Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex: Demonized #1)(41)

His glowing eyes didn’t shift from Amalia’s face.

She whimpered weakly. “I’ll help. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Smart hh’ainun,” he crooned, opening his hand. He stepped off her and folded his arms expectantly.

I stared at him, then at Amalia, my limbs quivering. Her teary glare burned with hatred as, wincing and cringing, she gingerly sat up.

“I—I didn’t tell him to do that,” I choked. “I didn’t, I swear.”

Her mouth trembled as she fought back tears. Sucking in a breath, she straightened her spine. “I dropped my backpack. I need to go get it, then we should find a hotel.”

Just like that, she was tough-Amalia again, pretending nothing had happened and a vicious demon wasn’t one word away from ripping her apart. I wished I had half her backbone.

“Okay,” I mumbled, climbing to my feet.

Amalia got up far more slowly, each movement triggering a wince. Without the contract, without Zylas’s promise, he could have done the same to me. His interpretation of “protect,” whatever it might be, was all that kept me safe from his strength, his claws, and his merciless brutality.

He watched me, arms folded, tail lashing impatiently.

I was bound to him. He was my demon. And if I couldn’t control him, he would kill a lot of people before he and I landed in an early grave.





Chapter Seventeen





Amalia scrubbed both hands over her face, then dropped them into her lap.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she said. “You were feeding the demon in the library because … I still don’t understand your reasoning, but whatever. You were feeding it. Travis saw you.”

I nodded.

“This afternoon, while we were out, Travis took you downstairs and Dad’s clients were there. Travis had made a deal with them.”

I bobbed my head again.

“And then …” She took a deep breath. “And then you made a contract with the demon to save yourself.”

“Yes,” I whispered, not minding that she’d skipped over the worst part.

We were sitting side by side on a stiff bed, heads bent together to hear each other’s quiet murmurs over the blaring television. This was the first motel we’d found and we’d checked into the double-queen room thirty minutes ago. Amalia had cleaned and bandaged her scraped elbows and knees with the first-aid kit from the front desk while I told her the whole story.

“You couldn’t have had much time to lay out a contract,” she muttered, picking at a tear in the skirt of her dress. “You definitely missed a few key clauses.”

“What are the key clauses?”

“There are a lot. What did you include in your contract?”

“Well, he …” I fidgeted with the infernus’s chain around my neck. “He has to protect me.”

“That’s vague. What else?”

“In exchange, I’m supposed to … make him cookies.”

She stared at me expectantly, waiting for the joke’s punchline. “Are you serious?”

“I was bleeding to death,” I mumbled in embarrassment. “It was all I could think of.”

“You’re supposed to promise the demon your soul when you die.”

“Why would I give him my soul?”

“Don’t you know what the Banishment Clause is?” When I shook my head, she sighed. “Okay, so once a demon is summoned to Earth, it can’t return to its own world—except with a soul it’s bound to. When you die, the demon is supposed to use your soul to escape our world. The Banishment Clause is crucial to a contract because without it, your demon is set loose when you die.”

“Zylas wanted my soul, but I said no.”

She huffed. “The demon must’ve been more desperate than you to agree to that. What else did you negotiate?”

“That’s it.”

“No, I mean, what other clauses did you two agree on?”

“None.”

“What do you mean, none?”

I shrugged self-consciously. “He protects me in exchange for baked goods. That’s … that’s the whole contract.”

Horrified disbelief twisted her face and she turned toward the room’s opposite end. I followed her gaze.

Zylas was crouched on the dresser, his tail swishing back and forth in front of the drawers. His nose was an inch from the wall-mounted TV, his head tilted. As we watched, he leaned sideways to peer behind the screen, trying to figure out where the picture and sound were coming from.

“Protect you,” Amalia whispered with a shudder. “You know a proper contract is about fifty pages long, right? You have to cover every possible scenario or the demon will find a loophole. Did you even define what ‘protect you’ involves?”

“No. He says he gets to decide what it means.”

Shivering again, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you realize that demon doesn’t have to obey you? It can do whatever it wants, as long as you aren’t hurt in the process. I don’t understand why it isn’t already on a killing spree.”

Zylas’s tail lashed, thudding against the dresser. He peered around the other side of the television.