Eleanora woke up, cold with fear and dripping with sweat. It was painfully obvious to her now.
Of course he was a demon! What else could he be? It all made sense—how he was able to find her with his eyes closed when the Earl needed help for that first ball…How he was able to cut off parts of her arm and then reattach them…How he could remove her lady parts and then put them back…How he could survive being shot in the East End…The way he took down that would-be robber…Those contracts in his desk drawer…How he had somehow managed to be alive even after being murdered…It all made sense. It was all coming together. He was a demon.
Eleanora shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. As she did so, she touched her left forearm and remembered the pentagram symbol. She immediately leapt out of bed and yanked her nightgown off and stood in front of the mirror, staring at it.
Weren't pentagrams the sign of the Devil? Of course they were. And she had signed a contract with a demon. She groaned and almost fainted. This mark on her arm was a symbol of the contract. It meant that she was a demon's prey…It meant that he was going to eat her soul and condemn her to hell for all eternity.
Then she really fainted.
She woke up a few minutes later with someone knocking on the door.
"Miss Black," the butler—the demon—called out, "are you alright? We heard a thumping noise downstairs, as if something had fallen…"
Eleanora was too scared to answer; the demon knocked again.
"Miss Black? Are you in there?"
He tried the doorknob and then Eleanora snapped back into reality.
"I'm here I'm fine everything is just fine just don't come and don't open the door!" She leapt up and hurled her body against the door, breathing hard.
"Certainly," the butler sounded a bit confused, but masked it fairly well. "If you're sure that you're alright, I'll see you downstairs."
She didn't relax until she heard his footsteps fade away. Then she got back to the issue of the contract.
Maybe she could cut it out? Maybe that would help? Maybe then it would just…disappear? Of course, she wouldn't try to chop off her whole arm; just kind of cut the skin away…
She tried. It was horrible and painful and she didn't want to look at the final result, but eventually the skin that had the demon's contract on it was tossed into the embers of the fire and then burned and she quickly bandaged up her arm and put her long white gloves on and began to leave the room…
Shit. Demons were lustful. Isn't that what all the religious people said? Wasn't there a certain type of demon who made love to women while they were asleep? Eleanora stared at her bed. Did he…Maybe…Did he do that to her? When she was asleep and defenseless?
She couldn't think about that now; she had bigger problems. She stared down at her maid's outfit. Before, she didn't think that it looked particularly special; in fact, she thought it was really rather ugly and baggy. Now she realized just how tempting it was.
It showed off her curves and a bit of her chest; her ankles were slightly visible. She didn't know what could set a demon off into a lascivious frenzy, but maybe just the slightest amount of bare skin was enough. She looked at herself in the mirror. Just how much skin had she shown off in the past couple of months? Maybe the demon was already frothing at the mouth, just thinking about soiling her body with his wicked hands…
She furiously dug through her clothes, looking for something—anything—that resembled a sack more than actual clothing. She found a maid outfit that was several sizes too small and thought that that might work, when she remembered that tightness meant showing off more things. The outfit that she was wearing was one of the biggest things she had.
She looked around her room for another excuse to stay in there for longer and couldn't find anything. She touched her hurt arm for luck, took a deep breath, and then went downstairs to face the monster in the kitchen.