Page 196 of Just One Little Bargain

“Anytime!” She darts off, already showing the photos to my mom.

The party continues. People drift between the tables, refilling plates, laughing, pulling Marmalade onto laps and spoiling him with attention he pretends to hate but clearly loves.

The ache in my chest hasn’t faded with the day. If anything, the pull has grown more insistent, tightening whenever I stop moving and pay attention.

Once the sun starts dropping behind the trees, the garden changes with it. The last clear gold of the afternoon deepens to amber across the lawn. Jackets come back on as the temperature falls. Mom wraps a blanket around her shoulders. The fairy lights begin their intended job, glowing overhead while the tables blur at the edges beneath the deepening blue of the sky.

When guests start leaving, I’m relieved.

Maddie and Daisy stay behind helping me clean up. They’re in the kitchen washing plates while I pick up the last scattered blankets from the grass outside. The cooling air raises goosebumps along my bare arms as I bend for another one.

Thunder rolls, low and long, somewhere out past the tree line, and a thread of lightning stitches the darkening sky. The pull beneath my ribs tightens, stopping me halfway to the blanket.

“I’m sorry I missed the party,” says a voice behind me.

I don’t move as my heart gives one violent thud, then another, and every other sound in the garden falls away around that voice.

I know that voice.

I’ve heard it read magazine trivia aloud, mutter at recipes in my kitchen, and say my name in a way nobody else ever had.

I was certain I’d never hear it again.

Chapter 56

Milo

The last time I stood in Brindlewood, I had horns, claws, and Hell’s deadline hanging over my head. Now I have a human body that still aches from being hurled into the mortal realm, and no plan whatsoever for what I’m supposed to say.

Evie has her back to me, bent slightly as she gathers a blanket from the grass, and I do nothing except stand there and look at her. A week without her has wrecked my ability to behave normally, because my first thought isn’t anything useful or remotely appropriate for a reunion.

The dress she’s wearing hugs her waist and hips before falling loose around her legs, leaving her shoulders bare beneath the fairy lights, and every movement pulls my attention somewhere else I remember touching. Heat rolls through me so quickly it almost makes me laugh, because of course this is what my newly human body chooses to contribute to an already impossible moment.

But underneath the want is what hurt most: I missed looking at her. Not remembering her, not replaying pieces of her until I worried I’d worn them thin, but standing close enough to see the way the breeze lifts strands of hair from her neck and hear the tiny huffs while she wrestles with the blanket.

All I want is to cross the garden, wrap both arms around her, and find out whether holding her still feels as much like coming home as I remember. The only thing keeping me where I am is the very real possibility that she might slap me before I get the chance.

Every line I rehearsed on the walk here vanishes. “I’m sorry I missed the party.”

The second it leaves my mouth, I want it back. Of all the things I could’ve said after being dragged to Hell, stripped of everything I’d ever been, and making it back to her, I chose to apologize for missing a party. Brilliant.

I should say something else, but she still hasn’t turned around. I start to think she won’t.

When Evie finally turns, she says nothing, and every second makes me more certain I’ve made a mistake. Her eyes find mine, fairy lights catching in her hair. For one brief moment, she looks relieved.

Then her shoulders square.

“No.” Her arms fold tight across her middle, pulling every line of her body taut beneath the dress I was admiring a moment ago. “Absolutely not. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to disappear through the floor of a building and then just . . . what? Wander into my garden a week later like you only popped out for milk.”

“I know.” The words feel inadequate.

“You were dragged back to Hell, Milo!” She spits my name. “Ripped away before I could even process what you’d done.”

I take one careful step closer. “Evie, I’m sorry you had to watch that. And I’m sorry I took the choice away from you.”

Her eyes flash. “But?”

“I don’t regret stopping you.”