Page 197 of Just One Little Bargain

She gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “Wow.”

“I know that was not the correct thing to say.”

“No, actually, keep going. You’re doing great.”

I rub my palm over the back of my neck, already feeling the sweat gathering there despite the cold.

“Your choices do matter. But this one would’ve been a mistake with horrible consequences that would follow you beyond your lifetime. So yes, I ran the clock out deliberately.”

Her jaw tightens. “How are you here at all? You delivered an entire speech about impossibility. You were abundantly clear that demons don’t simply stroll back into the mortal realm whenever convenient. That was the whole tragic point.”

“There isn’t a method for demons to stay.” I take another cautious step toward her. Only a few feet remain between us now. I can see the smudge of mascara beneath one eye and the way her fingers keep flexing against her arms. “But Hell stripped that particular obstacle away for me.”

For the first time since she turned around, the anger slips. “What?”

“I’m mortal now.”

She stares at me. “How?”

“There was a hearing for my punishment. My mother mentioned that stripping a demon of everything infernal is technically a sanction, and I may have become overly interested in that information.”

Her eyes narrow. “You asked them to do this?”

“There was some debate.”

“About what?”

“The Tribunal initially proposed converting me into a centipede.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Why?”

“Apparently it’s a traditional humiliation for demons who demonstrate excessive attachment to mortal affairs. Something about the indignity of becoming a creature humans reflexively crush underfoot.” I push my glasses higher on my nose. “Fortunately, a younger tribunal member was sitting in for training and had never witnessed a full severance. Watching a demon get stripped of everything apparently qualified as educational. The severance took six excruciating days.”

Evie’s mouth compresses into a flat line.

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“No.”

“Because you wouldn’t let me jeopardize anything for you, but you were perfectly happy to walk into Hell and risk getting turned into a centipede?”

I stop myself from pacing, because fleeing in small circles is unlikely to improve matters. “You’re right. It sounds hypocritical.”

“It is hypocritical.”

“Yes.” I force myself to meet her eyes instead of searching the grass for a better answer. “But the risks weren’t the same. If it went badly for me, the consequences stopped with me. Furnace, insect, whatever else they decided. If you signed with Krell, Hell owned your soul, and eventually that would have put you somewhere I couldn’t reach you or protect you. I couldn’t accept that.”

Her arms remain folded, but her posture loosens.

“And I didn’t do this entirely for you,” I add, because she deserves the whole truth. “That’s part of it, obviously. A substantial one. But even if you’d told me to leave Brindlewood and never return, I still would’ve requested mortality. Hell was suffocating me, Evie. It’s been that way for decades. Being dragged back there gave me the push I needed to ask for the exit I’d been too terrified to pursue on my own. Losing my demonhood wasn’t the sacrifice everyone down there thought it was.”

“What about your family?”

“Father more or less disowned me during the hearing. He seemed quite relieved once he got past the shouting. I suspect having his humiliating failure of a son officially removed from Hell improves his professional image.” I shrug, attempting to make it seem smaller than it feels. “And I’ll miss my mother, but we were never particularly close. She’s better at navigating social architecture than providing emotional support.”

Evie’s quiet, then another thought occurs to her. “What happened to Krell?”

Despite everything, my mouth twitches. “I left him in a supernatural processing queue.”