Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex Demonized #1) - Annette Marie Page 0,9
the floor and landed with a loud thwack.
Gasping and hacking, my eyes watering, I spun around and pressed my back against the bookshelf. The black dome loomed too close. I blinked away tears, my nose throbbing and knees trembling. My glasses hung crookedly off one ear.
“Hh’ainun.” The quiet, growling voice rolled out of the black dome. “Will you answer a question?”
Panic squealed incoherently in my ears. My limbs had gone numb and I couldn’t remember how to run for the door. The demon was talking. Talking. To me. It had … asked me to … “Huh?”
The demon didn’t respond. Maybe it didn’t know what “huh” meant.
Gulping, I sidled along the bookshelf until I was a safe distance from the circle, then took a wobbling step toward the door. I needed to leave. Uncle Jack had been very clear—if the demon ever spoke, fetch him or Claude immediately. Whether I reported the demon’s behavior or not, I should get the hell out of the library.
And yet …
From out of the circle’s inky nothingness, a creature from another world had spoken to me. Call me insane, but I kind of wanted to hear what it had to say. It was contained in the circle. It couldn’t reach me, couldn’t hurt me.
Pulse thundering in my ears, I backed toward the sofa and dropped onto the cool leather, relieved my weak knees hadn’t given out. I straightened my glasses, taking deep breaths. Inhale, exhale. I was okay. I was safe.
“Why should I answer a question?” I whispered cautiously. Then, since I’d already hitched a ride on the crazy train, I added, “You threw a cookie at me.”
“You threw it at me first.”
I stared at the black dome, even though there was nothing to see. That was … true, I supposed. “What’s your question?”
A long pause, as though the creature were second-guessing its words. “What is it you threw into the kaīrtis vīsh before?”
My brow wrinkled. Its English was heavily accented, but part of its query hadn’t been in English at all. “Threw into the … what?”
“The … vīsh … the magic.”
The magic? Threw into the … oh. “You mean the summoning circle? You’re asking what I threw at you?” Mad laughter bubbled in my throat but I swallowed it down. “Cookies. I threw cookies.”
“This is … food?”
“Yes.” I blinked bemusedly. “Did you eat them?”
Silence. Did that mean … yes? I had no idea how to interpret its lack of response. Who knew what long silences meant in demon conversation?
Oh god. I was having a conversation with a demon. I was crazy. I’d lost my mind. Stress-induced insanity. That had to be it.
The door called to me, but I felt tethered in place. It wasn’t fear that held my butt to the leather cushion and my socked feet to the hardwood floor. A new feeling had awoken inside me.
My archnemesis: curiosity.
A painfully familiar voice murmured in my memory.
“Oh, Robin,” my mother had laughed as she’d bandaged my scraped knees. I’d climbed a tree to look in a bird’s nest after reading about how sparrows care for their young, but had fallen on my way back down. “Curious and impulsive—it’s a volatile combination. You need to remember to think through your decisions.”
I thought I’d learned that lesson years ago, but even as I told myself I needed to leave, the demon’s quiet voice fed my thirst for knowledge, its words tinged with an alien accent—vowels sharp and crisp, consonants heavy and deep. A bit of throaty German and lilting Arabic, and a touch of rolling Greek.
A hundred questions crowded into my head. Where and how had the demon learned English? Why had it spoken to me? What was Uncle Jack trying to negotiate and why wasn’t the demon responding?
Or, even better, where had the demon come from? What was it like to be summoned to Earth? What sort of life had it led before this?
Don’t ever speak to the demon. Though Uncle Jack’s warning was easy to dismiss, I wasn’t about to forget my parents’ most important lesson: Stay away from magic. But my curiosity burned, and really, what was the harm?
“Um, demon?” I began tentatively.
Silence.
“Are you listening?”
Nothing.
“Helloooo? Demon?”
Not even a peep.
Disappointed, I slumped into the sofa. The demon had asked its one question and showed no further desire to communicate. Well, if it didn’t want to answer my questions, I’d get the information myself. Bending forward, I slid The Summoner’s Handbook from under the coffee table. As I settled back, I remembered my waiting snack.