A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch
: Chapter 19

Astaroth woke up with a mouthful of hair.

He mumbled and spit it out, only to realize the hair had encroached elsewhere. Strands were wrapped around his neck, something brushed his ear, and when he breathed in, hair tickled his nostril. He nuzzled into the pillow to scratch his nose, then opened bleary eyes.

Dawn light spilled through the window, casting a bright rectangle across the bed. Astaroth was lying on his left side, and directly in front of him was a large quantity of the hair in question. It was long, straight, and buttery-blond, the texture silky where it wasn’t tangled from sleep. The head to which the hair belonged rested on a pillow next to him, facing away in a mirror of his pose.

He inhaled the scent of Calladia’s soap. She smelled like oranges and sun-warmed linen.

His sleep-fuddled mind didn’t understand why she was so close to him. Hadn’t she erected a pillow fortress? His right hand was resting on something soft; maybe the barrier hadn’t been fully breached overnight.

When he raised his head, he realized he wasn’t touching the pillow barricade. His hand was resting on the curve of Calladia’s waist. Her chest rose and fell softly under blue, rubber duck–patterned fabric.

He slowly placed his head back on the pillow, not wanting to make any sudden movements and wake her. Resting with her, touching her, felt surreal. Lucifer, even seeing her relaxed and quiet was bizarre. She’d had a few lively conversations with herself during the night, but now her breathing was deep and even.

It could be like this between us, he thought. Days spent fighting the world and each other, nights and lazy mornings dedicated to peace. His witch was a powerhouse, a warrior queen, but even warriors had to rest between battles.

It was who they let themselves rest around that mattered.

Calladia shifted. “Freaking bulldozer,” she muttered.

Astaroth bit back a laugh. His fingers gently flexed on her waist. The onesie was soft, but he felt the firm line of her body beneath it.

Had rubber ducks ever been so arousing?

Calladia made a grumpy noise. “Where’d you get the fedora?”

Astaroth froze. The words echoed in his head, ringing like a bell. Where’d you get the fedora? Where’d you get the fedora?

Where’d you get the fedora, a pickup artist convention?

His temple throbbed, and his head spun. Astaroth closed his eyes, swallowing against nausea.

A memory played out, one bracketed with green pines and sprawling brambles. The background was hazy, but one thing was clear and sharp: Calladia, standing with her fists clenched, a furious expression on her face. Her hair hung loose to her lower back, and she was wearing the same outfit from the first day: leggings patterned with daisies and a blue tank top that said Sweat Like a Girl.

In the memory, Astaroth stood opposite her, his white suit clean of blood and a black fedora covering his horns. His hand rested on the crystal skull topper of his cane sword.

This motherfucker is Astaroth of the Nine? the Calladia of memory asked. Where’d you get the fedora, a pickup artist convention?

Memory Astaroth and current Astaroth were united in their outrage. I don’t take sartorial critiques from people wearing spandex, he’d sneered.

Nearby, a short pixie with pink-and-green hair expressed alarm. Another of Calladia’s friends, presumably. Whatever she said was lost, because Calladia was walking toward Astaroth, cracking her knuckles, and she was all he had focus for.

The last few days had taught Astaroth to be wary when she looked like that. The emotions captured in the memory didn’t match what he felt now though. At the time, Astaroth had been full of disdain. He’d considered her annoying and irrelevant. Beneath him.

So you’re the demon who’s been destroying the forest? Calladia began tying her hair up, and Astaroth instantly knew this memory was about to devolve into a fight. The demon who destroyed my best friend’s greenhouse? The one trying to force Oz and Mariel to make a bargain?

He’d looked at her soul then, opening his demon senses. It was brilliant, pure in its power. And Astaroth, greedy demon that he was, had wanted to claim it for himself. Seize a new victory out of the bitterness of recent defeat. Maybe with her soul as an offering, the high council would allow him to amend the terms of the wager. He could still come out on top.

