Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
Back downstairs, Lucia, one of my regulars who stocked hotels and upper-end boutiques with various delicacies was at the counter, talking to Toby who had the usual look on his face when she was there with her large orders and didn’t want to wait for anyone to write anything down.
“Candy!” she said with a large smile, gesturing me over.
“Look at this,” she said, tugging on my skirt.
“Such a fun theme, and the eye candy is an added bonus.” She raised a brow and leaned closer while she glanced over at Dorian where he was looking way too muscular in his tight pants and powdered wig, the better to cover up his king spikes.
No, they would have poked through if they hadn’t been vanished as thoroughly as his wings and tail.
Such a civilized glamour. Also, and much more interesting was the fact that there were the same number of demons as there had been earlier.
No, more. Now there were four violinists hanging from the suspended aerial hoops.
“So, is he as gay as he looks?”
I blinked at her. Dorian was the eye candy she was talking about? I laughed, but it was on the side of strangled. I was going to strangle him. I didn’t need this many people working in my shop. I was trying to be normal. Also, why didn’t he have a less attractive glamour to use? “Oh, he’s not gay.”
“Are you sure? Do you think he’d go out with me?
” Lucia gave me a weird look, I mean, it wasn’t weird, it was the look I’d seen a million times from the girls in the strip club when they looked at him.
I’d never seen that look on her face before, though.
She was a competent businesswoman who didn’t have time for dating, at least she’d mentioned that in passing.
“We’re seeing each other.” I said it to save her from heartache. She deserved a quality human, not a demon with delusions. Unless… What the White Rabbit said pounded in my brain and I completely missed what Lucia said. Was I actually some creepy slug-demon? It didn’t quite compute.
“Sorry, what?” I said, giving her a rough smile. “My head aches from the vodka.”
“Ah.” She nodded slowly. “I didn’t think that you ever dated or drank.”
“I don’t usually, but the other night I was with my delinquent foster sister.
I did all kinds of things I don’t usually do.
Karaoke,” I added when she got that look, like I was suggesting kinky things.
“Also ate some weird foreign food that didn’t agree with me.
On second thought, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.
How about you? How was your weekend?” I really didn’t want to think about eating Regis.
Regis who was Roberta in a corset, helping a customer even more efficiently than the original.
Lucia shrugged and glanced at Dorian again. He looked so terribly virile in those pants. “I went to a wine tasting on Sunday with my aunt. That was nice.” She said it while she looked at his pants.
“That does sound nice. Excuse me. Roberta will be right over to help you. I’m going to go talk to Dorian about his week’s schedule.” I gave her another smile and then walked around the room to the demon king who looked like he stepped out of one of Michelangelo’s paintings, only much more wicked.
“Candy. You look very well,” he murmured, without looking at me.
“Thank you. Your pants are quite impressive.”
“Not as impressive as what they hold.” He turned to look at me while I tried not to look at his pants. I succeeded in not gaping at him, but I failed in not blushing. I could feel my blush down to my knees.
“I’m sure your legs are very sturdy,” I said stiffly
“Oh, they are. I could carry you for days and days.” His eyes flickered, only for a moment before he brought the smolder down half a notch.
I wanted to fan myself. Happily, I happened to have a fan on me. I fluttered it coquettishly before I remembered that I wasn’t interested in flirting with him, then I fanned it briskly. “I thought that you sent a bunch of people away. You know, because of the parking issue.”
“I had them move the cars. How is Regis working out? Do you want someone else?”
“He’s frighteningly clever.”
“He’s sworn fealty to me. He will be unable to harm you, however clever he is. But if you’re uncomfortable with him…”
“You’ll have him take on a different glamour so he can join the rest of the horde in my shop? I don’t like having so many demons around. I’m trying to be normal.”
He raised a sexy brow. Behind me, I heard Lucia giggle. She was still watching him, undone by his brow raises.
“I wasn’t aware that becoming a Candy Queen and garbing oneself in remarkably unhistoric costumes was normal human behavior, but what do I know? Shall I tell you how many demons were working for you already?”
I grabbed his arm. He flexed under my touch and his eyes flickered before he got his glamour under control. “No. Absolutely not. There was only the one.”
