Free Accidentally Demonic by Dakota Cassidy Page B

her friends, then shrugged with a light lift of her shoulders. “Um, nope.”
    Pinching the bridge of her nose, Casey tried another tack. “Okay, how about this—does anyone else think this joker’s cheese is sliding off his cracker because he believes he actually had a demon’s blood?”
    “Clayton has to drink blood in order to function, honey,” Wanda soothed. “I know what you’re going to say—this is crazy—but in our world, it’s like taking your vitamins or eating your vegetables, you know? It’s what Nina, Clayton, and myself included, need to survive.” She bit her lip and winced when Casey gawked at her. “It just is—though I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone we know drinking demon’s blood. I didn’t even know demons truly existed other than the occasional gossip I’ve heard at parties, which you can’t always trust. But after the past couple of years, there isn’t much I’d doubt at this point. So no, I guess there isn’t a whole lot we find very surprising at this point.”
    Clayton’s jaw twitched, but his expression remained poker-faced. “Demon’s blood is a delicacy—a exceptional one. In your world, Casey, it’s like a human’s one-hundred-year-old Scotch or a Cuban cigar. It’s something to be savored. But I think, although I can’t be sure, my spilling it on you somehow left you with a manifestation of some demon traits. It’s the only explanation for your levitation, which—I’ll say once more—might seem inconvenient now, but in the long run could be really cool.”
    “And her fireballs—don’t forget those,” Nina reminded them, holding up a strand of her self-healed hair.
    And so there it was. Four rational adults, talking about demons and blood like it was normal—nay, like it was sane.
    So okay, insanity aside, at least she knew what she was dealing with, and some of what they all said had to have some kind of merit. There was absolutely no denying what she’d been doing before Clayton Whateversson had shown up.
    Now all they had to do was fix it. Surely if she could fix some of the debacles Lola and Lita got into, she could find a way to fix this. It was what she was good at—making everything better, cleaning up sticky messes. The only thing was, this time she couldn’t clean it up with a chunk of Mr. Castalano’s cash or his lawyer—which could prove problematic but maybe not impossible. Nothing was impossible.
    Squaring her shoulders, Casey summoned all of her hard-acquired skills, and made a desperate, internal plea for patience. Rolling up her sleeves, she stood before Clayton, disregarding the wonky tingle he evoked that made her light-headed, and instead, dug into her reservoir of determination. “Okay, so let’s just say, for argument’s sake, I’m a demon. Yay me. You’re nothing short of upstanding for rushing over here to tell me you were the one responsible for my—my issue. It’s obvious I can’t deny something’s happened to me, though I admit to a great deal of reluctance believing what’s going on has to do with demon’s blood, but that’s neither here nor there. You all seem to speak a language I don’t understand. Either way, it’s not a language I want to speak.
    “What I do want to know is what we do next. I think you probably get that I don’t want to levitate or shoot fireballs from my fingertips. There’s a certain amount of discomfort and awkward moments to be had if you can set someone’s hair on fire just because they made you angry. So if you know you did this to me, and you know how it happened, you must have a solution or you wouldn’t have taken the risk in coming over here when daylight is rapidly approaching and you vampires melt in the sun.” She fought the urge to snort. “So go ahead and do whatever it is that you have to and make this all go away. Just let me know if I should prepare for an act that’s painful. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but I’m sure I have a limit that can