How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days

by Saranna Dewylde

  Caspian wondered how Ethelred could stand the mortal’s stench. The Russian mobster smelled funny, like goat cheese, old socks, and vodka—not a good mix. Even his borscht-snorkeling crony Petru didn’t smell as bad. Caspian knew that scents played a strong role in human sexuality, so he had yet to see how the Russian ever got any tail that he didn’t take violently or pay for. What had Grace ever seen in him? He’d touched her. Every time Caspian thought of Grigorovich laying hands on her, it made something prickle on the back of his neck.

  He didn’t like that, either.

  Yes, there was quite a bit about Grace that Caspian didn’t like, but he knew that it all stemmed from what he did.

  Caspian, Crown Prince of Hell, was jealous.

  Admitting that was like kicking himself in the balls with soccer cleats. He was a demon. He had nothing to be jealous of. Grace didn’t even like Ass-o-vich.

  Caspian’s prowess was legendary, he reminded himself. He’d pleasured thousands of women, been pleasured by many more. He was no stranger to the carnal arts, and he’d never left an unsatisfied customer. Hell, he’d always left his lovers enraptured. But his Gracie seemed unmoved. Maybe she didn’t like him, either. Sure, she’d enjoyed their time together, but he hadn’t heard from her since their encounter in the Avenue dressing room. He’d expected a summoning, a mention, a muttered curse under her breath . . . Nothing. This made her different—a challenge. Add to that the fact that she’d been fixated on a douche bag like Michael Grigorovich, and Caspian’s disgruntlement only grew.

  He chose to ignore the hollow feeling at the base of his spine. When taken as a part of the big picture, it didn’t really matter. Caspian was a Crown Prince of Hell, and Grace was just a witch venting her fury at a man who’d done her and many other women wrong. Very, very wrong. Caspian was only here to do a job. Grace was that job.

  Caspian’s mouth curved in a smile as he followed his own logic. He was here to do a job, and if Grace was that job . . . well, then, he was here to do her. It was time to get back to work.

  If guilt had been an emotion he could feel, Caspian might have felt bad about his circular reasoning. He’d been contracted to make Michael’s existence a living hell, but while that was all fun and good, he liked playing with Grace more. He could have done this job, been in, out, spells in place to torment Michael until Cerberus wore pink ballerina slippers and himself back drinking shots of Flaming Nipples in his fireside condo by the very first evening. But he was drawing this out. He was going to make it last, all while doing lots of customer service. Caspian liked the “hands-on” approach to customer service. Especially with Grace.

  It was definitely time for some customer service.

  Materializing at her place, he found Grace naked in her kitchen. Her deliciously round rump was calling to him as she leaned over a little island to drop a bit of this and a pinch of that into her cauldron. He knew that she was working some kind of spell, but it looked for all the world like she was cooking.

  What man or demon could resist naked hausfrau-ery? Certainly not Caspian. His favorite decades were the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The women were all so shapely then; they’d worn stockings, which were a bitch to get off but looked divine. Silk hose were his favorite. He’d loved the hairstyles of the period; even when hair was short, it was always coiffed. And the makeup! Caspian loved painted women in high heels. Just watching Greta Garbo movies and Donna Reed reruns made him hard. Not to mention the work of that goddess Marilyn Monroe.

  Caspian licked his lips, envisioning scenarios as he watched Grace. Greta and Grace would have been lovely to see together. Not that he could have kept his hands to himself long enough to just watch. And, Greta had told him that when women chose to love one another it wasn’t for his enjoyment. Caspian didn’t see why not. Everything about women was for his enjoyment. Especially everything about Grace.

  She raised her hands to the sky and called out an invocation, slowly lowering her hands and arms and charging her brew with power. It was beautiful to watch: her sheer elegance, the way her body moved. The way her arms were shaped, the way they curved into that secret place beneath her shoulder, the gentle yet generous profile of her breast. The curve of her hips, and those long, long legs—they most certainly went all the way up.

