Page 72 of Catnapped

“He is now the hotel manager, and I will demand room service often. I will tell him it is to earn his way into my good graces when he tries to hire me. Now that I have my cat back, I can focus on the important things.”

“Like what?” my tall, dark, and handsome asked.

“Conquering you and dragging you to my lair, of course. I heard there’s a major seduction strategy in the works, and I wish to evaluate the plan and offer improvements. I’m good at improving major plans.”

“Sorry, Mom. I’m going to have to skip out on the rest of my summoning circle lessons. I have a major seduction strategy to refine and implement.”

If Claudine rolled her eyes any harder, she’d lose them in the back of her skull. “Begone, child. I don’t want to see you until Christmas. I’d say try not to embarrass yourself, but you’ve done that plenty without help.”

He sure had, although I found his efforts to summon me through the collecting of my lingerie to be amusing. To make it clear Darian hadn’t embarrassed himself all that much, I picked through my panties until I found a particularly lacy pair and its matching bra. I dumped both on his head. “Is this a strong enough hint?”

Darian removed my lingerie from his head and took the time to fold both pieces neatly. “As a matter of fact, yes. It is. I’ll see you at Christmas, Mom. I’ll be occupied until then.”

“I love you, but get out of my house.”

I whinnied my laughter.

Epilogue: Fate had, for a rare change, smiled upon me.

When I offered to host Christmas dinner, a first in my entire life, I should have warned my parents that they would be making a visit to the Devil’s many hells. A nicer woman would have warned her parents.

Over the months after recovering Mr. Flooferson the Magnificent and taking Darian home with me, I’d undergone more changes than becoming a living nightmare. I worked less and played more, I went out places I wanted rather than because work demanded it of me—and I planned to openly summon the Devil to Christmas dinner, as He thought it would be a good idea.

It would take getting used to Him showing up for a visit at His leisure, but as the Devil’s personal secretary and general busybody, I got to entertain the bigwigs. I also got to plan the more unusual meetings between the world’s varying pantheons. That would always disconcert me.

Nothing worried me quite as much as working to make sure the Egyptians didn’t get into a fight with the Greeks, the Indians, or the Chinese. The Egyptians, I’d learned, enjoyed stirring trouble just about everywhere, and they were not afraid of using every tool at their disposal, including Lucifer’s daughter.

Add in that one of Lucifer’s nephews was a direct descendant of the Sphinx, who in turn was married to the sole daughter of Ra, and things became interesting. Interesting often meant destructive. I suspected the Devil had turned me into a nightmare to up my chances of surviving his extended family, especially his beloved cindercorn.

Fate had, for a rare change, smiled upon me.

The beloved cindercorn, her husband, and their entire herd of children had opted to come to dinner, although the young gorgons were having dinner at the main house and being entertained by a slew of demons and devils seeking Lucifer’s favor, as several of the fosters were too young to have any control over their abilities to petrify people. To complicate matters—or add to my general entertainment—their two non-gorgon children came as cindercorn foals rather than human infants, which meant all of the equines of the many hells had made an appearance to play and care for them.

Two cindercorns, their foals, the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, Epona, and several other equines, including several standard unicorns, and Malcolm, in his kelpie form, romped around in my backyard, which had undergone a rather unusual transformation since the prior day.

Snowballs had a really good chance of surviving in hell, at least until dinner ended.

Kanika served as the group’s referee, and she even had a whistle if somebody got too rough with one of the foals.

Darian would, according to Lucifer, require another year of tender loving care from me before he would sport hooves, so I was the only equine holdout, staying in my human form rather than joining the activities out in the snow.

I needed hands to help in the kitchen of my lair. To my delight, I’d discovered while Darian couldn’t draw a decent summoning circle to save his life, he loved to cook, had a talent for it, and enjoyed when I sat on a stool nearby and did what I did best, which involved being pretty for his enjoyment and cutting the vegetables he didn’t want to handle.

I’d finished my vegetable slaying duties early, so I’d become the nice view while he made dinner. As he served as a mighty fine view, I enjoyed ruling over the kitchen as a pampered queen with a tall, dark, and handsome servant.

Still, guilt nibbled at me for making him do the work for an entire herd of demons, devils, and my family, who likely counted as demons or devils by their deeds rather than species designation. “Are five turkeys going to be enough?”

Darian’s dark chuckle made me wish I could get to my evening plans, which involved him and our big bed. “And three hams, plus the roasted pig Darlene is making. Just be glad she didn’t talk Lucy into an entire calf. I’m pretty sure my fathers are bringing a whole deer, and we have the unexpected tuna, as an old one in the conservatory was dying. Its meat is still good, so why waste it?”

Crap. “What tuna? When did an entire tuna become involved in this?”

“You know how Darlene gets. Darlene’s taking care of preparing the tuna. We won’t be eating it for dinner, but everyone is getting a gift of fish for the road. And onto the next surprise of the day.”

Uh oh. Surprises could be good or bad when Darian was involved with them. “What have you done now? Isn’t it bad enough my parents are coming here? Worse, Ra is fetching them. Why had I thought having dinner here was a good idea?”

“It’s the only place any of us has that would fit everyone, and Lucifer really wanted Christmas with the foals. Ra’s excellent at teleportation, so your parents won’t get teleportation sickness. We’ve been over that before. Ra likes being useful, and he also enjoys getting stabs in at idiot parents who need an attitude adjustment. Unlike the Gardeners, your parents are redeemable, although it’ll take some work. So, Ra is handling stage one of their redemption. Also, we’re all onto you. If your parents earned a stay here, you wouldn’t be a nightmare. You’d be a depressed mare. As such, steps are being taken to make sure that doesn’t come to pass. What they do in their next life will no longer be your problem, but we’ve decided we’re campaigning to prevent a severe bout of depression. In exchange, you’ll have to take part in punishing the Gardeners.”

I wrinkled my nose at mention of the Gardeners, who languished in a prison in New York for attempting to torch their daughter’s house. “I still don’t get why I have to be the case worker for that travesty. The last thing I want is to organize their community service and relocate them somewhere far away from New York. I’m in on rehabilitating them once they’re here, though.”