A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch
: Chapter 8

What happened when ambitious little girls were taught to contort themselves into whatever shape society deemed proper, feelings and individual preferences be damned?

Mayor Cynthia Cunnington happened.

Calladia squeezed her hands in her lap as she sat opposite her mother in the living room, trying not to fidget. Her father wasn’t there, of course, off on his never-ending business trip. The high-backed chair was stiff and uncomfortable, despite being covered in beautiful blue brocade. That summed up her childhood home in a nutshell—expensive, tasteful, and painful as hell.

Cynthia didn’t look uncomfortable in the slightest. As Mariel would say, cacti had evolved to thrive in harsh environments. Calladia’s mother perched at the edge of her chair, knees pressed together and feet tucked to the side. Her sheath dress was made of gray-blue satin, smooth as a glassy lake. She was sixty but hardly looked it, considering the mix of magical and nonmagical procedures she’d undergone to maintain the sharp line of her jaw and that stiff expanse of forehead. Her blond hair was rolled into a chignon, her lips were painted pink, and her blue eyes skewered Calladia like daggers.

“What did you say happened to your house?” Cynthia asked in a voice like ice. She’d never liked Calladia’s house—too small, too bright, not at all appropriate for the Cunnington family heir.

“A demon blew it up.” Calladia wasn’t going to mince words; that would only necessitate staying longer.

A long, slow blink while Cynthia processed this. “You seem unharmed.”

“Are you inquiring or informing me? Yes, I’m mostly fine, thank you so much for your concern.” Calladia didn’t bother to strip the sarcasm from her tone. She knew better than to expect motherly fretting, but the tepid response still stung, and the only defense was to sting right back.

“Watch your tone.” Cynthia touched the strand of pearls that perpetually adorned her neck. Not a threat, precisely, but a reminder of where the power in this room resided. Calladia wove spells with thread, but her mother’s necklaces were her own talismans, and the spinning and twisting of beads could portend a nasty spell.

Ambition could twist easily into ruthlessness, and if her mother had ever struggled to fit the Cunnington family mold the way Calladia did, there was no sign of it now. Cunningtons had always been socialites and politicians, as judgmental as they were influential.

“My tone is fine,” Calladia said. “Especially considering I’m nearly thirty years old and you no longer supervise my every action.”

She despised the defensive edge to her words. No matter how much time passed, she still felt like a rebellious teenager, and with the stress of the day wearing at her, Calladia was slipping into old patterns.

Hecate, this house. It scratched at her like one of the poofy dresses she’d been forced to wear growing up. It was straight out of a magazine spread, all silk and brocade, silver and crystal, gray and blue and cream. The Spark family home across the street had also been oppressive for Mariel growing up, but at least that hodgepodge monstrosity had character. The Cunnington home felt like a frozen lake.

Calladia thought of sunshine yellow walls and golden wood, and the loss of her home stabbed her in the gut again.

“How did you antagonize this demon into exploding your house?” Cynthia asked.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Calladia protested. “He thought I was sheltering a rival demon. No idea where he got that from.”

Telling the truth was out of the question. There was no way Cynthia would approve of harboring a demon, especially since a different demon—Oz—had accidentally nearly electrocuted her at the last town hall.

“If he heard that rumor, others may have as well. Is anyone else aware of the situation?” Cynthia grabbed her smartphone and started typing, no doubt some message to her beleaguered assistant, who was tasked with everything from procuring exotic potion ingredients to crafting social media responses to emergent crises. Crises such as family members pissing off demons, apparently.

“I mean, probably,” Calladia said. “Considering all the smoke and fire.” As explosions went, it hadn’t been subtle.

“No, I mean, does anyone know it was an attack, not an accident?” Cynthia’s thumbs stilled on her phone, and she looked up. If Calladia’s announcement had temporarily stunned her, she was back in action, the crafty expression on her face indicating an upcoming bout of scheming. “Then again, that could be a compelling campaign trail narrative. An underhanded attack against my daughter, no doubt funded by a rival candidate—”

Calladia shot to her feet, outraged. “Do not twist the destruction of my house into propaganda. You aren’t even up for reelection for two years.”

“It’s never too early to start planning.” Cynthia typed more, then set the phone aside. She clasped her hands in her lap and widened her blue eyes in a sympathetic expression that made Calladia’s teeth itch. That look was normally turned on unwitting constituents. “I understand this must have been upsetting, Calladia, but every setback carries an opportunity if you can control the message.”

Calladia focused on regulating her breathing. Her mother sounded so earnest, like she was imparting essential wisdom to a beloved daughter. It was an act she’d gotten eerily good at since deciding to run for public office, and Calladia hated the mask even more than she hated her mother’s overt disapproval. “I don’t want to control a message,” Calladia said. “I want to get some supplies from the basement and leave.”

“Leave and go where?” Cynthia looked confused. “The guest room is available.”

The guest room had once been Calladia’s bedroom, not that there was any evidence of it now. The soccer posters and athletic trophies had vanished while she’d been away for her first semester at college, and the daisy-patterned bedspread had been replaced with a plain cream comforter. The carpet that had borne witness to a young witch’s mishaps—burn marks, caked-on wax, spices ground into the fibers—had been ripped out and replaced with hardwood.

