Page 77 of Just One Little Bargain

Milo cracks the first egg cleanly. A ridiculous little burst of pride catches me off guard, and I immediately want to take it back. The second break is messier, sending a piece of shell into the pan. I press my lips together as he tries to pinch it out, but it skates across the wet egg white, dodges him twice, then disappears into the center.

“Use a bigger shell to scoop it out,” I say, in the calmest voice available to a woman dying inside.

“I almost have it.”

What he has is three fingers in a hot pan, and a piece of shell that’s outmaneuvering him.

Milo leans closer, brow furrowed, tongue pressed into his cheek. He finds it, pinches it between his fingertips, and holds it up for me to see.

“Got it.”

“You’re burning the bottom of the eggs.”

He drops the shell and lunges for the spatula. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to get down and take over.

“Scrape the bottom. Push everything toward the center.”

“Right.” He starts herding the eggs around the pan. “Scrambled. So, this is fine.”

The bacon is uneven, pieces still pale on one side because he flipped too early despite being explicitly told to wait. The scramble has shell in it, which I’m absolutely picking out before plating. None of it is up to my standards, but I don’t care because he just looked at me like cracking an egg wrong in my kitchen was a genuine moral failure. And he’s a demon. His bar for guilt should be higher than a broken yolk.

I breathe in and remind myself that imperfect bacon has never killed anyone. Probably.

“I’ve been thinking about the parking lot.” I keep my focus on the strawberries. “When you showed me your . . . horns.”

The spatula stops mid-motion.

“Everything happened so fast that I didn’t get a proper look.”

“There wasn’t much to see.” He resumes flipping the bacon, but the motion has lost its ease.

“I barely saw them before I ate gravel. I don’t think that qualifies as a thorough viewing.”

The corner of his mouth lifts, but the rest of his face doesn’t follow. “The full viewing isn’t really worth the buildup.”

“In movies, demons always have the whole ensemble. Horns, tail, red skin, pitchfork. Is any of that accurate? Or is Hollywood just making things up?”

“Some of it.” Lightness enters his voice, though his posture remains tense. “Horns vary in size and shape. Tails are less common than you’d think. Red skin is accurate, but it’s only one color out of many. We take mortal form when we’re topside.”

“You said the horns vary. What about yours?”

“Mine are . . .” The spatula hovers over the pan. “They’re fine.”

“Fine?”

“Functional.”

“Can I see them again?”

“No.” He focuses very hard on the bacon. “They’re not that impressive.”

I remember Daisy at thirteen, hunching in oversized sweatshirts because she developed early and the boys at school noticed. She had the same posture Milo has now, body trying to take up less space around the thing it can’t hide.

My hand stills. Not knowing what he actually looks like has been bothering me, but he clearly doesn’t want to show me. And I understand too well what it feels like when someone pushes past a boundary because they’ve decided they have the right.

“What do demons normally eat?” I ask because sometimes the kindest thing you can offer someone is an exit from a conversation they’re trying to avoid.

He latches onto the new subject immediately. “You don’t want to know.”