Calladia burst into loud laughter. Astaroth jumped at the noise, then found himself unable to tear his gaze away from Calladia as she cackled and slapped the steering wheel. “An oracle,” she wheezed. “You think Bing is an oracle. Even more remarkably, you use Bing!”
“No need to mock me,” he said, torn between embarrassment and a fascination with her amusement. She laughed as boldly as she did everything else, and as soon as the sound tapered off, he found himself wanting to hear it again.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s just . . . gosh. I love that. Every time I Google something, I’m going to call it ‘consulting the oracle.’?” She was still grinning as she glanced at him. “Bing and Google are internet search engines. You type things on your computer or your phone, and it shows results from across the web.”
“Ah. The internet.” That did sound familiar. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, tapping the screen and scowling when it requested a passcode. “If only I could remember how to get into this blasted thing.”
“You don’t have biometrics set up?” Calladia asked. “Like unlocking it with your fingerprint?”
The words felt familiar, but with little to anchor them in his head, the idea struck him as absurd. It was astounding how much had changed over the course of his long life. At the moment, his most vivid memories involved swinging a sword on European battlefields or entertaining queens by firelight. Now it was possible for a device the size of his palm to be unlocked with a fingerprint so the user could search the internet for information.
He slid his finger over the case, pressing it to various promising-looking spots. “It doesn’t seem like I do.”
Calladia swerved to avoid an oversized chipmunk sitting in the middle of the road—one with purple fur, wings, and fangs. “Probably for the best,” she said. “I heard it’s easy to hack those things with the right tools. Someone lifts a fingerprint, prints it on special paper, and bam, they can unlock your shit.”
Interesting. He’d need to look into that in case the technique could be helpful for soul bargaining.
Calladia switched on the radio and scanned through stations. Static, laughter, static, opera, static . . . then a familiar female voice danced over a rhythmic guitar line. Astaroth nodded along.
He didn’t realize he was quietly singing until Calladia gasped. “Wait,” she said. “No way.”
She was probably surprised by his recall of the lyrics—as was Astaroth, now that he thought of it. “I don’t know how I know the song,” he said. “It’s just familiar. Maybe there’s an amnesia exception for music?”
“Not that,” she said, flapping her hand. “You’re a Swiftie?”
He squinted, confused. “Is that a species? We’ve already established I’m a demon.”
Calladia cackled again, flashing her spellbinding grin. “So Bing’s an oracle and Swifties are a species. This is perfect.”
“Come on,” he said, once again annoyed and entranced. His lips tugged at the corners like he might join her hilarity, but fearsome demons didn’t laugh at themselves.
“Swifties are fans of Taylor Swift,” Calladia said once she’d stopped chuckling. “She’s a pop singer. Well, she started in country, but she’s branched out since then.”
Taylor Swift. He turned the name over in his head, but no images appeared. He shrugged. “Apparently I’m a Swiftie.”
This seemed to delight Calladia even more. “Me, too!” she exclaimed. She turned the song up, then alternated between singing—loudly and with a questionable understanding of pitch—and explaining the inspiration for the song. “She writes about her exes a lot,” she practically yelled over the music. “In this one, she’s singing about a guy she dated when she was younger. He was older and more experienced, so it was kind of a problematic age gap.”
“How much older?” Astaroth asked, intrigued by what she considered problematic. Three centuries? Five?
She made a face. “Thirteen years.”
Astaroth choked on his own spit. He coughed, pounding his chest. “You think thirteen years is problematic?” he wheezed when he was finally able to speak.
“She was only nineteen!” Calladia said defensively. “That’s a big maturity gap.”
“Huh.” Astaroth felt an odd tightness in his chest. It was worry, he realized, though why he should worry about Calladia’s age preferences was a mystery. “So you wouldn’t date someone thirteen years older than you?”
“I would,” Calladia said, “but I’m not nineteen. I’m twenty-eight. A lot of growth happens during your twenties.”
Twenty-eight. Lucifer, that was young. Yes, he knew she was human and thus subject to a short life span, but he hadn’t really thought about it specifically. When Astaroth had been twenty-eight, he’d been . . .
He frowned. What had he been up to at twenty-eight? He’d struck his first bargain around forty, but before then . . .
Fog.
Hang it, why couldn’t he remember?
“I guess that seems silly to you,” Calladia said.
Astaroth snapped back to the conversation. “What?”
“A thirteen-year age gap being problematic.” She slid him a glance. “Since you’re older than dirt.”
“I object,” Astaroth said. “Dirt is substantially older than me.”
“Still, you must have had, ah, relations with plenty of people younger than you.”
“I have,” he said. “Though it all blurs together after a while.” Nameless faces, nameless bodies, the dances of attraction or manipulation or boredom or some mix of the three. There had been princes and priestesses, demons and elves and humans. None of them stood out as being particularly remarkable.
“Hmm.”
He couldn’t tell what sentiment lay behind that syllable, but her jaw looked tighter than it had before. “You disapprove?”
“Not at all. If I was six hundred years old or whatever, I’d probably have a massive body count, too.” Her fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “I guess you get good at it after that long.”
“Oh, I was good at it from the start.” He smirked at her eye roll. “Why, looking for tips?”
He’d gladly give her some. Or literally the tip, should she express interest. The spandex had been packed away, but her well-worn jeans were just as much of a problem, as he suspected anything would be that had the fortune of cupping that remarkable arse. He eyed the fall of her messy blond braid over her shoulder, imagining wrapping the bright length around his hand while he thrust into her from behind.
His trousers grew tighter.
“No, thank you,” she said vehemently.
It wasn’t the enthusiastic response a demon might hope for, but it was the response he’d expected. Still, he deflated a bit. Metaphorically. The trouser situation remained an issue.
Calladia braked, and Astaroth was distracted from her rebuttal and his erection by the sight of a stop sign. The road terminated in an intersection, where a green sign with white arrows indicated what lay ahead: scenic lookout, 5 miles to the left, and fable farms, 15 miles to the right.