“She said he was an amazing pianist.”
He grunted again. “He could be Mozart reincarnated, and he wouldn’t be good enough for her.”
Jacqui laughed. “He could be a real live heavenly angel and you’d say he wasn’t good enough for her.”
“That’s true,” Dan replied in all seriousness.
She laughed again. “You’re such a caveman.”
He grinned, setting his coffee on the table beside him. “Then you’re my cavewoman.” She knew that look in his eye and quickly set her coffee down too, just in time for him to pounce. He loomed over her, still grinning, pinning her into the sofa and looking far too pleased with himself. She rolled her eyes at him but couldn’t fight her smile.
“Make me a fire while I go out to catch something for us to eat,” her Neanderthal grunted.
Jacqui’s eyes lit up as sudden inspiration struck. “We should do a series themed on modern relationship parallels to primitive ones! Oh, that’s good! We could have scenes of a present-day couple alongside our cave couple and draw comparisons between their expected societal roles.” She seized his strong shoulders in a tight grip and pretended to shake him, not that she could. “I’m a genius!”
Dan grinned. “It’s a great idea, hon.” He climbed off her and leaned back into the cushions. “Draw out some sketches and we can talk more about it later. I’ve got to work on that damned vulture. The head fell off again. I’m this close to scrapping the whole thing.”
“Oh no.” But she laughed. That silly scrap-metal statue had become Dan’s nemesis of late.
Jacqui thought of her conversation with Eva again and wondered how best to go about asking what needed to be asked. She loved her husband, but he was a bit overprotective at times, and she didn’t want Eva to feel stifled. She decided to pick and choose what to tell Dan about her daughter’s interesting challenges of late.
“Have you done any of your occult stuff lately?” she asked, taking a sip of coffee to hide the spark of interest she knew flared in her eyes.
“Not really. I was working on that project about witchcraft in the Middle Ages, but it’s so depressing that I started to wonder why I was bothering.”
“I thought we were going to make a piece about it. Correlations to modern feminism and all that.”
“We are. But like I said, it’s depressing.”
“Do you ever...” She sipped her coffee again. “Have you ever studied demonology?”
“Sure, why?”
“I heard these four demon names recently, and I thought they were interesting. I wondered what the background was on them, since I was considering using them in my writing.”
While visual art was her true passion, she had a bit of a side gig as a fantasy writer. She hated lying to her husband about why she wanted to know about the names, but she wanted to give Eva time to figure things out for herself before she got Dan involved.
“What names?” Dan asked, sipping his sugary coffee. His other arm was flung out along the back of the sofa, and she took a moment to admire him.
While Dan had no living family, Jacqui’s was extensive, and her parents were very old-fashioned. She still remembered the looks on their faces when she’d brought home her blond-haired, silver-eyed husband-to-be for the first time. To this day, she shuddered to think what would’ve happened if they’d found out she was already pregnant. But they’d grown to love Dan, especially after Eva was born. Who wouldn’t love a man who gave them such a perfect granddaughter?
She tried to remember the names Eva had told her. “Asmo-something.”
“Asmodeus?” Dan snorted.
“Yeah, that’s it. What’s funny?”
“I’m just surprised that you haven’t heard that name before. Asmodeus is legendary. There’s a royal ranking system for demons called the Order of Thrones, and Asmodeus is a Prince of Hell. That means he’s of the second-highest level and one of the most powerful demons in the underworld. I think he was a King at some point, but I’m not certain. He was once the most renowned lust demon of all time, but in recent times, he’s faded into obscurity.”
“Really?”Interesting.It lent credibility to the hallucination theory. The odds of a legendary, powerful demon being interested in jamming with Eva seemed slim.
“And what were the others?” Dan asked.
“Belial?”
Dan nearly spit out his coffee.
“What?”
