The Price of Exorcism

it was. Well,Mal just drank whatever struck his fancy, being a vampire and all. Sadly, pizzadidn't agree with him. His one shortcoming so far.
"Sabian had a family emergency. He will hopefullybe back soon." I crossed my fingers that soon would be tonight as weheaded into the office I shared with Billy. He was doing more and more of theadministrative stuff I hated, and I'd given him an appropriate raise to make upfor it. He said he didn't mind. I couldn't understand how he liked doing it,but as long as it got done and Billy was happy, that was the important part.
"Here." Billy tossed a shirt at me.
It was my size, one of the V-necked cuts, and blackwith a pepperoni pizza on the chest and an upside-down pentagram emblazoned onthe pizza.
I laughed. "These are perfect. Hang on a sec, I'mgoing to throw this on real quick."
Yep, definitely going to hell, but at least I wasgoing to look unique doing it.
I slipped out to the bathroom, did a quick change, andcame back.
"What do you think?"
Billy grinned approval. "It's great, Boss. Okay,here are the numbers."
He thrust some paperwork at me, and I did my best notto let my eyes glaze over.
∞ ∞∞
When I got home, I got the eye candy I had not sosecretly hoped for. I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve a man, or vampire,like Mal in my life, but he had not failed on his promise to teach Aaron aboutswords.
And Aaron was as fine a sight as Mal, just indifferent ways. Muscular, but tall and lean, his dark skin glistened with asheen of sweat. He'd even shed his shirt in the relative privacy of my frontyard and the white wing markings draped down his back just begged me to run myfingers, or maybe my tongue, over them. The eyes on his pecs and biceps were alittle creepy, but still pretty awesome.
Mal was showing Aaron what I gathered were the basicsand he seemed like he had picked it up quickly. They flowed through a fewpositions before Mal called a halt to the lesson.
Sometime during my admiration of the eye candy, I'dmanaged to get parked and get out of my car, and they both came over to me. Malhung back and I pulled Aaron down for a kiss before going over to Mal and doingthe same with him.
"Having fun?" I asked Aaron.
"Yeah. Mal's a good teacher." Aaron grinnedat the vampire. "He puts up with my fumbles."
Mal shrugged. "Aaron, you've never held a swordbefore. You're doing quite well. Better than most, in fact. You may have someinnate abilities from your angelic blood that give you an edge with a sword."
I chuckled.
Mal gave me a long-suffering look. "No punintended."
Aaron grinned and nodded, accepting Mal's assessment.
"I still need to talk to my folks about that one,"Aaron muttered.
"Good luck with that," I replied.
Aaron hunched his shoulders.
"Oh," I added as we went inside, Mayhem onmy heels. "I got another demon charm we need to get rid of." I'dforgotten to text Mal about bringing crystals home. Damn it. "I'm going togo put it in the basement. We'll have to take care of that before we try tosummon Sabian back."
Neither of them replied right away and I headed forthe basement. Since I'd dug up all of my occult tools, the basement looked alittle different than it had a few weeks ago.
Mal had put some heavy-duty wards on the workspace andit had a quiet quality I'd not been able to achieve on my own. Though I knewthe vampire had centuries of practice under his belt, it bugged me that hiswards were so much better than mine. Still, I was grateful.
Aaron had found a few antique bookshelves and a workbenchfor me somewhere and they fit right into the workspace. I'd happily placed mycollection of books and tools on the shelves and in the cabinet Mal had turnedup with.
I scanned the workspace, making sure I didn't noticeanything out of place, then stepped over the silver circle inlayed into theconcrete floor. I had sealed the concrete so that I could easily draw on it andremove the markings later. Sealing it also made up for some of the porousnature of the material and made it safer to work. I tugged the bag out of mypocket and opened it, cracking the seal on the spell. I'd have to reset it, butit had done its job quite well.
As soon as the seal opened, exposing the demon imbuedcharm to the protective circle, I felt the protections snap to life. I shookthe charm, a simple solid circle of silver, out on the workbench and left itthere. I could pass through the circle with only minor disruption because I nolonger held the charm.
"I'll be back down to set you straight in a few,demon," I said, not knowing if the creature could hear me, and hoping itwanted to go home.
Throwing the bag on the other work bench, the oneoutside the protective circle, I made a mental note to recharge it. I did havea couple more that I'd prepared and now that I knew they worked like a charm–haha–I would make others. I took one of the intact pouches and put it in mypocket in case I needed it and headed upstairs.
Mal, bless him, had started something for dinner and Ithought I heard the guest room shower running. Aaron, cleaning up.
I headed for the kitchen.
Mal had not put his shirt on, and he was standing infront of the oven, cooking something delicious smelling on the stovetop.
There was no way I could sneak up on him, so I didn'thesitate to come up behind the vampire, slide my arms around him, and pressmyself against his muscular back.
He rumbled in pleasure, trapping my hands with one ofhis.
I leaned against him for a few moments, just taking inhis scent, spicy incense combined with the scent of old books, and let it sootheme.
"Ready for tonight?" he asked quietly whilehe stirred whatever he was cooking.
"Yeah, I am." I was surprised to find thatwas the truth. I'd recovered from getting blasted with Ezra's energy during thefight and,