  Caspian suddenly realized that the Donna Reed reruns playing in his head now all starred Grace. The Marilyn and Greta movies showcased Grace, too. Rather than spend any time worrying about that, however, he considered asking her to put on an apron and heels while she double, double, toil, and troubled. Or maybe a cone of power. She’d be hot as hell wearing just a little witch hat. She would—

  His thoughts were interrupted. Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Ozymandias, what in the name of all that was unholy had the woman put in her cauldron? It was worse than sour lamb and olive turds filling a Greek outhouse in high summer after a garlic festival. Maybe he didn’t want her to cook for him, after all. They could just order takeout, and she could dance around the kitchen naked with a wooden spoon in her hand that he could spank her with and . . .

  He took another look at that inviting arse. Even though it sang songs of frolicking and debauchery, he was going to have to ask either what was wrong with her or whom she was trying to banish. She could banish just about anything with this olfactory assault.

  “Son of a . . . Why do these things happen to me?” Leaning farther over her wicked-witch workstation, Grace suddenly glanced skyward, as if she really thought she was going to get an answer. Caspian saw that she’d mistakenly dunked one of her sweater cows into the mixture, which dripped down onto the plane of her belly as she turned to the side to grab a hand towel.

  “Great! I hope my boob doesn’t disappear,” she grumbled.

  “Whatcha doin’ there, sweet cheeks?” Caspian inquired.

  Grace screamed six kinds of murder and, if it were possible, would have literally jumped out of her skin. Her expression reminded Caspian of a cat stuck to the ceiling, claws embedded in the plaster like some startling new kind of chandelier. He thought this was funny until her flailing arms sent her bowl flying through the air like a mortar shell of Hell-stench. Of course, that wasn’t the worst. It landed upside down on top of his head, a proper bowler hat but for the sludge dripping down through his supernaturally perfect hair.

  Caspian froze as a particularly nasty yellowish glob raced down between his eyes and off the end of his nose like a ski jump. He thanked whoever happened to be listening that his mouth wasn’t open. If it had been, he would have been reenacting Linda Blair and her pea-soup scene all over Grace’s kitchen.

  The corner of her mouth turned up, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “Think that’s funny, do you?” he asked, wiping his face on the back of his sleeve.

  “It’s no less than you deserve for popping in without an invitation.”

  Caspian narrowed his eyes. “Really?”

  For some people, really just means . . . well, really. For others it’s more of a challenge. It’s rhetorical. It’s a warning. Caspian was one such as this. His really, though in the form of a question, was a genial and polite way of snorting, like a bull that had been stuck in the hindquarters by sharp objects.

  Grace obviously wasn’t aware of any such nuances of interaction. She gave her own little snort and said, “Yeah, really.” Then she turned around, dismissing him as if she couldn’t possibly conceive of anything he could do about it.

  This was the equivalent of waving a red flag at that same bull. Caspian charged.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Banishing Cream

  Grace was delighted and terrified all at once to see two-hundred-some-odd pounds of raging, well-built demon charge her. She would have tittered like a schoolmarm in a too-tight corset if she could have laughed at all. But, nope, she couldn’t laugh too hard when she was unceremoniously hauled over Caspian’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She was reminded of Petru, with his hand on that dead—

  Except, she felt very much alive, and
Caspian was only making that feeling increase. His fingers seemed to have doubled in number before creeping into places they shouldn’t. Was he trying to pick her up like a bowling ball or a six-pack of Budweiser?

  She slapped at his shoulders and biceps, but this was ineffectual at best. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she got any of the smelly goo she’d been making on herself, so she didn’t struggle too much. If there was a way for a witch to banish herself, Grace figured she’d be the one who discovered it.

  Sometimes she wondered if her name was a curse. She’d learned a lesson while naming her pets: Giving a cat a name like Diablo was always a bad idea—the animal invariably felt a need to live up to it. Her first familiar, which she’d unwisely saddled with that name, always bit her on the backside whenever it was time to get up. Correction: He’d bit her when he decided it was time to get up.

