Present day…

Most witches had physical altars – tables, chests, entire rooms even devoted to the symbols and supplies of their demonic worship. Or pagan. Couldn't give all the credit to Hell. There were witches still out there who owed their allegiance and powers to forgotten gods instead of opportunistic demons. I'd known one witch in Manhattan who had commandeered an entire dumpster as her place of worship. Not exactly the place I'd pick to pay respect to what owned my soul but hey, who was I to judge?

My altar, if it could be called that, was a plain white piece of sturdy linen approximately thirty inches square. I'd have felt bad about it if I hadn't known for a fact that Crowley's altar was a silk handkerchief that he'd slapped the appropriate symbols on (in his own blood) during a moment of necessity. He'd never bothered to replace it. Some might think it thrifty of him but I knew better. The silk would have been the finest available and Crowley's blood, being who and what he was, was probably one of the most valuable – if not exotic – inks in existence. If he didn't replace his makeshift altar it was because he simply didn't believe he could find anything better.

Crowley was all about quality.

I laid the altar out on the coffee table, smoothing it with my fingers as I sank to my knees, positioning myself opposite the King of Hell. Wordlessly he held out a seamlessly carved black bowl, his face arranged into something almost careful. I raised an eyebrow but took it, rolling it between my hands. Just looking at it you knew that it was old – ancient beyond your ability to truly comprehend. It was a beautiful black piece of stone, its surface marred with the marks of its creation, back when the finest hand tools had been nothing more than another piece of rock. Time had worn away the edges and turned it to silk beneath the brush of my fingers, the stone itself seeming to glow with the residue of all that it had held. How many lives had been drained into this bowl over the long millennia of its existence? More than I could count or that anyone could remember, I was sure.

The last time I'd see this bowl had been ten years ago, the blood that filled its cavity rippling as the King of the Crossroads… conversed with Azazel.

I smiled up at him and laid it with reverence in the center of the altar. "A little bit of you, a little bit of me," he murmured, his face folding into a more familiar smirk and breaking the uneasy tension that had settled momentarily over the room. Even Fluffly, all but forgotten at his post over by the window gave a soft wuff of relief and relaxed, his great mass sprawling across the entire length of the windowed wall.

"I'll be requiring more of you before the evening is through," I drawled, staring up at him through the fringe of my lashes. I didn't have to make it a sexual innuendo but I did. Why? Because it was Crowley and after ten years the bastard had started rubbing off on me.

He grinned and shifted, a slight movement that drew subtle attention to the fine wool slacks stretched across his groin. "I was hoping you'd say that, love."

The timbre and scratch of his voice momentarily rendered me incapable of speech or movement and he knew it, smirking with a look I imagined would have charmed even the Devil had Lucifer ever given him the chance to use it.

Bastard.

Tension broken the rest of the preparation went quickly. The spell for the witch – Crowley in this case – was simple enough and not something I had any doubts about. Witches had been using it for centuries to find themselves familiars. The spell – spells, actually – that I was combining with it were a little trickier. One was pretty much a sure bet– provided that you had the right ingredients, which had been an absolute bitch to find. I'd been hoarding one of them that I'd found purely by accident during my semi-recent tour of Africa. The other was… untested. And of my own creation. And combining about seven different branches of witchcraft. At least I think it was seven. It could very well have been eight or even a dozen. I'd lost track. I'd started with the same spell that Crowley was using. We needed to get to the same place, after all, that magical someplace that was neither waking nor sleeping where familiars waited and could walk between states of existence – where witches who wished for familiars went to find them.

The problem then became that I was a witch and not a familiar.

Thus all the modifications. A dash of shamanism. A pinch of hoodoo. Double, double, toil and trouble and all of that shit… If it worked it would disguise what I really was – twist me and shape me into something that Crowley's witchcraft would recognize as an available familiar.

It should work. Should. Every witch that I'd run the idea past had found the methodology and logic of what I had put together to be sound. They'd all agreed that it should work.

Should. So until everything went belly up and shitfaced I was going to believe that it would every particle of my existence.

