A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch

A roaring noise filled Calladia’s ears, followed by a cacophony of explosions and shattering glass. A wave of hot air smacked into them like a train, sending them flying. She screamed as she tumbled across the grass, shielding her head with her arms. A bush stopped her forward momentum, and she lay dazed in a cradle of broken branches.

When she looked back at her house, she cried out in horror. A plume of fire reached toward the sky, and black smoke roiled around it like a many-limbed monster. Ashes rained down, and the wind blew an acrid scent into her nostrils.

Astaroth staggered into view through the smoke, looking as battered as Calladia felt. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to hide before he realizes we’re alive.”

Calladia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the destruction. “My house.” Her beautiful yellow house. Grief tightened her throat and burned her eyes.

Astaroth grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet. “Later,” he said. “We need to get away right now.”

Calladia was in too much shock to argue. She let him drag her down a slope toward a copse of trees. Astaroth was muttering as he patted himself all over with his free hand. When his fingers quested behind his ear, he snarled and tugged at something.

“Bespelled tracking device,” he said, showing it to Calladia. It was a small gold disk with miniature spikes covering one side. “Hunters use it on the demon plane; he must have applied it when we first fought.”

She couldn’t make sense of the words. My house, my house, my house. The mantra beat like a hammer, sending nails of grief deep inside her brain. Her eyes stung, but she couldn’t seem to blink.

Astaroth released Calladia once they were under the shadow of the trees. “Can you cast a spell to put the tracker back in the wreckage?” he asked. When she didn’t reply, he gripped her shoulders. “Calladia,” he said urgently. “The tracker. We’ve got to get rid of it.”

Right. She needed to send the bug back to the wreckage, aka all that remained of Calladia’s home. She’d dropped her string when Astaroth picked her up, so she yanked out a strand of hair. A few knots and a whispered spell later, and the tiny golden disk was flying toward the burning house.

The magic sapped the rest of her energy. Calladia sank to her knees, staring at the flames. She’d only moved in a few months ago. A lot of her stuff was still in storage, thankfully, but still . . . That house was her pride and joy, the evidence that she’d made a life for herself separate from her family. No need to ask her mother for a loan, no obligation to fulfill any expectations but her own. She’d renovated the neglected building carefully, then painted it yellow like a daffodil, her favorite flower, imagining she was helping it bloom.

In that house, Calladia had hoped to bloom, too.

Now it was gone . . . and she had demons to blame for it.

She turned on Astaroth, fury burning hot as the flames. “This is your fault!”

Astaroth’s eyebrows soared. “How is it mine? I wasn’t the one throwing fireballs.”

“You brought him here,” she said, poking him in the chest. “My house is gone because of you.”

“How was I supposed to know he’d put a tracker on me?” Astaroth asked. “You’re welcome for saving your life, by the way.”

Sanctimonious, despicable demon. “Ugh!” She threw up her hands. “I should have left you in that alley.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Astaroth said. “And now we’re here, and it isn’t either of our faults, but we need to get away. Moloch will probably start sifting through the ashes looking for bones.”

Calladia rubbed her cheek, then winced as she encountered a scratch from the bush. Her hand came away dotted with soot and blood. “Where will we even go?” she asked, voice trembling.

“How should I bloody know?” Astaroth asked, shoving his hand into his soot-streaked hair. He looked rather wild-eyed. “I’m just saying that wasting time arguing is a terrible idea.”

Calladia stiffened. “Excuse me for wasting your precious time,” she spat. “It’s not like my house just got blown up.”

“You can shout at me to your heart’s content,” Astaroth said. “Later. In a location farther away from the demon who just tried to murder us.”

Calladia opened her mouth, then closed it again. He had a point. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “There’s a bridge in the park we can hide under until he’s gone, and then I’ll get my truck. Assuming I still have a truck.”

Her truck—a battered red pickup she’d named Clifford the Little Red Truck—had been parked on the street, since she hadn’t wanted to disrupt a chalk drawing the neighbor children had made in her driveway. Maybe that distance had been enough to spare it.

Calladia led Astaroth toward the stream that cut through the park. Sirens wailed in the distance, and the people they passed were so fixated on the fire, they thankfully didn’t pay attention to two soot-covered strangers limping by.

The bridge was a low wooden arch over the stream, just tall enough to sit beneath. Calladia sat on the bank, wrapping her arms around her knees, and Astaroth took up position opposite. Thankfully, he stayed quiet, giving Calladia space to think.

What was she going to do? She was now without a house or most of her everyday possessions. Things could be replaced, and the furnishings had been relatively cheap, but that didn’t help the ache of loss in her chest.

Be practical, she told herself. Focus on logistics.

Calladia wasn’t without resources. Her friends had accused her of being a “paranoid prepper” due to the emergency supplies stashed in her truck. She’d stocked up on gear in case a camping trip went wrong, and assuming Clifford had survived the blast, there should be enough in there to last at least a week: a go-bag, camping gear, blankets, emergency rations, spare clothes, and more.

How did the demon figure into her plans though?

Across the stream, Astaroth looked miserable. His knees were drawn up in a mirror of her position, and he was shivering. Probably cold, since demons had higher body temperatures than humans.

She should leave him behind. Let him sort through his own mess and fight his own enemy.

He shivered again, then touched his face gingerly, exploring the bruised skin around his eye. Soot darkened his blond hair, and a gnarly, scabbed-over gash was visible on the left side of his head. The amnesia-causing wound, presumably.

Astaroth may have been the reason she’d nearly died, but he’d also saved her life. Calladia hadn’t known what the fire in Moloch’s hands meant. If she’d stayed in her living room a few seconds longer, she wouldn’t be here right now.