  It was the opposite with humans. Name a girl-child Helen for Helen of Troy and she’d end up not just ugly and dumpy, but with an assalanche—an avalanche of buttocks that just sort of sagged down past her knees

  Of course, it could simply be the klutz gene she’d inherited that had landed her in Caspian’s arms. And she was lucky. If she were honest with herself, she wanted this. She liked the feel of his large hand splayed across her backside. He knew exactly what he was doing with those fingers, and she knew what was coming next.

  Grace sighed, but her languorous sigh turned into a howl as that large hand smacked her soundly on the rump.

  “What was that for?!”

  “Because you’re a bad girl.” His hand cupped the rounded globe of her buttock before he slapped it again. He rubbed like he was sizing up the target for a more serious assault, and Grace wasn’t really sure if she was into that. She’d liked being handcuffed and told what was what in the Avenue dressing room, but spanked?

  Suddenly, the most curious throbbing began where he’d swatted her. Radiating inward, the sensation moved from her bottom to between her tightly clamped thighs, and tightly clamped or not, she couldn’t have blocked his fingers if she’d wanted. One slipped inside her, and her body tightened as if to trap it and force it to continue delivering those delicious sensations.

  He pulled out slowly and then pushed back inside with two fingers, then smacked her ass again. “Yes, you are a bad girl,” Caspian said.

  “No, I’m not,” Grace replied, breathlessly shifting against his fingers. “I’m so very good.” And to prove it, she turned her head to nip his earlobe and pressed her lips to the corner of his jaw.

  “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

  He leaned over, with her still on his shoulder. Grace thought for sure he was going to drop her, but neither his balance nor his grip wavered. She could feel his biceps working and wondered dreamily if he was using his perfect abs and hard thighs, or if he was lifting incorrectly with his back. She noticed that he was still wearing her goo hat. She had to bite her lip to keep from giggling.

  Caspian promptly dislodged her from her perch and dumped her into the shower. “You made the mess; you’re going to clean it up.”

  “You can’t just . . . ? You know.” She made little motions in the air.

  “Why do you always seem to think I can ‘just . . .’?” He mimicked her gestures.

  “You’re a demon. I thought you were supposed to be all-powerful.” Grace shook her head and fought off a grumble. The potion she’d been concocting obviously didn’t work, because she still had a Crown Prince of Hell staring at her naked self in her bathroom, wearing a whole batch of the stuff on his head like a ushanka, one of those furry Russian ear-hats. What was even funnier, he was now otherwise naked.

  Wait, maybe that wasn’t so funny. They were both naked but she was trying to get rid of the guy, not ride him like a mustang. Naked proximity didn’t tend to make a man go away. Neither did squirming against his fingers when he was fondling places he shouldn’t.

  Wicked inspiration struck like lightning. It did make them go away if it was bad. How did one ride a pony badly? An improper seat? Grace supposed she was lucky that she didn’t know. Whom could she ask?

  Caspian stepped into the shower stall with her, interrupting her thoughts. “I don’t know what’s going through that devious brain of yours, but let’s get to it.”

  Against her will, the slick walls of her sex tightened. Why did everything this demon said have to go down like a Fuck Smoothie infused with yes? Couldn’t he just speak the way normal people did? Getting rid of him was going to be so very hard. Hard, thick and . . .

  Damn it! Difficult. It was going to be difficult. It was going to be especially difficult, since he was hard. She glanced down once. Twice.

  She was daring a third peek when Caspian lifted her chin with his fingers. “Up here, sweet face. It can’t talk.”

  Grace seemed to remember telling him the same thing about her boobs. The shoe was on the other damn foot now, wasn’t it? And it was certainly a big shoe—

  “Grace. Goo. Hair. Not a happy demon,” Caspian reminded her.

  “Well, don’t get your thong in a knot. Jesus Harold, you’re worse than a woman. You better remember denying me later when you’re trying to hide the bald-headed hermit. Because it’s not going to happen.”

  Caspian smirked, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; she knew she’d be on her back like a turtle as soon as he snapped his fingers. She only hoped that Caspian wasn’t a Mack truck that would turn her into turtle soup. Or a mean kid with a magnifying glass. The truck would be quicker.

