Tempted by Demons_A Reverse Harem Paranormal

by Lidiya Foxglove

  (Perhaps one bread recipe.)

  Read on, if you are ready to shed your preconceived notions.

  “Oh, I am, Winifred,” I said, settling back into my pillows and turning the page.

  Epilogue

  Edie

  I was already waiting on the dock when the boat came in. Grant Parker still used his boat, which had more electrical components than the guys wanted to handle themselves, but Dante had gone with them to pick out his own groceries.

  “I found your Almond Crush Pocky,” he told me, handing me a bag and giving me a quick kiss, but I hardly paid attention.

  Nicole and Dakota flew into my arms at once.

  “Finally!”

  “I can’t believe it’s been a whole year!”

  “Where’s the munchkin?” Dakota asked, looking around for Aithne, who was three months old now. She was a wedding night baby or close to, we were pretty sure, even though I had still been on the pill the day before. It couldn’t stand up to demons, I guess.

  “With Van in the garden,” I said. “She was napping when I left her…”

  I hadn’t seen them in a year; no daily pictures or anything. Nicole had cut her hair super short while Dakota was clearly experimenting with bright colors of eyeshadow. But we had talked on the phone and exchanged letters so I didn’t feel like I’d missed that much.

  “You guys look great!” I said.

  “What about you! Where’s the baby weight?”

  “This place keeps you in shape. Come on, let me grab one of your bags.” I took Dakota’s pink suitcase.

  Dakota was panting halfway up the stairs. I went slow. It took me months to stop huffing and puffing up those steep stairs. Nicole actually kept up with jogging so she ended up ahead of us.

  Aithne was just waking up, so I scooped her up out of her basket. Van would let her get a sunburn while she napped if I wasn’t careful while he was picking vegetables. She was clearly Dante’s. The red hair was too obvious. Per custom though, she would consider all three of them her fathers—as they certainly were.

  “Do the other two get jealous?” Nicole asked, without even asking who her father was.

  “I worried about that myself, but they don’t,” I said. “Although they clearly want to make sure the second kid isn’t Dante’s too… But I understand that. I want to have one with each of them.”

  “Just three?” Nicole asked.

  “Definitely just three… I’m not Winifred and her eleven.”

  “Eleven is verging on a reality show,” Dakota said with a serious nod.

  We chatted babies while I nursed Aithne and then I passed her off to Alister so I could show off the house and grounds. Nicole and Dakota looked deeply jealous of how readily he accepted the responsibility.

  “Demons love kids, you guys,” I said. “I mean, love them. Actually, all the magical people do. I know when the witches come back I won’t see her for days except for nursing. Like, all the constant talk of bloodlines and legacies is weird, but that part is convenient.”

  Alister had thoroughly cleaned and freshened up their bedrooms so well it was almost embarrassing, with vases of flowers by each bed and chocolates on the pillows.

  “Hellooo, Black Butler,” Dakota said. “I’m still waiting to hear where another island is.”

  I just gave her my best enigmatic smile. I knew there were other spots between the Fixed and Sinistral Planes, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted my best friends involved. “I needed to give up the internet, but do you really want to cut yourself off from fashion shopping sites?”

  “She needs to,” Nicole said. “She could be saving for retirement for all she keeps spending, especially since she lost the office job.”

  “Oh, I’m making good tips at the cafe and it’s way more fun.”

  “How are you doing?” I squeezed Nicole’s hand. Since her traumatic episode with the Ethereal witch, I knew she’d had a bit of a life crisis, struggling with her job as a nurse, taking a string of semi-spiritual classes like yoga and aromatherapy, clearly trying to understand what she’d seen. I worried about her and that I might have accidentally shattered her life.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she said, with a faint laugh. “I’m good. I went on a ghost tour last week.”

  “No way!”

  “Yeah, in Georgetown. I’m still skeptical. I’ve seen magic, I’ll give you that, but I haven’t seen any ghosts yet.” She laughed. “What about you? How are your parents doing with it all?”

