What to Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting
What to Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting
Angie Fox
Contents
Also by Angie Fox
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Note from Angie Fox
About the Author
Also by Angie Fox
Also by Angie Fox
Keep track of Angie's new book releases by receiving an email on release day. It's fast and easy to sign up for new release updates.
The following Angie Fox titles are also available in print format.
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THE ACCIDENTAL DEMON SLAYER SERIES
The Accidental Demon Slayer
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers
A Tale of Two Demon Slayers
The Last of the Demon Slayers
My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding
Beverly Hills Demon Slayer
Night of the Living Demon Slayer
What to Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting
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THE SOUTHERN GHOST HUNTER SERIES
Southern Spirits
A Ghostly Gift (short story)
The Skeleton in the Closet
Ghost of a Chance (short story)
The Haunted Heist
Deader Homes & Gardens
Dog Gone Ghost (short story)
Sweet Tea and Spirits
Murder on the Sugarland Express
Next new book - coming fall 2018!*
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SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
A Little Night Magic: A collection of Southern Ghost Hunter and Accidental Demon Slayer short stories
1
I’ve heard it said that you can’t go home again. But as I steered my motorcycle down the Georgia highway, I realized that in my family, you can certainly go home, just not fifteen minutes late.
The cell phone in my coat pocket buzzed against my side.
Yes, I’d told my mother that we would be at her house by two o’clock.
It buzzed again, as if prodding me to drive faster.
Yes, I realized my mom had planned a birthday surprise for my husband, who rode with me. I’d suspected it the minute she’d asked me what griffins liked—as if the fact that he was a shapeshifter made him prefer a certain type of snack or beer or tie.
She’d better not have bought him a Southern-style bow tie.
My phone quit buzzing. For now, at least.
I glanced to the hunk of a man who rode next to me. Broad shoulders encased in a wicked black motorcycle jacket, sharp features under aviator sunglasses, and dimples deep and dark enough to inspire me in all kinds of naughty ways. Dimitri Kallinikos was all a girl could want, and more. He also treated me right, made me laugh, and he loved my dog as much as I did. What more could a girl ask for?
We were working our way back to my hometown after busting an evil voodoo cult in New Orleans. It was what we did. We fought evil in this world and sometimes into the next. Of course, my mom liked to remind me that just because I had a busy job didn’t mean I couldn’t stop home once in a while.
My life had certainly changed since I lit out of town after discovering I was a demon slayer.
For the most part, my non-magical, very proper adoptive parents had taken my career change in stride. At least after they’d gotten to know my hot-as-sin partner in all things good and right, and after he’d helped save us all from a demon invasion at our wedding.
My very proper mother had finally accepted that I liked leather and swords instead of golf polos and capris.
The phone began to buzz once more.
God bless America.
I had to keep my focus on the road and my right hand on the throttle.
We were only another fifteen minutes out, but at this rate, it might as well be hours. I wasn’t a huge fan of cell phones anyway, and this one was going to drive me nuts.
It rattled against my chest, as if poking me to ask: Where are you?
Fine. I’d put the question to rest, even if it meant taking longer to get there.
I held up an arm and signaled to the biker witches on all sides of me. They’d been with me in New Orleans and, well, my mom said I could bring some friends home.
I pointed to the exit up ahead and let it be known we’d be making a pit stop. A QuikTrip stood up ahead, much like the one I’d stopped at while fleeing town in the first place.
One point for déjà vu.
At least there was no hell spawn chasing us this time. Well, none that we knew of at least. These things did tend to pop up when I least expected them.
The witches gunned their engines up the exit ramp, and I couldn’t help but smile when an immense white dragon sailed overhead, leaving me briefly in his shadow.
Flappy had really grown up in the two years since I’d found him as an egg. He hunted on his own. He was great at keeping an eye out for danger. The dragon landed on the roof of the gas station up ahead and gave a warbled shriek.
Good thing he couldn’t be seen or heard by non-magical folks. I doubted my mother would want him near her prized rosebushes.
We pulled into the far end of the lot, near a large field, and for a moment I felt as if I were outside Jasper in the middle of the night, clinging to my grandmother’s back, terrified of my first time on a motorcycle and the imps that were chasing me. Imps were petty annoyances compared to the demons I had faced since.
Pirate had tried to face down the imps and nearly been torn to ribbons in the process. I wondered if he was thinking of them as we shut down our bikes. When the noise died down, I figured I’d ask, maybe offer him a little comfort. But the second Crazy Frieda’s motorcycle stopped next to me, Pirate leapt out of the sidecar like a dog on fire.
“Wow, what a ride!” he said, shaking off in a move that involved his entire body. He turned in a circle. “I broke my new bug-eating record! I love it, they just fly right into your mouth, and you don’t have to chase them or anything!”
