How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

dry if he could get away with it. For his own protection, of course. He’d never broken a deal before. For a demon, he was reliable. While some of his cronies thought it was terrible, having a reputation as being dependable, he’d found it good for business. It meant more summonings, which meant more corruption ultimately spread around. Sure, most of it was bitch work, but it kept him in the Big Boss’s good graces—which was important to everyone who didn’t fancy roasting on a spit.
    Grace rolled over and laid her head on his chest. From her light snore, he could tell that she was still asleep.
    Sleep. That was something Caspian loved about being topside. Only when he was corporeal did he get to sleep and eat corn dogs. And chocolate. Oh, by the Adversary, did he ever love chocolate. And Warcraft. The game was a personal triumph for the Big Boss, originally designed for demon R and R. He played every chance he got. If he’d been a mortal man, Caspian knew he would have started out handsome but ended up a sloppy fatso living in his mom’s basement and subsisting on corn dogs and Milky Way bars, jacking off to cybersex on one screen while gaming on another. With that thought, he looked at Grace. Once again, he was very interested in her naked breasts, in the curve of her bottom lip and—
    An eye cracked open. “You’ll just have to wait. My snatch is not a Bag of Holding. Nothing else will fit today. I am not a demon; therefore, I have no regenerative powers. I’ve had a baby, so I don’t think it’s going to just snap back into place. Sorry.”
    She didn’t sound the least bit sorry, but Caspian found he couldn’t be miffed with her when she curled into him like that. But, again with the nipple-twisting pain. Was she a virus only a demon could catch? That had to be it.
    Wait, what did she mean by “baby”? There was no baby smell to the house, no maternal scent to her.
    “Is that why you want to get Michael Grigorovich?” he asked.
    “Yeah. Why do you care?”
    “I don’t,” he said. But he felt a cold chill up his spine and wasn’t sure of the reason. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. “I just need to know what I’m dealing with. To be effective.”
    Grace opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbow. “He stole my child from me. I know that the parental bond probably doesn’t mean much to a demon, but I want my son. He doesn’t even know what I look like. Michael took him from me as soon as he was born. It’s been four years. I just lost my last court appeal—and all without ever getting a physical hearing.”
    Caspian felt another tightening in his chest. “How did he get away with that?”
    “Money. Power. Connections. All things that he’s gotten from trafficking with demons.”
    “Who am I up against? You should have told me this at the summoning. This information was not figured into the contract.” Caspian felt a faint glimmer of hope that he’d be able to get out of the deal by exploiting a loophole. Then, no more torture.
    “I knew you would try to find a way out of this.”
    The look on her face would have broken his heart if he’d had one. Not to mention that damnable pain in his chest doubled down again with the cold chill on his back. He thought for a moment the sensation might be guilt, but how could that happen? Guilt wasn’t possible for a demon. “Damn it, who is it? Which demon did he make his deal with?”
    “Ethelred.”
    “Oh.” Caspian laughed. “For a minute there I thought this was going to be a challenge. If it had been Lilith or maybe, say, someone closer in line for the throne, that might have been a problem.”
    “That’s why I summoned you specifically. I want my son back.”
    “I can do that,” Caspian said.
    “I want to be safe from Michael.”
    “I can do that, too.”
    He would have provided her safety regardless. The thought of someone hurting Grace did not sit well with him. Not that he cared to examine the thought at any length.