Calladia hadn’t stayed in the guest room since college. The sanitized version of her childhood bedroom only reminded her that her mother would sanitize her if she could.

“Thank you, but no,” Calladia said. “I just need some of my things from storage.”

Cynthia sighed and rose to her feet, smoothing her already smooth skirt. “I don’t understand why you insist on being spiteful. After all I’ve done—”

“What have you done?” Calladia demanded, the thin thread of her restraint snapping. “Other than constantly shame me for not turning out exactly like you.”

“I don’t need you to be exactly like me,” Cynthia said. The two women were facing off now, shoulders set in the same confrontational angle. They’d always looked alike, eye color aside, with tempers to match. “But I do expect some amount of proper comportment. After all the etiquette lessons, the private schools, your father and I sparing no expense to give you a foundation for a prosperous life, this is how you repay me? With attitude and ingratitude?”

Her voice had risen, and Calladia felt a sick surge of malicious joy at having rattled her unflappable mother. “I don’t need to repay you for anything,” she said. “I just want the freedom to live my life the way I want.”

Cynthia laughed scornfully. “And how is that? Lifting weights until you look like a man, wasting your talents on a menial job, living like you have no responsibilities to the family?”

Calladia flinched. She liked her bulky shoulders and muscled thighs, adored seeing the lines of strength in the mirror, but even if she knew her mother’s idea of what a woman could be was outdated and reductive, the words stung. Sam had flung that accusation at her after a few months of dating, complaining he didn’t like being seen with such a masculine woman. And Calladia, still young and desperate for the affection she’d been denied at home, had reshaped herself for him. Once she was weak enough to fit Sam’s definition of beauty though, he’d found something else to harp on.

Her mother was still talking. “You make a fool of yourself in public. Getting in fights, dressing like a pauper, pulling stunts like mouthing off at the town hall. Now you’re meddling with demons? You ought to be married and contributing to the family legacy, but you drove off your only high-value suitor, breaking off the engagement—”

Calladia’s rage meter maxed out. “Don’t you dare speak about Sam.”

Cynthia made a frustrated noise and threw her hands up. “I want you to have a future!” she exclaimed. “But you fight me at every turn.”

Calladia tugged at the neckline of her shirt as if that could ease the choking feeling. The house squeezed in around her; if she stayed, she would be crushed. “I’m getting my things,” Calladia said through the tightness in her throat.

She turned, ignoring her mother’s protests, and headed for the door leading to the basement. This dark, cluttered space was where the Cunningtons shoved everything not fit for public eyes. Storage boxes, files, abandoned exercise equipment, tacky family heirlooms . . . it was a wonder Calladia herself hadn’t been locked up down here during her adolescence like some subterranean version of Rapunzel, left to rot in the dark.

She yanked the chain for the single bulb overhead, then jogged down the stairs, imagining Mariel at her side. Mushrooms do quite well in the dark, Mariel would say. They clean up waste and toxins in the soil, and they build complex networks underground. They offer a lot more to the world than just looking pretty.

Calladia could be a mushroom. Better that than a delicate flower slowly dying in a vase.

The few boxes of her belongings were crammed into a corner next to a box of old photo albums. The air smelled musty; some other fungus was probably eating the paper. She’d paged through those albums back in the day, marveling at the photos of her as a chubby-cheeked baby. Then she’d wondered why the photos had grown less frequent over the years, and why she had only ever been photographed fresh-scrubbed and wearing a dress, lips twisted in a forced smile.

There weren’t any photos of her past age fifteen.

Calladia ignored the photos and started digging through the two boxes someone—probably Cynthia’s assistant—had written Calladia on in cursive Sharpie. School textbooks, childhood books she hadn’t been willing to get rid of, the ribbons and trophies she’d boxed up before the ones on display had been purged. She’d meant to retrieve them and move them into her house, but she’d always found a reason to postpone returning to her childhood home.

Her chest felt tight as she dug through the memories. There was no need to revisit report cards or the notebook she and Mariel had taken turns scribbling in during middle school, gushing about crushes and complaining about their mothers, but she did it anyway. These were artifacts, telling the story of the girl she’d been before hardening into the woman she was now.

As soon as she found somewhere new to live, she would take them with her.

The second box held college magic textbooks and spare equipment: a collapsible cauldron for potions on the go, a skein of rainbow-dyed yarn, chalk for marking inscriptions, and sachets of dried herbs. She picked up the whole box, not wanting to linger to pick and choose what would be most helpful.

Calladia’s mother was waiting at the top of the stairs, mouth twisted in a frown. There were lines beside her eyes she either hadn’t tried or hadn’t been able to eliminate. “I know you don’t believe me,” Cynthia said, “but I’ve only ever wanted the best for you.”

The worst part was, Calladia knew her mother was being, for once, entirely sincere. There was just one problem.

“Your idea of what’s best and mine don’t match, Mom.” Calladia’s voice sounded as tired as her mother looked. “I just wish you could understand that.”

She left before her mother could say anything more.