Astaroth returned dressed in the black pants and blue shirt she’d bought him. He bent to stash the bag in the tent, and Calladia couldn’t help a quick ogle. The pants looked unreasonably good stretched over his muscular ass, and she cursed herself for not buying a pair of baggy sweatpants instead. It was just that in the store, her eyes had been drawn to the black sheen of faux leather, and she’d instantly known he would like them.
Why that should matter, she didn’t know.
“How are the clothes?” she asked.
He turned to face her, holding out his arms in a ta-da pose. “What do you think?”
The shirt was a bit baggy, but the pale blue color echoed his eyes, and the pants looked indecently good from the front as well. Calladia swallowed. “Seems fine,” she said, trying to sound indifferent. “Do the shoes fit?”
He looked down at the plain white tennis shoes. “A bit naff, but very comfortable.”
Calladia wasn’t going to ask what naff meant. “Good,” she said. She grabbed a water bottle from the truck and tossed it to him. “I’m going to change and grab some kindling so we can get a fire going.”
She conjured another magical light and took the wet wipes, travel toiletries, and a fresh change of clothes with her. “Who’s paranoid now?” she muttered as she picked her way between trees, the glowing orb bobbing above her. Mariel and Themmie teased her for having so much survival gear in her truck, but this was exactly the sort of scenario she’d planned for.
Well, maybe not exactly. She’d envisioned an earthquake or getting stranded in the wilderness, not having her house blown up and running from a demon. Either way, she was glad she’d prepared.
At the stream, she stripped off her top and bra, then splashed water over her face and armpits, cursing at how cold it was. But that was November in the Pacific Northwest. It hadn’t snowed yet, but this stream was fed from high in the Cascades, and mountain water was frigid. She hurried through wiping down her top half before changing into a new sports bra and a button-up flannel. She peed behind a bush, then cleaned her bottom half even more quickly, shivering as goosebumps erupted over her bare skin. Fresh underwear and jeans helped with the chill, as did woolen socks and hiking boots. Workout gear was comfortable, but not suited for the wilderness, especially not at this time of year.
Dry shampoo was followed by a thorough combing and braiding of her hair, and Calladia finally felt halfway decent. She gathered her things and headed to the campsite, collecting sticks as she went. When she looked up, the night sky looked like it was spattered with diamonds.
Back at the clearing, she found Astaroth arranging firewood inside a shallow, freshly dug pit. Calladia stopped, taken aback.
Having someone help set up camp was a novelty. She’d camped with her friends before, but Themmie’s talents ran toward making the campsite aesthetically appealing for Pixtagram, and Mariel, bless her nature witch heart, usually got so distracted greeting and petting new plants that she forgot to gather wood. Calladia was happy to shoulder the practical burdens if it meant spending time with her adorably eccentric friends, but this felt . . . refreshing.
Not the sentiment she ought to be feeling around a demon. Calladia busied herself augmenting his base structure with her own kindling, reminding herself this situation was temporary. They’d find Isobel the life witch and figure out how Astaroth could recover his memory and defeat Moloch, and then Calladia would cheerfully send him off to face the demon alone. She’d return to Glimmer Falls, crash on Mariel’s couch until she could figure out her housing situation, and move on with her life, hopefully never seeing Astaroth again.
This was only an interlude. A brief detour in the journey of her life, soon to be nothing but a story to tell.
Calladia adjusted Astaroth’s logs here and there, and though he shot her a few dark looks, he let her meddle with his campfire structure. A few years in Girl Scouts had kick-started her love of camping, but she’d been pissed she couldn’t do the rougher things Boy Scouts got up to, and the stupid uniform skirt was an affront to practicality as well as a depressing imposition of gender norms, so she’d dropped out and started reading survivalist books at the library instead.
Her mother had, naturally, disapproved. “Girl Scouting is very respectable,” she’d said at the time. “And after a few years, you can switch to the Witch Scout corps. Don’t you want that?”
Had young Calladia wanted to join the older girls in Witch Scouts, who at the time held the mysterious glamour of adolescence? Yes, but not enough to wear skirts.