  I waved a hand. “I’ll figure that one out eventually…”

  She snorted. “What do they think you’re doing?”

  “Um…working on a special bird nesting project. They think Dante is my guy. I’ll have to tell you that story later…”

  “Oh my god, you went with Dante?” Dakota started snickering, probably in just mere anticipation of the story.

  “I wanted Van because he’s the most well behaved, but guys. Look at the kid! Anyway, I have to admit, a part of me still likes to see them squirm just a bit at the tats…”

  “Pssh, if your mom wasn’t a little bit jealous she’s dead inside,” Dakota said, and I screeched at the very thought.

  I showed them the summer kitchen in progress, the gardens, the island and the blueberries, but mostly we just talked until we were almost losing our voices.

  Dante made some delicious pork chops with onions and mofongo. (He’d been working through my cookbook collection…expanding his global horizons.) We drank wine and joked around and danced until Aithne woke up from a solid nap. I’d hardly spent any time with her all day and I was missing my baby. “I’d better go see her before she sets fire to something. You can keep hanging out, but don’t stay up too late. We’re going on the boat tomorrow.”

  I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. Winifred’s beloved tower room was still mine, and usually I rotated between my guys, occasionally kicking them all out when I felt hormonal. Some nights, like tonight, I invited all three of them in with me. Deep down I think I wanted my friends to see us all disappear behind the same door. I wanted them to see how this was working.

  I cradled Aithne. Her skin was getting hot—danger zone. “You aren’t much for strangers, are you, my love? Shhh.”

  Dante came in first. “Should I take her?”

  “Yes. I’m going to try making up that sleeping spell…” I opened a few jars to mix ingredients, including some powdered horn from Dante himself.

  Alister and Van followed a moment later. They all gave each other maddening smiles.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you remember what today is?” Alister asked, putting his hands on my shoulders as I stirred the horn into some lavender water and a single drop of “responsibly-sourced bat blood” (first rule of Sinistral witch spells, I had learned: don’t think about it too much).

  “Our anniversary?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does that mean we have to reenact the wedding night? Because I really don’t want Nicole to walk in on me naked yet another time.”

  “We can keep it under the covers this time,” Van said. “I made sure that is one solid bed.”

  “It means you get a present, Bright Eyes,” Dante said. “Look out the window.”

  “Oohkay…” Alister nudged me toward the right window, considering how many windows there were in the tower.

  I looked outside to the wildest garden over to the east. My mouth dropped open.

  There was a horse. No—not a horse.

  A fucking unicorn.

  “You got me a unicorn?”

  “You said you wanted a horse,” Van said. “Well, the unicorn was cheaper.”

  “The unicorn was cheaper?”

  “It’s just a horse with a horn on its head,” Alister said. “They are a bit overrated, I’ll warn you. It isn’t like your unicorn raising game.”

  “Yeah right. That is like epic eighties movie shit!” The unicorn was all black but it had a sparkly mane and the horn looked lik
e it was made of black crystal.

  “They tend to mess some stuff up in the yard with their horns and they’re more likely run away,” Van said. “But it’s a good riding unicorn and there’s nowhere for it to go around here.”

  “Oh no, is it going to be sad?”

  “Not sad. They just like running,” Van said. “They’re very smart and they like people.”

  “I love it. This is the best anniversary ever.”

  I threw my arms around Van, because I could tell he was the one that picked out the unicorn, and gave him a kiss before bestowing the same on Alister and Dante.

  “You’re still here, Bright Eyes,” Dante said.

  “And happier to be here than ever. In fact…if it wasn’t for the big day I have planned for tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind a reprise of the wedding night after all…” I unfastened a couple of buttons on Dante’s shirt.

  “Maybe just an…abridged version,” Alister said, brushing my hair off my neck and dropping a kiss there as his hand crept down between my legs.

