Page 42 of Just One Little Bargain

She’s out the door before I’ve finished pushing my chair in.

The flannel catches on the table corner as I stand, and a quick tug frees it without, mercifully, popping a seam. This is the only outfit I own. One day in the same clothes is nothing. Two is manageable. More than that is a problem I can’t solve. But Evie is already half a block ahead, so clothing issues will have to wait.

I scramble after her. At this point, I’d follow her into a salt mine, which is a horrifying sentence for several practical reasons, starting with salt and ending with small spaces.

Chapter 13

Milo

The literature is mercifully thin on summoning bonds: three paragraphs in Verath’s Compendium, a footnote in Harken’s Index of Mortal Entanglements, and one unhelpful doodle in a training manual that I’m sixty percent sure was sketched by a bored demon with zero field experience.

Want to know what they say about a bond that lasts too long? Nothing. Blank pages. Because no contract demon in recorded history has maintained it past the initial negotiation. You materialize, you seal the deal, the ethereal thread severs, and you return to the fiery depths of Hell.

Nobody accounted for the possibility that the demon might be bad at negotiating and the summoner might refuse to engage entirely.

Nobody accounted for me.

Evie hits the sidewalk ahead of me, walking at a speed that’s technically not jogging but communicates the same message. Her sneakers flash white against the concrete, disappearing and reappearing between bodies, every step timed to the cracks and curbs before her. I dodge around an older man carrying a potted fern and almost collide with a stroller.

I wonder if she thinks ignoring me hard enough will make me wink out of existence. It won’t, but I grudgingly admire the effort. I lengthen my stride to keep up with her.

Brindlewood unfolds around us in an offensive display of charm. Storefronts blur past in stripes of pastel paint and weathered brick, their awnings casting bands of shadow across a lopsided chalk hopscotch grid. Near the corner, a woman fusses over flowers that seem determined to be as colorful as possible. A teenager glides by on a skateboard while an empty coffee cup tumbles along the gutter, jerking forward with each crack in the sidewalk.

Evie reaches the crosswalk and halts. The thread between us settles as the distance closes, which is another new behavior. It seems to have developed preferences about proximity now. Wonderful.

I clear my throat. “You walk incredibly fast for someone with a nine-inch stride.”

Her gaze sears the crossing signal as if she could will it to go green by sheer annoyance.

“Evie.”

Her shoulders cinch tight. “What?”

The coil in my gut twists, dragging last night’s disaster back to the surface.

“I want to apologize again. I know I already said it, but I really am sorry.”

She cuts me a sideways glance. “You’re truly committed to this guilt spiral.”

The signal flips to green and she steps off the curb, her sneakers hitting the asphalt in that quick, purposeful rhythm I’m already learning to recognize. The breeze shifts, carrying another drift of vanilla and brown sugar my way, and I inhale without conscious thought.

“So,” I say, falling into step beside her, matching two of my strides to her three. “On a scale of one to restraining order, where are we currently sitting? Just so I can calibrate my anxiety accordingly.”

She shoots me another glance, taking in my too-long curls and glasses, which I’m suddenly, painfully aware are sitting crooked.

“Provisional parole. Don’t push it.”

A grin splits my face before I can rein it in. “Noted. I’m an excellent parolee. You won’t even know I’m here.”

“You’re six-two,” she says flatly. “I’ll absolutely know you’re here.”

We turn onto a busy street, and I realize that walking next to Evie in this town is a spectator sport.

An elderly man in a fleece vest stops tending to a window box to squint at us.

“Morning, Evie.”

“Morning, Bill.”