“He’s not my new hot friend. And if you call him that tomorrow, I’ll die. I really will.”
“Okay, okay. Mr. New Hot Friend is our little secret.” Raya raised her soda bottle like she was making a toast.
“He’s not a secret! And he’s not hot.” Erin felt a blush creep over her cheeks.
Raya rolled her eyes. “Fine. He’s not hot, he’s not a secret, and he’s definitely not a rebound.” She brushed the crumbs off her hands and stood. “I gotta get back to the stacks. See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Erin agreed. It was just lunch.
What could go wrong?
8
Erin opened the front door to find the living room transformed.
Andy, with a marker in each hand and one tucked behind his left ear, stood in the center of the chaos.
“You’re home! Don’t mind the mess. It’s part of my process,” he said.
Erin froze just inside the door, unable to take a single step. Papers covered the entire floor. Posters lined every open wall space. A stack of binders teetered on the coffee table.
“Oops,” he said, realizing that she couldn’t move. He hastily gathered up an armful to clear a path for her.
“Thanks,” she said. “What is all this?”
“The Plan.” He gestured grandly, waving the markers through the air. The one tucked behind his ear fell out due to the vigorous motion. He picked it up and balanced it precariously on the stack of binders.
It immediately rolled off and fell to the floor.
Nancy Drew wandered over and sniffed it, then lost interest and sat down on a stack of paper.
Erin picked her way over to the couch. “Did you even sleep last night, Andy?”
“Sleep is for mortals,” he said, adding a few underlines and messy star shapes to a poster titled “CAR-RELATED MISHAPS.”
“You sat up all night?”
“Something like that.” He stuck a fluorescent Post-It note to a poster labeled “UNWANTED PIZZA DELIVERY.”
She stretched out on the couch, put her feet up, and let her eyes close. “I guess demons don’t dream,” she murmured to herself, recalling the strange half-dream she’d had the night of the curse.
“Nope. But I can visit other people’s,” he said casually.
Erin’s eyes flew open. “Really?”
“Yup.” He circled an entry on the “EMBARRASSING MAIL ORDER CATALOGS” poster.
She shifted her position to look more carefully at another poster. “What are ‘Food and Drink Surprises’?”
“You know. Salt in the sugar bowl. Cool Whip in the mayo jar. Then you use the mayo you took out of the jar to replace the cream in some doughnuts.”
Erin nearly gagged at the thought. “That’s hideous.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You are the Michaelangelo of mayhem.”
He acknowledged the compliment with a flourish. “Thank you.”
“Speaking of mayhem, it turns out that my classroom was way worse than I thought. I could use a hand tomorrow, if you’re free.”
He sat on the opposite end of the couch. “You don’t mind if I’m seen?”
“Do you have anything else you can wear?”
Andy feigned outrage. “And abandon my signature outfit?”
“Maybe something a little less conspicuous.”
“If you insist.”He stood up and placed his hands on his shoulders, then ran them slowly over his chest and down his abdomen to the tops of his thighs.
Erin sat up, her gaze tracking the movement of his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Exactly what you asked.”
The fabric of his jacket rippled like a tilted lenticular image, changing from deep red to a professorial brown corduroy, spreading downward until his trousers also transitioned from waist to cuff.
Erin closed her mouth, which had been hanging open. “That’s … very nice. But maybe a little formal for moving boxes in ninety degree weather?”
He cocked his head at her and ran his hands down his torso again, holding eye contact the entire time. This time, his ensemble rippled into a buttoned chambray shirt tucked into artfully distressed blue jeans and a jet-black leather belt.
Erin’s mouth went dry. “Nice,” she croaked.
He smirked. “I’m glad you approve.” He rolled up his sleeves and turned back to his posters.
She felt the urge to do something for him, since he had clearly made such an effort for her. “Are you hungry? Do demons get hungry?”
Andy chuckled. “Not as a physical need, no—but appetite is a sensation of the mind, and in that sense I have hunger to spare.”
“Can I fix you something?”
“Not on your life. You’ve been moving boxes all day. Lie down. I’ll get us something.”
“No, really, I don’t mind.” Erin started up from the couch.
He whirled around and stared her down. “Sit, mortal, before you overexert yourself.”
“I don’t know whether to be insulted or grateful,” said Erin.
“As you please,” he said with a shrug. “As long as you stay put.” He left the living room for the kitchen.
She lay back and listened to the pleasantly domestic sounds of his movements.
“Do you have a tray?” he called.
“In the cabinet on the lower right.”
She heard the cabinet door opening and the rasp of the tray being extracted, followed by a thump.
“Got it—oh.”
“What is it?”
“Something fell out of the cabinet. No big deal.”
Erin jumped off the couch and ran to the kitchen with Nancy Drew belatedly skittering in her wake. She walked in to find Andy closing a white, heavily decorated, oversized photo album.
He shoved it back in the cabinet and quickly slammed the cabinet closed. “See? No big deal.”
“You saw it,” she said.
He stood up and fussed with the fruit on the cutting board. “Saw what?”
“For a demon, you’re a terrible liar.”
Andy loaded the food onto the tray and carried it into the living room without saying anything. He set the tray on the coffee table and sat on the couch without making eye contact.