  “Mm… for now,” I purred. “Just remember I have to get up early tomorrow.”

  He swept me off my feet and carried me to the bed.

  “Don’t worry,” Dante said. “We’ll make sure you get a very good night’s sleep.”

  Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this book, I would be so happy if you took the time to write a quick review. (Amazon will ask you for a star rating when you’re done—this is not a review. It’s just…confusing.) I planned Tempted by Demons as a standalone but if reviews and ranks are decent, I’m itching to tell more stories and will schedule a sequel—it helps me determine what to write next. Be sure to join my mailing list to get first look at bonus material and opportunities to read my books in advance! Although I have more day-to-day fun over at the Facebook group.

  You might like also enjoy my series Guardians of Sky and Shadow. There hasn’t been a fated priestess in a century—or so Phoebe thinks. It turns out the Emperor has killed them all and now she’s next, unless she can find her four guardians and unite the realm. Read on for a preview!

  26

  “Priestess Awakened” Sample

  You know, I used to like our town’s little Strawberry Festival once. But as Mom struggled to button up my old pink dress, I scowled at myself in the mirror. I had shimmering blue eyeshadow on, and the crazy outfit which was the height of fashion in the capital. It’s hard to be too upset when you’re shimmering. But I was upset anyway.

  “I think I’ll have to alter this next year,” Mom said.

  “Mom! Gods. You don’t have to rub it in that I’ve put on a few pounds.”

  “You look terrific, sweetie, you’re just not sixteen anymore. You’ve filled out into a woman.” She patted my hip, which was exposed due to some small, vaguely sexy cut-outs on the costume, and ran a comb through my hair so she could put on the headdress.

  Seriously, if I moved an inch, the entire costume was going to burst at the seams. I had gotten curvier (and, okay, baked a lot of “I’m-having-a-bad-day-pastry”) since my days in the dance troupe. But the town of Istim wanted to see me in this dress, which cost four hundred gildens. They wanted to see the whole package, because I was the hometown heroine. They would want to see me to stuff my wrinkled old body into this when I was a hundred, I’m sure.

  “Ew,” I said, disturbed at the image.

  “Ew?” Mom asked, jerking on my hair.

  “I was just thinking how I am never going to live this down,” I said. “I’m going to be a Strawberry Girl until I’m a Strawberry Crone.”

  “It’s the circle of life,” Mom said. “You’re going to have a long hard life if you’re already tired of it, Phoebe. Is it so terrible that everyone’s proud of you? Gosh, when you were a little girl, you couldn’t get enough attention if we tried. This town doesn’t have anything else to get excited about.”

  “I am well aware,” I muttered. I could faintly hear Percival Mintz playing his violin in the distance. He wrote his own songs, new ones every year. The result was that everyone had to sit patiently through several very long, sad tunes that no one knew at all.

  By the time he was done, I was all dressed, from the jeweled headdress to the boots. It was pure stage costume paired with capital fashion. No one in Istim had anything like it. My audience would be wearing simple homespun dresses, tunics, and cloaks with perhaps a little ribbon or fur for luxury. This dress was short, with a big collar that fanned out with a gold ornament for a clasp, a half-cape, long draping sleeves that emphasized all my movements, bare knees, heeled boots, and the jeweled tiara on my head. Most of it was dyed a bright pink, with white and red accents. It was a lot of outfit. Everyone loved it. Including me, actually.

  I just missed all the excitement that went with it. The festival just reminded me that this was my life now. I was twenty-one and my best days were already over. At some point I would have to suck it up and marry a town boy or apprentice in some useful trade like midwifery or goat breeding.

  I passed Percival, leaving the stage as I came up. “They can’t wait,” he assured me. “And you look great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You feeling okay?”

  “Of course I’m feeling okay. I love that this is the only thing of importance I’ll ever do for the rest of my life,” I snapped.

  He looked—understandably—like, Whoa, where did that come from? It was a good thing I’d lost Mom somewhere back there.

