tiny apartment kitchen was a disaster of batter-coated dishes. Flour dusted my apron and a chocolate smear had dried on my arm.
Amalia and I had moved into the small two-bedroom apartment yesterday, and my first act as a renter had been to buy all the baking ingredients I needed, plus an entire bakery’s worth of bowls, trays, utensils, and measuring cups. Our cramped kitchen could barely hold it all.
“Don’t you want to try them?” I asked Zylas, uncertain why he was just sitting there. “This is part of our contract. You don’t need to trade for them.”
“This is … a lot,” he muttered. “Why did you make so much?”
“Because you’ve been protecting me this whole time, and I wasn’t holding up my end of the deal. It wasn’t fair.” I twisted my hands. “I also wasn’t sure what you’d like.”
Head canting, he picked up a shortbread cookie, its center packed with sugary raspberry filling and the top drizzled with sweet vanilla icing. He lifted it to his mouth, nostrils flaring to take in the aroma, then bit into it.
I waited hopefully. Squinting at me, he held it in his mouth—then swallowed it whole.
“Chew,” I told him in exasperation.
“Ch.” He shoved the rest in his mouth, then picked up a s’more cookie with a crumbly chocolate-and-graham topping. He chomped it in half and gooey marshmallow stretched between the cookie and his teeth. He mashed the whole thing in his mouth.
“Do you like them?” I asked anxiously.
He selected a red velvet cookie. Ate it. Said nothing.
“You were so quick to tell me my blood tasted gross, but you can’t come up with a single observation about my baking?”
Smirking, he ate a fourth cookie without comment.
“You’re infuriating.”
His tail swished. He sampled the final cookie option, then licked a smear of sticky caramel off his finger. Grumbling under my breath, I turned to the sink heaped with dirty dishes.
“In my world,” he said unexpectedly, “there is a type of … tree.”