Page 51 of Just One Little Bargain

He scrubs a hand over his jaw, clearly dissatisfied with his own answer. I’m pretty sure if I asked him exactly what about Damien set him off, he couldn’t tell me.

I slide off the examination table onto my left foot, keeping my injured ankle off the floor. My sneaker sits unlaced on the floor. Milo picks it up before I can figure out the logistics and holds it out to me without a word.

“Guess you’re driving me home, then,” I say.

“Right. That’ll be a first,” he says under his breath.

My head snaps toward him. “What?”

“Nothing.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go.”

I hand him my keys, and they clink against his palm as his fingers close around them.

For the record, I don’t hand people my keys. Or anything else that gives them control over where I go and how fast I get there. I drove myself to prom and home from the emergency room at nineteen with a kidney infection and a hundred-and-three-degree fever, because the alternative was calling someone and admitting I needed help.

Today, a man I met last night carried me across a parking lot, and I’m now voluntarily handing him the keys to my car. The trajectory concerns me.

Chapter 15

Milo

“You have never driven a car?” Evie’s tone lands somewhere between a flatline and a funeral.

She’s staring at me from the passenger seat, her injured ankle propped against the glove compartment. Her green eyes are wide.

“Correct.” I wrap my hands around the steering wheel. The manuals explained hand placement very clearly, so I’m cautiously optimistic. “But I’ve done extensive research.”

She thunks her head against the headrest hard enough to rock the whole seat. “We’re going to die.”

“We are not going to die.”

“Milo.”

“The physics are very straightforward. Gas makes it go. Brakes make it stop. The steering wheel points it where you want.”

“Oh my God.”

“Look,” I say, shifting toward her, “I could handle this. Get you home, fix the ankle. Quick, easy, painless.”

Her head rolls sideways on the headrest. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m not.” I scratch the back of my neck. “But healing a sprained ankle in exchange for your immortal soul is a pretty rubbish deal.”

Evie groans. “I don’t . . . I’m still processing, Milo. I can’t decide if I believe you or if I’ve had some kind of stress-induced psychotic break and it’s all a hallucination.” She stares at the empty parking lot. “I’m going to call Daisy. Or my mom. Someone who has a driver’s license and doesn’t claim to be a denizen of the underworld.”

Her hand moves toward the cupholder where her phone sits. I need her to see that I’m not useless, that keeping me around has a point beyond being cosmically tethered to her whether she likes it or not.

“Wait.” My hand hovers near her wrist. “Give me a second.”

“To do what?”

I stay quiet. Contract demons learn early that power sells better without explanation. You never list possibilities. You pick a tiny, ordinary problem and make it vanish so cleanly the mortal has to wonder what else you could fix.

The engine kicks on in the quiet lot, and Evie flinches. Her hand jerks back from the phone as dashboard lights bloom green and blue, and the fuel gauge needle swings to half-full. With a mechanical click, the gearshift slides from park to reverse. The car begins to roll backward.

Evie grabs the dashboard with both hands. Her knuckles go pale against the dark vinyl.

“What—” Her pitch climbs a full octave. “What is happening right now?”