Astaroth’s sweat had felt cold in the forest air. Moloch couldn’t win. Not before Astaroth revealed . . .

But the particulars of what Astaroth needed to reveal drifted away like mist.

Do you want to become a princess? he’d asked, determined to find the price that would convince her to hand over her soul. Own a diamond mine? Say it, and it’s yours.

I do want something, she’d said, stopping just out of reach, but I can’t get it through a deal.

What had she wanted? He desperately wanted to know. He’d wanted to know back then, too, but for a different reason. Until he knew her vulnerabilities, he wouldn’t be able to use them for his own ends.

It was strange, feeling this split in himself. It seemed impossible he’d ever viewed her with sneering disdain, yet the memory was definitely his.

I can give you anything.

No thanks. I take what I want.

He’d noticed her beauty even then. The mix of classically delicate features and visible musculature had been interesting. His mind had traveled down speculative paths, considering what the angry, pretty witch would take if she could.

Then she’d punched him in the throat.

In the present day, Astaroth yelped and twitched. Calladia instantly sat upright, shoving hair out of her face to reveal flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes. “What is it?” she asked, voice still blurred by sleep. “Who’s there?”

He sat up, too, powered by a burst of outrage. “You punched me in the throat!”

“I did?” Calladia looked down at her hand, then back at him, blinking slowly. “Sorry, I’m an active sleeper. You look fine.”

“Not in your sleep,” he said through gritted teeth.

She squinted at him, and he saw when her mind finally caught up with the conversation. “Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh! Wait, did your memory return?”

“Some of it,” he said, crossing his arms. “I remember you hitting me.”

“Well, at least it’s a start,” she said with a cocky grin. “I’m sure you’ll remember the rest of the beatdown soon.”

The casual way she spoke about it set his teeth on edge. “You sound awfully cheerful about it.”

“And you seem upset, though I’m not sure why. We’re enemies, remember?”

“Because . . . because . . .” Dash it, he wasn’t sure why he was angry either. It was just that after all they’d been through together, being attacked by her stung. That the attack had happened before their recent adventures didn’t seem to figure in to his addled brain. With memories popping up willy-nilly, it felt like she’d punched him moments ago.

And why did she have to say it like that? We’re enemies, as if that neatly summed everything up. As if she still saw nothing more in him than a foe to be vanquished.

“You had it coming, if that helps,” Calladia said, oblivious to how her words had skewered him through the heart. She looked around the bed, and her brow furrowed. “Where did the pillows go?”

“Hang the pillows.” Astaroth rubbed his temples, struggling for calm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Calladia grabbed a pillow from the floor and tossed it in his direction. “That I beat you up? I thought I had.”

Pain stabbed through his head, and his eye twitched. “It was completely unprovoked.”

“Mmmm, was it though?” she asked skeptically, chucking another pillow and narrowly missing his face.

She wasn’t taking this seriously enough. He batted the next pillow aside. “I didn’t do anything to you,” he argued, “and then you hit me and insulted my hat—”

“It was a terrible hat,” she said.

Astaroth gasped, because now he recalled it wasn’t just a good hat; it was his favorite. “That fedora cost more than four hundred quid and came custom from my favorite London haberdasher!”

Calladia scoffed and shifted to kneel facing him, apparently giving up on the pillow wall. “I don’t know why you’re buying hats using sea creatures as currency—”

“I said quid, not squid.”

“Either way, you overpaid.” She looked him up and down condescendingly. “You looked like the flag bearer for the incel cause.”

Astaroth made a face. “The what?”

“Incels,” she said. “Does the word ring a bell?” When Astaroth shook his head, she continued. “If you forget anything you might have learned about them, it’ll be the best thing amnesia does for you. Incel stands for ‘involuntary celibate,’ and they’re misogynistic fuckwads who think women owe them sex.”

Astaroth’s fingers dug into his pillow as he contemplated ripping it apart. “You think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad?”

