Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Ramona kept her eyes closed. If she didn’t open them, if she stayed very still, maybe she could pretend last night hadn’t happened. Maybe she could pretend she hadn’t tried a summoning spell from a donation-bin grimoire. Maybe she could pretend there wasn’t a demon in her bedroom.
“Oh good, you’re awake.”
Ramona’s eyes snapped open.
Azareth was still sitting in the desk chair. Still wearing that expensive suit, though it looked slightly more rumpled now. Her dark hair was tousled, a few strands framing her face. She was holding that unsettling HellBerry and looked like she hadn’t slept at all.
“You’re still here,” Ramona said. Her voice came out rough, scratchy.
“Unfortunately.”
“I was hoping you were a nightmare.”
Azareth raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh, I am, but again, a very tangible one stuck with you thanks to the world’s worst grimoire spell.”
They stared at each other. Morning light made everything worse. In the dark, Ramona could almost convince herself this was all some wine-induced hallucination. But in daylight, Azareth was undeniably real. Solid. Taking up space in Ramona’s shabby bedroom like she belonged there.
She didn’t belong there.
“What have you been doing all night?” Ramona asked, sitting up slowly. Her head throbbed in protest.
“Working.” Azareth held up her phone. “Hell’s email system doesn’t stop just because I’ve been accidentally summoned.
I’ve received forty-seven emails since midnight.
Twelve required immediate response. Three were flagged as urgent.
And one is from my direct supervisor asking why I missed the second half of my performance review. ”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I had a personal emergency.” Azareth’s expression was flat. “Which is technically true.”
“I’m a personal emergency?”
Azareth touched the bridge of her nose as though she might let out another long-suffering sigh. “You’re certainly something.”
Ramona swung her legs out of bed and immediately regretted it. The room tilted. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I need coffee.”
“You need water, Mortal. And aspirin. You drank an entire bottle of wine.”
The word hit her like a small slap. “Did you just call me ‘Mortal’?”
“That’s what you are.”
“I have a name,” Ramona said, her tongue feeling like sandpaper inside her mouth.
“You haven’t told me what it is.”
“Am I supposed to tell a demon my name, or is that how you own my soul?” Ramona asked.
Azareth rolled her eyes. “That’s for the fae, Mortal.”
Ramona opened her mouth. Closed it. “It’s Ramona.”
“Ramona,” Azareth repeated, like she was testing how it sounded. “Noted.”
“Are you going to use it?”
“Probably not.”
Ramona wanted to argue, but her head hurt too much and she was pretty sure arguing with a demon before coffee was a losing battle. “Fine. Whatever.”
Azareth stood up, and the cheap chair creaked in relief. “The kitchen is down the hall?”
“I can get my own water,” Ramona protested. “I don’t need my roommates knowing I’ve let a demon into the apartment.”
Azareth eyed her critically. “You know demons pass undetected all the time, right? Your roommates won’t know the difference between me and a witch.”
Ramona furrowed her brow, skeptical. “I don’t believe that for one moment.”
“You don’t think that if any of them had detected a demon for the last twelve hours, they’d have at least knocked?” Azareth said, gesturing to the door. “Besides, you look like you might fall over.”
Ramona stood up to prove a point. The room swayed. She sat back down. “Fine. Yes. Kitchen is down the hall. Second doorway on the left.”
Azareth moved toward the door, then paused. “How far is it?”
“What?”
“The kitchen. How far down the hall?”
Understanding hit Ramona like cold water. “Oh. Right. The sixty-six-feet thing.”
“Yes, the sixty-six-feet thing,” Azareth repeated with a small nod.
“I don’t know. Maybe thirty feet?”
“Then you’re fine. Stay here.” Azareth opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
Ramona sat on her bed, feeling ridiculous, listening as hard as she could for anyone screaming. A demon was getting her water. A demon from Hell’s corporate structure was fetching her hangover supplies like some kind of evil assistant.
Her life had officially become a joke.
Ramona felt a strange tug in her ribs as the demon left her sight, but Azareth returned a minute later with a glass of water and two aspirin she’d apparently found in the bathroom cabinet. She set them on the nightstand. “Drink, Mortal. All of it.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“No, Mortal.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“No.”
Ramona sighed. “Why not?”
“Because it annoys you.” A mischievous light seemed to glint in Azareth’s eye. “And I have very little entertainment at the moment.”