“Let’s not go there,” I said.
Pirate was an energetic Jack Russell terrier, mostly white but with a dollop of brown on his back that wound up his neck and over one eye. Ever since I’d come into my powers, I’d been able to speak with my dog. In real sentences. In the beginning, I’d thought my new ability would enable me to at last crack the code on canine thoughts and behaviors. Now, I understood my dog mostly thought about bacon and beef jerky and pretty much any food besides the food I bought for him.
Frieda winked at me and patted her stacked blond hair, miraculously unmussed from her silver and white motorcycle helmet. “I’ll go ahead and get the little baby a snack.”
Frieda strolled for the main building, Pirate trotting at her side. “Dog treats,” I called, “you know you want to be a good dog.”
“I heard her say hot dog,” Pirate remarked.
I pulled out my cell phone, unlocked it, and called my mother back.
“This user has a voicemail that has not been set up yet. Goodbye.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I muttered.
It wasn’t really a surprise. My mother had owned a cell phone for years, and she’d never bothered to set up her voicemail. She claimed it was because she was a Luddite, but I knew better. You couldn’t navigate the shark tank that was the Atlanta socialite circle as effortlessly as Hillary Brown did if you were intimidated by something as simple as the settings menu on a phone.
I think she just wanted the freedom to be able to listen to who she wanted, when she wanted, on her own terms.
Now if only she would extend that courtesy to the rest of us.
Oh well. No doubt she’d call back soon. She was in a frenzy about something. Did I forget to tell her how many biker witches would be at her house for dinner tonight? There were only…
I glanced around and winced. Okay, there were a lot of us. At least ten witches at the front of the store, laughing and easing off their bikes. A dozen more filled every available gas pump, with others pulling up just to chat. Another handful by the field next to the station, hopefully not getting into any trouble. And even a witch named Bob, who pulled up last in a 1970s rocker cargo van with tinted windows and red and orange flames painted down the sides. A screaming skull decorated the back, and foam pool noodles crisscrossed the top, making a perfect dragon bed.
We’d needed something to haul the various spells and magical doodads we’d picked up from Ant Eater’s family home in New Orleans. Plus, it was nice to give Flappy a break on long bike trips. He was still a growing dragon, after all.
The Red Skull coven was bigger and stronger than ever these days. Funny what settling down after thirty years on the run from a demon could do for your recruitment efforts.
I glanced over the laughing, back-slapping bikers. Good thing nothing could keep Hillary down for long, not even unexpected houseguests. If my mother didn’t have enough canapés and artisanal cheese plates to go around twice, I’d know she’d been switched for a pod person.
I’d give it a minute before I tried to reach her again.
Grandma put down her Harley’s kickstand and stretched her arms over her head with a groan, her silver snakehead ring glinting in the sunlight. She was an apple-shaped woman with iron gray hair who wore her leather chaps like she lived in them, which she pretty much did. The T-shirt under her black leather jacket read Kiss My Asphalt, and when she strolled over to me and clapped me on the back, I felt it down to my toes.
“How’s it feel to be so close to your old stomping grounds, Lizzie?”
“A bit weird,” I confessed. “Not bad. It’s just not a place I belong anymore.” Not the way I used to, anyhow.
Before I became the Demon Slayer of Dalea, I had been a teacher at Happy Hands Preschool. I’d lived alone in my condo with my perfectly normal, non-talking dog. I’d color-coded my daily planner and dreamed of dating the hot guy at my local gym.
Now I preferred leather to khaki, high heels to sensible oxfords, and the only matching belt I wore was the one that held my weapons.
Yeah, it was definitely a little strange to be back.
“I stopped to call my mom back,” I told her, “but—”
A voice echoed across the parking lot. “Come on, I’ll be fast!”
Grandma and I turned and watched as Creely and Ant Eater exited the QuikTrip, Ant Eater holding the bathroom key above her curly gray head. Ant Eater had several inches and probably fifty pounds on the engineering witch, and she used it to her advantage as she beelined for the toilet.
“Age before beauty, kid.” She got in and shut the door behind her with a bang.
Creely scowled and pushed a lock of Kool-Aid red hair out of her face. “I know how many muffuletta sandwiches you packed away in your saddlebags,” she yelled through the door. “You think I want to marinate in the aftermath of that?” She shook her head. “To hell with it, I’ve still got my Sneak spell. I’m finding a bush.”
“I wish I’d had a Sneak spell on me the night we hauled ass out of here,” Grandma mused as she watched Flappy rub his face over the T in QuikTrip vigorously enough to make it creak. “Remember what happened when we got to the one outside Jasper?”
How could I forget? “I remember the imps. And”—I turned to face my husband, who raised one eyebrow curiously at me—“I remember seeing you for the first time.” I hadn’t known about shapeshifters then, and Dimitri had been in his griffin form.
