Page 34 of Fiends and Familiars
And I couldn’t completely blame Ty either. Faust had made a deal then welched on it. Ty was just doing his job in trying to retrieve him. And if I’d had a job to do and encountered a warded house with my quarry locked inside, I might try to sneak in via a dream as well.
It wasn’t Ty’s fault the dream had turned erotic. That…that was probably on both of us. There was an attraction there, and I knew it wasn’t just on my side. Yeth had said Ty had thought himself enchanted. Maybe he’d doubted our attraction to each other just as I’d doubted his intentions.
Yes, he wanted Faust back, but now that I thought about it, he truly hadn’t tried to attack me with his hellhounds. Plus if he’d wanted inside my house to get the squirrel, he wouldn’t have had to endure a putt-putt date with me when he could have broken through the wards and forced his way in.
And he’d left when I told him to, although I knew if he really wanted he could have overpowered me, even with his hellhounds as happy puppies. My magic worked on them, but not on him, and he was far stronger than I was. I had no real defense against demon magic. But he’d walked away from Faust, a soul he’d been hunting down for centuries, because I’d told him to.
Maybe there was some sort of compromise we could reach where Faust paid per the terms of his contract, but not necessarily the traditional hellish punishments. I needed to think on it before I reached out to contact Ty, though. And I definitely needed to get my emotions and heart under control before I saw him again.
You’re not going to turn me over to him, are you?Rhoid asked, twisting his paws nervously together.
“I don’t know. You made a deal, and it’s not my place to protect you when you refuse to hold up your end of the bargain.” Ugh. This was going to get ugly if I couldn’t come up with some compromise. If Ty went to Lucien and complained that I was protecting Faust, things would get very prickly in my family. I wasn’t even sure Cassie would stick up for me on this one. Rhoidhadsold his soul after all.
Unless there was a weird loophole in the contract. I wasn’t a lawyer, but Cassie was. Maybe she could figure something out. It would be better than me trying to come up with a deal. The only problem with that was that I’d need to tell Cassie everything, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that.
But there was one of my sisters I’d definitely tell. Tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep, that is.
“Go hide under the couch with your buddies,” I told Rhoid. “I promise I won’t do anything tonight.”
