Spotlight & Giveaway: A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Sarah Hawley’s new release: A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch

Calladia Cunnington curses the day she met Astaroth the demon, but when he shows up memoryless, why does she find him so helpless . . . and sort of hot?

 
Calladia Cunnington knows she’s rough around the edges, despite being the heir to one of small-town Glimmer Falls’ founding witch families. While her gym obsession is a great outlet for her anxieties and anger, her hot temper still gets the best of her and manifests in bar brawls. When Calladia saves someone from a demon attack one night, though, she’s happy to put her magic and rage to good use . . . until she realizes the man she saved is none other than Astaroth, the ruthless demon who orchestrated a soul bargain on her best friend.

Astaroth is a legendary soul bargainer and one of the nine members of the demon high council—except he can’t remember any of this. Suffering from amnesia after being banished to the mortal plane, Astaroth doesn’t know why a demon named Moloch is after him, nor why the muscular, angry, hot-in-a-terrifying-way witch who saved him hates him so much.

Unable to leave anyone in such a vulnerable state—even the most despicable demon—Calladia grudgingly decides to help him. (Besides, punching an amnesiac would be in poor taste.) The two set out on an uneasy road trip to find the witch who might be able to restore Astaroth’s memory so they can learn how to defeat Moloch. Calladia vows that once Astaroth is cured, she’ll kick his ass, but the more time she spends with the snarky yet utterly charming demon, the more she realizes she likes this new, improved Astaroth . . . and maybe she doesn’t want him to recover his memories, after all.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch 