  Caspian touched her cheek. “Look, Grace, I apparently can’t just will this crap off me. It’s magick. And you are the magick weaver, so you need to unweave it, got it?”

  Grace considered. “Does it hurt?”

  “No, it just stinks like an outhouse. So that means I stink like an outhouse. Why you’d want to climb on before I have a shower is beyond me . . . Though, I suppose it does explain the attraction to Michael Grigorovich.”

  The demon closed his eyes and bent his head like a supplicant, waiting for her to clean him off. Grace narrowed her eyes. His arrogance was staggering. He just expected her to wash his hair like he was some kind of prince and her a serving wench? Oh, hell no.

  Though, he was a prince—a Crown Prince of Hell no less. But that didn’t matter to Grace one bit.

  She flattened herself against the stall and angled the showerhead just so, then flipped on the cold water full blast. It shot Caspian in the face, a payback that some woman somewhere surely owed him. To counter his annoyance, however, the spray and her general intention took the magick goo off. Mostly. When she turned down the cold and made a big show of adjusting the hot, she chanced a glance at him, seeing his hair standing up like a crazy anime character’s. A blob of the magick-banishing goo was plastered like a centuries-old gum ball to the back of the shower.

  Caspian hadn’t made a sound when the cold water hit him, but he was wearing a look of startled incredulity.

  “Grace,” he growled through gritted teeth.

  “Yes, my lord Caspian?” Grace replied in the sweetest voice she could manage.

  “If you were a man, I would strangle you. Slowly.”

  “If I was a man, I don’t think you’d be naked in the shower with me.” She paused and looked contemplative. “Would you?”

  “The hair, Grace.”

  “I was trying, but then you got all growly.”

  “Grace.” He took a deep breath and, if he were her gran, she would have sworn that he was praying to the saints for patience. She wondered to whom he did pray for patience. If he prayed at all.

  “Stop fucking around.” Caspian punctuated this with another slap of her ass. The blow stung a little bit, but that didn’t stop the heat that went spiraling through her—which pissed Grace off even more. She didn’t want to feel this way. She couldn’t. Not considering Michael’s threat.

  She slathered almost half the bottle of her Burt’s Bees pomegranate shampoo on Caspian’s head. Too bad
it wasn’t something like Head & Shoulders that, when it ran into his eyes, would sting like being stood up on prom night. His nose twitched peculiarly as the fruity scent filled his nostrils. Good. Grace hoped he hated it.

  She was doubly mad at him—for being so grumpy and also because she had to get rid of him while she still felt desire. She wasn’t used to that. Grace was always the one to send lovers packing. She didn’t want Caspian to go, and she’d never had to face that before. She’d been quite finished with Michael when he’d given her the boot.

  This was all Caspian’s fault. Why did he have to be so damn hot? Worse, why did his hair have to feel like silk when she ran her fingers through it, even fully loaded up with her banishing cream like a blue plate special? She allowed herself to enjoy the sensation just a tiny bit as she raked her fingers through his locks, massaging his scalp and giggling at making him smell like a girl.

  Such yummy pomegranate shampoo. And the banishing cream smelled like mangos to her. She moved Caspian beneath the cascading water and rinsed it all away.

  This was such an intimate act, washing someone’s hair. Not to mention the delight of ogling him at her leisure—which was completely counterproductive to what she should be doing. But that cherubim-molded mouth was open in blatant pleasure as he enjoyed her ministrations.

  The water sluiced down his tanned skin, and as his eyes fluttered closed, his black lashes swept the curve of his cheek. A rivulet of water ran down that hard, defined line of his jaw, down the corded muscles of his neck, farther down those Goddess-sculpted pectorals. They were Goddess sculpted, because no man would be able design a creature so perfect and pleasing to the female eye. Caspian had been designed by a woman, for a woman, and he was built for pleasure. Everything about him screamed sex, like an alarm clock she couldn’t shut off. Grace lost track of the rivulet of water in her contemplation of his physical deliciousness, but she soon found another. This one was gliding down his abs to—