Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend Read Free

special.” The black widow preened. “Ah! This could be it!” The tiny screen glowed, projecting an eerie blue against her face.
    “Elle, you’ve been searching for the right hex to keep your lovers alive for centuries,” the witch told her. “And so far, every hex has been either a total bust or a hoax.”
    “The perfect hex is there. I know it. And now the web can be cast worldwide. If you can’t come up with one, I will.” She clicked her tiny mouse and read away.
    “There’s nothing like a lovesick black widow spider,” Sybil said.
    Maggie half closed the bathroom door and stepped into the shower. The witch had no trouble washing off the protection sigils written on her bare midriff, but she found the thick mucus harder to deal with.
    “I’ll need a blasting spell to get this crap off! For Fates’ sake, it’s even in my hair!” She dumped half a bottle of shampoo on her head and dug her fingers into the mess, yelping when the bubbles dribbled down her face and into her eyes.
    “Zap it out.”
    “This muck is so bad that if I did that, I could end up bald.” Maggie’s words were garbled under the strong shower spray.
    Sybil examined her nails, painted a shimmery lilac to match her wings. “It’s times like this I’m glad I don’t work in the field.” Her iridescent lavender hair hung in thick waves down her back. “Although there are moments when I think you have more fun than I do working here in the compound.”
    While she looked as fragile as a paper-thin china teacup, Sybil’s sweet smile and calm nature made her an effective interrogator. If the smile didn’t work, she always managed somehow to make their prisoners cry a lake of tears while making them give up whatever she wanted to know. In her own way, the elf was as strong as Maggie—and just as formidable.
    The Hellion Guard was known as protectors for all creatures in this world and others. A form of supernatural military that was under the Ruling Council’s mantle, the members were based throughout the world, set up to be ready for any alert that could harm any preternatural being or human.
    They may have flown under the human radar, but they were there to keep everyone safe.
    This branch of the Hellion Guard lived on a compound outside Houston, Texas, near a typical American suburb. The Guard was as close to a home and family as Maggie had known since being kicked out of the Witches’ Academy with her classmates some seven hundred years ago. She’d come a long way from the frightened little girl that Eurydice, the Head Witch, had rescued from the disaster of a plague-stricken town.
    “Now I’ll have to clean out the shower, because there’s no way I’m leaving that for the brownies to scrub when they come in to clean,” Maggie grumbled, walking out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped snugly around her clean body and her hair wrapped in a second towel.
    Thanks to the brownies that performed all the domestic tasks for the Guards, she never had to worry about dusting, vacuuming, and doing laundry. But brownies were touchy and secretive—they didn’t like you to acknowledge their work, and there was a limit as to how big a mess they’d allow.
    “I heard that the club has a hot-looking owner.”
    Maggie ignored Sybil’s gentle probing, even though she knew she would eventually have to comment. The delicate elf had a stubborn streak that made a mule look downright malleable.
    Wouldn’t you know it? I meet a cute guy, and he turns out to be demon and owner of a club that’s always been on the Guard’s watch list of shady locales.
    Not exactly boyfriend material. Like she’d know what a boyfriend was.
    Dating didn’t seem to be in Maggie’s cards.
    If she was smart, she’d get a new deck.
    “Demon.” She pulled the towel off and rubbed her hair partially dry before she ran a comb through it, leaving it hanging loose around her face. “I’d guess no more than half demon,” she corrected herself. “But even a