Even if she abandoned Astaroth, would that be enough to keep her safe? Or would Moloch see her as Astaroth’s ally and try to kill her anyway?

Calladia frowned, remembering something Astaroth had shouted during the confrontation. I’m going to take you down, Moloch. I have everything I need.

“What did you mean about taking Moloch down?” Calladia asked. “You said you have everything you need.”

Astaroth looked up at her. “Did I?” he asked, sounding distracted. His eyes were reddened from the smoke.

“You did,” she confirmed. “Did you remember something about him?”

Astaroth’s brow furrowed. Calladia waited, letting him sift through his memories.

“I don’t know what I meant by that,” Astaroth finally said. “I just looked at him and knew with utter certainty that I could hurt him.”

“So how do we do it?” she asked. “How do we take Moloch out?”

Astaroth looked surprised. “We?”

Calladia winced. Damn her altruistic impulses. She was way too deep into this mess to back out. “Well, now I’m on his radar, too. And since I don’t want to die . . .”

“We’ve got to collaborate.”

Astaroth sounded so unenthused that Calladia bristled. “You don’t have to sound so disappointed. At least this way there will be one functional brain between the two of us.”

Astaroth made an annoyed sound. He started to respond, then winced and rubbed his forehead. “Lucifer, this headache. Zero stars for amnesia.”

“There are painkillers in my truck,” Calladia said. “If it survived.”

“It’s fine. Demons heal quickly.”

Calladia wasn’t so sure. He was still sporting a shiner, and from what she knew from other hyper-regenerative species, that should have disappeared by now. Then again, as Mariel had learned with Oz, demons were very different from how they were portrayed in most literature. Maybe fast healing was conditional, or maybe the knock on the head had disrupted his abilities.

Well, if he didn’t want painkillers, that was his issue. Calladia rested her chin on her knees and planned her next steps.

First: check on Clifford the Little Red Truck. If Clifford was intact, they could drive somewhere and get help. Mariel and Themmie would gladly help with anything she needed, but she didn’t want to admit she’d helped Astaroth, so she’d need to come up with a version of the truth that wouldn’t make them ask too many questions.

Her friends would undoubtedly offer her a place to stay, but Astaroth wasn’t the only reason to avoid that. If Moloch was targeting Calladia, she’d be damned before she put her friends at risk. But if Clifford had survived, so had her tent and emergency supplies, which meant she could camp out in the woods while figuring out next steps.

Emergency supplies wouldn’t help her fight Moloch though. She needed to be ready for future battles, which meant finding thread and possibly potion ingredients, since her yarn and herbs had gone up in smoke. She should also probably review her Combat Magic 101 textbook.

Calladia’s stomach dropped as she realized there was only one option: she had to go to her parents’ house to pick up the boxes she’d been storing in their basement since college. She’d meant to clear out her belongings a long time ago, but since she avoided seeing her mom as much as possible, she’d never finished the job.

Cynthia Cunnington was a terror on the best of days, but if Calladia had to choose between facing her mother or Moloch, she’d pick her mother. Weaponized disappointment was easier to survive than a fireball.

They stayed under the bridge until the sirens cut off and the flames had been extinguished. Calladia passed the time by texting various people: her boss and clients for the next few days to let them know she couldn’t make their training sessions, her friends to let them know her house had blown up—it’s a long story—but she was okay and would stop by Mariel’s house that evening to update them. Thank goodness she’d still had her phone, wallet, and keys in her windbreaker pocket after hitting the gym, or this would have been even more of a disaster.

She kept an eye out for Moloch, but he never showed up, which hopefully meant Astaroth was right and the demon thought they were dead.

By midafternoon, Astaroth’s teeth were chattering. Deciding they’d waited long enough, Calladia stood, groaning when her knees popped. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s see if my truck survived.”

They took the long route around the park before circling toward Calladia’s house. By the time they arrived, the police and firefighters were long gone, and Moloch was thankfully nowhere to be seen.

Calladia nearly started crying with relief when she saw her truck parked at the curb, coated in ash but otherwise intact. “Clifford!” she cried out. She unlocked the truck with trembling fingers, relieved to see it was still full of her possessions. She climbed in, then traced her hands over the dusty dashboard and cracked bench seat. “Hi, baby,” she whispered.

She couldn’t stand to look at the blackened ruins of her house. She had insurance for magical mishaps and extraplanar acts of malice—any property owner in a town this steeped in magic did—but it was hard to imagine rebuilding. That little yellow house had been an extension of herself, a piece of her heart plunked down on a plot of land.

Her entire life, she’d struggled to break free from her perfectionist mother’s expectations. Too loud, too messy, too angry, too coarse, too unambitious . . . Calladia had been too much of all the things her mother despised and not enough of everything else. Cynthia Cunnington had wanted a politician for a daughter, polished and polite. Instead, she’d gotten the town’s most incorrigible tomboy, and Calladia’s rebellion against expectations had only worsened over time. Now relations between them were at an all-time low after Calladia had publicly opposed her mom’s plans to build a luxury spa in the woods—a plan Mariel had just foiled.

In the midst of that never-ending family drama, finally being able to buy a house with her own money had been a bright spot. A way to set herself apart and start building something of her own, untouched by her mother’s judgments.

Now her home and all its promise had been turned into smoking rubble, and Calladia needed to face the person she most dreaded seeing.

Delaying wouldn’t help, so Calladia cracked her neck and started the ignition. “Let’s go,” she told Astaroth, who had settled onto the bench seat beside her. “Our revenge plot starts now.”