“Psst.”

She opened her mouth to scream.

“Don’t scream. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You’re a bad person or you wouldn’t be here,” she said, logically.

“No. Miss Eleanor’s a bad person. Where’s your mommy?”
“Don’t have one any more,” she said mulishly.

Dead or left him, then. More likely dead. Or in prison. Or in an insane asylum. All of those were part of the feel I was getting from the situation.

Maybe in an insane asylum after committing a crime. Either way, I wasn’t going to be setting mommy on Miss Eleanor. “Well, Miss Eleanor’s here to hurt your dad. Do you want to help me get rid of her?”

Her eyes lit up. “There’s always a miss Eleanor. There’s lots of miss Eleanors. I hate all of them.”

Oh dear. Maybe his soul was already compromised. “Well, this is a really nasty Miss Eleanor and we’re going to play a trick on her to make her go away.”

I couldn’t do what I’d planned, which was to send the demonling back to Hell the hard way, but I could certainly play a trick on her.

After all, I was Loki’s daughter.

Her eyes lit up further. “What kind of trick?”

“Well, does your dad notice anything else when he’s entertaining?”

She shook her head. “No. They’ll shut the door and…”

I didn’t ask further. Apparently the soundproofing in the house wasn’t all it could have been. In fact, I could dimly hear their voices, and then a cork popping. “Ooh. Is there medicine in the bathroom?”

She nodded. Very, very quietly, I opened the door of her bedroom, hoping she’d have the sense to stay put. Very, very quietly I sneaked into the bathroom. Now the trick would be to get what I needed only into “Eleanor’s” glass. Demons weren’t alive, but when they were doing stuff like this they had to fake it very well.

Yes. What I needed was in the medicine cabinet. I sneaked back into the bedroom. “Make some noise for me.”

The girl, grinning, obliged by accidentally knocking some books off the shelf. Under the clutter, I put my wards all the way up and ran downstairs.

I really hoped I’d get the right glass. Daddy was stalking upstairs to ask the girl to be more careful.

I saw Eleanor with her hand curled around her wine glass, then she set it down, carefully far from the other, and moved to peer upstairs.

The perfect opportunity. Dumb demon.