My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Hearth Book

"A broker in a coffee shop," I said. "I answered a listing. Nobody sent me."

Malphas looked at me.

"Nobody answers that listing," he said. "There is no listing. My house isn't for rent."

"Well, somebody rented it."

"Yes," he said. "That's what worries me."

He didn't say another word the whole walk home.

On Saturday morning I learned I wasn't the only stray in the Larkspur.

I went down to check the mail, with Malphas on the landing above me, counting feet.

A tiny old woman was standing at the brass mailboxes in a pink cardigan.

She had a long white braid and reading glasses on a beaded cord.

She looked me up and down.

"You're the one in 5C," she said.

"I'm Dorrie."

"Opal Hatch. 2B. Fifty-five years." She squinted up the stairs. "Is he hiding up there?"

"He's not hiding. He's supervising."

"Malphas," she called. "Come down here and introduce your wife like a person."

Malphas came down the stairs.

"Opal."

"Don't 'Opal' me. You marry a girl and don't bring her to dinner?"

"It wasn't a wedding," he said.

"Did she sign something?"

"Yes."

"In blood?"

He said nothing.

"Then it's a wedding," Opal said. "Six o'clock. Bring bread."

She went back into 2B and shut the door.

I looked at him.

"Did a seventy-nine-year-old woman just boss a demon?"

"Every Saturday since 1971," he said.

At six we went down to 2B with a loaf of bread I'd bought at the corner.

Opal's apartment was full of sewing patterns, pincushions and a dining table that seated ten.

It seated twelve that night.

There was a woman in scrubs from 3A who worked nights at the hospital and ate like it.

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