Ramona took the aspirin and drank half the glass. The water was cold and delicious. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This is self-preservation. If you’re incapacitated, I’m stuck sitting in that terrible chair indefinitely.”
Ramona rolled her eyes but finished the water. “I need to shower. I have work.”
“Work?”
“Yes. Work. The place where I exchange my time and dignity for money.” Ramona stood up again, slower this time. The aspirin hadn’t kicked in yet, but at least the room wasn’t spinning. “I’m going to be late. Again. Marcus is going to—” She halted. “Wait. Can you…?”
“Can I what?”
“The shower. The bathroom. It’s farther than the kitchen.” Ramona’s brain was trying to do math through the hangover fog. “How far is sixty-six feet in a straight line?”
“Approximately sixty-six feet, Mortal.”
“That’s not what I… You know what? Never mind.” Ramona thought that perhaps this was Hell, and the spell had killed her, and now she was doomed to a lifetime of domestic torture.
Azareth smirked. “You’re asking if I need to be in the bathroom while you shower.”
“Yes.”
The demon raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, a grin pulling the edge of her mouth to reveal one of her fangs. “Would you like me to be in the bathroom while you shower?”
Ramona glared.
Azareth pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen. “Bathroom is forty-two feet from your bedroom door. You should be fine. I can stay here.”
“How do you—”
Azareth showed her phone screen in answer. “I have an app.”
“Of course you do.”
Ramona grabbed clothes from her dresser. Clean underwear. Jeans. A sweater that didn’t have any obvious stains. “If I start to feel pain from the tether… what do I…” She saw the unimpressed look on the demon’s face. “I guess I’ll just come back.”
Azareth’s eyes grazed her bare legs, and Ramona felt heat in her cheeks and… other places she was not going to think about. Wow, she’d been single for far too long if demonic judgment was having such an effect on her.
Azareth blinked. “Or you could just scream. That works, too.” Again with that slow, catlike grin.
Ramona arched a brow. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m absolutely not enjoying this.” But there was something in Azareth’s eye that was sparkling. “Go shower. You smell terrible and this room is very small.”
“Those are strong words coming from someone who lives in brimstone,” Ramona muttered.
The hallway felt longer than usual.
Ramona walked slowly, paying attention to how her body felt against the tether, counting each step. At first, nothing. Just the normal sensation of being hungover and exhausted and questioning every life choice that had led her to this moment.
But around thirty feet from her bedroom door, something changed. A tightness in her chest. Like a rubber band being stretched.
At forty feet, the tightness became uncomfortable. Not painful, not yet, but wrong. Like her body knew she was going too far.
At fifty feet, it felt like someone had wrapped a hand around her ribs and was squeezing.
She paused. Turned around. The sensation immediately eased.
Sixty-six feet was not a lot of space.
The bathroom was within range, but she could feel the tether pulling, that uncomfortable tightness that suggested if she went much farther, it would start to hurt.
But she could shower. She could use the bathroom. She had that much.
Small mercies.
Ramona locked the bathroom door behind her and turned on the shower as hot as it would go. Steam filled the small space, fogging up the mirror. She stripped off her T-shirt and yesterday’s underwear and stepped under the spray.
The hot water felt heavenly.
She stood there for a long moment, letting it run over her face, her hair, washing away the night’s mistakes. Or at least the physical evidence of them. The existential mistakes — like summoning a demon — were going to be much harder to rinse away.
It was only for three weeks.
She shampooed her hair, worked conditioner through the tangles. She should try the glamour spell again. Maybe sober, in daylight, with actual focus, she could fix her hair. Make herself look professional. Make herself look like someone who had their life together.
But that seemed like a lot of effort for a lie no one would believe.
When she finally turned off the water, she felt almost human again. The pain meds had kicked in. The shower had washed away the worst of the hangover fog. She could do this. She could go to work, pretend everything was fine.
She just had to figure out what to do with the demon in her bedroom first.
After her shower, she emerged from the bathroom dressed and feeling marginally more functional to find Cammie in the kitchen making tea.
“Morning,” Cammie said without looking up.
She was wearing her café uniform — black pants, obscure band T-shirt.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, her multiple earrings themed in celestial symbols of suns and moons for the day.
She glanced toward Ramona and nearly startled. “You look like death.”
“Thanks, Cam. You’re not opening today?” Ramona asked, leaning on the kitchen island.