With my luck though it was going to hurt like a sonofabitch.

Worth it, though.

I hissed a little as I drew a thin small blade across the curve of my palm and watched as my blood welled up, shining and red, to bead across the pale stretch of my skin and drip like a slow, leisurely rain down into the bowl. "A little bit of you, a little bit of me," I echoed with a smile, reversing the blade and offering it to him hilt first. He took it with the ease of someone who had spent a great deal of time around knives and slid it across his own palm.

Together we watched his blood, more purple and black than crimson, drip down into the bowl, steaming as it hit the contents. My own blood began to bubble and boil beneath the heat of his, thin white curls of steam spiraling upward.

"I'll see you on the other side, love," he drawled, sliding his blood slicked palm into my own and setting my skin on fire as the Latin incantations fell from his tongue.

Showtime.

It was whiter than I expected.

I'd been to realms of subconsciousness before. Multiple types of shamanism and witchcraft began with extracting at least a portion of your soul from your body. Still, most of the dream worlds I'd wondered through were either overly vivid or a muted, faded shadow of the world we existed in.

But this place was white. It was all fluffy clouds and drifting mist - a veritable bad porn production of Heaven white.

I blinked and looked around, circling slowly in place. For being so white it was incredibly dim, cutting off the line of my sight after a hundred feet or so. It was nothing but white shapes and shadows drifting in all directions.

And for the moment I was all alone.

Dammit.

One of the downsides, I suppose, to knowing that you only have ten years (or less) left on your life is that you get used to just doing things. Patience isn't a virtue when your days are numbered. But I was here and I didn't see anyone else which led me to believe that my spell had worked. If I had arrived as a witch this place would have – or at least should have – been crawling with available familiars. But if I arrived as a familiar, unbonded and unattached, then I would only see available witches if they should happen to cross my path.

So it was a waiting game, now. Waiting and hoping that Crowley would find me.

God, I hated waiting.

"So what animal do you morph into, gorgeous?"

I rolled my eyes at the middle aged man dressed in something vaguely hipster-esque. "Seriously? That's the best you can come up with?" I asked dryly. Hipster Dad, as I had taken to calling him in my head, had been by four times tonight – or at least I was assuming it was still tonight. "Though the interest is somewhat flattering -" and verging on annoying, I silently added, "I told you, I'm not interested, so…" I made shooing motions with my hands, the white mist rippling away from my touch.

"But you know nothing about me," Hipster Dad wheedled, practically whining.

I gave a half hearted shrug. "Doesn't matter. I know enough. You don't have what I want," I told him bluntly, dismissively, praying the guy would finally take a hint. I'd had stalkers that were less persistent. "I'm looking for a witch with a little more… heat." My words, assisted by the measuring track of my eyes up and down his body left little doubt to my meaning.

His face shut down instantly, skin going an awful pasty yellow-tinted color.

"That is forbidden," he whispered, voice shaking.

"Oh, but she's not your typical familiar. Are you darling?"

The smoky, raspy tone was unmistakable and I made no effort to hide the wicked little smile that beamed across my face. I tilted my head to the side so that I could see approach of the familiar suit-clad figure from behind me, sashaying his way through the mist like the goddamn princess that he was. "God, I would hope not," I demurred. "That one's mine," I added, catching Hipster Dad's widened gaze and jerking my head.

"She's a bit of a minx," the demon drawled helpfully, pulling a hand from his pockets to slide it down the length of my spine. I shuddered, biting back the urge to mewl beneath the heat of his touch. "And considering that I turned down a very generous offer from a pair of tigers back that way," he motioned airily off to the side, "I'd suggest you go. Or not." He smiled darkly. "Your choice, handsome." He blinked, the crimson of his true colors bleeding through and shining from his eyes.

Hipster Dad stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet in his effort to get away. "You can't be here," he muttered, breaking out in a sweat. "It's not allowed. You're… you're…"

"… intelligent, dashing, devilishly handsome?"

"… a demon!"