This was dumb.
No, not just dumb. This was the single worst idea anyone had ever had.
Calladia lingered at the door to her spare bedroom, watching Astaroth poke around. He investigated the bookshelf, picked up a few trinkets, then fingered the lacy curtains. He was an odd sight in the cheery room: gorgeously disheveled above the neck, alarmingly blood-spattered below. His hand kept twitching at his side, and Calladia wondered if he was instinctively reaching for his cane.
A cane topped with a crystal skull, which she’d learned contained a sword, of all things. It was outrageously unnecessary, but the more time she spent with the demon, the more it seemed to suit him.
He tugged open a drawer and started digging through her scarves, and Calladia had had enough. “Stop snooping,” she ordered.
He adopted an innocent expression that didn’t fool her for a moment. “You can’t expect me to spend the night in a strange place without assessing the territory.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you want to assess my front lawn? Because I’m tempted to make you sleep outside.”
He shivered. “No, this will do.” He was holding a lumpy knitted blue-and-purple scarf—a gift from Themmie during the pixie’s intense but short-lived obsession with knitting. As he let it trail through his fingers, a tingle raced down Calladia’s spine. Those hands had leveled a sword at Oz’s throat earlier that day. They’d probably dealt more death over the centuries than she could imagine. And now they were touching her things.
It was like having a dangerous exotic animal prowling loose in her house. The bedroom was bright and comfortable, decorated in yellows and whites, and Calladia had assembled the simple furniture herself after buying it from the werewolf-run furniture and home accessory store LYKEA. It was a casual space suited for laughter and relaxation, not Astaroth’s elegant brand of menace. His white suit, blood-spattered as it was, was clearly expensive, and his black horns were sharp against his white-blond hair. Even his face was sharp, with high cheekbones, an elegant nose, and a chiseled jaw that would have been at home on a magazine cover. When he flicked his ice-blue eyes in her direction, Calladia resisted the urge to flinch.
“Are you going to stare at me all night?” he asked in that posh British accent.
“Are you going to keep being nosy?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know anything about you except that you hate me. It makes sense to learn more about my enemies.”
Hecate, why was she doing this again?
Oh yeah, because she was incapable of stepping away from a fight or a person in need. Also? Tequila.
Her buzz had worn off, but even with common sense back in action, Calladia didn’t like the idea of kicking Astaroth out of her house. Sure, she’d made Oz sleep on the lawn when she’d first met him and he’d been a real dick, but Oz hadn’t been hurt. Astaroth’s right eye was starting to swell, and although he’d clearly tried to mask it, by the time they reached her house, he’d been limping. Not to mention the blood that had dried in the hair near his left temple, which she suspected hid a nasty cut.
What had happened to make him lose his memory? Had she been the one to hurt him that badly? Sure, her spell had launched him over the mountains, but demons were hardy and healed quickly. Oz had staggered into town a few hours after she’d done the same to him, barely the worse for wear. It had been over twelve hours since she’d punched Astaroth, and he still looked like shit.
Astaroth shrugged out of his suit coat and hung it on the back of the desk chair. His vest went next, and before Calladia could process what was happening, he was unbuttoning his bloodstained white shirt.
“What are you doing?” she yelped, turning around and shielding her eyes.
“Getting ready for bed.” He sounded infuriatingly unbothered. “You seemed inclined to watch.”
“No, I just—” Shoot, why was she still standing there? “I wanted to, um, set some wards.”
Cheeks burning, Calladia pulled the hank of thread from her pocket, focusing on the outcome she wanted. Distracted thoughts were one reason a spell could go awry, and she’d trained hard over the years to be able to focus through emotional distress—a handy talent with a mother like Cynthia Cunnington, mayor of Glimmer Falls and the embodiment of parental disapproval. Calladia closed her eyes, imagining a golden cage shimmering into life at the boundaries of the room, then started weaving.
“I can feel your magic,” Astaroth said. “You’re strong.”
Calladia ignored him, contemplating what mix of words and knots would be best for this spell. The language of magic was difficult, complex, and irrational. It was an amalgamation of many languages, with chaotic elements all its own. Speaking the words wasn’t necessary for small spells—especially not for a spellcaster as accomplished as Calladia—but for a working like this, it was essential to ground the spell in both language and action. The string dug into her fingers, winding in tightening loops as she added varieties of knots. One knot for safety, one for captivity, one for violence should her mystical boundary be breached.
“Are you going to allow me access to the loo?” Astaroth asked.
“Demons don’t eat, drink, or use the bathroom as often as humans do. You’ll be fine.”
“If you want to risk it. They’re your sheets.”
Damn. Calladia unraveled a few knots, then made new loops to extend the parameter, adjusting her mental picture to allow a narrow corridor between the spare bedroom and the bathroom. Hopefully she wouldn’t run into him in the middle of the night.
“Astaroth din indelammsen,” she whispered. With a final tug, the spell settled into place, and Calladia shivered with the pleasant sensation of magic sparkling through her body. It felt like a banked forge in her chest had roared to life, filling her with heat and light.
She opened her eyes and turned around. “All set—what the fuck?” The last words came out way too high-pitched, because Astaroth hadn’t stopped with the shirt.
No, the demon was standing by the foot of the bed, hands on his lean hips, completely nude.
Calladia’s eyes darted down against her will, then immediately up again. Whoa. That was . . .
Yeah. No. Ew.
She shook her head as if that could dislodge the image, then covered her eyes with her hands for good measure. Nevertheless, his frame was imprinted in her brain: pale skin stretched over lean muscle, and between his legs . . .
“Nope,” she said, refusing to contemplate it.
“Something not to your liking?” he asked.
“All of it, actually.”
“Are you sure? You haven’t even seen all of it yet.” His voice practically dripped with wickedness.
“And I never will,” Calladia vowed. “Now go to sleep, you menace.”
She didn’t move until she heard the rustle of sheets. When she peeked out from between her fingers, she saw him sitting upright in bed, arms crossed behind his head as if to better show off his cut torso. Thankfully, his legs and . . . yeah . . . were covered by the sheets.
“My wards will cause serious damage if you go anywhere but this room and the bathroom,” she said, trying to ignore the warmth in her cheeks. “So don’t fuck with me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” His lips curved up on one side in a devilish smirk that implied otherwise. His burgeoning black eye should have diminished his appeal, but Calladia had always been a sucker for a good fight.
She turned off the light. “Don’t get too comfortable. I’m getting rid of you tomorrow, one way or another.”
His voice trailed after her. “If you say so . . .”

Excerpted from A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Hawley. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. ©Sarah Hawley. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

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Meet the Author:

Sarah Hawley is the author of A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where her hobbies include rambling through the woods and appreciating fictional villains. She has an MA in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats.
Buy link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712949/a-demons-guide-to-wooing-a-witch-by-sarah-hawley/