Page 180 of Just One Little Bargain

“No.”

My shoulder screams as I haul him toward me. His shoes carve pale tracks through the dust, and I tighten my grip, stupidly believing I’m winning.

Then Hell pulls harder.

His body snaps away from me, taking me forward with him. My knee slams into concrete, pain shooting up my thigh, but I keep hold of his sleeve, fingers twisted into the fabric until the seams strain beneath them.

“Milo!”

“Evie, let go.”

“Absolutely not!”

I brace one foot under me and pull. The darkness around his legs has thickened until it looks almost liquid, erasing the edges of whatever it touches. The line of his boots blurs, returns, then vanishes again below a ripple of black that sinks straight through the unbroken floor.

Behind him, Krell is still fighting with considerably less dignity than I suspect he’d prefer anyone to witness. His mortal form slips under the strain. Red floods his skin, and his nails lengthen into claws that score through old brick. He looks furious rather than afraid.

“There’s a grace period,” he snaps toward whatever unseen bureaucracy is hauling him home. “There has always been a grace period.”

Hell answers with another subterranean shudder. Under any other circumstances, that would’ve been funny.

Milo watches me, wrecked and apologetic, and being right about why he did it only makes me angrier.

“I’m sorry.” His face twists. “But I knew you wouldn’t stop.”

“I could’ve saved you.”

“Maybe.”

That hurts more than if he’d told me there was never a chance.

The darkness takes another violent pull at both of them. Krell swears, his voice warped by something deeper beneath it, but my focus narrows to Milo’s hand sliding from mine.

Loose debris skitters toward them in widening circles, scraps of paper and leaves dragging themselves over the concrete before vanishing wherever the darkness touches. The moonlight above them warps, stretching thin around their bodies, and the deeper the distortion becomes, the harder it’s to judge where they actually are.

Krell loses the column. His fingers rip free in a shower of crumbling mortar, and the force whips him backward several yards before darkness folds around his shoulders. Then he’s gone, and my brain keeps expecting him to reappear somewhere else in the room.

“Milo.”

I hate the expression on his face because it’s too calm for what is happening. “Don’t look at me like that.”

His mouth tightens.

“I mean it.”

Another yank drags him backward. I stumble forward, catch myself, and haul him closer, only for the force to steal the distance back.

“I’m so angry with you.”

“I know.” He smiles at me. It’s small and sad. “I need you to live a long, ordinary, and happy life. That’s what I want. You were never the thing that needed saving.”

“No!” His last two fingers slip through mine.

I lunge, but the darkness closes over him first. I’m left reaching into empty space as the distortion snaps inward with a concussive rush that knocks me onto both hands.

“You asshole,” I whisper.

The words vanish into the empty building.