Page 30 of Devils Don’t Deal

I jabbed her eyes with my thumbs hard enough that she whipped her head back, eyes feral like her snarl.

“Go away. I don’t take non-paying customers, and you are definitely non-paying. You don’t have any money, do you? Just go…”

She yanked the sword up until it caught on my ribs. Now my blood was falling all over the place, mixing with whatever blood she’d used to make the creepy swords. And the ribbons.

I was so dead. “Philius Gray is going to avenge me,” I whispered. Would he? Or would he just shrug and find someone else to feed his rabbit?

Her eyes narrowed, mouth opening in a hungry smile. And then the rabbit’s shadow fell over us, stretching taller and taller, until I turned to look at him, a pale shadow in the darkness. He swallowed her whole, top to bottom, in one gulp, the way Philius ate my croissants. A shadow seemed to slither away as the blood sword dissolved, leaving me sliding to the ground behind the counter.

Well, that was the weirdest death sequence ever.

Was she dead? How did you kill something that wasn’t alive? Wasn’t I dead yet? So weird.

Divinity was there, soft, fluffy, and somehow still perfectly white. He looked vibrantly healthy, not just kind of cute but gleaming with vitality and life. And then he bit my hand. Seriously? What kind of rabbit bit people when they were already bleeding to death?

A vampire rabbit. I’d known there was something fishy about this deal.

And then Philius Gray was there, kneeling over me, running a hand above me, like he could see the damage that way.

“Stay with me, my beauty,” he murmured as he pressed a hand to my stomach. It should’ve hurt, but I couldn’t feel it. That was a bad thing.

I grabbed his wrist, holding on as well as I could with my blood-slick grip. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easily,” I whispered, barely a breath, because I didn’t have much breath. Any. That was the end of it.

“Hush. Save your strength.”

“So bossy.”

He gave me a deliriously beautiful smile. “I am sort of your boss. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m still losing it.”

He groaned and pressed his lips to mine.

I was so surprised that I jerked, and then the taste of him, caramels and ganache with a hint of cinnamon, consumed me. Had anything ever tasted so good?

I lost my mind at that point. He must’ve still had a hand over my stomach to keep in the blood or whatever people put pressure on wounds for, but that was far away, nonessential compared to the sweet and delicious taste of my devil.

He kissed me and kissed me like I’d never been kissed before. Not that I’d ever been kissed before, but it seemed that no kiss should ever be so exquisite, otherwise that was all anyone would ever do. Kissing. Two lips, and then his tongue, and was he breathing into my lungs? Why did that feel so good? Probably because he was a devil and could turn pain into pleasure. Convenient to have a devil around when you were dying so they could send you off properly. Or improperly, because kissing a devil wasn’t something I should ever do.

But I clung to his wrist and kissed him, or let him kiss me, as delighted as I possibly could be in such a situation.

Happiness was kissing a devil.

Chapter

Ten

Iwoke up in the Bell, Singsong’s best hospital, where my mother had spent so much time in her last year. Time I was still paying off.

I tried to sit up, because I couldn’t be here and rack up more bills that my dad would end up in a cage for. Or the goblins would unleash another Lady of the Wild Woods for. But my stomach muscles acted like they’d been chopped in half recently and didn’t do anything but send a spike of pain through me. Zero upward movement, oodles of pain. Clearly not a winning combo.

“Don’t move,” my dad growled, putting a heavy hand to my upper chest, like I was going to try that again. Nope. Not with the way my stomach was still throbbing horribly.

I tried to smile, but my face wasn’t working great. Something soft moved against my arm then the rabbit rose up to stare into my eyes. Wow. His eyes were bright and shiny, like worlds coalescing in a very magical way. Yes. This was a magic rabbit. Why did he look so good after I’d basically died? Maybe he was a death rabbit. Vampire rabbit?

“Off,” my dad said, trying to shoo him away.

Divinity sniffed and snuggled down by my side, between my arm and my ribs. I tried to bring back exactly what had happened in the bakery. Had he really expanded and eaten the Lady of the Wild Woods? It seemed like the shadow silhouette had been in the shape of a devil, with a horn and a tail, but maybe I’d been hallucinating. It was hard to think properly when you were being dragged around by a blood sword.