Page 82 of Just One Little Bargain

“You can’t know that without examining the pocket depth.”

“I can and I do and the answer is no. That jacket is the color of a hazard cone and I refuse to be seen with you in it.”

“So you care about being seen with me.”

Her stride hitches. “I care about not walking next to a human traffic cone.”

The distance between us closes as she pulls the jacket from my grip and hooks it onto the rail with a decisive clack of the hanger. Then her hand lands on my lower back, redirecting me toward a different section. Her hand on my lower back sends my attention straight to the growing problem in my jeans.

“You’ve been coming here a long time?”

“Since I was eight.” She doesn’t glance up from the hangers. “Fran used to let me and Daisy try on whatever we wanted. We spent hours in here. My sister always went straight for the ugliest hat she could find, while I put on some enormous fur coat that fell past my ankles. Then we’d parade around the shop like we were famous.”

She’s smiling, dimple showing in one cheek, gold catching in her eyes beneath the shop lights. Evie’s unfairly pretty, and it takes actual effort to drag my gaze back to the shirt in my hands before I do something unforgivably stupid.

“Fran never rushed us. Even when we weren’t buying anything, which was most days, because we didn’t have the money.” She pulls out a sweater and adds it to the pile. “Mom gave us two dollars each, and somehow the thing Daisy wanted always cost exactly that. Funny how that worked out.”

There was no mystery to it. Fran had been quietly adjusting prices so two little girls could walk out with something. Evie knows that now. She probably figured it out years ago.

“I used to steal books,” I say.

Her hands stop on the hanger.

“Not from people. From the processing halls. When new souls arrived, they sometimes carried pieces of their lives with them. Books, photographs, letters. It all got incinerated, but I’d take the books before they reached the furnace and hide them under my mattress.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. “My father found them once and burned every one. Told me human things make you soft.”

She’s looking at me now. “Did you stop stealing them?”

“No. I just found a better hiding spot.”

“Rebel demon with a book problem.” Her mouth twitches. “I should’ve guessed.”

Evie goes back to stacking clothes in my arms, and the pile grows until it reaches my chin and I have to grip it with both hands.

“Go try everything on.”

The changing area is a curtained alcove barely wider than my shoulders, with a full-length mirror propped against the wall and a wooden stool that wobbles when I set the pile on it.

The jeans Evie selected bunch around my ankles in denim puddles, and the Henley stretches across my shoulders while gaping at the waist. I pull the curtain back.

“This isn’t working.”

Evie looks up from a rack of jackets. She looks me up and down and snorts. Her hand slaps over her mouth, but it’s too late.

“You look like a scarecrow someone dressed in the dark.”

“Constructive feedback. Thank you.”

“Wrong size. The fit is a disaster.” She’s moving again, diving back into the racks and emerging with replacements. “Try these.”

The second round is better. The dark jeans sit where they should, and the red flannel is decent through the shoulders but billows at the sides. When I step out, Evie studies the fit before vetoing it and handing me the gray crewneck sweater instead.

“This one over the Henley.”

I pull it on right there, because the curtain seems pointless by now. When I look up, Evie is holding a flannel she was about to refold, but her fingers have gone slack around the fabric and her attention is fixed on my chest.

I recognize what this is. Hell spent years teaching me to read human want in all its forms, because that’s the hinge a contract swings on. The summoning bond only sharpens what I’d pick up without it, making the signal impossible to ignore. It can’t invent feelings or plant anything new. It only reveals what’s already there. Evie wants me, and now I know it. The problem is that the second I feel her desire, mine answers, and the bond muddles them together until I can’t tell where hers ends and mine begins.

“Come here.” She beckons me closer. “The collar’s all bunched up in the back.”