He smiled. “And did I impress you?”
“You just about scared the pants off me.” He was beautiful as a griffin, with his tawny lion’s fur and blue, purple, red and green feathers, but he was also as big as a truck. Seeing something like that dive-bombing you from above would scare anyone.
“From what I recall, we had to work up to the pantsless part,” he teased in that irresistible Greek accent.
Before I could flirt back, Grandma said, “Remember how you went on and on about missing out on dinner with Hot Guy?” She snorted out a laugh as she ambled toward the store. “You dodged a bullet there, babe.”
“Hot guy?” Dimitri lost his smirk. “What hot guy?”
“Nobody, just some guy I met at the gym.” Hot Ryan Harmon. Gosh, I hadn’t thought about him in years.
Dimitri raised a brow. “How hot are we talking, here?”
I leaned in against Dimitri’s chest and trailed a finger along the edge of his T-shirt. He’d dressed down from his usual GQ look for the ride back from New Orleans, and I was looking forward to peeling off his jeans and jacket and getting at the man underneath. My man.
“He didn’t hold a candle to you,” I said with total honesty.
Dimitri wound his arms around me and pulled me closer. “Well, naturally,” he drawled. “I’m not asking because I’m nervous about the competition, I’m just curious. You don’t talk about that time very much.”
“There isn’t much to say about it.” Wasn’t that the truth?
He leaned down and kissed me high on the cheek, then lower, close to my ear. I barely resisted the urge to moan. “Do you ever miss it?”
“Never,” I murmured. “I’d rather look forward than back these days.”
“Yeah? Me too.” He pulled back far enough that I could see his grin. “I’m especially looking forward to getting you alone tonight in a room that doesn’t share walls with the biker witches.”
That sounded promising. “Oh really? What do you have in mind?”
Dimitri’s hands slid down to the small of my back, spanning my waist in a firm hold as he hitched me a little tighter to his body. “Remember the last time in the shower?”
How could I forget? My feet had barely touched the ground. “Hmm, you may need to remind me,” I teased.
He lowered his lips to my ear. “This time I want to try—”
“Hey! Lovebirds!”
Mother fricking H-E double hockey sticks. Nothing broke a moment faster than getting loudly called out by a woman who sounded like she’d been gargling with Jack Daniel’s.
We broke apart and I looked over at Grandma, who stood outside the QuikTrip with a neon-blue Rooster Booster Freezoni in one hand.
“Save it and get on the horn to Hillary already,” she called out. “Or this thing’s gonna melt before we get there!”
If it wasn’t one buzzkill, it was another. “Fine.” I grabbed my phone and called my mom again.
This time she picked up immediately. “Lizzie!”
“Hey, Mom, what’s going on?” Otherwise known as what was so urgent it couldn’t wait fifteen minutes?
“Well, honey, I stopped by your house to put some fresh-cut roses in the foyer for when you arrived, but there’s something…wrong here.”
She sounded disconcerted. Hillary never let herself sound upset; it was practically against her religion to let on that everything wasn’t perfect. My stomach tightened uneasily. “Wrong how?”
“There’s this strange fog in the house—I’m trying to air it out, I’ve got all the windows open and the fans going, but it just isn�
��t budging. I think we may have to have a heating and air-conditioning man come in.” She clucked her tongue. “And on a Saturday, too.”
Oh no. The last time I’d been in my condo, Grandma and I had just finished fighting off a demon named Xerxes in the bathroom. He’d tried to kill me, I’d blown him up—temporarily—and by the end of it the bathroom was a stinky, ashy mess. Heck, I’d melted imprints of my hands into the edge of the counter.
“Mom, you shouldn’t be in there.”
She laughed lightly. “Don’t be silly, Lizzie. I drop by once a week to water the plants and freshen up the place.”
She what? “I left it with demon ashes in the bathroom and blue vapor climbing the walls!”
“Oh, I hired a crew to clean that up.”
She what? “Are they all right?”
“They came from a very highly recommended service,” my mom assured me, completely missing the point. I’d have to find out who had shown up and check on the poor people.
“But this is different from that,” she continued. “This smells like something’s gone off in the fridge, only it’s the whole house. And the fog is just—you know, it’s almost like it’s sticky.”
I clutched my phone so tight I was surprised I didn’t break it. “Get out of there.”
She sighed. “I am a bit light-headed.”
“I mean it, Mom. Leave now. Just walk out of the house and keep walking. I’ll meet you down the street.”
Her voice was weaker when she spoke again. “Goodness, my legs feel funny. Like they don’t even want to move.”
“Mom!” I heard her stumble and hit the wall. Oh cripes, she wasn’t going to make it out of there in time.