Page 30 of Demon Dating Service

He’d expected them to want to keep Luke because they’d all grown fond of the adorable, bumbling human, but he’d thought they’d argue to adopt him like a pet or a houseplant. They’d water him, feed him, and protect him from the cold.

But no. They wanted to give him dating advice.

“Get over yourself,” Ogos scoffed, drawing Azroth’s eyes to him. “Scaring a human isn’t a challenge for a demon. Luke might have been a rare one where it took a few tries, but it’s not like you actually exerted yourself to succeed.” Ogos paused and made a clicking noise with his tongue. “But givinggooddating advice to a human? Can you do it? Or are you afraid that your advice will destroy all the hard work Luke has put in?”

As much as he hated to admit it, Ogos had a good point. Scaring humans was easy. Giving them good advice about their love life was much harder. He’d watched humans fuck up their relationships for centuries. Could they do any better?

Well, they had an excellent shot at it, considering they had such a great catch to work with. Luke was cute, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and funny. Those were all qualities humans enjoyed in a mate.

Of course, that raised the question of why this Matteo hadn’t fallen for Luke already. Maybe there was something deficient in this Matteo, and he wasn’t worthy of their Luke.

“Is this what you are all interested in doing? We keep Luke and help him date this other human?” Azroth inquired, his eyes skimming over the other occupants of the room.

There was a clear round of murmured agreements and nods.

“Very well. I have two suggestions. First, if Luke is going to remain a resident of our house, he has to live with us as we are in our natural state. There’s no point in sharing a house with someone we must hide ourselves from.”

“Do you think he’ll agree to it?” Annod asked. He was the one who this affected the most. While the rest of them could maintain a human form for hours on end, Annod struggled and could usually only manage for a few minutes.

“I do if he wants to continue to live here,” Azroth grumbled.

“He won’t have a problem with it,” Mullmag reassured Annod, patting the skeletal demon with one of his spidery limbs.

“Second, we work as a team to help Luke with his love life. We discuss strategies together. We succeed or fail as a team.”

There were some indistinct murmurs, and he could hear the doubt in their voices. Getting demons to work together for anything was unheard of, but he was more afraid of them giving Luke conflicting advice, resulting in Luke abandoning them completely. If they were going to help Luke, they had to be working together.

“Okay!” Tog practically shouted.

That was enough to get the rest of them nodding.

“Very well. It’s decided.” Azroth clapped his hands together and shifted to the edge of his chair. There was a new lightness in his chest that he preferred to ignore. “I will have a chat with Luke tomorrow about whether he would be comfortable livingwith demons who stopped wearing their human disguises. If he is fine with it, he will stay.”

“What about Matteo? And the love advice?” Bath’tuk asked.

“Assuming Luke agrees to our new terms, we will start with reconnaissance regarding the target of Luke’s affections. I will get my crows to follow Matteo. Mullmag and I will also spend some time spying on him. Ogos will chat Luke up to get more information about Matteo and Luke’s feelings. Once we have that information, we will make plans for stirring up romance.”

Yes, this was an excellent plan. Azroth smiled to himself and rubbed his palms together. This would give him a front-row seat in determining whether this Matteo was worthy of Luke.

Making romance would also be an interesting adventure. It couldn’t be that difficult.

Chapter 13

Your New Dating Advisors

LUKE

Luke sat on the edge of his bed, his fist wrapped around the strap of his backpack, trying to work up the courage to leave his room. He wasn’t sure how he’d slept last night after that frightening encounter with Azroth. The only thing he could think of was that he’d passed out from exhaustion. It had been a long day, and then he’d been worn out from shock.

Demons.

He was living in a house full of demons.

His brain didn’t want to believe it. Prior to now, he wasn’t sure he’d even believed in God, let alone demons, Heaven, and Hell.

But…demons.

He’d seen the red eyes, talons, horns, and wings. Azroth’s wings had been enormous, spanning the entire width of the library. Did the others look like him? Or were all the demons different?