***
It took a while, but Cassie briefed the demon on everything that had happened since the morning of the time skip. From Sammael’s lack of response, she guessed that the demons already knew about the time skip. She wondered how much else they knew about what went on in the human world.
When she had finished, Sammael rubbed his eyes; Cassie still couldn’t get past how strange it was to see the creature using so much of Sam’s body language. Whether it was intentional or not, it was creepy. “Quite a mess you two have here; not that I should have expected anything less.”
“What should I do? Since I have his jacket, I can summon him, right?”
“You can,” he said slowly, “but you have to deal with me first. Word to the wise: summon one demon at a time.”
Cassie raised an eyebrow at him; now that he’d revealed he wasn’t going to drag her off to Hell forever, she found it difficult to be properly scared of him, even though she really should be. “I thought you said you weren’t going to do anything to me?”
He jumped off the bed and took a step towards her, causing her to take an involuntary step back. Okay, maybe she was still a little scared of him.
“I said I wouldn’t take you home with me. I never said I wasn’t going to do anything to you.”
She frowned. “Aren’t you worried about Helen?”
He laughed. “Oh, from the mouths of babes! I won’t hurt you, but you have to understand, I have a reputation to consider; one does not get summoned by an innocent virgin—"
“Whose blood runs with liquid magic, you said this part already—"
“—whose blood runs with liquid magic, wearing a very sexy little thing, in the dark of a moonless night, and then just go home with nothing. It’s the principle of the thing, you understand.”
“Not really,” she sighed. Demons and their protocol; it was all the same.
He closed the distance between them, and tucked his finger under her chin again; he seemed to like doing that. “Kiss me.”
She sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“Oh come on, you may be a virgin but you’re not five years old. Kiss me, and then you’ll have a bond with me too. Not as strong as the one with my son, because God-forbid I show up the little bugger and give Helen a conniption, but I get something to save my pride and you get rid of me for the night. How does that sound?”
“Uh…” Cassie mumbled, at a loss. She didn’t want a bond with him, but it sounded like he was giving her a pretty good deal by demon standards, and it’s not like she was exactly swimming in options. A more analytical part of her brain noted that demons seemed to have no trouble saying the word “God.”
“Take the deal,” he said, and suddenly his voice sounded nothing like Sam’s. For a fraction of a second, she sensed the demon behind the human mask, and that was enough to convince her that she’d best do whatever would get him out of the room the fastest. She stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Deal?” she said. He just looked at her for a moment, face unreadable.
“I see why you and my son get along so famously; you probably go to the same club for pathetically inhibited people.”
With that, he pulled her against his body and crushed his lips against hers. Cassie almost screamed, and probably would have if he wasn’t covering her mouth; he felt incredibly hot, and not in the erotic sense; in the molten lava sense. She thought she might burst into flame any second.
“Deal,” he said, and before she could catch her breath, he was gone.