The Menopause Grimoire

Forty-three, divorced, and eating cold lo mein over the sink in my underwear. This was not the fresh start I had in mind.

Maggie Kowalski just wanted a house of her own after twenty years of marriage to a man who looked through her like furniture. What she got was a fixer-upper with a surprise feature: a seven-foot shadow demon bound to the foundation by a four-hundred-year-old covenant.

Azazrith, Lord of the Seventh Circle, Commander of the Fallen Legions, Keeper of the Eternal Flame... and apparently, her new live-in housekeeper. He makes her breakfast. He mixes perfect Cosmopolitans. He terrorized the HOA president so thoroughly that Maggie's trash can placement is no longer a neighborhood concern.

He also looks at her like she's the most magnificent thing he's seen in four thousand years of existence.

The covenant binding him requires genuine emotion from the household's occupant—or he'll be ripped back to the Abyss forever. Maggie just got out of a loveless marriage. She's not looking for feelings. She's looking for peace, quiet, and maybe some really good sex with a supernatural being who actually notices when she walks into a room.

But when the binding starts to crack and her adult children discover Mom's new "roommate," Maggie has to decide: Is she willing to risk her heart again? And is choosing a demon really any crazier than staying in a marriage where she'd already become invisible?