A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch （Glimmer Falls, #2(106)

Oz nearly choked. Mariel and Themmie collapsed into hysterical giggles. Ben eyed the door longingly.

And Astaroth? He gave her a wicked smile and palmed her ass. “Then hurry up and start appreciating, my warrior queen.”

* * *

Calladia and Astaroth stayed in the same treehouse from before, this time with Tansy’s cawed assurance that the griffin would not allow any visitors. Candles flickered in the windowsills, champagne was chilling in a bucket, and claw-punctured rose petals had been sprinkled over the bed.

“Seems a tad cliché,” Astaroth said, eyeing the setup.

Calladia rolled her eyes. “Of course you have a pretentious opinion.”

“What’s going to happen to those petals? They’ll be crushed or end up in my unmentionables. It’s impractical.”

“If you want me to stuff them up your ass, just say so.” Calladia uncorked the champagne and sniffed appreciatively at the vapor wafting out.

“When I ask you to stuff something up my ass,” Astaroth said, “it will not be flower petals.” He held the flutes out so Calladia could pour.

“I’ve always wondered what pegging someone would be like,” she mused. The guys she’d slept with had not been interested in letting her peg them, though they’d had no qualms about asking her for anal.

“We can try it sometime.”

She laughed, pleasantly surprised. “You mean it?”

Astaroth lifted his glass and grinned. “Calladia, I am over six hundred years old. I have been there, done that with most carnal activities, and if I haven’t done something already, I’d probably like to try it out.”

“Fascinating.” Calladia would have to make a list of possible carnal activities. She took a gulp of champagne, and the flavor burst on her tongue, crisp, bready, and faintly fruity. She’d sampled enough champagne at political events to recognize it was a quality vintage.

“What, no toast?” Astaroth asked. “Poor form, Calladia.”

“Good point.” She raised the flute. “What should we toast to? A successful protest tomorrow? The imminent recovery of your memory?” As soon as she said the latter, she regretted it. Yes, he might have some secret piece of information to defeat Moloch hidden away in that devious brain, but she was feeling optimistic about the group’s plan. What if, when the old Astaroth merged with this new version, he went straight back to his old ways? Would he decide sacrificing humans on the altar of his immortality was worth it, after all?

Astaroth seemed oblivious to her inner debate. He was relaxed and smiling, looking utterly dashing in a crisp gray button-up and charcoal slacks he’d sourced at a local store. Candlelight flickered off his obsidian-smooth horns and played over the sharp contours of his face. The light loved him, as much as she was beginning to—

“I’d rather toast to you,” he said. “A toast to Calladia Cunnington, as fair as she is fierce. Long may she terrorize werewolves.”

Calladia laughed, though her heart was racing from that thought she’d almost completed. The light loved him . . . “I can hardly toast to myself,” she said.

“There’s an obvious solution.” Astaroth tipped his chin to a haughty angle. “You can toast to my beauty and brilliance.”

“More like your vanity.” She shook her head, still grinning. She smiled around him an unreasonable amount, truly. “I would like to propose a toast to Astaroth, soon to be of the Nine again, as beautiful as he is brilliant. Long may he fight for hybrid rights.”

A lump formed in her throat. Hecate, she was beyond emotionally compromised for this ridiculous, charming, intense demon. If he could just stay mortal . . .

Astaroth’s expression had softened. “Long may he fight,” he repeated. “I like that.”

They clinked glasses, maintaining eye contact as they swallowed. It felt like a ritual, as if the words of the toast were a spell and the champagne a potion, and together they were reshaping reality into a shared vision.

Astaroth set his flute down on an end table. “Calladia,” he said softly, stepping toward her.

Calladia’s phone started buzzing. “Ugh,” she said, putting the glass down and heading for her backpack. “This had better not be Themmie calling to ask about a color scheme for her protest posters.”

Her heart sank when she saw the name on the caller ID. She should have known this reckoning would come sooner rather than later. Her mother would never stay silent for long.

Astaroth took one look at her face and intuited the issue. “You don’t have to talk to her.”

“I have to at some point. She’s like a terrier with a rat when she’s upset about something. She doesn’t let go until she’s absolutely brutalized the topic.”

This conversation was going to be especially ugly. Calladia butted heads with her mother frequently, but she hadn’t missed a mandatory event before.

They’d been building to this for a long time though. Every snide comment about Calladia’s career or appearance, every time Calladia had snapped back . . . it had been escalating. When Calladia had opposed her mother at a recent town hall discussing the construction project that would have harmed the forest, it had pushed their relationship troubles into the public eye. I know you’re selfish and don’t want to let anyone else enjoy nice things, Cynthia had said in front of everyone. It had felt like being slapped.