Page 52 of Baking and Angels

“Have you seen the demon Vassago around here?” Agent Sophia asked softly, taking a small step forward even though there was no one around near enough to overhear. “Has he been stalking you or haunting you oranything?”

“He’s not a ghost, for Heaven’s sake,” Agent Archon muttered at her partner, before turning back to him, bracing her fist on his table. “I hope you haven’t done something unadvisable, like make a deal with Vassago or something? This is a strange way to get started in the culinary industry. A cooking competition.”

“Looks fun though,” Agent Sophia piped in, grinning at the board. “I love cooking shows. I would watch the heck out of something like this.”

“Vassago has nothing to do with me being here,” Rafferty said, meeting Agent Archon’s eye. “If anyone does, it’s Helena, my girlfriend.” He nodded over at where she sat with Cindy, looking worried as they watched him talk to the agents.

Agent Archon narrowed her eyes a little more, studying for cracks in his steely mask.

Then she straightened. “We’ll leave you to your business, Mr. Lares,” she said, stabbing her hands into the pockets of her coat as she nudged Agent Sophia in the shoulder to head towardthe doors.

Agent Sophia gave an apologetic smile and nod as she followed. “Good luck with the final round.”

He warily watched them go. “If they would just kill me, this would all be so much easier,” hemuttered.

“Forty-five minutes left in the round,” the official declared over the speaker, and Rafferty focused onhis work.

His hands flew as he opened the condensed milk and measured out what he needed, adding it to his dry ingredients, chasing it with his wets, including adding the apple cider vinegar at the end. Mixing it well, he felt confident in his creation, eyeing the available fruits to garnish with, or maybe even turn into a glaze.

And then he opened his toaster oven.

Cold.

“Crap,” he muttered, and dropped to his knees to check that the cord was plugged in. It was and when he quickly traced his fingers over the power strip they were all plugged into, he confirmed the strip was on and the other cooks all had power. “This would never happen with fire.”

He unplugged, gathering the cord up with the broken machine and spun to one of the tables that were still waiting to be broken down.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a gruff, familiar voice intoned over his shoulder as he went to grab the hopefully working machine.

Rafferty nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned to meet the swirling whirlpool of black ink eyes of Vassago. The demon in human form grinned wide, his teeth looking normal at first glance, but too sharp the longer you looked. He also was wearing one of those green shirts the other officials were wearing.

“My toaster oven is broken,” Rafferty stated, the words falling out of him in a small voice, like a boy knowing he’d been caught and was in trouble, not because he had done something wrong, but because the bully had caught him. He could feel Vassago’s aura washing over him, emphasizing the fear and self-doubt that always lived in the background. When he had been a demon, he learned how to fight back against it, but he had never felt more fragile or mortal than he did at that moment.

“No,” Vassago said, seizing the machine from his hands. “No substitutions. You have to use whatyou have.”

“It’s broken,” Rafferty repeated, knowing it would do little good.

“What’s going on?” Helena demanded, suddenly appearing at his side, her fists planted on her hips, ready for a fight. The feeling abated some. Was Vassago using his aura to influence him? That wasn’t quite a violation of their agreement. A negative aura spread out from the one producing it, and the longer a demon was in creation the harder it was tosuppress.

Realizing that, Rafferty steeled himself against it. “My toaster oven is broken. I’m trying to swap it out,” Rafferty said to Helena, willing her to be careful. Oldest trick in the book, get the target to fear that the demon had violated the agreement, so they violated it themselves.

Helena flinched as the demon’s aura washed over her, but she furrowed her eyebrows and wrinkled her nose. “Are you one of the judges?”

She didn’t seem to recognize Vassago, but he was unsettling her. The pinch in her brow conveyed that she didn’t know why. Since she had only met the demon a couple of brief times and under a great deal of duress, Rafferty didn’tblame her.

Vassago gave Helena a small leer as he said, “The rules state that he has to use the equipment he was assigned when he starts the round. Switching out equipment in the middle is an automatic disqualification. It’s in the official rules. I didn’t write them.”

“That isn’t fair!” Helena argued, now crossingher arms.

“No, it isn’t fair,” Eleanor agreed, stepping up to the other side of Rafferty, crossing her own arms. “His equipment isn’tworking.”

Vassago narrowed his own eyes at Eleanor, which made his leer seem hungrier. Rafferty’s heartbeat sped up. His deal didn’t extend protection to her, he hadn’t known her until a couple of days ago, and Eleanor would clearly be the perfect target for a demon like Vassago.

“You’re not allowed to mess with me,” Rafferty said, his ears ringing in his panic. Why were they ringing?

“I didn’t,” Vassago said. “It’s not my fault either if the equipment gets broken. I didn’t do it, nor did I make the rules. Like I said, I’m just enforcing them. The rules are the rules. Finish your dish or be disqualified.” It was clear that he was mocking him, but mocking wasn’t a violation of their deal.

With that, the demon turned on his heels and walked back to the official’s table, having done whatever he needed to at the crucial moment he needed to do it. He may not have broken the toaster oven, since he couldn’t have even made sure that Rafferty ended up with it. That would have been a violation, but enforcing existing rules made by others at the exact moment it hurt Rafferty insulated the demon from the “spirit” of theagreement.

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