Free What a Demon Wants by Kathy Love

real threat to Ellina. After that meeting, Jude agreed.
    He placed the papers beside his computer and typed in his password. Within moments, he was connected to the Internet. Fortunately Ellina had unsecured wireless. She should have it password protected, but for his purposes now, he was glad she didn’t.
    He pulled up his favorite search engine, then typed in “demons Pasha Andrey.” The search returned almost instantaneously with dozens of results. He’d half-expected to get nothing—suspecting that twins’ human names weren’t their demon names, which was true.
    They were better known as Andras, the demon of quarrels, and Pyro, the demon of falsehoods. But their human names were close enough, making the search easier than he expected.

    Jude read through the descriptions of them, making notes. They were primarily, as Ellina had described them, tricksters. Relatively low-level demons deriving most of their powers from causing rifts and misunderstandings and meddling.
    But Jude didn’t disregard them. Anyone could be dangerous. Anyone could kill—
    especially demons. More likely, since they were low level, it was possible that they could be working for someone else.
    Ellina’s father. The twins had mentioned him and said he wasn’t happy with his daughter. Were they working on his behalf? Could a father—even one who was a demon—
    want his daughter dead?
    Of course.
    Jude had seen far more disturbing things in his two thousand years.
    Jude continued to review Maksim’s notes and research on the other demons he’d mentioned, including Ellina and Maksim’s father, who was a very strong demon. He was not as easy to research. Higher level demons did much better jobs of keeping their identities and abilities unknown. They spread conflicting information themselves, making it hard to know what was fact and what was fiction.
    If only they had a snopes.com for demons.
    By the time Jude finished his research, the living room was dim with graying shadows. He checked the clock on his computer. A little after seven o’clock.
    The house was quiet expect for the occasional faint sound from Ellina’s office.
    Jude straightened away from his laptop, rotating his shoulders to get the kinks out.
    Leaning over the coffee table to type wasn’t ideal, especially not at his height. Being immortal didn’t exclude him from minor aches and pains. There’d been many a fight in his past that had left him hurting afterward, he just didn’t hurt as long. And, at least as of yet, he hadn’t died.
    He stretched again. Ellina must be sore too, hunched over her papers. His stomach rumbled. And she had to be hungry as well.
    Dinner. That’s something he could do to help her. Cooking would help settle his thoughts and would allow him to work through all the information he’d just found.
    He rose and headed down the now dim hallway toward the kitchen. Ellina had turned on a lamp in her office, and muted light filtered out into the hallway from her doorway.

    He moved silently, stopping outside the door to check on her. She sat at her desk, her attention centered on piles of papers. She scanned one, then debated between the multiple stacks, a frown creasing her brow as she considered her next move.
    She chose one of the piles and placed the page on top. She looked back to the next page in front of her, her eyes moving from left to right over the words. Her brow was furrowed, and strain pulled at the corners of her mouth. Yet her obvious focus and stress didn’t lessen her loveliness.
    Jude watched her a moment longer, noticing that she’d pulled her hair back into a messy bun. Her skin glowed buttery gold in the lamplight. She worried her bottom lip as she concentrated on her reading.
    Jude’s body reacted instantly to the sight. White teeth biting into soft, pink flesh. He stepped slowly away from the doorway as if carefully backing away from something that could lunge at him. Something that could attack.
    Attack. That wasn’t the