couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. He couldn’t be—
“Azazel,” I whispered, voicing the name that surfaced from the depths of my mind.
His eyes flashed as he snarled, like lightning through clouds of storm gray. “Starting to remember?” He took another sinuous step toward me. The air crackled around him. “After you conveniently forgot me?”
“I was thirteen,” I finally got out, the pieces having connected to revive a chilling memory. “It was supposed to be a joke...”
“A joke?” He appeared to choke on the word.
My throat dried up. “Well—umm—” I stammered, my voice embarrassingly creeping up to a whispered squeak. “You know, two teenagers having a fake séance kind of thing, making a ‘deal with the devil’ to not end up sad and alone...” I made air-quotes for him.
He did not look impressed.
“You called on me,” he growled, “as a joke?”
“I didn’t think you were real!”
Darkness exploded from him.
There’s no other way to describe it—shadows shot out from his form as if his very core were made of pitiless black that devoured all light. It snuffed out the lamps in the room, plunging everything into unrelenting darkness. Not even the streetlights penetrated the stygian veil that suffocated me.
As fast as he’d thrown the shadows out, he pulled them back into himself—only now two enormous black wings rose behind him. A faint shimmer of fire danced upon the glossy onyx of their feathers.
“Is this real enough for you?” he snapped.
“Shouldn’t your wings be leathery?” I covered my mouth with both hands, but it was too late. My verbal filter had successfully failed again.
He curled his lip. “We’re not bats.”
“But the pictures—”
“Are wrong. Monks and prophets and saints.” He scoffed. “There is little they got right. Now.” He stretched his wings, knocking a glass off the coffee table. Those things sure were solid. “Pack your things and come.”
“What the—what?”
“It’s time.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “We need to be gone by midnight, but I’d rather not spend the next two hours watching you pack. So grab your essentials and let’s go.” He paused, tilting his head as he studied me. “I’m letting you pack your stuff as a courtesy. Don’t make me regret my indulgence.”
I stood there, giving him the most pathetic imitation of a fish out of water while my brain desperately tried to keep up.
“What are you talking about?” I finally managed.
He stared at me. The carpet beneath him started smoldering. “Do you need this spelled out?” His voice was deceptively calm. “Maybe in a slide show presentation?” Fine tendrils of smoke rose up from his boots. “Or drawn with crayons?”
His sarcasm raised my hackles, but for once my sense of self-preservation kicked in and made me bite back my scathing response.
Instead I carefully asked, “Why should I need to pack my things?”
“Because,” he replied in a measured tone generally used on morons, “you’re coming to Hell with me.”
My heart skipped a beat. The smoke detector chose that moment to go off, and I jumped and clutched my chest. I’d have a cardiac arrest before this night was over.
The demon’s gaze cut to the beeping menace on the ceiling, and the next second the smoke detector exploded.
I shrieked and ducked under the table.
Yep, cardiac arrest coming right up.
“So,” the demon said into the oppressive silence, “you forgot me and the terms of the contract you tricked me into.”
From my vantage point under the table, I could only see his legs and boots...and the burn marks on the carpet where he stood. I swallowed. “I didn’t trick you into anything. I didn’t even know what I was doing!”
The lights flickered. A pulse of...something shuddered through the room, raising goosebumps on my skin.
“I’ll refresh your memory.” His voice was velvety soft with the kind of rumbling undertone that would usually make my knees weak. Good thing I was already kneeling on the floor. Going spaghetti-legged right in front of this guy would be worse than hiding under a table.
“The covenant you forced me into stipulates that should you be unwed by your twenty-fifth birthday, I am to...” He made a pause, and when he spoke again, he sounded as if he were chewing on a lemon “…marry you.”
His words echoed in my mind, merging with the revived memory of one stupid night twelve years ago. And I knew them to be true, with nauseating certainty.
I cowered back, further under the table, and wrapped my arms around my drawn-up legs. Reality was slipping away from me, one shallow, too-fast breath at