  “But most people never do anything important!” he said. “You’re the luckiest person in Istim! I mean, you’ve seen the whole kingdom and most of us never even leave the gates!”

  “Yeah. Exactly…,” I said, letting my mind briefly wander over all the things I’d seen. The towers of the Temple of Stones. The beautifully painted ‘Frosting Castle’ of Rungenold. The markets and shops in the capital with all the goods fresh off the ships from around the world. The warriors of Gaermon, which was now under siege, according to the paper. I wanted to cry when I read that. I’d seen the Black Army marching down streets. I’d seen monsters attacking our caravan…

  Percival was looking at me like I was crazy. No one in town was going to offer me any sympathy, because no one in town had seen any of these things, except Mr. Argrave, the former soldier who had quietly settled here at the same time I returned. And he was—of course—a weird hermit who pretty much stuck to his shack in the north corner of town until he needed groceries. He bought our garden produce from me sometimes. He had an intense, unsettling gaze under his hood. It wasn’t like I would go pay him a visit to reminisce on our travels.

  “Well.” Percival laughed uncomfortably. “You’d probably better go before they run backstage and drag you out.”

  “Yeah.”

  I walked out to a cheering crowd of three hundred people or so. That was most of the population of Istim. It was obvious why I meant something to them. They were just farmers and shopkeepers, struggling to eke out a living in this small town so close to the Cavern’s Gate, hemmed in by the tall stone walls that kept out the monsters. Even from the stage, the walls loomed around me, although the effect was lessened slightly by the town being built on a hillside.

  When I walked out, I couldn’t help but get swept up in the energy that reminded me of that year when I had traveled the world. Every year, girls of the realm competed to join one of the four singing and dancing troupes that toured the land in armored caravans. You had to be at least sixteen but no older than twenty to compete. Girls dreamed of the day the troupes came to their town, because recruiters came with them. The state sponsored the troupes and made sure they came to every tiny town at least once every four years. They were the most excitement a town was going to get.

  It didn’t used to be like this, I knew. A century or two ago, during the Era of Elders, our world was very different. The gate to the realm of the monsters, in the northern caverns, was protected by the priestess and her four guardians. They prevented monsters from crossing through the gate.
It was safe to travel between towns just riding a horse. You didn’t need guards armed to the teeth and armored carriages, and so towns could keep their gates open during the day and all sorts of performers and festivals traveled the world. More goods were available, too, and they were cheaper.

  Back then, girls hoped to be chosen as the priestess, not a performer. But priestesses only came along every thirty years or so, and their fate was written in the stars, not chosen by a capital-appointed committee.

  The old days sounded amazing to me, but even the most withered crone in the village couldn’t remember it at this point. I had never known anything but a world full of monsters, so when I was chosen for the Strawberry Girls, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

  I didn’t think about the fact that new girls were selected every year, and what happens to the old ones then? Well, you just go home, back to your boring old life in whatever boring old town you came from, and for the rest of your life, you’re known as A Girl Who Got to Do Something, Once.

  In my case, I came home to a little cottage with a vegetable garden, some chickens and milking goats. Our growing season was short, this far north. We ate a lot of cabbage and root vegetables. One of the big events of the year in Istim was a rock-tossing competition.

  And I got to rehash my old routine, but without all the other girls I used to perform with or the costume designers and hairdressers and makeup artists who used to help me look the part, or the magic that amplified our voices, or the professional musicians who played so beautifully.

  Plus, a lot of my old friends, who were definitely jealous, made fun of the music, but I’m sorry—it was awesome. The Strawberry Girls were the most ridiculous of the dance troupes so I got to sing a lot of songs about candy, rainbows, hair ribbons, and first love, and I thought that was a lot better than the sad songs the Moonlight Girls were known for.

  I jumped out onto stage and the pathetic excuse for a band we had around here kicked off with a rousing number, Carriage Ride.