"Oh, but he's not your typical demon," I murmured, shivering as his fingers slipped between the hem of my shirt and the waistband of my jeans and began tracing superheated patterns against my flesh. "Are you darling?" I finished breathlessly as he added the drag of his nails to his caress.

"Of course not," he murmured, amusement coloring his tone as he watched the man scramble away. "I'm the daringest devil you'll ever meet and tonight I just happen to feel… benevolent. So run along, darling," he tipped his head at the other witch, smirk firmly in place. "You don't look so good."

Hipster Dad gaped like a fish, eyes bulging out of his head as he stared for a moment, mouth working soundlessly. Then he turned and ran, his existence fading as his spirit fled back to his body as fast as he could mumble the incantations under his breath. "Wise choice," I observed over the chuckle that brushed against my ear. "You ready to do this?" I asked quietly, cocking my head to watch as the King of Hell circled around to my front, dragging his fingers around the curve of my waist and down across the swell of my hip. "Unless of course you want to go back to the tigers…"

"We made a deal, love, and as you know I always keep my deals," He growled, offended at the mere suggestion that I thought he might go back on his word.

"Just making sure, your Majesty. Don't get your panties in a bunch."

"That would require that I actually be wearing… panties. You should know by now that I prefer to go au natural."

I snorted, unable to muffle the laughter that bubbled up between my lips as he ran his free hand down my arm and entwined his fingers with my own. "Because it doesn't mess with the hang and fit of your pants," I acknowledged with a bob of my head. "Yes, I know." I gave them a gentle squeeze, shutting my eyes against the intimacy of such a gesture. Over the years we'd done many things that normal people would view as intimate – far more intimate than holding hands. Perverted as well. But that was what gave his gesture such a shocking amount of intimacy. It was a normal thing to do and we didn't do normal. Like ever.

So I just stood there and tried to remember how to breathe between the heat of a demon's hands. "You ready?" he asked, the rumble of his voice almost gentle. I nodded, still unable to open my eyes.

"Yes."

For a moment there was nothing and then I felt the heat of him draw nearer, close enough that I could feel the trim line of his form through the covering of his expensive clothes. Close enough that I could feel the hot puff of his breath against the corner of my mouth and the rasp of his stubble against my jaw. I shuddered, breath catching in my throat and strangling the whimper that tried to leak out as I blindly turned my head to follow the brush of his lips.

"A kiss, love" he growled softly into my ear, startling my eyes open with the echo of his words from so long ago. I blinked owlishly at him and he smirked against my skin as the Latin began to roll of his tongue. The words – and it was always so strange to hear Latin in his rough, accented voice – seemed to soak in through my pores and into my blood, filling every corner of my body. It was a siren's call: irresistible to the soul housed in the shell of my body and final proof that my mad, patchwork magic had worked. I could feel the magic of his call, tugging at me and drawing my spirit out of my flesh and up towards his mouth, rolling and clogging in my throat.

When he did kiss me it was gentle and it burned. Fucking hell, it burned.

His lips sealed around my own, sighing into my mouth as I opened to him, that shiny bit of me uncurling and slithering out across my tongue, seeking the force that had called to it. In response I was met with fire and heat and brimstone, the overwhelming taste of sulfur spilling into my mouth and consuming what I offered him – a soul that was already his.

He consumed me, the essence of who he was twisting itself through me body and soul. He took everything that I was and wove himself through, stamping his identity over mine and he swallowed it down.

I could feel it like a cage, a tether, an infinite number of little threads that stretched from my atoms to his. There was no escaping.

Thank god.

I fisted my hands in the front of his shirt and kissed him back, holding myself up as he slowly, almost tenderly, plundered my mouth with his tongue and wove our souls together.

Author's Note: Chapter title taken from "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry. The song, while of dubious quality, and – for the love of god – don't ever waste the 4 minutes of your life on that music video, has lyrics that fit the dynamic of Crowley and Melissa better than most.

Also, thank you for your patience! We shall now resume our regularly scheduled posting. I'll see you fine people in another 10 days ;)