Page 6 of Exorcise Me
By the time we finished dessert—a tiramisu that actually made me groan out loud when I tasted it, causing Lucien’s eyes to darken in a way I tried not to think about—I realized I was enjoying myself. With a demon. A very charming, funny, intelligent demon who looked at me like I was more interesting than anyone he’d met in centuries.
It was dangerous. It was forbidden. It was… nice.
As we walked back to my apartment, the cool night air cleared some of the wine-induced warmth from my head. Reality began to seep back in. I was an exorcist. He was a demon. This couldn’t work.
“You’re overthinking again,” Lucien said, breaking the comfortable silence between us. “I can practically hear the gears grinding.”
“I’m thinking about what happens next,” I admitted. “This—” I gestured between us “—isn’t supposed to happen. Exorcists don’t befriend demons.”
“And yet here we are, defying convention.” He bumped my shoulder lightly with his. “Perhaps the universe has a sense of humor.”
We reached my apartment building, and I paused at the entrance, key in hand. “One night,” I reminded him. “That was our agreement.”
Lucien looked up at the night sky, stars barely visible through the city lights. “One night,” he agreed. “Though time is such a flexible concept, isn’t it?”
I pushed open the door, already knowing I was making a mistake that would either ruin me or remake me entirely.
Maybe both.
Chapter 3
Five days later, Lucien was still on my couch.
“This isn’t working,” I announced, standing over him with my arms crossed.
Lucien looked up from my laptop, which he’d commandeered to watch cooking videos. “You’re right. Your wifi is atrocious. How do you live like this?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I ran a hand through my hair, a habit that had increased exponentially since his arrival. “You said one night.”
“Did I?” He tilted his head innocently. “How time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Fun is not the word I’d use,” I muttered, though it wasn’t entirely true. Despite my initial panic, the past five days had settled into a strange but not unpleasant routine. Lucien cooked meals that made me question everything I thought I knew about food. We talked—about theology, philosophy, history (which he corrected with alarming frequency, insisting he’d “been there”). At night, he sprawled on my couch while I retreated to my bedroom, both of us pretending we didn’t feel the strange tension that seemed to fill the apartment after dark.
“What word would you use, then?” Lucien closed the laptop and sat up, giving me his full attention. The movement caused his black t-shirt to ride up slightly, revealing a slice of toned stomach that I definitely did not notice.
“Inconvenient,” I said firmly. “Inappropriate. Dangerous.”
“Mmm, now we’re getting somewhere.” His smile was slow and deliberate. “Danger is far more interesting than fun, don’t you think?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I have a job, Lucien. A calling. I’m supposed to be banishing demons, not… not…”
“Hosting one for an extended sleepover?” he supplied. “Making breakfast for one? Watching one reorganize your bookshelf by color rather than subject because ‘aesthetics matter, Noah’?”
Despite myself, I smiled at the memory of finding him arranging my books into a rainbow pattern, insisting that my organizational system was “an offense against beauty.” He’d been wearing reading glasses at the time—completely unnecessarily, he later admitted, but he thought they made him look “scholarly and sexy.”
They had, which was beside the point.
“I got a call today,” I said, sobering. “From Father Finnegan. There’s another case.”
Lucien’s playful expression vanished. “Ah. And now the moral crisis arrives right on schedule.”
“It’s not a crisis,” I insisted. “It’s my duty.”
“And where is this alleged demonic activity?” He made air quotes around ‘demonic activity.’
“An old Victorian house in Parkside. The family reports strange noises, objects moving, cold spots—”
“Sounds like a drafty old house and a radiator that needs replacing,” Lucien interrupted, standing up. He moved with that strange fluid grace he always had, like gravity was merely a suggestion he occasionally honored. “But by all means, go perform your holy magic tricks for the scared humans.”
