“For how long?”
“Until—and I quote—I unlock her heart’s truest desire.”
“Sorry, mate,” Finn says, clearlynotsorry, his shoulders shaking with barely contained laughter. “But that sounds suspiciously Hallmarky. I can already see the trailer.”
“Don’t. For the love of hellfire, donotdo the movie announcer voice—”
“In aworldwhere magic isrealand dreams reallydocome true—”
“I’m serious, Finn. Quit while you’re—”
“One witch has adreambigger thanallthe rest.”
“Are you always this obstinate?”
“A burning desire that canonlybe unlocked by aPrince.”
“You’ve missed your calling. Truly.”
“But it’s not Prince Charming riding to her rescue this time. It’s… dun dundun! The Prince of Darknesshimself.” Finn doubles over, and it’s almost enough to make me laugh, too.
Almost. If it weren’t so damned close to the inconvenient truth.
FuckingHell, what a mess.
“What does the witch desire, anyway?” he asks.
“The usual. Money.” I tighten the tie on my smoking jacket, for all that it helps. Hell of a nip in the air, and it’s biting relentlessly on my backside. “She’s trying to bail out her tea shop—place just a few doors down. Sinking ship.”
“Why is ityourship to fix? We’ve got more important things to do than clean up some flighty witch’s bad credit.”
“She’s not flighty, Finn. Just in a bind. It happens.”
He watches me a beat, eyebrows raised, and I realize how oddly defensive I sound. How defensive Ifeelwhen I think of her standing behind her tea counter, curly hair tied back, glasses sliding down her nose as she mixes up her brews, trying to make an honest go of things.
“As I said, I don’t have a choice,” I rush to add. “The magic has bound us together until the task is complete.”
“Which will be when, exactly?”
“However long it takes. Although, she’s only got a month before she’s evicted from the storefront, so… less than that, I suppose.”
“A month? Fuckme, Dev. No, that’s not an invitation.”
“Fuckyourself, Finn. Thatisan invitation.”
“I’m serious. A month is about how long we’ve got left to lock in those last five hundred souls. Fail that, and we’re all smoked.”
My heart drops into my gut as the truth of his words sinks in.
A thousand years—that’s all my father gave me. One millennium to sign over one million souls, or kiss the throne, my home, and my immortality goodbye, cursed to live out the last of my measly years as a powerless mortal, subject to the whims of an angry, vengeful god until I take my last breath.
For their unwavering loyalty, all the demons who chose to accompany me to the human realm—Finn and the twelve additional demons currently serving as my staff in Los Angeles—are cursed to the same fate.
If the task sounds impossible, that’s because it is. Or should have been, anyway. In all his infinite, Godly wisdom, the old man never expected me to accomplish it. Just used it as a way to profit off my ineptitude—kind of his M.O.
But he severely underestimated me and my demon companions. Sure, none of us believed we could do it—not at first. But now that we’re close, I can see it in their eyes. InFinn’seyes. The hope they kept hidden for centuries, finally sparking back to life.
“I suppose we’ll need to cancel tomorrow’s festivities,” he says, the flame in his eyes guttering as the reality of my predicament settles in.