She blew a hank of hair out of her face, then gave him a mean smile. “They like fedoras is all I’m saying.”

She was likely kidding, but Astaroth’s irritation was spiraling out of control, heading in too many illogical directions. What was he really angry about? The hat? The dismissive way she spoke about beating him up?

Or was it because he’d come to trust, admire, and—curse it—like her, and that memory had been the emotional equivalent of getting punted in the crotch? Which she had done after the throat punch, he now recalled.

Was his anger even directed entirely at her? When he remembered the cynicism he’d felt facing her in those woods, his stomach churned.

Rather than performing a more in-depth interrogation of that uncomfortable feeling, Astaroth barreled on with the argument. “So you do think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad. Even more laughably, you think I’m a celibate one.” The gall. He’d been bedding men, women, and nonbinary folks of multiple species for centuries and doing a grand job of it. Nothing but rave reviews.

Calladia’s cheeks turned pinker, and a combative light shone in her eyes. “That’s what you’re upset about?” The humorous edge to her voice was gone; she wasn’t teasing any longer, but picking up the gauntlet he’d thrown down. “Not that you might be a misogynist, but that I might think you’re not getting laid on the regular?”

“No—”

“I must have missed your travel concubines,” she continued, voice rising. “Or did you leave your Fleshlight in your other pants?”

“I don’t even know what a Fleshlight is.” And he’d never employed travel concubines, of all things.

Calladia poked him in the chest, a jab he felt through the fabric of his robe. “Well, let me tell you something, Casanova. I don’t think you’re a misogynist, for the record, but you clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed and are determined to make it my problem. I have zero interest in that bullshit, especially when I haven’t had coffee yet, so you and your attitude can go meet your hand in the bathroom and work it out.”

Lucifer, she was mean. Agitated emotions churned inside Astaroth’s chest like leaves in a cyclone. His skin tingled where she’d poked him, and the fury in her expression was sending mixed signals to his body. He wanted her to yell at him some more, pull his hair, maybe even slap him, and then he wanted to shut her up with his mouth and taste the full force of her passion.

Succumbing to instinct, Astaroth grabbed her hand and pulled until her finger hit his pectoral again. “Harder,” he said.

Calladia’s eyes widened. “What?”

“You heard me. Do it harder.” He licked his lips. “Make me feel it.”

Calladia’s breath hitched. Complicated emotions flitted across her face. This wasn’t just anger; whatever madness had gripped him had her in its claws as well.

He had a premonition: This could destroy me.

She could destroy me.

Astaroth didn’t care. “Come on,” he said, low and challenging. “Hurt me.”

Calladia hesitated, but not for long. She was a creature of passion, after all, and she never retreated from a fight. “You,” she said, jabbing him in the chest, “are obnoxious.”

“More,” he said, leaning in. He grabbed a handful of her golden hair, winding it around his wrist, and Calladia’s eyelids grew heavy as her lips parted.

She drilled her finger into his chest again, harder this time. Not hard enough to bruise, though he wished it would. “You’re an arrogant, volatile prick, and you drive me insane.”

“Same,” he gritted.

Another poke. “You’re a conceited know-it-all.”

“Takes one to know one,” he shot back.

She glared as she delivered the coup de grâce. “Your cane sword is tacky, and you have horrible taste in hats.”

Astaroth bared his teeth. “Take that back.”

“Make me,” she said, a challenging light in her eyes.

He would enjoy trying, but that wasn’t what he wanted now. Watching her blown pupils and flushed cheeks, the rapid heaving of her breaths, he wanted to push her. See what would happen if she snapped. “Why would I do that,” he asked, tightening his grip on her hair, “when you can just take what you want?”

Her eyes flared. The shared memory hung suspended between them, his words an echo of another time, another place. That time, she’d declared herself his enemy. This time . . .

Calladia made an incoherent screeching sound, fisted the lapels of his robe, and hauled him in for a searing kiss.

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