He smiled sweetly. “Perhaps I’ll tell you which of them are human. Toby is human. Congratulations on hiring one human out of so many demons.”
I cleared my throat. All those demons had already been working in my shop?
Why? Was it the angel thing? Was I going to faint?
The world grew blurry around the edges until I blinked Dorian, the handsomest creature in the world back into focus.
Annoyingly handsome. He didn’t need such a pretty glamour. “Ah. They clean up very well.”
“Naturally. They’re demons. Illusions are the first thing a demon learns.”
I glared at him. “Lies too.”
“Absolutely. Would you care to dance, my queen?”
“I’m not your…”
He took my hand and led me out into the dance.
Quadrille. I’d looked up how to do it online to prepare, but that didn’t mean I was good at it.
Dorian was good, very good, like he’d spent a lifetime in pantaloons leading women into the dance.
The musicians were also like that, like they were used to performing for dancers, and the whole shop was so alive, so magical, so otherworldly, even though it was barely after noon.
Should I protest? Out of all the weirdness, I could deal with dancing.
I danced with him until a little boy tugged on my sleeve.
“Yes?” I said, relieved to not be so close to Dorian. Except that I also hated it.
“Are you really the Candy Queen?”
I smiled down at him and his big eyes and round cheeks. “I am. Would you like to try the cake?”
“I want to dance with you.”
I glanced at Dorian who gave me an elegant bow and left me to dance with the very young but enthusiastic customer. When the song ended, I curtsied.
He leaned in and said, “Will you marry me?”
It was so adorable. I was going to pat his head, but a strong hand came around my waist.
“She’s already married to the demon king,” Dorian said, so smooth as he spun me away and back into the dance.
He moved us away from the customers, staying in the center of his demons who all acted like a barrier so that nothing could break us up.
Yep, there were Lisa and Merl as part of the cohesive candy crew. Apparently demons. Shudder.
I glared at Dorian, like it was all his fault that I attracted demons like catnip. Or an angel. “I’m not married to the demon king. I may have had a joke wedding with Dorian, but as you made so clear, you are not the same person.”
“What did you talk to the White Rabbit about?”
I inhaled sharply and stumbled in the dance, but he kept his hand on my waist and held me on my feet. “What?”
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his bright eyes.
“It’s was very peculiar to break into the Grand Master’s dungeon to talk to a psychopath murderer.
Mixl came to get me and tell me that your life was in danger, but he wasn’t sure why you went to see the White Rabbit in the first place.
” His eyes flickered again. Was that anger?
“Well…” I had a flashback of the White Rabbit’s gray features, the intensity in his pink eyes as he made me nod three times. If the Zombie Queen knew I was an angel, I was dead. Dorian also hated angels. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Life and death?” He stepped away from me, pointed his foot like the world’s most graceful human, and then spun us around so we were back to back, his chin near my ear.
“Yes. My life. My death. I was doing research on demons with Tom, but he only knows so much. The White Rabbit, what doesn’t he know?”
“Nothing he’d actually tell you, and if he did tell you, nothing that you could trust.”
“Yes, well, he didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was a bad day.”
“I understand that being thrust into a world of monsters isn’t what you wanted, but to search out the White Rabbit? That smells of suicidal.”
“I’ve been suicidal a lot since you failed to dump me so phenomenally. I’m not currently, though, mostly because when I start spiraling down into depression, something incredibly weird drags me back out again.”
“Such as…”
“Your fireplace. It was distinctly pleasant with the flames wrapped around me.” Pleasant wasn’t the right word, not when the crackling flames had soothed my soul while every sensation was beyond exquisite.
He stepped towards me and then we turned in a circle, staring at each other while the rest of the world drifted away.
I was feeling like that again, contentment, peace, happiness, all those other lies that I’d swallowed so eagerly.
Would I again? Probably. He was so handsome as a human, so regal.
He looked like a king with or without the spikes coming out of his head.
“I thought that it would take serious convincing for you to ever touch my flames, but you climbed right into them,” he murmured against my ear before he spun away.
“Only because I was running away to freedom on the other side. I woke up, and everything kind of…” I swallowed hard and turned my back to him, pointing my foot and then doing delicate little kicks before turning back to face him.