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Cathy watched him rise from the splintered remains of her kitchen table, flour settling like fresh snow around his immaculate suit. He brushed white powder from his charcoal jacket with the unruffled grace of a man accustomed to far more dignified circumstances, as if he had emerged from a particularly inconvenient sneeze rather than an exploding summoning circle.
His gaze locked onto hers. Those black eyes, voids of pure shadow, seemed to drink the light.
Her stomach plummeted. She had accidentally summoned a Demon Prince. Of all the small, manageable demons in Hell, she had yanked through the highest-ranking gluttony entity to ever exist. The one who ate kingdoms. The one whose hunger was legendary even in supernatural circles.
Turnip screamed from under the couch.
“Before you attempt another incantation,” Jeremy said, his voice smooth and aristocratic, somehow more terrifying than any roar, “I suggest we negotiate.”
Gold radiance spilled from her knuckles. Panic-bright magic pulsed so intensely, the light nearly blinded her. She shoved her hands into her cardigan pockets, but the gold seeped through, illuminating the destroyed kitchen like a warning beacon.
Jeremy’s expression shifted. His nostrils flared slightly. His gaze, already dark, deepened to an impenetrable void. He took a step forward.
Cathy scrambled backward until her spine hit the refrigerator. “Stay back. I am not what you want. I barely have any magic. I make… I make cinnamon rolls, not spells.”
“Irrelevant,” Jeremy said. His gaze swept across her apartment, landing on the coat rack, the lamp, the threadbare bookshelf. His lip curled in barely concealed disdain. “This place smells like poverty and desperation. I could consume the entire ambient energy from this dwelling in a single breath and still be hungry.”
He turned back to face her. Something shifted in his expression. She felt less like prey, more like an interesting problem he considered solving.
“However,” Jeremy continued, moving to the sink and turning on the water to rinse his hands, “your summoning circle was catastrophically inept. Yet somehow, the magic you wove into it was… not entirely without merit. There is something unusual about your essence. Something almost alive.”
“That is not a compliment, is it?” Cathy asked, her voice barely steady.
Jeremy smiled, and too many teeth showed. “Tell me, little witch, what did you summon me for? What could you possibly want from a Demon Prince of Gluttony?”
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Cathy took a breath, deciding honesty might be her only survival strategy. She explained the Feast, the petition, the seven days. She detailed her Aunt Drusilla with bitter precision, the stolen orchard, the family magic that belonged to her by right and bloodline.
Jeremy listened without interrupting, drying his hands on her only clean dish towel with the air of someone who had never had to consider whether that action was rude.
“So you need a fiancé,” he said when she finished. “One convincing enough to fool your coven. One powerful enough to face scrutiny.”
“I need someone who will not eat my family,” Cathy said flatly. “Apparently that was too much to ask.”
Jeremy laughed. It sounded like shattering glass, but not entirely unpleasant. “I will make you a bargain, little witch. I will play the role of your respectable warlock fiancé. I will charm your family. I will help you reclaim your land.” He paused, his dark eyes fixing on hers with absolute focus. “In exchange, I want access to the Johnson Family Reserve. The wellspring hidden in your ancestral orchard. The magic that only your bloodline can touch.”
“Absolutely not,” Cathy said immediately. “That reserve is the foundation of our family’s power. It is not something I can just give you access to.”
“Then your aunt keeps your land,” Jeremy said simply, “and you face eviction in two months. Choose.”
Her mouth went dry. She opened it. Closed it. The eviction notice was real. The wards would activate. She had nothing, nowhere. This creature offered a path forward. The cost, though…
“If I agree,” she said slowly, “what stops you from just consuming the reserve yourself? What is to stop you from taking everything and leaving me with nothing?”
Jeremy’s smile widened. “A contract. Signed in your own blood or its equivalent. Neither of us violates the terms without suffering the consequences written into the magic itself. It is how Hell works, little witch. Contracts are sacred because breaking them is agony.”
He extended his hand. “Seven days. Your fiancé. Access to the reserve as payment. You get your land back, your family’s respect, and the comfort of knowing I have no legal reason to betray you until the contract expires.”
Cathy looked at his offered palm. The nails were just slightly too pointed for humanity. Heat radiating from his skin made the air waver.
“I need to know something first,” she said. “That warning about demons consuming their mates that Turnip mentioned… is that true?”
Jeremy’s expression did not change, but something flickered in those dark eyes. “Eventually? Yes. Gluttony demons develop attachments to their sources of power. The longer we feed on something, the hungrier we become for it. But that takes years, little witch. We have seven days.”
It was not a reassuring answer. Yet it was honest, which was something.
Turnip poked his head from under the couch. “She says no. She says absolutely, definitively, unquestionably no.”
“Turnip, she does not pay your rent,” Cathy muttered.
“Neither does a Demon Prince, but one of us is significantly more likely to eat her soul,” the opossum shot back.
Jeremy glanced at the small creature with mild interest. “Your familiar is unusually verbose.”
“Also unusually correct,” Turnip added.
Cathy turned away from both of them, her mind spiraling. She thought of the eviction notice. The empty apartment coming. The way her mother had looked through her at Drusilla’s last dinner party, as if Cathy was not even worth acknowledging. She thought of the orchard, full of her family’s ancient magic, being poisoned under Drusilla’s rigid, unimaginative hand.
“If I agree,” she said, not quite turning back to face him, “you swear the contract will protect me? That you will not betray me?”
“I swear it,” Jeremy said, and something in his tone made her believe he meant it. “The terms we agree upon will be ironclad. I am many things, little witch, but I am not a fool. Breaking a contract would damage my reputation across all nine circles, and I spent considerable effort building that reputation.”
Cathy turned back to look at him. “No eating my furniture.”
“That would be petty,” Jeremy agreed.
“No eating my familiar.”
“He is stringy and impertinent,” Jeremy said, but something like amusement surfaced in his voice. “Not worth the effort.”
“No eating anyone in my family unless I explicitly give you permission.”
“Acceptable.”
“And when the seven days are over,” Cathy finished, “you return to Hell and leave me in peace.”
Jeremy’s expression flickered. Just for a moment, something dark and possessive flashed across his features before his aristocratic mask slid back into place. “When the seven days are over, I return to Hell and our contract expires.”
It was not exactly a denial that he wanted to keep her. But it was close enough to a promise that Cathy could pretend not to notice the careful phrasing.
“All right,” she said, hearing her voice as if from very far away. “Let us sign your contract.”
Jeremy’s smile sharpened to a dangerous edge. “Excellent. Fetch me something to write with and something to bind this in blood. We have not much time. You look as though you are about to have a panic attack, and your aunt’s eviction wards will activate at midnight.”
Cathy nodded numbly, turning toward her kitchen drawer, her hands still pulsing with betraying gold. Behind her, Jeremy’s satisfaction radiated like heat from a forge.
Turnip pulled himself onto the arm of the couch. “We are going to die,” he announced to no one in particular. “Or worse, we are going to live, and it is going to be absolutely chaotic.”
He paused, considering. “I am not entirely opposed to chaos, actually. But I am holding a grudge about this.”